The Persistence of Sacrifice as Self-Sacrifice and Its Contemporary Embodiment in the 9/11 Rescuers and COVID-19 Healthcare Professionals

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the persistence of sacrifice as self-sacrifice in contemporary societies. In order to reach this goal, firstly, we discuss how in the Axial Age (800–200 B.C.E.) an understanding of sacrifice as ritual worship or a ritual practice that involves the immolation of a victim became less prevalent and a new understanding of sacrifice emerges. This new notion of sacrifice focuses on individual relinquishment and gift exchange, that is, on a person sacrificing or relinquishing him/herself as a gift that is given in an exchange relationship for protecting a greater good (a god, a community, a person, a nation, and so on). Secondly, we analyze how this new sacrifice formula had an important impact on the understanding of sacrifice. Most notably, it led people to conceptualize sacrifice as a project or as something that persons could intentionally embrace. Thirdly, and as a result of the previous processes, we attend to the secularization of sacrifice, not in the sense of a de-sacralization of this phenomenon but in the way of sacralization of the mundane realm and mundane things, such as intentional self-sacrificial acts, in social contexts where there is religious pluralism. Insight into how the notion of sacrifice is secularized is found throughout the classic works of Marcel Mauss and Georg Simmel, and these works are discussed in section three. Fourthly, we study the sacredness of the person as a clear type of secular religiosity that develops self-sacrificial forms. Two of these self-sacrificial forms are the actions of 9/11 rescuers and COVID-19 healthcare professionals. A short analysis of both will serve us to illustrate how self-sacrifice is embodied in contemporary societies.

The Evolutionary Masks of Love: Continuities between Judeo-Christian Religious Love and Modern Secular Love

“…This religious delocalization, which had already begun in Judaism with the transition from the temple to the book understood as a portable sacred device (Jung 2012;Gil-Gimeno and Capdequí 2021), reaches with Christianism a new dimension regarding the relationship between Yahweh (now God) and his people. Thus, in Christianism, the chosen people, whom God loves, is no longer the Jew, but the whole of humanity.…”

To the Study of the Phenomenon of Self-Sacrifice in the Context of Ensuring the Security of Russia

“…Закономерно, что всестороннему исследованию феномена самопожертвования посвящена обширная литература как в нашей стране, так и за рубежом. Изучается эволюция этого феномена от его возникновения в обществах Осевого времени до современной эпохи [3], анализируются прототипы самопожертвования в традиционной культуре [4]. Непреходящий интерес к этому феномену демонстрируют военные специалисты [5 ; 6].…”

“…217], что позволяет говорить о его близости понятиям «социальная сплоченность» и «коллективная солидарность». 3 Способность к сверхнапряжениям означает, по-видимому, способность выдерживать психоэмоциональные перегрузки. Иначе говоря, она означает высокую стрессоустойчивость.…”

“…Среди других факторов он упомянул качество элит и населения в целом [32, с. 8 3 . Сливаясь воедино, моральный дух и сплоченность образуют воинский дух [6].…”

“…2 Синонимичное куражу психологическое понятие «драйв» схоже, по мнению Р. Коллинза, с понятием «эмоциональная энергия» [31, p. 108]. 3 Трактовка морального духа А. Коксом практически идентична пониманию Л. Н. Гумилевым пассионарности как характеристики поведения.…”