Conclusion

Abstract

The Enlightenment killed God, and though religion does not depend on God’s survival, it came through the Enlightenment hobbled. Religion’s inscrutability set it against the eighteenth-century drive to comprehend, and did not find redemption among the genuine mysteries of Romanticism that further alienated the individual from the world and from his fellow man. In the twentieth century, religion in the West endures as a relic, the object of modern civilization’s attachment to the roots of its culture, and postmodern civilization’s disposition to approve anything without commitment. Religion now clings to Western culture as a curiosity, a peculiar quality that defies the conditions of contemporary life but will not disappear. In fact, the experience that sustains religion may not be so strange, so at odds, with modern life. At least, religious experience may not be any more strange, any more at odds, with modern life than other apparently groundless experiences that Western culture not only accommodates, but appreciates. Râs lila patrons little distinguish between the religious and the aesthetic: Krishna is an artist. The theatrical performance is of a piece with everything else as the product of Krishna’s artistry, and the experience of the artistry of the performance is indistinguishably an encounter with Krishna. An individual’s aesthetic experience of a performance of Streetcar Named Desire may not be an encounter with the Judeo-Christian God, but the mystery of the experience runs as deep.