Belief in a thing’s sacredness historically precedes aesthetic enjoyment of it.

Evidence

Man’s esthetic responsiveness relates in its prehistory to various forms of idolatry; his belief in the goodness or sacredness of a thing precedes his enjoyment of its beauty. This applies no less to such concepts as freedom and humanity … Such ideas must preserve the negative element, as the negation of the ancient stage of injustice or inequality, and at the same time conserve the original absolute significance rooted in their dreadful origins. Otherwise they become not only indifferent but untrue. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 371

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that modern secular values like freedom and humanity still depend on a pre-religious sacred residue they cannot acknowledge is a genuinely paradigm-shifting formulation worth sitting with.
• DEFINE: Reframes aesthetics and Enlightenment values as secularized idolatry, giving a technical hinge for Horkheimer’s critique of instrumental reason.
• XREF: connects to: Awe at vast landscape produces a religious attitude rather than mere pleasure — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 187; Attention in aesthetic experience historically derives from prayer — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 436
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Awe at vast landscape produces a religious attitude rather than mere pleasure — Isabella L. Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, 187; Attention in aesthetic experience historically derives from prayer — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 436