Significations: Signs, Symbols, and images in the interp of rel Charles h. long philadelphi: fortress press 86 (collection of articles published since late 60s)
2-much, but not all is signifying—even Saussure says the symbol has osme of what it signifies—signifying is still mostly arbistrary tho
-relus symbols deploy meanings, creating “an arena and field of power relationships which, tho having their origin in symbols and symbolic clusters, r best defined in terms of significations and signs. On a methodological level, this tendency is expressed in the range of disciplines, such as the socgy, psychgy, and anthrgy of rel”
-“when one places various methodologcl theory w/in the various cultural milieu in which they arose:. This enables one to c the diff forces and valences that came into play when the tools of method r being fashioned and to c that it is quite possible that methodological theories could have been otherwise, but also it enables one to understand why they were not. I am not suggesting that all methodology should b reduced to a prob of the soc of knowledge. I am, rather, stating that a total hermeneutical discussion cannot overlook the role of signification in the creation of theoretical formulations.”
3-in this bk, “all of the essays r hermeneutical attempts to make sense of the phenn of rel on the most gen level of the problematic meaning of rel in the US in particular.”
-the history of rel discipline “begins w/ the problematical nature of rel in the post-Enlgihtnmnt world of the West…the problematic status of rel itself as an authentic and even necessary mode of human exprc and expression is an acute issue of the mod period.”
*-2 things brot this ambiguity: 1) the Englightnmnt’s search for universal modes of understanding changed “normative meanings of rel in human societies” esp in w.—and made it compete w/ other realities for “role of normativity regarding the nature and destiny of the human being.”; 2) w. exploration-made ppl ask if all ppl had rel, is it involved w/ evo?, w/ all the diffcs, is there one single def?—(4_ “In seeking to give a unitary meaning to this phenan, rel has been almost created anew w/in the cats of the disci;ones of the human sciences…”
4-while these sciencs were based on empirical approach, they “inherited the existential and philosophical cultural issues surrounding the meaning and nature of rel that had formed the discussions for el since the Englighntmnt. For the most part, those discussion served to distantiate rel”—it was etiher culture at large or “relegated to the peripheries of human existence, for ecmpl, the contmp w. lower classes or women or int eh peripheral areas of the world, among “primitive” ppls or other cultures that were technologically infereior to the W.”
-Englghtnemtn wanted reform, saw rel as devissev, and so criticized it—this “paved the ground for” evory and racial thinking which meant that “rel and cultures and ppls…were created anew thru academic dsicplinary orientations—they were ‘siggnified’.”
-signification=”one of the ways in which names r given to realities and ppls during this period of conquest; this naming is at the same time an objectification thru cats and concepts of those realities which appear as novel and ‘other’ to the cultures of concquest. This is of course the element of power in this process of naming and objectification. This power is both latent and manifest. It is manifest in the (5) intellectual operation that exhibit the ability of the human mind to come to terms w/ that which is novel, and it is manifest in the manner of passivity that is expressed int eh process wherin the active existential and self-idfying notae trhu which ppl know themselves is almost completely bypassed for the skae of the conceptual and categorical forms of classification. The latency of the power is obscured and the poll, ecoc, and military situ that forms the context of the confrontation is masked by the intellectual desire for knowledge of the other. The actual situation of cultural contact itself is never brot to the fore w/in the context of intellectual formulations.”
5-“More often than not, the diffcs that bring a culture or a ppl to theattention of the investigator r not simply formed from the pov of the intellectual problematic; they r more often than not the nuances and latencies of that power which is part of the structure of the cultural contact itself manifesting itself as intellectual curiosity. In this manner the cultures of non-w. ppls were created a s products of a complex signification.”
-signifying made protests form signified, (6) and also changed signifiers’ culture—tho they hide this w/ “rhetorical recourse to historical and cultural continuities”—it changed them b/c “One does not have the option of finding another place outside the structure of these relationships.”—so u must have a “critical lang” that can “undercut the very structures of cultural langs that undergrid the problematical situation itself”—and signified rel should have that
6-says rel of aas can b “the sources for new modes of thot”, tho rejects using w. categorical structures, even (7) theology
*7-“For my purposes, rel will mean orientation—orientation int eh ultimate snese, that is, how one comes to therms w/ the ultimate significance of one’s place in the world.”
-”The rel of any ppl is more than a structure of thot, it is exprc, expression, motivations, intention, behaviors, styles, and rhythms. Its first and fundamental expression is not on the level of tho. It gives rise to thot, but a form of thot that enables the precision and nuances of its source.”
-“For the majority culture of this country, black have always been signified. By this I mean that they have always been part of a culotural code whose euphemisms and stereotypes have indicated their meaning w/in the larger framework of amercan cultural lagns.” And black cultural reality was created by signifiers whose range is wide
8-for long, rel gave “a mode of making sense fo the exprcs of my trad that did not begin w/ a methodology of pathology, one of the primary amercn cultural and social scientific alngs about balck. I perceived that there was a structure for the universal in the human world that, tho created from englightnmt understandings of the human venture, expressed an opening for the authentic expression of tehrs. Rel thus becomes the locus for a meaning that carried an archaic form; it was a root meaning and could thus become the basis for radical critical thot.”
14-the deprtments in study of rel have not shown “structures of essential order which would define serious positions>’
-early studies were framed in theology or biblical studies which, while preventing positivist reduction, created probs—issues studied were “smothered under the moral, poll, and theoretical concerns that had their origins in theological and biblical studies.”
-it was genlly “understood as the study of ‘wrld rels’ or of non-xn rels, as a way of broadening the awareness of students to a wider wrld of cultures and meanings. There was and still is great value in this intention, but ht essential meaning of re lint eh life of humankind was seldom broadened.”
15-study in cultural and humanistic sense dates back to muller, german, while studying Sanskrit in paris, was invited by the purssian minister in london to translate txts at oxford’s taylorian institte, which was reqd by it sdonor, lt.-col. Joseph bouden of the W. india company (d. 1811), to spread xnty (16) to india using Sanskrit—which revealed diff idea of use of india btwn England and other eurpn counties—for England india is a place of wrk and pragmatic control, for tohers its romanticized for having esoteric wisdom, muller stayed there from 1848-1900 (his death), and he wanted to study india’s philogy and rel—so he didn’t get the chair when it was opened b/c of that
17-they were diff b/c germy had a “specific intellectual orientation…to the novelty and innovation represented by the symbols enlgightnmnt and Romanticism.”; unlike fr, engl, and others—grmany did not colonize or dvlp national idy—tho they did dvlp an ideology—the romantic mvmnt that “everywhere was a reassertion of the Germanic element in eurpn civilztn after its relative suppression in the age of the englightnmnt.”; “the german Romantic mvmnt is the Romantic mvmnt, just as the Italian Renaissance is the Renaissance.”
18-discovery that Sanskrit was realted to eurpn langs “had a profound effect on philogy and linguistics from that time to the present.”
-first noticed by William jones (brit) in 1788, but “philological and cultural implications” by germans; bopp in 1808 saw grammar, then schlegel said this meant race and lagn too, grmany then was looking for origin of lang of all and came up w/ Aryan myth
-tho muller “was not a proponent of the Aryan mth…he was not free from the german cultural ideology regarding the indo-eurpns.”, saw Vedas as from origins of indo eurpn roots, showing they r “spiritual kith and kin”, the Vedas r “the first beginnings of our lang, and of all that is embodied in lang.” (in his intro to a science of rels)—not semites as roots
19-combined grimms workd on the German roots of pagan rels of teutons
-romanticism is to find old concepts “in new soil, and from this soil the concept will sprout new branches pointing in several direction.”—(20)old ideas r the ideal form
20-first continental eurpn history of rels chairs followed muller’s model; tho (21) grmany was reluctant to have chairs b/c the universities were church-run and his theories were thot inimical to them
*31-concern for origin of rel, latter in otto, solderblom and wach—tho wwI “destroyed the optimistic euphoria that surrounded the muller generation.” And emphasis turned to exprc as the “primordium of human consciousness”—no longer a first ppl , these writers thot of this exprc as the “uniqueness in the exprc of rel”, moving muller’s sensus communis to a sensus numinous—(22)and w/ otto, wach, and heiler “a new trad of history of rel begins”
*22-muller “opened up the area of rel for hermeneutical reflection”—a trad that lasted on
23-wach came to us in 43—and Charles long studied under him
-recommends Jastrow 02 study of rel—says its like how wach taught him, tho it lacks hermeneutics
24-since Husserl, human meaning/reality has been ?d—eliade ?d history and structrualists ?d nat history
-schleiermacher changed meaning of hermeneutics from just biblical studies to of human existence—so rel and hermeneutics have gone together—otto and wach used that idea, 25) and oso did chi school (but eliade, jzsmith, (jew), kitagawa (jap) and long were others—therefore wanted outside approach that didn’t rely on old structures of history)
25-but hermeneutics itself is an ideology that it critiques
-the study of rel, in the end tho, is really the study of the other
*27-one of the central probs is tension btwn phenmlgsts and socigsts/anthro (who look at “practical sides of relus activity”)—b/c of diff “basic methodological principles”; “often forced students of rel to make a choice btwn them”—long tries to combine them, b/c socgy-type leaves “’rel’ devoid of any referent” and for morphology practical issues “too often does not receive adequate explanation”
-all rels offer a new reality that is manifested in a cultural form, (28) and “the showing constitutes the quality of sacredness”—“power and ultimacy”—and it is “a fundamntl datum to the human consciousness”
28-and “The expression of this type of exprc in myth and symbol enables us to c that there is present here a logic or a set of axioms peculiar to this specific mode of manifisteation.”; place where subject and object seem identical—(van der leeuw’s “pennon” in rel in essence…)
-“the quality of the exprc as sacred that differentiates it from other exprcs…” and its expressed in objects (eg sky, tree) to provide “a basis for the ordering of this exprc”, (29) then the myth is mores specific expression of it
*30-and whil otto, vdl, eliade, and wahc have all shown how the relus is manifested and makes ontology, “the articulation of the relationship of rel to the other cats and dimensions of cultural life is stated abstractly a and does not match their careful and refined analysis of the ontological structure of relus exprc andexpression. Thus, the practical side of the relus life…does not seem to follow logically from their initial analysis.”
