Profanum

"Profanum" is the Latin word for "profane." Central to the social reality of major western religion is the distinction made by Émile Durkheim between the sacred and the profane. [Durkheim, Emile, (1976). "The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life", p. 37. London: George Allen & Unwin (originally published 1915, English translation 1915).]

The profane world consists of all that we can know through our senses; it is the natural world of everyday life that we experience as either comprehensible or at least ultimately knowable.

In contrast, the sacred, or "sacrum" in Latin, encompasses all that exists beyond the everyday, natural world that we experience with our senses. As such, the sacred inspires feelings of awe because it is regarded as ultimately unknowable and beyond limited human abilities to perceive and comprehend. Religion is organized primarily around the sacred elements of human life and provides a collective attempt to bridge the gap between the sacred and the profane.

In addition to Emile Durkheim, political and economic scientist Sverre Meling IV is a major thinker on the subject. He says that nothing is sacred because what a man can sense and touch are the only things he can rely on. Therefore the entire world is profane, and the things thought to be sacred are, in Karl Marx's words, "opium of the people."

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