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Reverence () is "a feeling or attitude of deep respect tinged with awe; veneration".〔Reverence | Define Reverence at Dictionary.com. (n.d.). Dictionary.com | Free Online Dictionary for English Definitions. Retrieved April 28, 2011, from http://dictionary.reference.com〕 The word "reverence" in the modern day is often used in relationship with religion. This is because religion often stimulates the emotion through recognition of God, the supernatural, and the ineffable. Reverence involves a humbling of the self in respectful recognition of something perceived to be greater than the self. Thus religion is commonly a place where reverence is felt. However, similar to awe, reverence is an emotion in its own right, and can be felt outside of the realm of religion. Whereas awe may be characterized as an overwhelming "sensitivity to greatness," reverence is seen more as "acknowledging a subjective response to something excellent in a personal (moral or spiritual) way, but qualitatively above oneself" 〔Roberts, R. C. (2003). Emotions: An essay in aid of moral psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press. p. 268〕 Solomon describes awe as passive, but reverence as active, noting that the feeling of awe (i.e., becoming awestruck) implies paralysis, whereas feelings of reverence are associated more with active engagement and responsibility toward that which one reveres.〔Solomon, R. C. (2002). Spirituality for the skeptic: The thoughtful love of life. New York: Oxford University Press〕 Nature, science, literature, philosophy, great philosophers, leaders, artists, art, music, wisdom, and beauty may each act as the stimulus and focus of reverence. == Religion and music == David Pugmire’s article, "The Secular Reception of Religious Music" explores the unique experience of reverence through music. In particular he looks at how religious music has the capacity to instill emotions of reverence, awe, wonder, and veneration in secular people who lack the context to fully understand the transcendent through religion. "Sacred music seems to have a surprising power over unbelievers not just to quicken or delight them as other music does, but also to ply them, as little else can, with what might be called devotional feelings".〔Pugmire, D. (2006). The Secular Reception of Religious Music. Philosophy, 81(315), 65-79. 〕 Even with this though, Pugmire argues that the secularist cannot fully comprehend the nature of sacred art including sacred music. "Its undoubted expressiveness can lead him at most to accesses of feeling, not to emotion in the fullest sense, i.e., emotion with appropriate objects sustained by appropriate judgments".〔 Pugmire believes that reverence belongs to the range of emotions that can be classified in their devotional or sacred forms, "Emotions of reverence, solemnity, agape, hope, serenity, and ecstasy".〔 But this classification of emotions poses an interesting question: can any emotion be purely religious? "A central candidate for a distinctively religious emotion would be reverence".〔 But it is not entirely distinct from the rest of the emotions that are not related to transcendence or religion. "Reverence is indeed graver, and an attitude in which one is more given over, than its secular approximations in the shape of approval or esteem or respect".〔 But this does not make it purely religious. In fact, "Kant was able to claim reverence as our principal moral emotion without invoking any grounding theological basis for this".〔 "Similarly for its bracing sibling, awe: it figures in our experience of the sublime, of which Kant purports to find an entirely secular account".〔 To connect the secular and the sacred emotions Pugmire looks at the emotions which can be experienced equally in both contexts. These are, "Love, humility, sorrow, pity, joy, serenity, ecstasy".〔 Pugmire then suggests that devotional emotion is: "The transfiguring of mundane emotion into what one might call emotion of the last instance, to the reception and expression of which religious imagery is especially well-suited, and not accidentally".〔 The emotion of the last instance refers to the capacity of the emotional imagination to lose the sense of self and engage in the infinite and the ineffable. Pugmire is suggesting that religion, "Provides a strikingly apt vocabulary for the expression of emotion of the last instance".〔 Reverence is perhaps the most critical of these "emotions of the last instance" and can be adequately accessed through religious music. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reverence (emotion)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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