-the relus is the “rupture btwn humanity and the world”—tho we don’t know why it takes place, it is expressed in myths; (31) it is also an expression of the nostalgia for the wholeness and “completenss and the drive toward human authonomy”
32-manifested in objects, ppl /w “sacred” powers, and th imagination, “objectiveity and intimacy” (53) “obligation”, “actualities and potentials”, “habits and conduct r defined and clarified”
*38-e b tylor saw rel as a “belief in Spiritual Beings”, muller saw it a s a “disease of lang”—they both were (39) discredited by “a mass of new data” from older cultures and “A universal history of humankind now loomed as a possibility. The diffcs btwn culturalstages could now b related to the discovery of a new thecnique or the axquistion of a new artifact from another culture”—so “culture” became seen as more than tylor’s “complex whole”, it became “human creativity in history”—now not necessarily under idea of evo, left culture “open and flexible”
39-one of earliest to do this is saussaye in his phenmnlgy—“placing together similar forms of relus phea to c if they revealed a coherent and internal sturcutre.”—but the prob is we don’t know if this structure refers to “a analogous structure in human consciousness”
-otto (in idea of holy)—a “wathershed of phenmlgcl studies”, “attacks the prob head on by describing (40) the a priori relus cat of humn consciousness”, tho he didn’t clrify the forms thru which consciousness manifested, and neglects idea of historical subject—attempting “to move beyond historicism”, “tho it leaves probs of historicism unresolved, same w/ vdl
*40-b/c phenmlgy started w/ husserl’s idea of “eidetic translation”—“changes the historical subject into a transcendental ego—a moment of consciousness which permits the perception of the essence of the phenmn.”
42-pettazzoni did offer a reolution btwn phenlgy and “historical contingency” in late 50’s –the relus symbolism is from human anxiety over existence—and is expressed in diff forms, but long says its too culturally determined, and does not explain why similar symbols r in many cultures, and doesn’t explain how to understand others’ symbols—it is another reduced idea of “worldview”
93-what we conclude is that since phnmlgy shows “an enduring structure to relus exprc and expression” so a study of it must also have “a search for the archaism of the subject.”
-otto was “the first real pehmlgy of rel”
44-heidegger (idea was comprehension is being) was husserl’s pupil; heid looke to pre-socratics, Husserl to Descartes, mod artists to primitives, freud to unconscious—archaeology of reason
47-they believe in an “authentic selfhood”
*48-mccleary ptd out that the w’s idea of truth reqs examining and subsuming all cultures—to prove tis unity—to do this it needs an “historical memory”, (49) supported when the singular subject is ?d in the hermeneutic of knowledge—it says that the subject must b equal w/ an object if it is to understand it—seen in the “great cultural symbols”
60-“silence forces us to realize that our wrds, the units of our naming and recognition in the wrld, presuppose a reality which is prior to our naming and doing.”, (61) being (“relus”) is made manifest [cf wittgenstien who also said Being is in “showing”] in silence, (62) that’s why prayers say “be still”—meditate
64-in 73 he made presidential address to aar, called it similar to cargo cult, aar started in 63, from natl assoc of biblical instructors—changed structure, expanded membership to wide variety of scholars from diff “disciplines devoted to the study of rel”
-cargo cult represents the colonized’s response to conquerors—wherby “the hegemonic and authoritative orders of both cultures r threatedned” and r destroyed for the conquered
-“The delining clarity of focus on the Bible as defining the study of rel, the growth of several deprtments of relus studes in the state unives, the receding of the normativity of the mainline prtstn trads, the inauguration of black stuies, women’s studies, and ethnic awareness , all have had an effect on the meaning and understanding of the nature and meaning of rel in the US-…I felt that in the study of rel we were exprcing the impingment of ‘America upon the Americns.’”—making aar like a cargo cult
*65-w.ers, in forming sicen of the human, looked at “primitive” ppl and their rels, clling it rational, but “what they failed to grsp was that their ideals of rtlty and objectivity, rather than being self-evident properties of critical method, reflected an ideological bias which prevented them from seeing and understanding the phena they were studying.”, the “W. intellectural trad…has blinded us to an adequate appreciation of the diversity of the humn.”
*-wach insisted that the academic discipline of the history of rel started in englightnmnt, tho he was more based on romanticism than trlsm, (66) b/c it was a study using empiricism and analysis, not theology
*67-w. “systematic inquiry presupposes the locus of an ordered and centered intelligence in humn consciousness”—gives arise to prob of recutionsim
69-eliades sacred center arises in cities (which r non egalitarian and started off as ceremonial centers; cf the evo of urban society)—and begin w/ arist and plato—(70) and it mae an understanding of rtlty, “common mode of knowledge in all humn skowing”, the “espistemological center”—meant “an ordering of consciousness”—“the issue of knowledge itself was part and parcel fo a class structure”—rtlty and the sociological context
*70-the w. criticism of myth (by arist and plato) begins at same time as end of city as center of ceremonial order—thi “is the beginning of the isntittnlztn of a notion of th irrational”—(71) “the data or the other that was to b interpreted came from those removed in time and/or in space.”; “objectivity as a scientific procedure allied itself w/ the neutrality of distancing in time and space. The issue of relationship was a bit more difficult to negotiate.”—what was the “correspondence” btwn outer and innter, so idea of cultural evo and theories of fanstasy/emotionalism/pathology, etc
71-in w., this center is seen as human consciousness—based on derrida’s idea
-but its nature says it can’t b known—u can only know data; led to scientific inquiry—and (72) so the failure to “articulate a ‘new science’” of rel is relatied to this methodological tension
74-so we need a “decentering of methodology”—treate everything, everyone as equal; w/ no center, everything is discourse—and rel shows its own modalities
*77-“Can there b a science of rel w/ specific data, methods, and discourse? Yes…but it must b a new science…capable of seeing law and rule in the most contingent and voluntary acts, a science which never gives up the definite and fragil moments of the human image…[It must b] capable of devising methods and procedures consistent w/ those moment af being and imagination which the human is graced to repeat and embody.”
79-Adams’ “Hisotry of rels and the study of islam” in kitagawa history of rels 67
80-“Initial perceptual froms for the New Wrld [and its “empirical other”] were more often than not based upon a prior history.”, (81) eg for women w/ “hysteria”, the “wild man”, and (82) the “mad”—these formed “a basis for the symbolic and mythological langs used to describeand interpet the new worlds discovered by the eurpns sicne the 15th ce.”
82-the other’s biological structure is “extraordinary” or “patholgicla”/”irrational”; and their loci is itinerant
83-these were used, but new wrld had new factors that need symbols too—“poll, ecoc, and rlus”—compre them to “civilztn”
*-“the precise word ‘civilization’ does not appear in w. langs until the late 18th ce”, first in fr, then engl, (84) adam smith used it caually; genlly used for certain “cultural processes” in engl and fr—psychic and social changes sicne 16th ce, that produced what we call “W. civ”—it is the w’s self-conscious affirmation of its “superiority”—at the same time it discovered new world
85-“civliztn” is a symbol that include def of primitive; it’s “an expression of will to power”
87-in renaissance explorers labeled foreign lands on maps w/ biblical ideas, eg claling places by what biblical ppl lived or rule there
89-indians r seen as “noble savages”—like the “wild men”, or pagans for crusades (esplly in s. America); and by 19th ce new symbols for maps and ppl had almost entirely replaced 15th ce symbols
*91-since mod period, “primitieves” r seen as “relus and emprircal ‘others’”, and they “form one of the most important bases of data for a non-theological understanding of rel in the post-enlgihtnmnt west.”; and they “operate as a negative structure of concreteness that allows civilztn to define itself as a structure superior to [it]”—used as the idealized foil in human sciences
92-primitives’ rel is often seen as static, (93)even after hundred of years of contact
93-no the marks that distinguish primitives from civlztn r fading (no nudity, writing, rtlty)
98-human understanding of the sacred was that the sacred was transient when human wandered; but w/ cities (starting in upper neoliticgh), sacred center became more important—saw “the absolutenss fo power as eternal and inflexible”—b/c that “space manifests itself in some extraordinary manner”—and becomes orgzng principle; also seen as sacred axos btwn earth ans sky
99-voyages of exploration were seen as relus plgrmage—old meaning of humn who moves (pre-neotlithic) or journey to sacred center w/ journey in the wild and returning home to stability
100-contact w/ new ppl and land challendged many old assumptions
101-new wrlds made relus thot seem more around mobility again—“a new orientation of eurpn consciousness”—mid class could now com in “close contact w/ the powerful and the great…[and] those w/ no power…at all”; “self-fashioning is achieved in realtion to something perceived as alien”—eg (102) excessive pleasure
105-englsih treaed Indians like “younger brethren” who had lost their father and should show obedience to older bro—has relus “ring” to it
106-after domination, lang of plgrmge changed to lang of progress-and lang conquest w/ new “self-worth structure”
108-for conquered, to explain colonizers, they have “myth-dreams”—highlighted ideas from myths to explain new exprcs, (109) and these restructure native societies while trying to revive trads, forshadows new order
114-reports of cargo cults have come from around the world
116-for them, the “vague Somewhat” , power, other—is “the scientific, industrialized w. culture w/ its relus ideology”
119-their madness comes from destruction of old myth and construction of new one
121-make a harbor and hope a ship w/ cargo would come in
124-the revo in anthrogy was seeing that observers r also participants, “The metholdological prob of cutlrual contact is itself an aspect of a cargo cult.”; unity of old myth of sicence ended and myth decenters
*125-it’s the w. impinging on the w., decentering the myth, “there is no longer the privileged position which is the West or America.”
*137-“The tendency of Amercan ‘in the main’ to ‘conceal even from thesmselves’…the tragic dimension of their cultural exprc…”; (138) conceals balcks and indian history—and so conceals its “primordial exprc…which indlcdes richness and variety”
139-the rebellion of the oppressed has opened up “a new evaluation of history” (eldrige clearver)
-and acknowledging this diversity equals exprcing mysterum tremendum
141-believes “that the relus life of humanity is the locus of those primordial and perennial patterns that define us as a species.”It is at this level that we may orient ourselves thru thot, action, and passion to carry out our common task.”
