The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present

Rituals stabilize life. To

Chasing new stimuli, excitement and experience, we lose the capacity for repetition.

God blessed and sanctified the seventh day. The rest enjoyed on the Sabbath consecrates the work of creation. It is not mere idleness. Rather, it is an essential part of creation. In his commentary on the Book of Genesis, Rashi thus remarks: ‘After the six days of creation, what was still missing from the universe? Menuchah [inoperativity, rest]. T

Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails.

The glory of play goes along with sovereignty, where sovereignty simply means being free from necessity, from purpose and utility. Sovereignty reveals a soul ‘which stands aloof from caring about utility’.1 The compulsion of production destroys sovereignty as a form of life. Sovereignty gives way to a new kind of subordination which, however, masqu

Likes, friends and followers do not provide us with resonance; they only strengthen the echoes of the self.

Repetition stabilizes and deepens attention.

The mistrust of play intensifies in the age of the Enlightenment. Kant subordinates play to work. His aesthetics, for instance, is characterized by the primacy of work. In the face of beauty, the cognitive faculties, namely imagination and understanding, are in play mode. The subject likes what is beautiful; the beautiful creates a feeling of pleas

To paraphrase Antoine Saint-Exupéry, we may say: rituals are in life what things are in space.