Scruton’s Wagner on God, Salvation, and Eros

Introduction

Salvation arouses suspicion. It presupposes an

indefensible metaphysical framework. A soteriological

conception of the human telos commits us to something

whose existence is doubtful, beyond the world in which

we ‘live and move and have our being’. The usual

suspect is God, but it could equally be Good on a

suitably inflated interpretation.

Second, it compromises human fulfillment.

Soteriological models presuppose that we can be saved

only by ceasing to be human, because what we must be

united with, if we are to be saved, is not of this world,

and we can unite with it only by relinquishing this

world. We devalue human existence in favour of a

promised land, which turns out to be spurious. If to be

saved is to ascend to heaven, then we need to be saved

from human existence.

We might conclude that nothing we do can make any

soteriological difference. Humanity is the source of

the problem and, as such, cannot provide the solution.

We cannot save ourselves. Yet again we reach a

conclusion inimical to human fulfillment. Not merely

must we devalue human existence; we must acknowledge

incoherence in the very idea of a human realization of

the human telos.

1

If the human telos cannot be humanly realized, it

apparently follows that hope must come from without.

One obvious gloss is that we require God’s help. And

this could easily be taken to compromise our humanity

once more, by taking responsibility out of human hands

and displacing it into God’s. As Levinas said, ‘the

conditions for action and effort are annulled’ and

humanity is cast in the role of a helpless child. 1

The worries are familiar, but each move of this

attack can be questioned.2 We cannot assume that we have

a clear enough picture of God or Good to reject these

ideas out of hand. This response perhaps has more

weight in the case of Good, for everyone would allow

that this idea is central to an adequate conception of

the human telos. However, without a clear conception of

it, we cannot be sure that the Good is not of more

metaphysical weight than some of us are prepared to

shoulder, nor that it can be comprehended in non-

theological terms.

Is talk of salvation bound to take us away from this

world to a heavenly, non-human realm? Again, we must

tread carefully, and remember that interpretation of such

talk is hardly perspicuous. The commitment seems clear in

Plato’s scheme of things, in, e.g., Diotima’s

recommendation that we leave behind the ‘mass of

perishable rubbish’ which is the stuff of ordinary human

existence.3 And yes, we find a clear expression of this

idea in the Christian tradition, when Augustine bemoans

2

our tendency to ‘grovel’ in this world of flesh and blood

rather than aspiring towards the eternal bliss of union

with God. 4 However, we may be danger of distorting the

content of these accounts by interpreting them too

literally.5 There is more than one way of understanding

what it means to go to heaven or unite with God or Good,

and no immediate implication that we can fulfill these

aims only by relinquishing our humanity. 6 It could simply

be a fancy way of describing a fulfilled human existence.

Equally, there are interpretations of what it means to

grovel in the world of flesh and blood which do not imply

that redemption requires loss of humanity. It may simply

be that there are aspects of humanity which require to be

transcended, or controlled, if our telos is to be realized.

The idea that we should focus on what it is to

live a fulfilled human existence is important to

Levinas – hence his worries about those positions –

predominantly Christian, he believes - that view God as

a consoling father figure in the sky. He objects that

God’s nature is seriously compromised by this view, but

that it doesn’t follow that we must forsake all

reference to God. The point is simply that we must give

due weight to His transcendence and our own role in

securing our salvation: ‘Man is responsible for the

universe. He makes and unmakes worlds, elevates and

lowers them. God’s reign depends on me’. 7

Both Platonism and the Judeo-Christian tradition

insist on our taking seriously the possibility of some

3

kind of life after human life, even if it is a

possibility that we can barely comprehend. This will

raise the hackles of those who prefer to work within a

secular framework. But even if we do take seriously this

possibility, it need not imply that human existence is

something from which we need to be saved, nor that our

human efforts can make no difference.

Augustine notwithstanding, the Christian

tradition is packed with testimonies to the

soteriological significance of human existence and

action. St Paul concludes a discussion of the future

resurrection of the body as follows:

Therefore, my beloved ones, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, because youknow that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.8

Abounding in the work of the Lord is no mere diversion

from the horrors of our all too human existence as we

await the promised land. Such work – our work - can

move us in the required direction, and transform this

world.9 This should give pause to those who assume that

salvation can be bought only at the cost of our

humanity. And, once we grant significance to what we do

and how we are as human beings, it becomes harder to

insist that salvation is out of our hands – as if we

need only sit back and wait for the promised heaven, no

strings attached and preferably all earthly strings

broken.

4

I shall examine a position which throws all these

issues into stark focus – the position advanced by

Roger Scruton in Death Devoted Heart. The theme of the book

is Wagner’s Tristan, and Scruton examines its

philosophical and soteriological presuppositions. He

has denied in conversation that he endorses Wagner’s

position, but there are significant overlaps with his

own philosophical and religious standpoint, and his

mode of presentation makes it difficult to situate him

with respect to the many voices in the discussion. My

own view is that Scruton is attracted to Wagner’s

position, but retains sympathy for the traditional

religious alternative. This tension is understandable

given the obscurities of the relevant options, and must

be acknowledged if we are to engage with the

philosophical issues. So it is this position that I shall

focus on – this peculiar amalgam of Wagner and Scruton

– and to avoid misidentification, I shall refer to its

author as ‘Scruton’s Wagner’.

Scruton’s Wagner on salvation

Scruton’s Wagner holds that we have a yearning for

redemption, and that this is a religious yearning, but

his religious faith is ‘shaky at best and scarcely

contained within the bounds of orthodox Christianity’.10

He sets out therefore to ‘discover a redemption that

needs no God to accomplish it’, and is ‘detached from

every promise of a life after death’.11 This redemption

5

is spelled out in three ways. It involves ‘a

transcendence of the world of appetite into the realm

of values’.12 It brings about ‘a changed perception of

the empirical world – a recognition that freedom really

does exist in this world and that we possess it’.13 And

it regains ‘the sacred in a world where sacrilege is

the prevailing danger’14.

Scruton’s Wagner distinguishes his position from

the ‘non-religious’ alternative wherein man ‘makes

himself’ only at the cost of desacralizing himself and

the world. He sees sacrilege as a perennial threat, and

cites Mircea Eliade’s definition of the ‘non-religious

man’: the non-religious man believes that the sacred is

‘the prime obstacle to his freedom’, and that he will

‘become himself only when he is totally demysticized.

He will not be truly free until he has killed the last

god’.15

So there are ways of ‘making oneself’ which lead

to a desacralization of man and his world.