142-amercn have genlly wanted (otto’s) mysterium fascinosum—“desire for comfort, unification, and idefication w/ the relus object”, the opposite of myst termendum, which puts object as other, distant—and we get fascinosum thru nature and moral conscience” that we worroship combined w/ no historical knowledge
147-says theres also a constant regret that we’ve destroyed nature
150-but the emphasis on ouward acts hides those suppressed
155-to fix this we must overcome the “singularity of a normative trad” (of the “American rel”)
158-troeltsch thot w. james saw most ppl saw rel thru platonic lens, an “indv consciousness”, but he did not c an “essence” of rel, (161) it was in indv psychological cats—(162) otto’s analysis denies this reduction
163-in late 1880s, dubois was a student of w. james, encourage him to expand his philosophy but have a backup plan
164-james saw rel in man’s solitude, but dubois saw it in community—long syas its in both (b/c its just the mysterim tremendum)
*-“one has only to read the accounts fo the conversion experencs of blacks to c how this mysterium tremendum in the life of slaves and ex-slaves, is never identified w/ the sociological (165) situation or w/ the oppression of slavery itself; it is, in fact, a manner in which these human beings rwecognize their creatureliness and their humanity, shall wa say, before God, and it is this essential humanity which is not given by the slave system or the master.” Cf god struck me dead 69, tho oppression colors it
166-since late 19th ce nrms have appeared (called diff names ege milleniarian, cargo, crisis—cults)—these mvmnts of the oppressed have often been compared to early xn, jew, and budd mvmnts, but long says don’t—b/c these happen in modty and they r a critique of modty
167-hobbes, lock and hegel were all against slavery—seen as war, (168) hegel saw it as man’s condition that would b overcome, and so these cults offer a new consciousness for them and humanity—outside of the maste-slave dialect
171-says james was rt, there is a diff consciousness w/ rel—but its caused by real rel, not just psychology as james thot
*173-msot studies of aa rels have used soc sciences w/out coming “to terms w/ the specifically relus elements in the rel”, other studies r black theologies done as xn apologetics—these r too narrow—(174) but tho the analyses r overly social, they can still make good observations about symbols used and patterns of activities
175-most slaves came from w. afr and daryll forde showed w. Africa is a cultural unit—lang and relus forms—tho there r debates of continuing afrcn influence
178-new consciousness “be balck and die”; the symbol of afr
188-calvinists thot god gave all knowledge of Him, and superstition/sin prevented that knowledge—so prtsnts saw all dark ppl as sinful (b/c of their superstition)
189-in symbolism of evil ricouer shows genealogy of how balck was associated w/ evil before racism started.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Postmodern Theory: Critical interpretation by Steven Best and Douglas Kellner 91
Postmodern Theory: Critical interpretation by Steven Best and Douglas Kellner 91
xi-“…theoretical discourses can b read as responses to historical crises, to unsettling ecoc and technologyical dvlpmnts, and to social and intellectual turbulence produced by the disintegration of previously stable or familiar modes of thinking and living. New theories and ideas articulate novel social exprecs and a proliferation of emergent discourses therefore suggests that important transformations r taking place in society and culture”
-says 70’s and 80s saw “a series of socioecoc and cultural transfrmtn…[which] suggested that a break w/ the previous society had taken place”, includes more media, computrs, other techs, “a restructuring of capitalism, poll changes, novel cultural forms, and new exprcs of space and time produced a sense that dramatic dvlpmnts have occurred thruought culture and society”—the “new, as yet barely charted, ‘pomo’ terrain” and these writers map this and give new modes of theorizing for it—writers of (x) “pomo theory”
x-“While the term ‘pomo theory’ may seem problematical, since pomo critiques r directed against the notion of ‘theory’ itself—which implies a systematically dvlpd conceptual structure anchored in the real—the writers we classify under the pomo rubric nonetheless dvlp theoretical positions on diverse topics”—and the authors “assess their usefulness for dvlping critical theories of society and radical pols”
1-in the 70s and 80s, “pomo debates dominate the cultural and intellectual scene in many fields throughout the world”—does it exist?, what r its facets?, critics said it was a fad, a specious invention made for “social capital”, an attempt “to devalue emancipator mod theories and values”
2-“there is no unified pomo theory”, and they smtimes conflict
-modty is genlly seen as a historical period following feudalism, and in it: “Reason was deemed competent to discover adequate theoretical and practical norms upon which systems of thot and actoions could b built and society could b restructured” (to b egalitarian and not feudal)
-“Aesthtic modty…rebelled against the alienating aspects of industrializtn and rtlztn, while seeking to transform culture and to find creative self-realiztn in art”
3-“modztn” includes “those processes of individualztn, secularztn, industriaztn, cultural differentiation, commodification, urbaztn, bureaucrtztn, and rtlztn”
-“Yet the construction of modty produced untold suffering…ranging from the peasantry, proletariat, and artisans oppressed by capitalist industrialztn to the exlusion of women from the public sphere, to the genocide of imperialist colonztn.” And the legitimzng “instittns practices , and discourses” for its domination
-some claim tho that modty can repair itself
-pomosts, otoh, think that in a “hi tech media society” there is a new society (Baudr, Lyo, Harvey), while others say its “hi capitalism”—more “capital penetration and homogeniztn”-- (jameson and Harvey)
-both say it makes “increased cultural fragmentation“ and “new modes of exprc, subjectivity, and culture”
4-“mod theory…is criticaized for its search for a foundation knowledge, [incl descrts, comte, marx, weber] for its universalizing and totalizing claims, for its hubris to supply apodictic truth, and for *its allegedly fallacious rtlsm.” While defender attack “pomo relativism, irrationlsm, and nihilism”
-“POmo theory provides a critique of representation and the mod belief that theory mirrors reality”…instead they think “theories at best provide partial perspectives on their objects, and that all cognitive reprtations of the world r historically and linguistically mediated”; often rejecting metatheories; ideas of social coherence, and “notions of causality in favor of multiplicity”’ and (5) “abandons the rtl unified subject…in favour of a socially and linguistically decentered and fragmented subject”
5-in this book, “pomoty” refers to the epoch and “pomosm” describes cultural artifacts and mvmnts; “mod pols” is “characterized by party, parliamentary, or trade union pols” v. “pomo pols” –“locally based micropols that challenge a broad array of discourses and instittnlzed forms of power.”
-precursors: 1870 engl painter john Watkins chapman talked of “omo painting” to designate painting “more mod” than fr impressionist painting; 1917 german writer rudoph pannwitz used it describe (6) nihilism; then historians D. C. Somervell and Arnold Toynbee (late 40s to 60s) used it to describe new stage in history, starting for them in 1875 characterized by anarchy, social turmoil—tho its “universalistic philosophy of history w/ its notions of historical cycles of the rise and decline of civliztns, hsit philosophical idealism, and the relus overtones of his analysis would b totally foreign to those who took up the concept of pomodty in the contemp sense”—its similar to Nietzsche and Spengler
7-in 50s, several more “historical-sociological notions” of pomodty, appeared; (8) incl c. wright mills who is not very optimistic b/c it’s the end of Enlightnmnt belief that “increased rtlty would produce increased freedom”—tho his sweeping generlztns is “very much ‘modst’”; (9) barraclough 64 says what defines pomodty is 3rd world resisteance, indv to mass society,a dn new forms of culture
9-in 40s and 50s, it was used occasionally for architecture and poetry, but in 60s and 70s was used to describe many cultural artificats—(10) eg mixed media, pastiche—and not as serious/moral; (12) g. steiner 71 said pomosm rejects “foundational assumptions and values of w. society”, pomo culture “no longer blindly and unproblematically trusts in science, art, and reason as beneficent, humanizing forces,a dn, consequently, there has been a loss of ethical absoluteness and certainties”; etzioni thot it was based on increased tech dvlpmnt after wwII that would change human capabilities and values; (13) d. bell sees pomosm as an extension of modty’s release of “rebellious, anti-bourgeois, antinomic, and hedonistic [and narcissism] impulses”
14-“there r 2 conflicting matricies of pomo discourses in the period before it proliferated in the 1980s”: 1) the “predominatly positive valence”—drucker, etzioni, sontag, Hassan, fiedler, ferre and others; 2) negative discourses, eg Toynbee, mills, bell, baudrillard; the positive one was “divided into social and cultural wings”—all them “reproduced 50s optimism and the sense that technogy and modnztn were making possible the break w/ an obsolete past”—the “affluent society” idea—the “grea society”; and positive culturalists affirmed the liberating properties of pomo art
15-pomo cultural discourse had greater impact on 80s pomo theory than the sociohistorical discourses b/c that still used “mod modes of thot (reason, totaliztns, unification, and so on)”
-negatives saw a crisi for w. civilztn—and the discourses of “Howe, Steiner, Bell and others would also prepare one way for the neo-consrvtv attacks on contemp culture in the 1980s”
-both were responding to new capitalzm that encouraged hedonism and new lifestyles
-by the 80s there were ether cultural conservatives or avantgardists; tho started in Amer, (16) Fr made theories more comprehensive and extreme
16-and Fr had other precursorsin anii enlghtnmnt ppl (bauderlaire, rimbaud, etc) and other eurpns (Nietzsche and heidegger who went against hegel, marx, phenomenology and existentialism”)
-“The most significant dvlpmnts of pomo theory have taken place inFr”, “a series of socioecoc, cultural, theoretical, and poll events occurred in Fr which helped give rise to new pomo theories”
17-Fr pomo theories were influenced by rapid modztn after WWII, dvlpmnts in philosophy, and “the dramatic sense of rupture produced by the turbulent events of 1965, in which a study and workrs’ rebellion brot the country to a standstill, appearing to resurrect Fr revory trads.”
-at end of WWII “Fr was still largely agricultural” but w/ modztn became “one of the world’s most dynamic and successful “ ecoies—became “mainly urban and industrial”
-“Proseperity soard”—cahanging lifestyles and bringing conflict btwn old and new—and new theories analyzed the social change: esp mass consumer culture which Barthes said idealized this new structure, Debord criticized the “society of the spectacle” for masking the alienation and oppression; (18) Lefebvre said how new structure gave new modes of domination
18-post war Fr was mostly “Marxism, existentialism and phenomenlgy” but by 60s, “these theories were superseded by the linguistically-oriented discourses of structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis which advanced new concepts of lang, theory, subjectivity, and socity.”—“Structuralists applied structural-linguist concepts to the human sciences”
-eg Levi-strauss applied it to myths, kinship, etc.; lacan to psychoanalysis; althusser to Marxism
*-this was using “holistic analyses that analyzed phena in terms of parts and wholes, defining a structure as the interrelation of parts w/in a common system. Sturctures were governed by unconscious codes or rules, as when lang constituted meaning thru a differential set of binary opposites, or when mythologies codified eating and secual behavior according to systems of rules and codes”—and the goal was to “make known the ruels of functioning” of things—looked at “underlying rules which organized phena into a social system” eg totemic practices in trad societies for dividing things into sacred and pofane or culinary rules in mod societies—it (19) rejected humainism that used to shape social siceinces [that all ppl r essentially the same] “Structuralism stressed the derivativeness of subjectivity and meaning in contrast to the primacy of symbolic systems, the unconscious, and social relations…subjectivity was seen as a social and linguistic construct. The parole, or particular use of lang by indv subjects was determined by langue, the system of lang itself.”
*19-Sturcturalism had its roots in “semiotic theory” of Ferdinand de sussure (1857-1913), said that “lang can b analyzed in terms of its present laws of operation w/out ref to its historical properties and evo, Saussure interpreted the linguistic sign as comprised of 2 integrally related parts: an acoustic-visual component, the signifier, and a conceptual component, the signified. Lang is a ‘system of signs that expresses ideas’, or signifieds, thru diff signifiers that produce meaning. Saussure emphasized 2 properties of lang that r of crucial importance for understanding contemp theoretical dvlpmnts: First, he saw that the linguistic sign was arbitrary, that there is no nat link btwn the signifier and the signified, only a contingent cultural defsignation. Second, he emphasized that the sign is differential, part of a system of meanings where words acquire significance only by ref to what they r not.”—tho he believed that (20) the sign still has a “nat immediate relation to its referent”—the later post-structuralists would disagree, in fact everything social was arbitrary—even “society itself”
20-“Just as structuralists radically attack phenmlgy, existentialism, and humanism, so did poststructuralists assault the premises and sassumptions of structuraist thot.”; they “attacked the scientific pretensions of structuralism which attempted to create basis for the study of culture and which strove for the standard mod goals of foundation, truth, objectivity, certainty, and system. Poststructuralists argued as well that sturctlst theories did not fully break w/ humanism since they reproduced the humanist notion of an unchanging human nature…that the mind had an innate, universal structure and that myth and other symbolic forms strove to resolve the invariable contradictions btwn nature and culture. They favored instead a thoroughly historical view which sees diff forms of consciousness, ids, signficaation, and so on as historically produced and therefore varying in diff historical periods. Thus, while sharing w/ structuralism a dismissal of the concept of the autonomous subject, post structuralism stressed the dimensions of history, pols, and everyday life in the contemp aworld which tended to b suppressed by the abstractions of the structuralism project”
-by derrida, fouc, kristeva, lyo and barthes did this critique—and it mad “an atmosphere of intense theoretical upheaval that helped to form pomo theory”
21-“the signified is only a moment in a never-ending process of signification where meaning is produced not in a stable, referential relation btwn subject and object, but only w/in the infinite, intertextual play of signifiers.”
