ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to answer the question: what is the social importance of religion? Why is it facile to suppose that “growing out of religion” (Winnicott), and replacing religion by rational thought and the “reality principle,” the alleged achievement of Freudian psychoanalysis, is a development that entails no significant social or psychological cost? Using in particular the thought of Martin Buber, Levinas and Ronald Dworkin, this essay suggests that a crucial social function of religions has been educational: to provide ways to single out, to remember and to affirm (although not to create) the foundational ethical values that are recognised in the “epiphanic” direct experience that Levinas describes.
