The sacred in life and art

by Philip Sherrard

The concept of a completely profane world -- of a cosmos wholly desacralized -- is a fairly recent invention of the Western mind, and only now are we beginning to realize the appalling consequences of trying to order and mold our social, personal, and creative life in obedience to its dictates. This book attempts to clarify what is demanded of us if we are to have any chance of avoiding the impending catastrophe. It examines the nature and significance of the sacred itself and focuses on the ever-present, timeless qualities of beauty, love, and miracle through which we can be renewed and transformed whatever the condition of the world in which we live.

Genres: Art, Theology, Philosophy, Christianity, Religion

180 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1990

About the author

Philip Sherrard was educated at Cambridge and London and taught at the universities of both Oxford and London, but he made Greece his permanent home. A pioneer of modern Greek studies and translator, with Edmund Keeley, of Greece's major modern poets, he wrote many books on Greek, philosophical and literary themes. He was also the translator and editor (with G.E.H. Palmer and Bishop Kallistos Ware) of the Philokalia, a collection of texts in five volumes by the spiritual masters of the Orthodox Christian tradition.

A profound, commited and imaginative thinker, his theological and metaphysical writings embrace a wide range of subjects, from the study of the spiritualizing potential of sexual love to the restoration of a sacred cosmology which he saw as the only way to escape from the spiritual and ecological dereliction of the modern world.