Desacralization eliminates what is valuable and sacred,

and, given the contrast drawn between the world of

value and the world of appetite, we are to suppose that

a desacralized world is one where appetite reigns.

However, it is not a world in which freedom is entirely

lacking; the ‘non-religious’ man possesses freedom of a

sort, only he sees the sacred as an obstacle to his

freedom.

6

Talk of the sacred involves a concession to

religion, and we have heard already that the yearning

for redemption is a religious yearning. However,

Scruton’s Wagner resists spelling out these notions in

God-involving terms, which would make redemption ‘an

escape into another world in which the sufferings of

this one are finally compensated’.16 Man would thus be

propelled towards a life after human life, implying

that there can be no sacralizing of man and his world,

for these are things from which one has to escape. Nor

1 “A Religion for Adults”, in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism, trans. SeanHand (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1997), 15.2 Stephen Mulhall’s Philosophical Myths of the Fall (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005) discusses this with reference to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. 3 The Symposium, trans. Walter Hamilton (London: Penguin, 1951), 211c-212a.4 Confessions, trans. R.S. Pine-Coffin (London: Penguin, 1961) ,VIII, 8.5 John McDowell notes Plato’s ‘penchant for vividly realized pictorial presentations of his thought’ in his “Two Sorts of Naturalism”, Mind, Value, and Reality, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1998), 177.6 Iris Murdoch argues that Diotima’s ‘ladder of love’ is a mythical representation of the journey we must take to full humanity in her Fire and the Sun (London: Chatto and Windus, 1977), 33. 7 “Judaism and Kenosis”, in In the Time of the Nations, trans. Michael B Smith (London: Continuum, 2007), 112. 8 I Corinthians 15.58.9 See Hugo Meynell, ‘Towards a theology of industrial man and society’, in The New Theology and Modern Theologians (London: Sheed &Ward, 1967), 105-116. 10 Death-Devoted Heart: Sex and the Sacred in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 3. All references will be to this work unless otherwise stated. 11 14.12 192.13 183.14 182. 15 182. The reference comes from Mirceal Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane (Orlando, Florida: Harcourt, 1987), 203.

7

could such a redemption be secured by human devices. As

Scruton’s Wagner puts it, it is God who redeems us from

our world.

On the preferred alternative, we can redeem

ourselves ‘without the aid of a god’, and redeem

ourselves in this world rather than from it. Hence, man

‘makes himself by sacrilizing himself, and…by sacrilizing

himself he also sacrilizes the world’.17 In this way

redemption consists in a ‘changed perception of the

empirical world’, a demonstration of its value.18

Some comments

Scruton’s Wagner denies that we need salvation from our

humanity. Rather, we require to be saved from our

appetites – hence, redemption involves a transcendence

of the world of appetite into the realm of value. The

idea that we are to transcend the world of appetite is

ill-defined as it stands, not merely because the notion

of appetite is unclear, but also because it is unclear

what kind of transcendence is needed. These unclarities

will become more evident as the argument proceeds. We

can, however, make some preliminary points. If we do

not require saving from our humanity, and if human

beings do have appetites, one might find a difficulty

in the idea that our appetites are to be transcended.

It would be absurd to suppose that we must transcend

16 183.17 182.18 183.

8

bodily appetites like hunger and thirst, for their

satisfaction is required if we are to continue to exist

and do the things which distinguish us from creatures

living a purely appetitive mode of existence –

creatures like cats and dogs.

Scruton’s Wagner does not recommend abstention

from eating and drinking. So the recommendation is not

that we transcend the world of appetite in this sense.

However, he is concerned with features that distinguish

us from cats and dogs, and will argue that one such

feature is our capacity to erotically love another

human being. Erotic love is significant to Scruton’s

Wagner because although it is irreducible to appetite,

he wishes to retain its essential connection with the

body and reject Plato’s view that one can realize the

true aim of eros only by transcending one’s embodiment.

All this ties up with his wish to define a

soteriological model which accommodates and redeems the

bodily rather than leaving it stranded and detached from

the whole human being. The idea that the bodily is to be

redeemed rather than rejected is important for

understanding what it might mean to transcend the world

of appetite. The bodily appetite in question is sexual

appetite, and the transcendence envisaged is not

abstinence but spiritualization: we may indulge sexual

appetites, but only in a spiritual way. The notion of

spiritualization must remain vague at this stage. But at

least it involves all the notions which must be in play

9

if there is to be genuine salvation. A spiritualized

appetite is not just appetite, and Scruton’s Wagner will

emphasise this by distinguishing between sexual desire

and sexual appetite: sexual desire retains an essential

bodily element, but it is distinct from mere bodily

appetite.

So Scruton’s Wagner readily accepts a

soteriological conception of the human telos provided

that it accommodates and redeems the bodily. However,

he remains alert to the worries which have led

philosophers to reject such a conception. His shaky

religious faith leads him to dispense with any

reference to God, and he believes in any case that a

God-involving soteriology is self-defeating: it

encourages us to devalue and bypass our humanity and

our world. These worries do not lead him to abandon

talk of soteriology – talk which is best translated

into talk about ‘sacrilizing’ self and world. He has no

reservations about describing his position as

‘religious’. As he puts it, his use of the term

‘redemption’ –a regaining of the sacred in a world

where sacrilege is the prevailing danger – restores its

true religious sense. We shall reject this conception

of the human telos only at the cost of retreating into a

‘non-religious’ alternative in which man ‘makes

himself’ only in proportion as he ‘desacralizes’ and

‘demystifies’ himself and world.

10

It should be clear from what I have said that

Scruton’s Wagner’s worry that a God-involving

soteriology encourages us to bypass and devalue our

humanity and the world is unfounded. Furthermore,

‘shaky religious faith’ is hardly a reason for

forsaking reference to God given that the boundaries of

the concept are so obscure. These obscurities come to

the fore when we recall his insistence that the

redemption he favours belongs to a properly religious

framework, and wonder whether he is simply rejecting a

false god, or, alternatively, aiming to articulate a

conception of religion shorn of reference to God. Lucy

Beckett adopts the second interpretation and objects:

The literal meaning of the world ‘religious’ is ‘firm-binding’ or ‘re-binding of the human to the divine. To cut the word loose from divinity, and fromtruth, and to use it for any experience that gives usthe subjective feeling that we are ‘in the presence of the sacred’ is either archly elitist….or actually dangerous. 19

Beckett’s account of the term ‘religion’ is

conjectural, the notions she deploys are questionable,

and, given that Scruton’s Wagner seeks a more

satisfactory conception of religion it cannot be

assumed that her criticism is justified. But we shall

find some evidence for her claims that the real theme

of Death-Devoted Heart is ‘idolatry, or the worship of what

19 “Scruton: Death-Devoted Heart – Sex and the Sacred in Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde”, Opera Today, 14 Jan, 2005.

