Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity

ISBN-13: 9780521228732 / Angielski / Twarda / 1999 / 564 str.

Roy A. Rappaport

Opis

This book argues that religion can and must be reconciled with science. Combining adaptive and cognitive approaches, it is a comprehensive analysis of religion's evolutionary significance, and its inextricable interdependence with language. It is also a detailed study of religion's main component, ritual, which constructs the conceptions that we take to be religious and therefore central in the making of humanity's adaptation. The text amounts to a manual for effective ritual, illustrated by examples drawn from a range of disciplines.

Recenzje

'This is a massive volume, full of great philosophical complexity and possibly the most detailed epistemological analysis of the phenomenon of rituals.' Cambridge Archaeological Journal

Spis treści

1. Introduction; 2. The ritual form; 3. Self-referential messages; 4. Enactments of meaning; 5. Word and act, form and substance; 6. Time, eternity and liturgical order; 7. Intervals, eternity and communitas; 8. Simultaneity and hierarchy; 9. The idea of the sacred; 10. Sanctification; 11. Truth and order; 12. The numinous, the holy, and the divine; 12. Religion in adaptation; 13. The breaking of the holy and its salvation.