RELIGION AND TH E INTELLECTUALS
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some readjustment necessary, by which the scientific attitude will
be
given a new place in the intellectual hierarchy?
3. Religion and culture. Can culture exist without a positive
religion? To what extent must this religion be organized as an in–
stitution? The distinction has been made between prophetic and
institutional religion: Do you think that enduring values in society
can be carried by the former?
Certain writers in this century (the Frenchman Maurras would
be an example) have sought to justify religion simply as a social
institution-as a safeguard for civilized tradition and as a means of
social discipline? What do you think of such justifications? Is a return
to religion necessary in order to counter the new means of social
discipline that we all fear: totalitarianism?
If
we are to have an integral religious culture again, can its
tradition be purely Christian? Will not the religious tradition of any
civilization have to be essentially pluralistic?
4. Religion and literature. The revival of religion has perhaps
been most noticeable in the literary world. Does this imply some
special dependence of the literary imagination upon religious feeling
and ideas? Is the present emphasis upon myth among literary theorists
connected with the renewed interest in religion?
5. Certain writers have attempted to separate the religious con–
sciousness (as an attitude toward man and human life) from religious
beliefs. Thus the philosopher Heidegger, and in his recent writings
the novelist Malraux, both attempt to make viable certain attitudes
that were formerly aspects of the religious consciousness while at the
same time rejecting traditional religious beliefs? Is this separation
possible? Is there a valuable religious consciousness that can be
maintained without an explicit credo postulating the supernatural?
Assuming that in the past religions nourished certain vital human
values, can these values now be maintained without a widespread
be–
lief in the supernatural?