11

is not God’,20 and that Scruton’s Wagner belongs to ‘the

tradition of moral vitalism’ in which ‘man in a

meaningless universe creates his values…rather than

discovering what is good’.

Erotic love, appetite, and desire

We inhabit a ‘morbidly unheroic world’, Scruton’s

Wagner complains. ‘We are tempted to live by rational

self-interest, judging everything – the sexual act

included – in terms of cost and benefit’. We have

exchanged ‘duty for pleasure and value for price’21, and

‘the truly human - the thing which invites redemption

and which may also achieve it’ – has ‘become hidden in

the clouds of appetite’.22 Hidden in the clouds of

appetite, ‘we have become habituated to forms of sexual

interest in which the person, the freedom, and the

virtue of the other are all irrelevant to the goal’. 23

These forms of sexual interest are ‘deeply insulting’,

‘and in every form they compromise not only the person

who addresses them but also the person addressed’.24

We have here a version of Augustine’s claims that

we grovel in the world of flesh and blood, that this

condition deeply compromises our humanity, but can be

overcome. Unspiritualised appetites did not emerge so

recently as Scruton’s perfect tenses suggest: it is not

20 Ibid.21 10-11.22 4.23 141.24 141.

12

only modern man who inhabits the clouds of appetite.

Cost-benefit calculation is perhaps more prevalent than

in Augustine’s day. But it is distinct from appetites.

Appetites may be indulged for pleasure rather than

money and, conversely, non-appetitive activities, such

as philosophy or poetry, may be pursued for a price.

The appetites which concern Scruton’s Wagner are

sexual, and it is no part of his position that we can

lift the clouds only by ceasing to be sexual beings.

The point is, rather, that we can do so by a form of

sexual interest which is irreducible to appetite, and

focuses on all the things which disappear at this

appetitive level – the person, the freedom, and the

virtue of both parties concerned. This form of interest

is erotic love.

It is obvious that sexual interest can take a

purely appetitive form. Nor is it outrageous to suggest

that, in such a form, it tends to bypass the other qua

person, satisfying its urges by any means available.

This provides a clear sense in which the humanity of

the other person is compromised: she becomes a mere

means for sexual satisfaction – somebody who delivers

the required goods, and whose status as a person

becomes irrelevant. As Kant says:

As soon as a person becomes an object of appetite foranother, all motives of moral relationship cease to function, because as an object of appetite for another a person becomes a thing and can be treated and used as such by every one’.25

13

Is the humanity of the person engaged in this

pursuit equally compromised? The case here is more

complex, for we need to distinguish between

dehumanizing a sex object in a particular case and

living a mode of existence focused exclusively on

satisfying one’s sexual urges. The first scenario has

no obvious impact on one’s humanity. One could

occasionally satisfy one’s sexual urges with others

without this compromising one’s humanity. Take the case

of Florentino in Love in the Time of Cholera. We are led to

suppose that his love for Fermina remains spiritually

chaste, but because she is unavailable to him he has

many ‘meaningless’ sexual encounters with other women.

There is no implication, however, that his humanity is

compromised. He has found a way of coming to terms with

an intolerable situation. Or consider the case of

someone who satisfies his sexual urges in an

inappropriate way, but also has deep friendships with

others. That it would be bad to ever do only x, does not

entail that it is bad to do x sometimes.

Nevertheless, there is something deeply

dehumanizing about a mode of existence focused

exclusively on satisfying sexual urges. As Levinas puts

it, there is more to a properly human existence than

‘the hunger one satisfies, the thirst one quenches, and

the senses one allays’. 26 This appetitive mode of

existence fails to accommodate the independent reality 25 Lectures on Ethics, trans. Louis Infield (London: Methuen, 1930).

14

of the other person, and only by acknowledging this

reality can one enter the dimensions of the ethical,

and the properly human.27 Scruton’s Wagner concurs when

he refers to the freedom, selfhood, and personality

which distinguish us from the rest of nature, and which

we ignore only at the cost of degrading our humanity,

and by virtue of which we relate to one another in

moral terms.28

Where does erotic love fit in? Scruton’s Wagner

resists the temptation to view it as simply a bodily

appetite like hunger or thirst. Nor does he go to the

opposite extreme of insisting that sexual desire is a

mere stepping-stone in the ascent of the soul towards a

desire-less appreciation of the forms of Beauty and

Goodness. Each of these options contains an insight he

wishes to preserve, however. ‘Platonism’ captures the

insight that erotic love takes us beyond the realm of

bodily appetite to the realm of value, but it does so

at the cost of eliminating desiring and desired

embodied beings. It argues that such beings remain

excluded from value. Now if we accept that desiring and

desired embodied beings are essential ingredients in

any satisfactory conception of erotic love and if we

still comprehend them in purely appetitive terms, we

26 “Philosophy and the Idea of the Infinite”, in Adrian Pepersak: To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas (West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press, 1993), 114.27 Ibid.28 124.

15

are forced to conclude that erotic love is reducible to

bodily appetite.

Scruton’s Wagner displaces this either/or

framework, and one of his motives is to define a

conception of salvation which incorporates the bodily

and the spiritual. His aim is to defend a conception

of erotic love in which desiring and desired embodied

beings play an essential role. But these beings are no

longer viewed as mere bodies whose sexual behaviour is

dictated solely by appetite. They are embodied persons

whose capacity to erotically love another embodied

person raises them above ‘the generalizing transactions

of the body’. 29 In this way, the person in love ‘leaves

behind everything that is universal, replaceable,

transferable, or consumable’ so as to focus on the

‘irreplaceable incarnate subjectivity of the other’. 30

What does this focus involve? It cannot be

comprehended in appetitive terms, it involves an

essential element of sexual desire, and this desire

focuses on a particular person as embodied. The idea

that the desire focuses on a particular person as

embodied captures the sense in which one’s interest is

not just in any old body or bodily part, but in the

body of a particular person ‘in whom animal and self

exist in an inextricable unity’.31It is as an embodied

subject that the other is desired. It is for this

29 131.30 130.31 136-7.