-these new theories attacked philosphy’s “root assumptions”, b/c it assumes there can b “an absolute bedrock of truth”
-Der thot w. phihlosphy and culture was based on “binary oppositions” (“subject/object, appearance/reality, speech/writing”, etc.)—and these create a “hierarchy of values which attempt not only to guarantee truth, but also serve to exclude and devalue allegedly inferior terms or positions.”—and many ppl followed der, in his conclusion that philosophy needed revamping
22-precursors to this were neitzsche, Heidegger, wittgenstien, james, dewey, de sade, bataille, and artaud; esp “Neitz’s attack on w. philosophy, combined w/ heidegger’s critique of metaphysics”
-Neit replaced “W. philosophy w/ a perspectivist orientation for which there r no facts, only interps, and no objective truths, only the constructs of various indvs or grps. N. scorned philosophical systems and called for new modes of philosophizing, writing and living. He insited that all lang was metaphorical and that the subject was only a product of lang and thot. He attacked the pretensions of reason and defended the desires of the body and the life-enhancing superiority of art over theory.”
-“Neit saw modty as an advanced state of decadence”
-Heid thot w. philosophy, beginning w/ plato, was increasingly doing “forgetting of Being” and we should go back to that, and advocated for “premod modes of thot and experc”
23-the 68 poll upheavals “signaled desires for a radical brea w/ the instittns and pols of the past and dramatized the failure of lib isntittns to deal w/ the dissatisfaction of broad masses of citizens.”
-the may 68 student revolt was against school’s and socity’s conformity, repressiveness and how it hides its mechanisms to perpetuate itself itn media, class
24-btwn poststructuralists there was “intense debate over how the subject was formed and lived in everyday life, as well as the ubiquity and multiplicity of forms of power in socity and everyday life.”
-and since Marxists supported fr govt in teling students to relax, theorists started moving away from Marxism, “embracing micro pols” like “feminism, ecocly, grps and gay and lesbian formations”—opposing marxsism’s strict emphasis on labour, saying there r multiple forms of oppression and power “that r irriduciby to the exploitation of labour.”—(25) “in effect redefining the socialist project as that of radical democracy”
25-some (eg glucksman and Bernard-levy) “denounced Marxism as a discourse of terror and power”, and poststructuras genlly attacked marsixm as, like other mod theories, “resting on obsolete epistemological premises”—and this permeated “literacy, philosphcl, sociological, and poll discourse in fr and elsewhere during the late 1960s and the 1970s and had a decisive impact on pomo theory”
-for b and k, they say that poststructuralism critiqued mod theory and produced “new models of thot, writing, and subjectivity, some of which r later takedn up by pomo theory”, which, for them, is the broader fo the 2. Pomo theory too takes, (26) “radicalizes it, and extends it to new theoretical fields” (eg sociohistorical theory and new pomo forms and exprcs) and genlly more comprehensive, tho “most of the indvs that we discuss int his bk can b considered as either pomo or poststructurst theorists”
26-and pomo theory gives primacy to “discourse theory” which is used for structuralism and poststructuralsm; it “sees all social phena as sstructured semiotically by codes and rules, and therefor amenable to linguistic analysies, utilizing the model of signification and signifying practices”, and they emphasize “the mat and heterogeneous nature fo discourse”—so for fouc and others they look at the “instittnl bases of discourse, the viewpts and positons from which ppl speak, and the power relations thse allow and presuppose.”
27-“much pomo theory follows discourse theory in assuming that it is lang, signs, images, codes, and signifying systems which organize the psyche, society,a nd everyday life” tho most pomo theorists don’t “reduce everything to discourse or textuality” and b and k say tho that some ppl can take it too far
28-in other countries: w. james championed pluralism; john dewey attacked tradl philopshy, nrth amers (drucker, mills, etzioni and bell) and n amer theoriest introduced “pomo” wrd into the arts; and “it has indeed been int eh English-speaking wrld that interest in all facets of the pomo controversies has been most intense w/ ocnfs, js, and publishing lists proliferanting in these countries.”
-so by the 80s, it “penetrated every academic field”; they “embrace principles of chaos, indeterminancy, and hermeneutics, w/ some calling for a ‘reenchantmnt of nature’”
-and penetrated culture (eg mtv)
29-there is difficulty and confusion when ppl use diff and conflicting defs
30-but pomo theorists think genlly there is a real break in history and critixize mod norms and calls for new forms of thot and values; some focus on alternative forms of “knowledge and discourse” (lyo and fouc) and some “semphasize the forms of ecoy, society, culture, and exprc”; some use mod theory “to ananlyze pomo cultural and social forms” (fouc, deleuze and guattari, lyo, guattari, and other s don’t even want that label)
32-“the Frankfurt school, esp adorno, anticipated certain trends of pomo theory”
-many ppl (incl habermas) say pomo theory is irrationalism
-b and k do not accept the idea of a radical break in history which need totally new theories, tho there r changes and new theories needed
xi-“…theoretical discourses can b read as responses to historical crises, to unsettling ecoc and technologyical dvlpmnts, and to social and intellectual turbulence produced by the disintegration of previously stable or familiar modes of thinking and living. New theories and ideas articulate novel social exprecs and a proliferation of emergent discourses therefore suggests that important transformations r taking place in society and culture”
-says 70’s and 80s saw “a series of socioecoc and cultural transfrmtn…[which] suggested that a break w/ the previous society had taken place”, includes more media, computrs, other techs, “a restructuring of capitalism, poll changes, novel cultural forms, and new exprcs of space and time produced a sense that dramatic dvlpmnts have occurred thruought culture and society”—the “new, as yet barely charted, ‘pomo’ terrain” and these writers map this and give new modes of theorizing for it—writers of (x) “pomo theory”
x-“While the term ‘pomo theory’ may seem problematical, since pomo critiques r directed against the notion of ‘theory’ itself—which implies a systematically dvlpd conceptual structure anchored in the real—the writers we classify under the pomo rubric nonetheless dvlp theoretical positions on diverse topics”—and the authors “assess their usefulness for dvlping critical theories of society and radical pols”
1-in the 70s and 80s, “pomo debates dominate the cultural and intellectual scene in many fields throughout the world”—does it exist?, what r its facets?, critics said it was a fad, a specious invention made for “social capital”, an attempt “to devalue emancipator mod theories and values”
2-“there is no unified pomo theory”, and they smtimes conflict
-modty is genlly seen as a historical period following feudalism, and in it: “Reason was deemed competent to discover adequate theoretical and practical norms upon which systems of thot and actoions could b built and society could b restructured” (to b egalitarian and not feudal)
-“Aesthtic modty…rebelled against the alienating aspects of industrializtn and rtlztn, while seeking to transform culture and to find creative self-realiztn in art”
3-“modztn” includes “those processes of individualztn, secularztn, industriaztn, cultural differentiation, commodification, urbaztn, bureaucrtztn, and rtlztn”
-“Yet the construction of modty produced untold suffering…ranging from the peasantry, proletariat, and artisans oppressed by capitalist industrialztn to the exlusion of women from the public sphere, to the genocide of imperialist colonztn.” And the legitimzng “instittns practices , and discourses” for its domination
-some claim tho that modty can repair itself
-pomosts, otoh, think that in a “hi tech media society” there is a new society (Baudr, Lyo, Harvey), while others say its “hi capitalism”—more “capital penetration and homogeniztn”-- (jameson and Harvey)
-both say it makes “increased cultural fragmentation“ and “new modes of exprc, subjectivity, and culture”
4-“mod theory…is criticaized for its search for a foundation knowledge, [incl descrts, comte, marx, weber] for its universalizing and totalizing claims, for its hubris to supply apodictic truth, and for *its allegedly fallacious rtlsm.” While defender attack “pomo relativism, irrationlsm, and nihilism”
-“POmo theory provides a critique of representation and the mod belief that theory mirrors reality”…instead they think “theories at best provide partial perspectives on their objects, and that all cognitive reprtations of the world r historically and linguistically mediated”; often rejecting metatheories; ideas of social coherence, and “notions of causality in favor of multiplicity”’ and (5) “abandons the rtl unified subject…in favour of a socially and linguistically decentered and fragmented subject”
5-in this book, “pomoty” refers to the epoch and “pomosm” describes cultural artifacts and mvmnts; “mod pols” is “characterized by party, parliamentary, or trade union pols” v. “pomo pols” –“locally based micropols that challenge a broad array of discourses and instittnlzed forms of power.”
