4. Ritual is unhelpful and hollow. Again with the Like Hell. Buber says that the man who possesses that special feeling of religiosity is more praiseworthy than the man who goes through the motions of religion (i.e. religiosity is authentic, religion is mere performance), but how do we achieve that feeling of religiosity if not through ritual? A recipe book is not the same thing as a meal, but no beginner can produce the latter without the aid of the former.
Well, I'm not convinced a meal is the right simile for religiosity; it certainly fits the point Helen wants to make, but there is a universe of 'religiosity is like x's, why this one?
I'm also not convinced the simile works on its own terms, either at the beginning or the end: at the end, because eventually the beginner will have less need of the book, unless they retain the status of beginner perpetually ('a melancholy thought,' as Josef K. says in the snippet of The Trial I am re-reading for class tomorrow)--otherwise, there would be neither chefs nor innovation. Nor does it seem to work at the beginning, because where did all those recipes come from in the first place?
That's not really an argument against ritual as such, which I like as well as any conservative. And certainly, as a Christian, I'd argue one should keep up certain practices even though one doesn't always feel them (though always in the hope one will feel them again), but it seems pretty clear that we do the rituals to get to the feeling, which suggests to me the importance of the feeling over the ritual (I'm not really comfortable with either of those terms, 'feeling' or 'ritual,' but adopt them since that's the language of what I'm replying to); but at any rate, it seems like the claims we make for ritual shouldn't outstrip what it can do.
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