16

reason that the face plays an important role in sexual

interest: ‘the face provides the picture of the other’s

subjectivity: it shines with the light of the self’.32

It does not:

(f)unction merely as a bodily part but as the whole person: the self is spread across its surface and there “made flesh”. Hence the significance of blushes, smiles, and glances, where ‘the body exalts and reveals the person, shows the subject in the object, and makes of that subject an object of desire– of the desire to be united with this person’.33

This contrasts with an excitement ‘that seeks to bypass

the complex negotiation of the face’ by, e.g.,

concentrating on the sexual organs. In so doing, it

‘voids desire of its intentionality and replaces it

with the pursuit of the sexual commodity, which can

always be had for a price’, returning us to a form of

sexual interest in which ‘the person, the freedom, and

the virtue of the other are all irrelevant to the

goal’.

Erotic love, possession, and the Good

The idea that the person, the freedom and the virtue of

the other are relevant to erotic love captures the sense

32 139. Compare Iris Murdoch: ‘Georgie’s so familiar face, close to mine, in repose at last, her big eyes gentle now, her mouth relaxed, resting from my kisses, was a beloved landscape. Without words we gazed and murmured into quietness, until it was as if we had talked in detail for a long time, so spiritual a thing is the human face’, The Severed Head (New York: Vintage, 2006), .91.33 141.

17

in which it operates within the realm of value –which

is important for its salvific significance. But how is

this to be understood? And can it be reconciled with a

feature of equal importance to Scruton’s Wagner, that

erotic love ‘notoriously bypasses moral judgment’? 34

The focus of erotic love is the embodied subject –

the incarnate person – and true desire is an

‘interpersonal feeling’ rather than the physical urge

which remains when the self is ‘driven from its

incarnation’ to become a mere body.35 Desire goes hand

in hand with respect for and commitment to the other,

an acknowledgement that the beloved is no mere

instrument of my will – no body or thing to be defined

purely in terms of sexual use.36 Rather, she is a ‘free

being bound by flesh’, one who is ‘special, precious,

and worthy of [my] exclusive care’ but who has the

power to refuse the love that is offered, or to

surrender to the ‘free giving of the self’ that we call

falling in love.37 It is in this sense that erotic love

is offered and received as a gift, a manifestation of

grace.38 The further claim, to which I shall return, is

that this enables us to understand the idea of the

sacred.39

So, erotic love involves a relation between free,

embodied selves, and such selves are worthy of care and34 157.35 146.36 146.37 150.38 156.39 152.

18

respect. It is value-involving. However, Scruton’s

Wagner insists also that it ‘notoriously bypasses moral

judgment’ 40 - a claim which, on the face of it,

threatens to compromise this account. The tension

becomes apparent in a discussion of the distinction

between friendship and erotic love. Friendship involves

comfort, help, and security, and your friend wants your

good. Erotic love involves distress, anxiety, and

danger, and your lover wants you rather than your good:

‘Its aim is to possess, to hold, to exclude; and its

object is neither the body of the beloved nor the soul.

It is the embodied person: the free being bound by

flesh’.41 That the person in love wants her beloved comes

as no surprise given the desire involved in erotic

love. But how is ‘possession’ to be understood? The

obvious way of taking it is to suppose that lover wants

her beloved in the way that she might want an ice-

cream. This would imply that such a relationship

bypasses moral judgment, but it would make the beloved

a mere object of appetite, and it is clear that

Scruton’s Wagner rejects this.

Levinas claims that possession cannot be

extricated from an appetitive model, and that we should

drop this vocabulary altogether.42 To ‘recognize its

exceptional place among relationships,’43 we must

40 157.41 153.42 Time and the Other, trans. Richard A Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duequesne University Press, 1987), 88.43 Ibid.

19

distinguish eros from possession and power. Scruton’s

Wagner agrees that erotic love differs from possession

and power in this sense, and that it has an exceptional

place among relationships, hence his wish to identify

what is ‘special about erotic love, what sets it apart

from the other desires which besiege us in our everyday

existence’.44 Levinas justifies this exceptional place

by gesturing, as Scruton’s Wagner does, towards its

religious significance. It involves ‘a relationship

with alterity, with mystery’45:

(T)he caress does not know what it seeks. This ‘not knowing’, this fundamental disorder is the essential.It is like a game with something slipping away, a game absolutely without project or plan, not with what can become ours or us, but with something other,always other, always inaccessible, and always still to come.

The claim that erotic love is a relationship with

alterity discards the idea that it is simply possession

and power –which reduces the beloved to an instrument

of my will. The association between alterity and

mystery expresses Levinas’s belief that it is by

relating to others that we stand in a relation to God.46 However, this does not imply that God could ever be

an object of knowledge: ‘If one could possess, grasp,

and know the other, it would not be other. Possessing,

knowing, and grasping are synonyms of power’.47 The

44 133.45 Time and the Other, 88.

20

‘other’ in question is equally the human other, and it

is because of the inevitable mystery which surrounds

one’s relation to the human other, one’s relation to

God, and the relation between these two things, that

the caress does not know what it seeks.

One cannot but have a sense of déjà vu when

reading what Scruton’s Wagner says about the looks and

caresses of erotic love. They have a ‘metaphysical telos’

– a claim he spells out initially in terms of

possession: ‘They are an attempt to appropriate the

other’s body, to make that body your own – in short,

they are an attempt at possession.’ He adds:

The goal that I glimpse in desire is not of this world; no merely empirical transaction could possiblyfulfill it, since it would merely rearrange our bodies and not produce the substantial unity that I crave. Hence the courtly ideal of chastity: lovers faithfully joined, desirous of each other and feedingoff each other’s looks and caresses but never consummating their desire, so that it persists as an endless unsatisfied yearning, come as near as possible to their metaphysical goal, which is a unionin the transcendental with no correlate in the world of fact. 48

The idea that looks and caresses have a ‘metaphysical

telos’ suggests that the possession Scruton’s Wagner

has in mind is far removed from that involved in

satisfying bodily needs. This interpretation might be 46 See Richard A Cohen: Face to Face with Levinas (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1986), 23.47 Time and the Other, 90.48 152.

21

thought to sit awkwardly with the claim that the lover

seeks to ‘appropriate the other’s body’, ‘to make that

body [her] own’, but it is borne out by the suggestion

that the goal I glimpse in desire is not of this world.