-precursors: 1870 engl painter john Watkins chapman talked of “omo painting” to designate painting “more mod” than fr impressionist painting; 1917 german writer rudoph pannwitz used it describe (6) nihilism; then historians D. C. Somervell and Arnold Toynbee (late 40s to 60s) used it to describe new stage in history, starting for them in 1875 characterized by anarchy, social turmoil—tho its “universalistic philosophy of history w/ its notions of historical cycles of the rise and decline of civliztns, hsit philosophical idealism, and the relus overtones of his analysis would b totally foreign to those who took up the concept of pomodty in the contemp sense”—its similar to Nietzsche and Spengler
7-in 50s, several more “historical-sociological notions” of pomodty, appeared; (8) incl c. wright mills who is not very optimistic b/c it’s the end of Enlightnmnt belief that “increased rtlty would produce increased freedom”—tho his sweeping generlztns is “very much ‘modst’”; (9) barraclough 64 says what defines pomodty is 3rd world resisteance, indv to mass society,a dn new forms of culture
9-in 40s and 50s, it was used occasionally for architecture and poetry, but in 60s and 70s was used to describe many cultural artificats—(10) eg mixed media, pastiche—and not as serious/moral; (12) g. steiner 71 said pomosm rejects “foundational assumptions and values of w. society”, pomo culture “no longer blindly and unproblematically trusts in science, art, and reason as beneficent, humanizing forces,a dn, consequently, there has been a loss of ethical absoluteness and certainties”; etzioni thot it was based on increased tech dvlpmnt after wwII that would change human capabilities and values; (13) d. bell sees pomosm as an extension of modty’s release of “rebellious, anti-bourgeois, antinomic, and hedonistic [and narcissism] impulses”
14-“there r 2 conflicting matricies of pomo discourses in the period before it proliferated in the 1980s”: 1) the “predominatly positive valence”—drucker, etzioni, sontag, Hassan, fiedler, ferre and others; 2) negative discourses, eg Toynbee, mills, bell, baudrillard; the positive one was “divided into social and cultural wings”—all them “reproduced 50s optimism and the sense that technogy and modnztn were making possible the break w/ an obsolete past”—the “affluent society” idea—the “grea society”; and positive culturalists affirmed the liberating properties of pomo art
15-pomo cultural discourse had greater impact on 80s pomo theory than the sociohistorical discourses b/c that still used “mod modes of thot (reason, totaliztns, unification, and so on)”
-negatives saw a crisi for w. civilztn—and the discourses of “Howe, Steiner, Bell and others would also prepare one way for the neo-consrvtv attacks on contemp culture in the 1980s”
-both were responding to new capitalzm that encouraged hedonism and new lifestyles
-by the 80s there were ether cultural conservatives or avantgardists; tho started in Amer, (16) Fr made theories more comprehensive and extreme
16-and Fr had other precursorsin anii enlghtnmnt ppl (bauderlaire, rimbaud, etc) and other eurpns (Nietzsche and heidegger who went against hegel, marx, phenomenology and existentialism”)
-“The most significant dvlpmnts of pomo theory have taken place inFr”, “a series of socioecoc, cultural, theoretical, and poll events occurred in Fr which helped give rise to new pomo theories”
17-Fr pomo theories were influenced by rapid modztn after WWII, dvlpmnts in philosophy, and “the dramatic sense of rupture produced by the turbulent events of 1965, in which a study and workrs’ rebellion brot the country to a standstill, appearing to resurrect Fr revory trads.”
-at end of WWII “Fr was still largely agricultural” but w/ modztn became “one of the world’s most dynamic and successful “ ecoies—became “mainly urban and industrial”
-“Proseperity soard”—cahanging lifestyles and bringing conflict btwn old and new—and new theories analyzed the social change: esp mass consumer culture which Barthes said idealized this new structure, Debord criticized the “society of the spectacle” for masking the alienation and oppression; (18) Lefebvre said how new structure gave new modes of domination
18-post war Fr was mostly “Marxism, existentialism and phenomenlgy” but by 60s, “these theories were superseded by the linguistically-oriented discourses of structuralism and Lacanian psychoanalysis which advanced new concepts of lang, theory, subjectivity, and socity.”—“Structuralists applied structural-linguist concepts to the human sciences”
-eg Levi-strauss applied it to myths, kinship, etc.; lacan to psychoanalysis; althusser to Marxism
*-this was using “holistic analyses that analyzed phena in terms of parts and wholes, defining a structure as the interrelation of parts w/in a common system. Sturctures were governed by unconscious codes or rules, as when lang constituted meaning thru a differential set of binary opposites, or when mythologies codified eating and secual behavior according to systems of rules and codes”—and the goal was to “make known the ruels of functioning” of things—looked at “underlying rules which organized phena into a social system” eg totemic practices in trad societies for dividing things into sacred and pofane or culinary rules in mod societies—it (19) rejected humainism that used to shape social siceinces [that all ppl r essentially the same] “Structuralism stressed the derivativeness of subjectivity and meaning in contrast to the primacy of symbolic systems, the unconscious, and social relations…subjectivity was seen as a social and linguistic construct. The parole, or particular use of lang by indv subjects was determined by langue, the system of lang itself.”
*19-Sturcturalism had its roots in “semiotic theory” of Ferdinand de sussure (1857-1913), said that “lang can b analyzed in terms of its present laws of operation w/out ref to its historical properties and evo, Saussure interpreted the linguistic sign as comprised of 2 integrally related parts: an acoustic-visual component, the signifier, and a conceptual component, the signified. Lang is a ‘system of signs that expresses ideas’, or signifieds, thru diff signifiers that produce meaning. Saussure emphasized 2 properties of lang that r of crucial importance for understanding contemp theoretical dvlpmnts: First, he saw that the linguistic sign was arbitrary, that there is no nat link btwn the signifier and the signified, only a contingent cultural defsignation. Second, he emphasized that the sign is differential, part of a system of meanings where words acquire significance only by ref to what they r not.”—tho he believed that (20) the sign still has a “nat immediate relation to its referent”—the later post-structuralists would disagree, in fact everything social was arbitrary—even “society itself”
20-“Just as structuralists radically attack phenmlgy, existentialism, and humanism, so did poststructuralists assault the premises and sassumptions of structuraist thot.”; they “attacked the scientific pretensions of structuralism which attempted to create basis for the study of culture and which strove for the standard mod goals of foundation, truth, objectivity, certainty, and system. Poststructuralists argued as well that sturctlst theories did not fully break w/ humanism since they reproduced the humanist notion of an unchanging human nature…that the mind had an innate, universal structure and that myth and other symbolic forms strove to resolve the invariable contradictions btwn nature and culture. They favored instead a thoroughly historical view which sees diff forms of consciousness, ids, signficaation, and so on as historically produced and therefore varying in diff historical periods. Thus, while sharing w/ structuralism a dismissal of the concept of the autonomous subject, post structuralism stressed the dimensions of history, pols, and everyday life in the contemp aworld which tended to b suppressed by the abstractions of the structuralism project”
-by derrida, fouc, kristeva, lyo and barthes did this critique—and it mad “an atmosphere of intense theoretical upheaval that helped to form pomo theory”
21-“the signified is only a moment in a never-ending process of signification where meaning is produced not in a stable, referential relation btwn subject and object, but only w/in the infinite, intertextual play of signifiers.”
-these new theories attacked philosphy’s “root assumptions”, b/c it assumes there can b “an absolute bedrock of truth”
-Der thot w. phihlosphy and culture was based on “binary oppositions” (“subject/object, appearance/reality, speech/writing”, etc.)—and these create a “hierarchy of values which attempt not only to guarantee truth, but also serve to exclude and devalue allegedly inferior terms or positions.”—and many ppl followed der, in his conclusion that philosophy needed revamping
22-precursors to this were neitzsche, Heidegger, wittgenstien, james, dewey, de sade, bataille, and artaud; esp “Neitz’s attack on w. philosophy, combined w/ heidegger’s critique of metaphysics”
-Neit replaced “W. philosophy w/ a perspectivist orientation for which there r no facts, only interps, and no objective truths, only the constructs of various indvs or grps. N. scorned philosophical systems and called for new modes of philosophizing, writing and living. He insited that all lang was metaphorical and that the subject was only a product of lang and thot. He attacked the pretensions of reason and defended the desires of the body and the life-enhancing superiority of art over theory.”
-“Neit saw modty as an advanced state of decadence”
-Heid thot w. philosophy, beginning w/ plato, was increasingly doing “forgetting of Being” and we should go back to that, and advocated for “premod modes of thot and experc”
23-the 68 poll upheavals “signaled desires for a radical brea w/ the instittns and pols of the past and dramatized the failure of lib isntittns to deal w/ the dissatisfaction of broad masses of citizens.”
-the may 68 student revolt was against school’s and socity’s conformity, repressiveness and how it hides its mechanisms to perpetuate itself itn media, class
24-btwn poststructuralists there was “intense debate over how the subject was formed and lived in everyday life, as well as the ubiquity and multiplicity of forms of power in socity and everyday life.”
-and since Marxists supported fr govt in teling students to relax, theorists started moving away from Marxism, “embracing micro pols” like “feminism, ecocly, grps and gay and lesbian formations”—opposing marxsism’s strict emphasis on labour, saying there r multiple forms of oppression and power “that r irriduciby to the exploitation of labour.”—(25) “in effect redefining the socialist project as that of radical democracy”
25-some (eg glucksman and Bernard-levy) “denounced Marxism as a discourse of terror and power”, and poststructuras genlly attacked marsixm as, like other mod theories, “resting on obsolete epistemological premises”—and this permeated “literacy, philosphcl, sociological, and poll discourse in fr and elsewhere during the late 1960s and the 1970s and had a decisive impact on pomo theory”
-for b and k, they say that poststructuralism critiqued mod theory and produced “new models of thot, writing, and subjectivity, some of which r later takedn up by pomo theory”, which, for them, is the broader fo the 2. Pomo theory too takes, (26) “radicalizes it, and extends it to new theoretical fields” (eg sociohistorical theory and new pomo forms and exprcs) and genlly more comprehensive, tho “most of the indvs that we discuss int his bk can b considered as either pomo or poststructurst theorists”
26-and pomo theory gives primacy to “discourse theory” which is used for structuralism and poststructuralsm; it “sees all social phena as sstructured semiotically by codes and rules, and therefor amenable to linguistic analysies, utilizing the model of signification and signifying practices”, and they emphasize “the mat and heterogeneous nature fo discourse”—so for fouc and others they look at the “instittnl bases of discourse, the viewpts and positons from which ppl speak, and the power relations thse allow and presuppose.”
27-“much pomo theory follows discourse theory in assuming that it is lang, signs, images, codes, and signifying systems which organize the psyche, society,a nd everyday life” tho most pomo theorists don’t “reduce everything to discourse or textuality” and b and k say tho that some ppl can take it too far
28-in other countries: w. james championed pluralism; john dewey attacked tradl philopshy, nrth amers (drucker, mills, etzioni and bell) and n amer theoriest introduced “pomo” wrd into the arts; and “it has indeed been int eh English-speaking wrld that interest in all facets of the pomo controversies has been most intense w/ ocnfs, js, and publishing lists proliferanting in these countries.”
