Sacred Music, Religious Desire and Knowledge of God: The Music of Our Human Longing (Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy of Religion)

"Many people find sacred choral music profound and deeply evocative, even in societies that seem to be turning away from religious belief. In this book, Julian Perlmutter examines how, in light of its wide appeal, sacred music can have religious significance for people regardless of their religious convictions. By differentiating between doctrinal belief and the desire for God, Perlmutter explores a longing for the spiritual that is compatible with both belief and 'interested non-belief'. He describes how sacred music can elicit this kind of longing, thereby helping the listener to grow in religious openness. The work of Thomas Merton is also analyzed in order to show that musically-elicited desire for God can be incorporated into the Christian practice of contemplative prayer, aimed ultimately at a union of love with God. By exploring connections between desire, knowledge and religious practice, this engaging account illustrates how sacred music can have a transformative effect on one's wider spiritual life. Of particular interest to philosophers and theologians, the book makes a novel contribution to several topics including religious epistemology, the philosophy of emotion and aesthetics."-- Provided by publisher Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Contents 8 Acknowledgements 9 Chapter 1: Introduction 12 Chapter 2: Sacred music, longing and openness 14 2.1 Sacred music and religious desire: A real-life story 14 2.2 Statement of aims: Non-believing openness 15 2.3 Sacred music and religious non-belief 19 2.4 Interested non-belief 20 2.5 Self-deception? 32 2.6 Desire: Some preliminaries 34 Chapter 3: Desire and knowledge 42 3.1 Emotion, thought and affect 43 3.2 Three kinds of desire 49 3.3 Desire as knowledge about the desired: The ‘Wynn-Madell’ account 53 3.4 Developing the account: An analysis through three examples 54 3.5 Desire’s contribution to the desirer’s knowledge: A worry 64 3.6 Summing up and looking forwards 66 Chapter 4: Music and affect 72 4.1 Issues on which neutrality is appropriate 72 4.2 Peter Kivy and the possibility of extra-musical emotion 75 4.3 Mirroring responses and analogous affects 90 4.4 Qualities of affective life 91 Chapter 5: Sacred music and knowledge by desire: The account applied 94 5.1 Music and religious devotion: A recurring concern in the church 96 5.2 The epistemology applied: Desire for God in four works of sacred music 98 5.3 Purcell’s Hear My Prayer, O Lord 99 5.4 Rheinberger’s Abendlied 106 5.5 The Nunc Dimittis: Stanford and Howells 112 5.6 The value of musically elicited, desire-based knowledge about God 125 5.7 Can we sense what divine satisfaction would involve without any past experience of it? 127 Chapter 6: Religious desire and contemplative prayer 132 6.1 Contemplation 135 6.2 Contemplative prayer and ‘ordinary’ desire for God 137 6.3 Answering the challenge to ‘ordinary’ desire for God 142 6.4 Contemplative prayer and propositional belief 151 6.5 Conclusions 158 Chapter 7: General conclusion 160 Chapter 1 162 Chapter 2 162 Chapter 3 170 Chapter 4 175 Chapter 5 179 Chapter 6 186 Chapter 7 191 Notes 162 Bibliography 192 Index 198 Many people find sacred choral music profound and deeply evocative, even in societies that seem to be turning away from religious belief. In this book, Julian Perlmutter examines how, in light of its wide appeal, sacred music can have religious significance for people regardless of their religious convictions. By differentiating between doctrinal belief and the desire for God, the book explores a longing for the spiritual that is compatible with both belief and 'interested non-belief'. Perlmutter describes how sacred music can elicit this kind of longing, thereby helping the listener to grow in religious openness. The work of Thomas Merton is also analyzed in order to show that musically-elicited desire for God can be incorporated into the Christian practice of contemplative prayer, aimed ultimately at a union of love with God. By exploring connections between desire, knowledge, and religious practice, this engaging account illustrates how sacred music can have a transformative effect on one's wider spiritual life. Of particular interest to philosophers and theologians, the book makes a novel contribution to several topics including religious epistemology, the philosophy of emotion, and aesthetics. Many people find sacred choral music profound and deeply evocative, even in societies that seem to be turning away from religious belief. In this book, Julian Perlmutter examines how, in light of its wide appeal, sacred music can have religious significance for people regardless of their religious convictions. By differentiating between doctrinal belief and the desire for God, Perlmutter explores a longing for the spiritual that is compatible with both belief and 'interested non-belief'. He describes how sacred music can elicit this kind of longing, thereby helping the listener to grow in order to show that musically-elicited desire for God can be incorporated into the Christian practice of contemplative prayer, aimed ultimately at a union of love with God. By exploring connections between desire, knowledge and relgious practice, this engaging account illustrates how sacred music can have a transformative effect on on'e wider spiritual life. --Back Cover