What does it mean to say that this goal is ‘not of

this world’? Scruton’s Wagner equates what is worldly

with what is factual, and what is factual with what is

empirical and bodily. In view of the contrast he draws

between appetite and sexual desire, ‘world’ surely

refers to the world of ‘carnal transactions’49, and

‘other-worldly’ refers to the dimension of reality

which incorporates value, personhood, and freedom – a

dimension to which we become responsive when we fall in

love.

Such a distinction carries no particular

metaphysical commitment. We recall, however, that

Scruton’s Wagner resists the implication that we can

achieve the true aim of erotic love only by abandoning

our embodied condition. Its aim can be realized in this

world by desiring embodied beings whose sexual

behaviour is irreducible to bodily appetite. So, the

claim that the goal I glimpse in desire is ‘not of this

world’ might be thought to show how it differs from

that of bodily need or appetite. However, there is no

reason for insisting that it is unattainable for human

beings, nor that it is irreducibly mysterious.

Religious or non-religious? 49 131.

22

This interpretation guarantees that the ascent of

erotic love occurs in this world, but some of Scruton’s

Wagner’s claims – e.g., that lovers seek a union in the

transcendental – undeniably suggest a more radical

notion of ‘other-worldly’, implying that the goal of

erotic love is unavailable to the merely human. At the

other extreme, Beckett’s reading suggests that the

ascent is simply a construction of the lovers:

Scruton’s Wagner belongs to the tradition of moral

vitalism. Beckett presents Scruton’s Wagner as opting

for the non-religious position he expressly rejects,

that man ‘makes himself completely in proportion as he

desacralizes himself and the world’.

What is moral vitalism? How is it related to the

idea that values are created rather than discovered?

Scruton’s Wagner implies that desacralizing something

robs it of value, and that it is man that robs it of

value. One way of robbing something of value is by

thinking that it is not valuable when it really is, or

as less valuable than it really is. So I could,

inappropriately, think of someone as a sex object,

where my thinking alone does not reduce or eliminate

the value of that person. Alternatively, I could rob

something of value by doing something to it that

reduces its value. I could, by treating someone as a

sex object, degrade them to that status. A hybrid

combination of these two alternatives suggests that we

might reduce the value of something simply by thinking

23

of it in a certain way. As a materialist, e.g., I think

that persons are mere bodies and that sexual desire is

purely appetitive. If my thinking affects my

interactions with others, so that I treat them

accordingly, my thinking reduces value. Alternatively,

we might say that these beliefs leave the value of

things intact, even if, at some level, I think that

they do not.

Conversely, these distinctions provide alternative

interpretations of man’s creating value or meaning. This

could be (1) thinking that things are valuable when

they really are not - e.g., thinking that an inanimate

object is a person, or (2) making things valuable by

doing something to them, e.g., treating someone as a

person rather than an inanimate object, or (3) making

things valuable by thinking about them in a particular

way, e.g., thinking of sexual relations in value-

involving terms. Alternative (3) leaves it open that

value has its source in something other than my

thinking. According to moral vitalism, the universe is

meaningless, inherently valueless. The moral vitalist,

like the materialist, views the world in non value-

involving terms. Man is the source of value, creating

or constructing it. Position (3) best fits moral

vitalism: things are made valuable by thinking about

them in a particular way.

My example of (3) was neutral regarding the

question whether value stems from the subject or the

24

object. Moral vitalism claims that its source is the

subject, that our evaluations make things valuable,

leaving unclear whether ‘our’ refers to each of us

individually or all of us collectively. The idea that

our evaluations make things valuable is implausible,

for we distinguish between what we regard as valuable

and what is really valuable, even if these often

coincide. The distinction is preserved even if the

evaluations are ours collectively, since if the idea

that each individual creates value from her own

resources is problematic, the addition of more creators

surely provides just more of the same. The reply might

be that moral vitalism must be accepted, the idea of a

worldly constraint on evaluation is senseless. We shall

see that this argument lurks in Scruton’s Wagnerism,

but that it is inconclusive.

Beckett implies that the attempt to construct

value from our own resources is doomed, and also

unnecessary because things are inherently valuable,

deriving value from God. The moral vitalist robs the

world of value in two ways. He thinks the world is not

valuable, when it really is. He does something to

reduce its value. He views it in degrading terms, and

relocates the source of value within the subject.

Either way the world remains valueless.

Is Scruton’s Wagner a moral vitalist? His claims

about the metaphysics of desire concede a lot to the

other side, and he rejects the ‘non-religious’

25

alternative. However, there is some evidence for

Beckett’s interpretation, such as:

Modern people believe that they are animals, parts ofthe natural order, bound by laws tying them to the material forces that govern everything. They believe that the gods are their invention and that death is exactly what it seems. Their world has been disenchanted and their illusions destroyed. At the same time they cannot live as though that knowledge where the whole truth of the human condition. Even modern people are compelled to praise and blame, loveand hate, reward and punish. Even modern people – especially modern people – are aware of the self at the center of their being; and even modern people tryto connect to other selves around them. They therefore see others as if they were free beings, animated by a self or a soul, and with a more than worldly destiny. If we abandon that perception, then human relations dwindle into a machinelike parody of themselves, the world is voided of love, duty, and desire, and only the body remains. Modern science hastempted us with the ‘as if-ness’ of human freedom; but it could never equip us to live without the belief in it.50

Viewing ourselves as animals is commendable insofar as

we are embodied beings. Awareness of a self at the

centre of our being expresses our status as embodied

subjects – beings in whom ‘animal and self exist in an

inextricable unity’. But we see ourselves and others as

if we were animated by a self or a soul. Even if we are,

notwithstanding, so animated, this ‘perception’ is

still problematic. The problem is science. Science

suggests that the universe is meaningless, leaving no 50 12.

26

room for embodied selves capable of loving, desiring,

and valuing other embodied selves. Yet we abandon this

non-scientific perception at the cost of our humanity,

and the temptation to do so is not one that we can

succumb to in practice. So we must see ourselves and

others as if the relevant concepts applied, while science

suggests that, really, they do not.

This is a version of the idea that thinking in a

particular way can reduce something’s value. Thinking

about reality in scientific terms tempts us to conclude

that reality is not value-involving. Science does not

undermine the ideas of Scruton’s Wagner; it appears to

do so only on the scientistic assumption that it

contains the whole truth about the universe. The

temptation to suppose that it does is resistible and

must be resisted if we are to live a properly human

life. There is, moreover, no suggestion that value is

created by us, only that its status becomes problematic

if we view the world in exclusively scientific terms.