-so by the 80s, it “penetrated every academic field”; they “embrace principles of chaos, indeterminancy, and hermeneutics, w/ some calling for a ‘reenchantmnt of nature’”
-and penetrated culture (eg mtv)
29-there is difficulty and confusion when ppl use diff and conflicting defs
30-but pomo theorists think genlly there is a real break in history and critixize mod norms and calls for new forms of thot and values; some focus on alternative forms of “knowledge and discourse” (lyo and fouc) and some “semphasize the forms of ecoy, society, culture, and exprc”; some use mod theory “to ananlyze pomo cultural and social forms” (fouc, deleuze and guattari, lyo, guattari, and other s don’t even want that label)
32-“the Frankfurt school, esp adorno, anticipated certain trends of pomo theory”
-many ppl (incl habermas) say pomo theory is irrationalism
-b and k do not accept the idea of a radical break in history which need totally new theories, tho there r changes and new theories needed
Monday, October 27, 2008
Practicing Religion in the age of the media ed stewart hoover and lynn schofield clark 02 ny: Columbia univ press
Practicing Religion in the age of the media ed stewart hoover and lynn schofield clark 02 ny: Columbia univ press
"Intro: The Cultural construction of rel in the media age" by stewart m. hoover 1-6
1-in 70s, televangelism started, at same "time when rel was playing an ever more important role in domestic and intl pols"
-then, as in the era of non-authority sanctioned relus radio broadcasts, rel was seen as ind from media, but now it's more complex, "layered interconnections btwn relus symbols, interests, and meanings and the mod media sphere w/in which much of contemp culture is made and known"; (eg music icons express faith "but in ways that r (2) consciously and deeply embedded in contemp, mediated, musical, visual, and performative genres, the lines btwn "rel" and "the media" become blurred"
2-looks at how rel is done outside tradl boundaries and how media is now more a place for idy formation than it was before
*-but just saying u need many perspectives is “trite and unhelpful”, but u can look at stuff in terms of “practice”: “This means that instead of focusing on social structure, or instittns, or formal claims about meanings and values, the contributors stand in the middle of these things, where indvs and communities can b seen to b active in the construction of meaning.”—(3) based off Bourdieu’s idea that “objects of knowledge r constructed, not passively recorded, and contrary to intellectualist idealism, that the principle of this construction is the system of structured, structuring dispositions, the habitus, which is constituted in practice and is always orientated towars practical functs”
3-“This is an approach that recognizes the various complexities as they converge in real exprc, as they r engaged, constructed, reconstrued, mode meaning of, and used.”, how and where ppl produce relus goals—“not so interested in those goals per se”
-labels of “sacred and secular” can’t help much here where both boundaries r so blended, also eg public/private
5-and popular media has delegitimized authorities, and elite/pop, mainstream/marginal; new ideas of relus—doing things traditionally thot as secular “relusly”, charisma of celebrities; direct/mediated exprcs, north/south
“The ‘Prtstntization’ of Research into Media, Rel, and Culture” by Lynn Schofield Clark 7-33
7-pts to a contradicting “cultural victory and organztnl decline for lib prtstnsm in the U-S-.”—cultural values like “indvlsm, freedom, pluralism, tolerance, democracy, and intellectual inquiry”—(cf N. Jay Demerath III “cultural victory and orztnl…”); (8) and even Tocqueville and weber ptd it out, esplly indvlsm and capitalsm; and also “relus tolerance and relativism”
11-in post-civil war US, “Xnty…Continued to serve as the primary content and hence driving force behind the spread of magazines, almanacs, and other printed mats thruought the settled East and the Western frontier.”
12-in 50s, lib prtstnts were hi culture and saw tv as spreading “moral decadence, superficiality, and commercializtn”, tho evangelicals and rcs embraced it—tho they assumed a passive audience
13-US govt sponsored “social research and policy formation” “to mitigate the effects of industrialztn”; and the presumption that the radio helped hitler rise to power led to research on mass media’s power of persuasion in the 30s; then soon also research for media in relation to consumption, looking personal attributes relation to voting, rel, and product purchasing in 50s
14-in 60s, idea of culture changed from ideas of “taste and refinement” to a “way of life”, b/c Raymond Williams 65, ppl used gramsci and althusser and saw culture as way for social change—and many studies started to look at rel in the media
15-then james carey theorized that media was a “ritual” that brot social cohesion, not just transmitting info
17-theres been a “global rise of conservative xn views”
“Allah on-line: the Practice of Global islm in the Information Age” by Bruce B. Lawrence 237-253
237-authority in islm is scriptural (Q), charismatic (hadith of m.), and juridicial (sharia, ulama)—all have narratives, and all r contested
238-most common story of islmic authority sets up islm w/ pols, (239) but that’s not the only way—eg diversity of islms
239-paper looks at impact of info technology revo (ITR--idea by manuel castells) on islm
240-believes that relus boundaries r not swiftly changed, islm and technogy is multifaceted, and “info techngies, like relus trads, remain inherently conservative…they tend to reinforce global structures and asymmetries rather than bode a new era for civil society and transformative justice” (ef saskia sassen G and its discontents 98, esp 177-94)
-the idea of “str8 path” (from fatha), is common idea for all muslims, but u need to know wht’s not the str8 path to know what is—and this reqs authority, but internet tests authority so it makes str8 path unclear—still guideposts (Q, M, Sharia) but they r now being redefined
*-“And since not all Muslims have equal power or equal access to the Web, (241) there is already a preselection, a filtering, of Muslim perspectives on the Net”—tho still “staggering diversity”
241-bks on Muslim communites in W., cf kepel allah in the w.; leonard the south asian amercns—so do they shape asian muslims or other way around?
-uses 3 cats of rel in media of hoover and venturelli “the cat of the relu” critical studies in mass comm. 13 (’96)—(242) instittnl (indp cultural groups), polities, and private (incl small grps)
242-for intittnl grps—“huge overap”; also marginal grps outside trad ideas—doing polemics against others
“scapegoating and deterrence: criminal justice rituals in amercn civil rel” by Carolyn marvin 203-218
203-looks at “US criminal justice system as an instittn of ritual sacrifice…w/in the framework of amercn civil rel…”; w/ civil rel referring to ntlsm as a rel b/c “All rel, it could b said, invests int eh notion of a transcendent power that commands life and death”—does not need g, specifically, in this case, it’s the nation as supreme
204-believes ritual is there to create grp cohesion, and unity exists when violence w/in grp is low—and that’s why deterrence is used, tho it does not eliminate it, it “displace[s] and conceal[s] it”
205-nation is totem, “and the nation-state is the agent of totem killing authority”—like when durk’s ppl ate or killed the totemic animal “on designated ritual occasions”—b/c grp survival demands proof that everything is subservient to it—and the ‘totem secret’ is smtimes grp has to kill own members—and unity fails if secrte is revealed—and for nation-state, war is the most powerful sacrifice
207-sacrifice unifies grp if: 1. Victim is willing, 2. Grp agrees that its rt, 3. Outcome must b uncertain, 4. Ritual must have definite beginning and end, 5. It must b valuable, 6. And its commemorated, or if fails, discarded
208-eg war, elections (humiliation, “ordeals of courage”, failure means [poll] death)
210-it must appear that victim is arbitrarily chosen for the “sacrificial mechanisms of society [to remain] concealed”
-2 sacrifical goats (killed and exiled into wilderness, from levit 16 (205)) of amercn justice system r plaintiff and defendant –but idies can shift even during trial and this makes for grp confusion, (211) and if its not cleared up, fitual fails
“Ritual and the media” Ronald l. grimes 219-234
*220-lists 11 diff ways media and ritual interact: 1. “media presentation of a rite”;
2. Ritual event extended by media”, eg “tv coverage of a papal mass witnessed by a fithful cath viewer.”;
3. “ritual actions in virtual space”, eg “Cyberspace weddings resulting in legal marriage.”;
4. “Subjunctive (or “ludic”) ritualizing”, eg “Myth- or fantasy-based games played on the Internet “as if” they were rites.”;
5. “Magical rite w/ media device as ‘fetish’ (or ‘icon’).”,eg “putting a hand on a TV set to receive healing power from an evangelist”;
6. “Ritualized behavior toward electronic objects.”, eg “The TV set as functl centerpiece of family gatherings; a computer terminal as locus of ultimate concern.”;
7. “A media-delivered ritual object.”, eg “Presentation of a Torafax page on the World Wide Web.”;
8. “A media document as a certificate of ritual act.”, eg “Funeral videos mailed from Toronto to Africa to attest to a death.”;
9. “Ritual use of media device.”, eg “Amplification of Pueblo drumming during a ceremony; worship services built around CD-ROMs produced by the Amercn Bible Society.”;
10. “mediated ritual fantsy”, eg “The initiation scene in the film Emerald Forest.”;
11. “Media as model for, or butt of, ritual activity.” , eg “Hollywood gestures imitated, consciously or unconsciously, in liturgical space; media-manufactured images as objects of homiletical critique.”
227-in media-ritual studies, defs of “ritual” have varied; (228) it is a medium like any kind of art; theories of its orgins will remain unverifiable; (229) so now scholars focus on what they “do”—durk and turner perspectives (cohesion and social transformation); and jzsmith has us look at ritual’s ability to create boundaries
230-it also is performance—showing or doing, both for efficacy and entertainment
"Intro: The Cultural construction of rel in the media age" by stewart m. hoover 1-6
1-in 70s, televangelism started, at same "time when rel was playing an ever more important role in domestic and intl pols"
-then, as in the era of non-authority sanctioned relus radio broadcasts, rel was seen as ind from media, but now it's more complex, "layered interconnections btwn relus symbols, interests, and meanings and the mod media sphere w/in which much of contemp culture is made and known"; (eg music icons express faith "but in ways that r (2) consciously and deeply embedded in contemp, mediated, musical, visual, and performative genres, the lines btwn "rel" and "the media" become blurred"
2-looks at how rel is done outside tradl boundaries and how media is now more a place for idy formation than it was before
*-but just saying u need many perspectives is “trite and unhelpful”, but u can look at stuff in terms of “practice”: “This means that instead of focusing on social structure, or instittns, or formal claims about meanings and values, the contributors stand in the middle of these things, where indvs and communities can b seen to b active in the construction of meaning.”—(3) based off Bourdieu’s idea that “objects of knowledge r constructed, not passively recorded, and contrary to intellectualist idealism, that the principle of this construction is the system of structured, structuring dispositions, the habitus, which is constituted in practice and is always orientated towars practical functs”
3-“This is an approach that recognizes the various complexities as they converge in real exprc, as they r engaged, constructed, reconstrued, mode meaning of, and used.”, how and where ppl produce relus goals—“not so interested in those goals per se”
-labels of “sacred and secular” can’t help much here where both boundaries r so blended, also eg public/private
5-and popular media has delegitimized authorities, and elite/pop, mainstream/marginal; new ideas of relus—doing things traditionally thot as secular “relusly”, charisma of celebrities; direct/mediated exprcs, north/south
“The ‘Prtstntization’ of Research into Media, Rel, and Culture” by Lynn Schofield Clark 7-33
7-pts to a contradicting “cultural victory and organztnl decline for lib prtstnsm in the U-S-.”—cultural values like “indvlsm, freedom, pluralism, tolerance, democracy, and intellectual inquiry”—(cf N. Jay Demerath III “cultural victory and orztnl…”); (8) and even Tocqueville and weber ptd it out, esplly indvlsm and capitalsm; and also “relus tolerance and relativism”
11-in post-civil war US, “Xnty…Continued to serve as the primary content and hence driving force behind the spread of magazines, almanacs, and other printed mats thruought the settled East and the Western frontier.”
