Book & Audio Forum

     In this intricate and erudite extended essay (190 pages), the eminent Harvard psychiatrist Robert Coles argues that without the spiritual, without the sacred, those who live only in the secular world miss an important part of being human. He comes to this view after a lifetime of recording and reviewing conversations he has had with figures such as Paul Tillich, Anna Freud, Karen Horney, William Carlos Williams, Walker Percy, and Dorothy Day -- as well as intensive, close readings of works by philosophers, scientists, and novelists.

     Looking ahead centuries or a millennium, Coles expects that humans will learn more, that they will learn about learning, and that they will be able "to figure out what that learning means in the larger scheme of things." With advances in biology, he optimistically contends, will come knowing not only about knowing but also knowing about feeling -- about being. He concludes by saying, "One prays [emphasis added] . . . on behalf of one's kind, though unsure, in a secular sense, to whom or what such prayer is directed, other than, needless to say, one's own secular mind, ever needy of an 'otherness' to address through words become acts of appeal, of worried alarm, of lively and grateful expectations . . . - the secular mind given introspective, moral pause, its very own kind of sanctity." Is Coles legitimately redefining the term secular?

[Note by Francine Weinberg, a member of The City Congregation for Humanistic Judaism, New York City; March 2001]

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