So, thinking about the world scientistically can make

world appear valueless, but it does not show that the

world is valueless, only that its value cannot be

comprehended scientifically. This leaves open the

question of its source. Scruton’s Wagner is still

tempted to suppose that value concepts have an ‘as if’

status. Later, however, he resists scientism, conceding

only that values exceed our comprehension: the

understanding (in Kant’s sense) ‘deals only with

27

empirical objects and falls silent on the threshold of

the transcendental’. 51 We stand on the threshold of the

transcendental by virtue of being loving, valuing

persons.

Standing on the threshold of the transcendental

sounds rather grand and metaphysical, and it recalls

the previous claim that, as lovers, we seek union in

the transcendental. That the transcendental exceeds our

understanding suggests that it lies beyond the world in

which we find ourselves. However, ‘understanding’ may

be just a placeholder for scientific understanding,

leaving open that we can comprehend the transcendental,

albeit not through scientific investigation. A

discussion of Kant’s oscillation between to conceptions

of humanity brings this interpretative difficulty to

prominence:

On the positive interpretation, a human being is really two distinct things – an empirical object and a non-empirical subject, the latter existing in another way and another dimension, so to speak, beingthe real, substantial self behind appearances. On thenegative interpretation, a human being is one thing, known and approached in two separate ways – as objectand as subject. There is no “real transcendental self” behind appearances. But there is, nevertheless,a way of treating people as if there were such a thing: addressing them as free beings governed by reason. 52

The positive interpretation of our dual nature as

animals and selves furnishes one obvious account of our51 123.52 123-4.

28

existing on the threshold of the transcendental: we

stand in relation to a transcendental self. That a

transcendental self exists ‘in another way and another

dimension’ could simply mean that it cannot be

understood in bodily/appetitive terms, so that

‘transcendental’ amounts to ‘non-worldly’ in the

previously defined sense. But this reading fits the

negative interpretation better, while the positive

interpretation suggests that a transcendental self is

not merely irreducible to bodily terms, but itself non-

bodily/immaterial, separable from the bodily form.

Both Kant and Scruton’s Wagner believe that we

must think of ourselves in terms of selfhood,

personality, and freedom. But this idea remains vague,

as does its underlying metaphysics. It is implied that

the positive interpretation is problematic, and that

the negative interpretation is sufficient. Thus, we are

told that it is no part of the negative interpretation

that the self is an illusion. We are then told,

however, that although this negative interpretation

presupposes that there is no real transcendental self

behind the appearances, we can treat people ‘as if there

were such a thing’. It becomes clear that this

treatment involves relating to them as persons, i.e. in

terms already granted by the negative interpretation.

Interlude

29

The threshold on which we exist is every bit as

mysterious as Scruton’s Wagner implies; what we are and

what we are thus oriented towards can never be properly

comprehended. The religious connotations are

unsurprising given his aim to articulate a properly

religious framework. However, there are further

features of his position which threaten to compromise

this vision.

Redemption by our own devices

For Scruton’s Wagner, man is his own redeemer, by

redeeming himself he also redeems the world, and no god

is needed to accomplish this. Some of his reasons for

sidelining God are acceptable, even to adherents of a

more traditionally religious framework. We must avoid

casting God as a consoling father figure, and man as a

helpless child, because it compromises not merely the

reality of God, but also our humanity, rendering us

powerless to help ourselves, powerless to assume

responsibility for ourselves and the world. It may be

this God-degrading picture that Scruton’s Wagner hopes

to avoid by excluding God altogether. If so, then he is

rejecting a false god, not (as Beckett charges)

endorsing a spurious form of religion. That we must

assume responsibility for ourselves and the world

implies that man the redeemer cannot pass the buck. But

what can it be for man to redeem himself? What exactly

must we do? And where does erotic love come in?

30

Clearly we cannot do anything to ‘desacralize’

self and world, through, e.g., offending forms of

sexual interest. We must acknowledge the value of

things, acknowledge, e.g., the freedom, virtue, and

personhood of both parties to erotic love. Erotic love

involves sexual desire, which might seem to obstruct

our path to self-redemption. For desire seems beyond our

control. As Levinas says, it ‘invades’ us, it is ‘not

due to our initiative’.53 If so, it is surely not we who

redeem ourselves, but erotic love that redeems us,

allowing the possibility, so important to Levinas, that

its source is God. One could deny that erotic love is

invasive, and risk stultifying the idea that it is a

love into which we fall. However, Scruton’s Wagner

insists that we are summoned to respond to another

person by a ‘force that overwhelms (us)’,54 that love is

a ‘manifestation of grace’,55 that it is ‘more like an

affliction than a choice’,56 and that ‘(w)e may choose

to give way to this love or to conceal it, but what we

give way to or conceal is not itself a choice’.57 Love

is a force more powerful than ourselves, though it

‘translates itself into voluntary actions, and must do

so if it is to be understood for what it is’. 58 For

Scruton’s Wagner too erotic love is not due to our

initiative. But this ‘force’ lies within the individual

subject and is directed towards another embodied

subject. 59 Unless this were so we could not coherently

claim that it is the individual who falls in love, that

31

she falls in love with another individual, and that

this falling translates into voluntary action.

These conditions must surely be met. But what

constraints do they impose? The idea that the force

lies within the individual may simply mean that the

subject receives the force, that the force afflicts me,

the desire I have is my desire. However, this says

nothing about its source, and allows the possibility

that it is external. If the source is not external,

then the force is self-generated. For Scruton’s Wagner,

it derives from one’s human nature, but not one’s sheer

bodily nature. He believes that, as desiring human

beings, we stand on the threshold of the transcendental

and (with some reservations) that sexual desire has its

source in the transcendental. This could be just a

fancy way of saying that sexual desire is irreducible

to appetite. But his claim to be defining a religious

framework, wherein we are oriented towards a dimension

of reality we only dimly comprehend, should make us to

hesitate before concluding on his behalf that sexual

desire is self-generated. If, alternatively, we do

plump for self-generation, we must acknowledge that the

limits of the self are unclear, and that these limits

may well expand to the point where there is no genuine

53 Time and the Other, 88.54 150.55 156.56 121.57 153.58 173.59 132.

32

contrast between self-generation and its explicitly

religious counterpart.