12-in 50s, lib prtstnts were hi culture and saw tv as spreading “moral decadence, superficiality, and commercializtn”, tho evangelicals and rcs embraced it—tho they assumed a passive audience
13-US govt sponsored “social research and policy formation” “to mitigate the effects of industrialztn”; and the presumption that the radio helped hitler rise to power led to research on mass media’s power of persuasion in the 30s; then soon also research for media in relation to consumption, looking personal attributes relation to voting, rel, and product purchasing in 50s
14-in 60s, idea of culture changed from ideas of “taste and refinement” to a “way of life”, b/c Raymond Williams 65, ppl used gramsci and althusser and saw culture as way for social change—and many studies started to look at rel in the media
15-then james carey theorized that media was a “ritual” that brot social cohesion, not just transmitting info
17-theres been a “global rise of conservative xn views”
“Allah on-line: the Practice of Global islm in the Information Age” by Bruce B. Lawrence 237-253
237-authority in islm is scriptural (Q), charismatic (hadith of m.), and juridicial (sharia, ulama)—all have narratives, and all r contested
238-most common story of islmic authority sets up islm w/ pols, (239) but that’s not the only way—eg diversity of islms
239-paper looks at impact of info technology revo (ITR--idea by manuel castells) on islm
240-believes that relus boundaries r not swiftly changed, islm and technogy is multifaceted, and “info techngies, like relus trads, remain inherently conservative…they tend to reinforce global structures and asymmetries rather than bode a new era for civil society and transformative justice” (ef saskia sassen G and its discontents 98, esp 177-94)
-the idea of “str8 path” (from fatha), is common idea for all muslims, but u need to know wht’s not the str8 path to know what is—and this reqs authority, but internet tests authority so it makes str8 path unclear—still guideposts (Q, M, Sharia) but they r now being redefined
*-“And since not all Muslims have equal power or equal access to the Web, (241) there is already a preselection, a filtering, of Muslim perspectives on the Net”—tho still “staggering diversity”
241-bks on Muslim communites in W., cf kepel allah in the w.; leonard the south asian amercns—so do they shape asian muslims or other way around?
-uses 3 cats of rel in media of hoover and venturelli “the cat of the relu” critical studies in mass comm. 13 (’96)—(242) instittnl (indp cultural groups), polities, and private (incl small grps)
242-for intittnl grps—“huge overap”; also marginal grps outside trad ideas—doing polemics against others
“scapegoating and deterrence: criminal justice rituals in amercn civil rel” by Carolyn marvin 203-218
203-looks at “US criminal justice system as an instittn of ritual sacrifice…w/in the framework of amercn civil rel…”; w/ civil rel referring to ntlsm as a rel b/c “All rel, it could b said, invests int eh notion of a transcendent power that commands life and death”—does not need g, specifically, in this case, it’s the nation as supreme
204-believes ritual is there to create grp cohesion, and unity exists when violence w/in grp is low—and that’s why deterrence is used, tho it does not eliminate it, it “displace[s] and conceal[s] it”
205-nation is totem, “and the nation-state is the agent of totem killing authority”—like when durk’s ppl ate or killed the totemic animal “on designated ritual occasions”—b/c grp survival demands proof that everything is subservient to it—and the ‘totem secret’ is smtimes grp has to kill own members—and unity fails if secrte is revealed—and for nation-state, war is the most powerful sacrifice
207-sacrifice unifies grp if: 1. Victim is willing, 2. Grp agrees that its rt, 3. Outcome must b uncertain, 4. Ritual must have definite beginning and end, 5. It must b valuable, 6. And its commemorated, or if fails, discarded
208-eg war, elections (humiliation, “ordeals of courage”, failure means [poll] death)
210-it must appear that victim is arbitrarily chosen for the “sacrificial mechanisms of society [to remain] concealed”
-2 sacrifical goats (killed and exiled into wilderness, from levit 16 (205)) of amercn justice system r plaintiff and defendant –but idies can shift even during trial and this makes for grp confusion, (211) and if its not cleared up, fitual fails
“Ritual and the media” Ronald l. grimes 219-234
*220-lists 11 diff ways media and ritual interact: 1. “media presentation of a rite”;
2. Ritual event extended by media”, eg “tv coverage of a papal mass witnessed by a fithful cath viewer.”;
3. “ritual actions in virtual space”, eg “Cyberspace weddings resulting in legal marriage.”;
4. “Subjunctive (or “ludic”) ritualizing”, eg “Myth- or fantasy-based games played on the Internet “as if” they were rites.”;
5. “Magical rite w/ media device as ‘fetish’ (or ‘icon’).”,eg “putting a hand on a TV set to receive healing power from an evangelist”;
6. “Ritualized behavior toward electronic objects.”, eg “The TV set as functl centerpiece of family gatherings; a computer terminal as locus of ultimate concern.”;
7. “A media-delivered ritual object.”, eg “Presentation of a Torafax page on the World Wide Web.”;
8. “A media document as a certificate of ritual act.”, eg “Funeral videos mailed from Toronto to Africa to attest to a death.”;
9. “Ritual use of media device.”, eg “Amplification of Pueblo drumming during a ceremony; worship services built around CD-ROMs produced by the Amercn Bible Society.”;
10. “mediated ritual fantsy”, eg “The initiation scene in the film Emerald Forest.”;
11. “Media as model for, or butt of, ritual activity.” , eg “Hollywood gestures imitated, consciously or unconsciously, in liturgical space; media-manufactured images as objects of homiletical critique.”
227-in media-ritual studies, defs of “ritual” have varied; (228) it is a medium like any kind of art; theories of its orgins will remain unverifiable; (229) so now scholars focus on what they “do”—durk and turner perspectives (cohesion and social transformation); and jzsmith has us look at ritual’s ability to create boundaries
230-it also is performance—showing or doing, both for efficacy and entertainment
Friday, October 24, 2008
Critical terms relus studies ed mark c. taylor 98 u of chi press: usa
Critical terms relus studies ed mark c. taylor 98 u of chi press: usa
“intro” mark taylor
1-the mod contrasts itself to the ancient/tradl, implying “a related set of oppositions” incl “emotion/reason, intuition/thot, superstition/science, undifferentiation/individuation…” etc, w/ the latter term [the mod ones] privileged “when understood diachronically—that is, as it occurs over time—this hierarchical structure leads to an interp of history according to which the mvmnt from primitivism to modernism involves a progression from emotion to reason, undifferentiation…” etc—(2) the evory view of history, and it associates “rel w/ infantile and primitive behavior”
2-and rise of nation state w/ social contract (instead of contract w/ god) as well as free market contributed to decline of rel; as well as plurality of relus denominations and they competed w/ other discourses; science led to disenchantment w/ world
-and up to 60s some social theorists said rtlztn and seculariztn r inseperable; and g became more transcendent (deists)
-but rel really didn’t die, it went inward w/ a transcendent g too, from luther, (3) culminating w/ Kierkegaard when relus collapses into secular, unlike hegel who thot world became more sacral w/ the “naturaliztn and historicztn of relus realities”
4-and this shows what “less-sophisticated interpreters overlook” is that “twentieth century culture is haunted by rel”—even in pop culture (music, tv—treated religiously)
-and there has been a recent revival too for relus belief and practice which, inter alia, “legitimize strategies of resistence designed to secure a measure of indpc and autonomy” and change ideas of nation and state—(5) tho this revival is bound to G, which produces, inter alia, nomadization of labor—creates “vertigo”, “alienation”
6-but there’s little consensus about “what rel is and how it can best b studied”—just as other areas r insecure in their object of study; and even the ? “What is rel” presumes rel is sui generis; some say same rel only occurred in “particular intellectual and cultural circumstances” and is “constituted by local discursive practices”—ppl (7) create their own truths
8-aug defined rel as binding to the “truth” but mod scholars looked for rel’s origins
9-hume traces rel to hope and fear so ppl create g’s w/ whom they give the power of causation, of causing ppls’ feelings
10-insistence on non-relus origins of rel reject its existence and is a “pernicious reductionism”
-says poststructuralist views of rel really still perpetuate “Hegel’s speculative logic as well as saussure’s structural linguistics”
-“prior to the 60s, most graduate study of rel” was in protstnt divinity schools
11-schempp v. Abington school dist 63 and engel v. vitale 62 cleared the way; so did 60s mvmnts’ creating of “multicultural sensibilities”
*12-“the conditions governing the study of rel underwent a rev that began in the 60s.”, (13) sharp distinction drawn btwn relus studes and theology, tho “in many cases ostensibly nontheological approaches to rel tend to become as theological as the positions they r designed to overturn”, w/ “an emthusiasm bordering on the relus” for soc science methods, that they can b a perfect, ideal lens
*13-then critical theory ?d this, found limits of methods, so no “foundational method or comprehensive explanatory theor…a multidisciplinary approach to the study of rel becomes unavoidable”
14-m. muller’s stress on leang and comparing cultures “has been very influential”
*15-“’To make peace btwn premod typologies and pomo difference,’ it is necessary to dvlp comparative analyses that do not presuppose universal principles or reinscribe ahistorical essences.”, tho some criticize that any search for unity is really just a search for a new hegemony
16-and “terms” r permeable and multivocal—“r a function of both its multiple components and its relation to others”, eg “liberation” means diff things in diff contexts; and so a discussion of “liberation” needs many diff explanations thru theology, anthroly, cosmology, etx. And it is related to other terms that have multiple meanings like value, personhood, ritual, etc.
-says ever since kant’s 3 critiques, “the notion of criticism has been inseperable from the self-reflexivity of self-consciousness”, (17) kant thnks the mind is effectively, hardwired and presupposes “forms of intuition (space and time) and 12 cats of understanding”, tho hegel said mind dvlpd historically in a metastructure that can eventually be entirely comprehended—tho this idea is “historically indefensible and analytically problematic”
*17-“Rather than positing a universal grid or seamless organism, critical reflection articulates an imcomplete web of open and flexible terms. This seamy network of constraint, which is riddled w/ gaps that can b neither bridged nor closed, constitutes a constantly shifting cultural a priori that renders critical knowledge possible while circumscribing its unavoidable limits”
18-and recognizes that terms r “not universally translatable”
*-“we insist that every cultural a priori that renders knowledge possible to interp necessary is always incomplete”, “the wrk of analysis is interminable”
-“discern commonalitities w/out erasing diffcs”
*-it’s “an open—even interative—text that challenges the reader to take up and extend the critical study of rel”
Book takes terms (eg body, belief, etc) and looks at diff uses w/in certain historical places and comparing them, their etymologies, the diversity of ideas w/in those particular places—pt out similarities, diffcs, gen patterns (eg B. lincoln’s models of conflict in nation states), relation of epistemology and term (eg schussler fiorenza and kaufman’s article on g), term’s relation to “rel”
Gustavo benavides “modty” 186-204
191-“But even if Weber’s and Gellner’s assessments of the implications of Israelite theology were correct [that g was transcendent which made it possible to manipulate world thru magic] one would have to consider this primordial disenchantment…as but one of many, in some cases contradictory, acts of drama”; like eg divination of roman emporers—magic still happened but g was on earth
JZ Smith “Rel, Rels, Relus” 269-284
269-the fact that explorers to the “New World” (eg Richard Eden and Pedro Cieza de leon in 16th ce) thot natives didn’t have rel shows what was meant by “rel” at that time—and it is an 1) idea imposed by an outside culture, 2) and “rel” was thot to b ubiquitous to humans, so it would b an anomaly if ppl didn’t have it
-“’Rel’ is an anthropological not a theological category” (w/ the exception of 19th ce Amer idea “to get rel”), “It describes human thot and action, most frequently interms of belief and norms of behavior.”
