Representation of the sacred in modern western studies

The article examines the evolution of the understanding of the sacred in the modern Western research tradition. The sphere of the sacred attracts close attention of modern scientists and philosophers, numerous works are published on sacred space and time, sacred texts and communications, sacred sociology, "undivine" sacred, simulation of the sacred in modern cinema, etc. Emile Durkheim explored the social nature of myth and the sacred, taking a consistent positivist and rationalist position in sociology. His ideas had a strong influence on subsequent concepts of the sacred and scientific concepts of religion as a necessary social phenomenon. French sociological thought, represented by the names of Durkheim, Levy-Bruhl, Moss, has accumulated a large layer of ethnographic knowledge, which was further developed by representatives of the College of Sociology Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois, Michel Leiris and others, who proposed their theories of the sacred. In the new historical and social realities, the myth and the sacred paradoxically act as ways of rationalizing the post-secular world, the sacred is also understood as a transgression beyond the framework of everyday experience and ideas.