For Levinas appetite and desire are sharply

distinct. Appetite is self-generated because it has its

origin in the subject and stems from a lack which can

be satisfied: ‘I can sink my teeth into the real and

satisfy myself in assimilating the other’. In desire,

‘there is no sinking one’s teeth into being, no

satiety, but an uncharted future before me’. 60 Desire

can never be satisfied, because it has its source in

and is aimed towards what can never be grasped, ‘can

never become ours or us’, is ‘always inaccessible’, but

is prefigured in the person we desire when we fall in

love.

Scruton’s Wagner agrees that sexual desire can

never be satisfied, and I shall consider this later.

But let us continue with his conception of redemption

by our own devices. Erotic love is a force that

overwhelms us and, whatever its source, it translates

itself into voluntary action, a ‘free giving of the

self’. What is this ‘free giving’? Wherein lies its

redemptive significance? We can begin to answer these

questions by considering Tristan and Isolde.

Tristan, Isolde, and self-giving

‘The urge to sacrifice arises from our very existence

as free subjects’;61 ‘heroes of erotic love….long either

60 Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Richard A Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 117.

33

to redeem or be redeemed through an act of loving

sacrifice’. 62 Scruton’s Wagner speaks of a ‘heroic

passion’, which ‘could justify the ultimate sacrifice

and indeed require that sacrifice as its fulfillment and

price’.63 Most loves are not heroic, and do not justify

such sacrifice: ‘Devotion wears thin, the beloved loses

his or her character as an exclusive destiny, and

little by little the thought arises of better versions

and more rewarding deals.’ 64 But genuine love demand

the ultimate sacrifice:

In those sublime moments when love prepares to sacrifice itself for the beloved – in other words, when it wills its own extinction – the shadow of accountancy disappears. And those moments in and out of time constitute our redemption: they are moments of consecration, in which life is shown to be worthwhile. 65

That it is love that prepares to sacrifice itself

suggests that love is a force working through us. But

it becomes clear that it is the lover who wills her own

extinction. This sacrifice endows life with meaning and

brings redemption. But it is not a means to eternal

life – which would imply that human life has no

intrinsic value. So redemption is not a condition that

is purchased through sacrifice. Rather, it occurs in the

act of sacrifice itself. Nor is death itself the 61 150.62 9.63 8.64 10.65 10.

34

redemption. Death acquires this meaning only when

inspired by love. 66

The love is that of Tristan and Isolde. It is a

forbidden love which cannot lead to domestic happiness

or fulfilled old age.67 It is a love without a future,

but it cannot be renounced because ‘self and self are

linked by it’, and it provides the ‘supreme vindication

of their existence’.68 Hence:

Dying for the sake of their love, they offer the final proof of it – as a condition that is more valuable than life itself. But paradoxically, it is life – in its fullest sense of achieved and out-goingindividuality – that is expressed in their love. By valuing their love to the point of renouncing all else for the sake of it, they are therefore also valuing life. In true heroic manner, they prove that life has a value by throwing life away…love can be fulfilled in death, when death is chosen, and this fulfillment is a genuine redemption. 69

So love bestows meaning on their existence, it is more

important than anything else, more important than life

and death. Its religious significance is this:

As self-conscious individuals our primary need is formeaning, and our ever recurring fear is the fear of death. Religion provides that meaning and overcomes that fear; but it does so through baseless promises that offer redemption from a point of view outside our human world and on a metaphysical assumption that

66 13.67 147.68 147.69 192-3.

35

is no longer credible. Only if man can produce meaning from his own resources, and vanquish the fearof death in the same act, is the consolation of religion now available. The lingering afterimage of an old theology tells us that meaning lies in some reward offered after life is over. But more noble, more dignified, and more in tune with the deep needs of religious man is the belief that meaning is its own reward. On this view, life becomes meaningful when it throws rewards away – in other words, when itis self-sacrificed. But enfolding this sacrifice within the sacred aura of the erotic, Wagner offers the final proof that man can become holy to himself with no help from the gods. 70

Our need for meaning recalls the distinction between

appetite and value. An existence focused on appetite is

without meaning, and we can be redeemed by transcending

to value. Meaning and triumph over death cannot come

from traditional religion, only from man’s producing

meaning from his own resources and vanquishing fear of

death in the same act.

Man’s producing meaning from his own resources

need not imply his creating value in the manner of

moral vitalism. Man may simply do something which

allows him to discern what is truly valuable. So is

Scruton’s Wagner as close to moral vitalism as his

language suggests? The answer remains unclear. We are

told that death for love’s sake is ‘a triumph over the

empirical world, a final proof of freedom and

personality against the meaningless flow of causes’, 71

and:70 190.71 193.

36

By setting aside the empirical world and its claims, by scorning death for the sake of a goal that only free beings can embrace or conceive, the act of sacrifice sanctifies the one who performs it. It brings the sacred into being. And once we recognize that the sacred too is a human invention, redemption becomes a possibility – redemption by our own devicesand without the aid of a god.72

That the sacrifice is a triumph over the meaningless

flow of causes need not imply that the world is

inherently meaningless, and that meaning is self-

generated. The point is simply that we can act freely,

leaving open the question of the source of this

capacity and of the realm to which we respond by acting

thus.

The claim that sacrifice ‘brings the sacred into

being’ is equally equivocal. It may simply imply that

lovers appreciate what is sacred, and this appreciation

is nourished by their readiness to die. This realist

interpretation is suggested by the claim, e.g., that

experience of the sacred moves us towards the

supernatural73, and that the sacred is found when we

glimpse the ‘free and transcendental being in the most

ordinary things of the world’. This ‘free and

transcendental being’ is the human subject, and sexual

desire ‘provides us with some of the primary material

from which the experience of the sacred is

constructed’: 72 183.73 180.

37

You are the free self-conscious being whose flesh this is…to touch this flesh without the rite of mutual acquiescence is to pollute what I desire, by recasting your body as an object…This experience prefigures our experience of the sacred. Sacred things are removed, held apart, and untouchable – or touchable only after purifying rites. 74

That our experience of the sacred is so constructed has no

immediate implications for the sacred itself, only the

origin of the concept of the sacred. However, the claim

that the sacred is a ‘human invention’, and that

recognizing this enables us redeem ourselves, is a

concession to moral vitalism, implying that the lovers

produce the sacred in the way that we allegedly produce

value. And if such a creative act falls short of

generating the sacred, then the lovers are no more

redeemed than the non-religious man. However, Scruton’s

Wagner rejects the non-religious position because it

eliminates the sacred. The lovers’ act of sacralization

‘comes about through the recognition in both self and

other of the transcendental freedom that invites us to

sacrifice’.75 This implies that self-redemption makes us

responsive to a reality which is not self-generated.

