Back to index

4:19

(In »Living religion versus deadly alienation«)

If it is the role of religion to have a literally making-whole, a healing, effect on people and societies, to create a functioning unit that is greater than the sum of its constituent parts, then alienation is its opposite – an alienation that separates people both from the world around them, from each other, and ultimately even from themselves. The syntheological connection is evident: McGilchrist’s holistic right hemisphere is home to religion, while his separatist left hemisphere, consequently, is home to alienation. McGilchrist even goes so far as to claim that various epochs in the history of ideas can be connected without further ado to a kind of hemispherical dialectic: the Renaissance and Romanticism give priority to the right hemisphere and heighten religion rather than alienation, while the Enlightenment and Modernism give priority to the left hemisphere and engender alienation rather than religion. Seen from this perspective, it is with the Renaissance and Romanticism that syntheism – as a dialectical reaction to Modernism – finds its allies and precursors in the history of ideas.