Sacral States: the Politics of Worship, Religious and Secular

Abstract

The first chapter investigates the overlap between cultural sanctity and other forms of political worship, as reflected upon in a tradition from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Edmund Burke to Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. The importance of Carlyle’s Of Heroes and Hero-Worship is highlighted, introducing as it did the Romantic artist as an inspired, visionary, and charismatic authority figure.