I shall return to this tension later. For now I

sum up what Tristan and Isolde’s redemption supposedly

achieves. They are firmly within the world of value:

they value each other and value their love in their

74 179.75 182-3.

38

willingness to renounce everything for it. Their

sacrifice is chosen, done ‘with no help from the

gods’: they freely redeem themselves. Their sacrifice

restores the sacred: they become sacred in each other’s

eyes, sanctified by ‘scorning death for the sake of a

goal that only free beings can embrace or conceive’76.

This sacrifice overcomes their ‘fear of death’: they

surrender their lives for a love that eclipses

everything else, proving its worth in this very act.

Picking up the pieces

How does this bear on the metaphysical goal of desire,

which is a ‘union in the transcendental’, not of this

world? Tristan and Isolde do not want an afterlife,

only mutual self-sacrifice. Their goal is not of this

world in that their love is ‘intrinsically death-

directed’. 77 No merely empirical transaction could

fulfill their (and not only their) desire, ‘since this

would merely arrange our bodies and not produce the

substantial union we crave’. So one’s desire for

another person cannot be satisfied by sex. Scruton’s

Wagner is less interested in death than the love that

precipitates it, and adamant that love’s desire is

irreducible to appetite. Sex will not satisfy it

because we want more than simply to satisfy our lust.

The ‘substantial union’ we crave is the relationship of

genuine lovers. Our goal is not of this world in that

76 183.77 187.

39

it does not belong to the world of appetite. Scruton’s

Wagner’s uses the term ‘transcendental’ ambivalently.

How expansive is the realm of the transcendental? The

courtly ideal of chastity brings this ambivalence to

the fore. It requires ‘lovers faithfully joined,

desirous of each other…but never consummating their

desire, so that it persists as an endless unsatisfied

yearning’. This ‘comes as near as possible to their

metaphysical goal, which is a union in the

transcendental’.

For Levinas, the lovers’ desire remains an

unsatisfied yearning because its true object, God,

exceeds our grasp. Scruton’s Wagner wavers between this

view and exclusion of God, with nothing beyond this

world, albeit a world irreducible to ‘carnal

transactions’. Exclusion of God becomes explicit in the

plight of Tristan and Isolde. Their desire cannot be

satisfied because it is forbidden, by ‘their own inner

permitting’, not by the world. 78Any goal but death

would sully their desire:

Marriage, household, budgets, children…would pollute this heroic love, drag it down into the world of calculation, and negate its iconic value as the symbol of what we all, in love’s first passion, can aspire to. 79

Desire is insatiable not only contingently, as Tristan

and Isolde’s is, but essentially: satisfaction degrades78 187.79 187.

40

it to appetite. Scruton’s Wagner wants to explain this

without reference to God, while accommodating love’s

religious and redemptive significance. Once God is

excluded, desire’s insatiability cannot derive from the

excess of its object. But it cannot be satisfied by

sex. This is reasonable if sex is a purely

bodily/appetitive interaction. But why can desire not

be satisfied in an erotic relationship?

Tristan and Isolde’s love is presented as a

prototype to measure inferior loves. Their forbidden

love guarantees the insatiability of desire. Although

they can have sex – it is unclear whether their love is

consummated – they cannot do what this would normally

lead to, and remain fearful of being separated. So

their desire remains all-consuming and insatiable.

Unforbidden desire is insatiable because its object is

inaccessible. But Tristan and Isolde’s object is only

contingently inaccessible – in different circumstances,

they could have got together. The object is a human

person, not God. Levinas avoids the apparent idolatry

here by insisting that we relate to God only through

another person. Scruton’s Wagner denies this, at least

in the case of Tristan and Isolde. But remarks

elsewhere remain compatible with it.

If the beloved is only contingently inaccessible,

she is no God substitute. However, for Scruton’s Wagner

desire is genuine only if it remains unsatisfied. So

although the forbidden beloved could become available,

41

this would be a Bad Thing. To highlight the essential

insatiability of desire, he takes a situation which

embodies insatiability, with no need for God. Provided

the obstacles remain, the desire remains an endless

yearning, and her beloved assumes the role of God in

traditional theology.

However, now the beloved seems less important than

the obstacles: the lovers are engineering a situation

which guarantees that their passion remains pure and

unsatisfied. Perhaps they are in love with being in

love, uninterested in anything else, least of all each

other.80 They really want endless desire, and would

rather die than get their beloved. If so, they have

taken the ‘non-religious’ route, their redemption is a

sham, and Beckett is vindicated. Scruton’s Wagner now

has three options. He can retain insatiable desire, but

not because its object is God, or the beloved. Love’s

object is itself. This fits the claim that erotic love

‘notoriously bypasses moral judgment’, and also Blake:

‘Love seeketh only self to please’. 81 But such self-

seeking, ‘non-religious’ love cannot redeem. Levinas

accepts this, believing agape more apt to divert us from

the realm of selfish consciousness than eros. He still

maintains that desire is insatiable, that its ultimate

object and source is God, and that its insatiability

becomes insatiable responsibility for the other person.80 This is the interpretation adopted by Denis De Rougemont in his Love in the Western World, trans. Montgomery Belgion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1956). 81 154.

42

Love as agape transports us into the realm of value and

sanctity, but at the cost of making the lover a pure

giver, not a desiring human being. Scruton’s Wagner

declines to jettison insatiability and allow that desire

is satisfiable in unforbidden love: insatiability

distinguishes desire from appetite. But this undermines

the distinction, because love that ‘seeketh only self

to please’ cannot redeem.

If desire’s insatiability is God-involving, it is

not self-seeking, and value and sanctity are no human

inventions. Scruton’s Wagner rejects this option,

believing that it attributes our redemption exclusively

to God. However, traditional religion allows that we

have an essential role to play in securing our

salvation whilst denying that this concession removes

God from the picture. Traditional religion overcomes

the man-God dichotomy: the human being is expansive and

religiously charged, without the limits imposed by the

‘non-religious’ man. There may be good reasons for

setting the limits short of God. But Scruton’s Wagner

has not supplied them. 82

Fiona Ellis, Department of Philosophy, Heythrop

College, London W8 5HN.

82 I thank Mike Inwood, Dominic McLoughlin, John McDade, and Gemma Simmonds for many valuable discussions and comments.

43