-this history of wrd “rel”, much of it is “irrelevant to contemp usage”, 3 possible roots (bind, re-read, be careful), roman and early xn latin used it mostly to refer to carefully performed cultic rituals—(still used in our word “relusly”); in (270) 5th ce xns used it by expanding cultic sense to whole life for monastics—Cortes used this idea to describe Aztecs, and this was then used in an encyclopedic work on mesoamers in 1604 by Joesphe de Acosta, but is also used as “the belief system that result in ceremonial behavior”—tho ritual was most common equivalent to rel, and belief was dismissed as old myths
271-in 18th ce, ppl were using rel similar to belief/theology/reverence/worship/iety for the “Supreme Being” (influenced by prtstnts, shown in the german preference for glaube (blief, origin “to adore, cf chptr on belief over rel; and in England the increasing use of “faith”, esply b/c of competition over who had the most credible and true on btwn prtstsnts
-“the ? of the plural rels…forced a new interest in the singular, generic rel”
272-then idea of nat rel emerged—pailan 94 said “nat rel” had up to 7 diff meanings, from rel arrived at rtlly (coming from disputes btwn xn sects) to the idea that all rels share essential characteristics (from anthrogy comparisons); and w/ the rtl idea, (273) ppl started looking at its origins (eg (274) hume 1757 said its an interp of exprc, coming up w/ “accidents and causes” for things; hume said rel started w/ polytheism or idalotry—to explain hope and fear)—and for many 18th ce ppl, the “relus” was the variety of ways interpreted these exprcs—ultimately in “rtly, morality, or feelings”
275-the explosion of xn sects and discoveries of non-eurpn rels led to more classifications from 16th -19th ce, where all non-abrahamic rels were called idalotors, and (277) later “nature” rels—as in the “evory” sense of being “frozen” at a “stage of dvlpmnt” (ie, the idea of “nat rel” that said rels evolved from a common exprc and rtl thot added)
277-then there were debates that rels evolved diffly depending on race and so in late 19th ce ppl started using term “world” rels to recognize rels’ histories and geography (eg tiele 1876), w/ “morphological” classifications for the “stages of dvlpmnt”—nature to ethical (w/ xnty, islm and budd at top)—b/c they have (279) a “superior civilztn”, w/ xnty as the very best
280-then others, to avoid imperialistic critique, use native cats (eg geertz)
-and in defining rel, some said its ppls world view, understanding of the universal--either theological and rejecting some views (eg Tillich) or not (eg smart), tho this kind can not easily be separated from other ideologies
281-pop anthrogy def is spiro 66—cultrual institution concerning superhuman beings—tho this makes culture very important
-leuba 12 gave 50 diff defs of rel
-“’Rel’ is not a native term; it is a term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore theirs to define. It is a second-order generic concept that plays the same role in establishing a disciplinary horizon that (282) a concept such as ‘lang’ plays in linguistics or ‘culture’ plays in anthrogy. There can b no disciplined study of rel w/out such a horizon”
“intro” mark taylor
1-the mod contrasts itself to the ancient/tradl, implying “a related set of oppositions” incl “emotion/reason, intuition/thot, superstition/science, undifferentiation/individuation…” etc, w/ the latter term [the mod ones] privileged “when understood diachronically—that is, as it occurs over time—this hierarchical structure leads to an interp of history according to which the mvmnt from primitivism to modernism involves a progression from emotion to reason, undifferentiation…” etc—(2) the evory view of history, and it associates “rel w/ infantile and primitive behavior”
2-and rise of nation state w/ social contract (instead of contract w/ god) as well as free market contributed to decline of rel; as well as plurality of relus denominations and they competed w/ other discourses; science led to disenchantment w/ world
-and up to 60s some social theorists said rtlztn and seculariztn r inseperable; and g became more transcendent (deists)
-but rel really didn’t die, it went inward w/ a transcendent g too, from luther, (3) culminating w/ Kierkegaard when relus collapses into secular, unlike hegel who thot world became more sacral w/ the “naturaliztn and historicztn of relus realities”
4-and this shows what “less-sophisticated interpreters overlook” is that “twentieth century culture is haunted by rel”—even in pop culture (music, tv—treated religiously)
-and there has been a recent revival too for relus belief and practice which, inter alia, “legitimize strategies of resistence designed to secure a measure of indpc and autonomy” and change ideas of nation and state—(5) tho this revival is bound to G, which produces, inter alia, nomadization of labor—creates “vertigo”, “alienation”
6-but there’s little consensus about “what rel is and how it can best b studied”—just as other areas r insecure in their object of study; and even the ? “What is rel” presumes rel is sui generis; some say same rel only occurred in “particular intellectual and cultural circumstances” and is “constituted by local discursive practices”—ppl (7) create their own truths
8-aug defined rel as binding to the “truth” but mod scholars looked for rel’s origins
9-hume traces rel to hope and fear so ppl create g’s w/ whom they give the power of causation, of causing ppls’ feelings
10-insistence on non-relus origins of rel reject its existence and is a “pernicious reductionism”
-says poststructuralist views of rel really still perpetuate “Hegel’s speculative logic as well as saussure’s structural linguistics”
-“prior to the 60s, most graduate study of rel” was in protstnt divinity schools
11-schempp v. Abington school dist 63 and engel v. vitale 62 cleared the way; so did 60s mvmnts’ creating of “multicultural sensibilities”
*12-“the conditions governing the study of rel underwent a rev that began in the 60s.”, (13) sharp distinction drawn btwn relus studes and theology, tho “in many cases ostensibly nontheological approaches to rel tend to become as theological as the positions they r designed to overturn”, w/ “an emthusiasm bordering on the relus” for soc science methods, that they can b a perfect, ideal lens
*13-then critical theory ?d this, found limits of methods, so no “foundational method or comprehensive explanatory theor…a multidisciplinary approach to the study of rel becomes unavoidable”
14-m. muller’s stress on leang and comparing cultures “has been very influential”
*15-“’To make peace btwn premod typologies and pomo difference,’ it is necessary to dvlp comparative analyses that do not presuppose universal principles or reinscribe ahistorical essences.”, tho some criticize that any search for unity is really just a search for a new hegemony
16-and “terms” r permeable and multivocal—“r a function of both its multiple components and its relation to others”, eg “liberation” means diff things in diff contexts; and so a discussion of “liberation” needs many diff explanations thru theology, anthroly, cosmology, etx. And it is related to other terms that have multiple meanings like value, personhood, ritual, etc.
-says ever since kant’s 3 critiques, “the notion of criticism has been inseperable from the self-reflexivity of self-consciousness”, (17) kant thnks the mind is effectively, hardwired and presupposes “forms of intuition (space and time) and 12 cats of understanding”, tho hegel said mind dvlpd historically in a metastructure that can eventually be entirely comprehended—tho this idea is “historically indefensible and analytically problematic”
*17-“Rather than positing a universal grid or seamless organism, critical reflection articulates an imcomplete web of open and flexible terms. This seamy network of constraint, which is riddled w/ gaps that can b neither bridged nor closed, constitutes a constantly shifting cultural a priori that renders critical knowledge possible while circumscribing its unavoidable limits”
18-and recognizes that terms r “not universally translatable”
*-“we insist that every cultural a priori that renders knowledge possible to interp necessary is always incomplete”, “the wrk of analysis is interminable”
-“discern commonalitities w/out erasing diffcs”
*-it’s “an open—even interative—text that challenges the reader to take up and extend the critical study of rel”
Book takes terms (eg body, belief, etc) and looks at diff uses w/in certain historical places and comparing them, their etymologies, the diversity of ideas w/in those particular places—pt out similarities, diffcs, gen patterns (eg B. lincoln’s models of conflict in nation states), relation of epistemology and term (eg schussler fiorenza and kaufman’s article on g), term’s relation to “rel”
Gustavo benavides “modty” 186-204
191-“But even if Weber’s and Gellner’s assessments of the implications of Israelite theology were correct [that g was transcendent which made it possible to manipulate world thru magic] one would have to consider this primordial disenchantment…as but one of many, in some cases contradictory, acts of drama”; like eg divination of roman emporers—magic still happened but g was on earth
JZ Smith “Rel, Rels, Relus” 269-284
269-the fact that explorers to the “New World” (eg Richard Eden and Pedro Cieza de leon in 16th ce) thot natives didn’t have rel shows what was meant by “rel” at that time—and it is an 1) idea imposed by an outside culture, 2) and “rel” was thot to b ubiquitous to humans, so it would b an anomaly if ppl didn’t have it
-“’Rel’ is an anthropological not a theological category” (w/ the exception of 19th ce Amer idea “to get rel”), “It describes human thot and action, most frequently interms of belief and norms of behavior.”
-this history of wrd “rel”, much of it is “irrelevant to contemp usage”, 3 possible roots (bind, re-read, be careful), roman and early xn latin used it mostly to refer to carefully performed cultic rituals—(still used in our word “relusly”); in (270) 5th ce xns used it by expanding cultic sense to whole life for monastics—Cortes used this idea to describe Aztecs, and this was then used in an encyclopedic work on mesoamers in 1604 by Joesphe de Acosta, but is also used as “the belief system that result in ceremonial behavior”—tho ritual was most common equivalent to rel, and belief was dismissed as old myths
271-in 18th ce, ppl were using rel similar to belief/theology/reverence/worship/iety for the “Supreme Being” (influenced by prtstnts, shown in the german preference for glaube (blief, origin “to adore, cf chptr on belief over rel; and in England the increasing use of “faith”, esply b/c of competition over who had the most credible and true on btwn prtstsnts
-“the ? of the plural rels…forced a new interest in the singular, generic rel”
272-then idea of nat rel emerged—pailan 94 said “nat rel” had up to 7 diff meanings, from rel arrived at rtlly (coming from disputes btwn xn sects) to the idea that all rels share essential characteristics (from anthrogy comparisons); and w/ the rtl idea, (273) ppl started looking at its origins (eg (274) hume 1757 said its an interp of exprc, coming up w/ “accidents and causes” for things; hume said rel started w/ polytheism or idalotry—to explain hope and fear)—and for many 18th ce ppl, the “relus” was the variety of ways interpreted these exprcs—ultimately in “rtly, morality, or feelings”
275-the explosion of xn sects and discoveries of non-eurpn rels led to more classifications from 16th -19th ce, where all non-abrahamic rels were called idalotors, and (277) later “nature” rels—as in the “evory” sense of being “frozen” at a “stage of dvlpmnt” (ie, the idea of “nat rel” that said rels evolved from a common exprc and rtl thot added)
277-then there were debates that rels evolved diffly depending on race and so in late 19th ce ppl started using term “world” rels to recognize rels’ histories and geography (eg tiele 1876), w/ “morphological” classifications for the “stages of dvlpmnt”—nature to ethical (w/ xnty, islm and budd at top)—b/c they have (279) a “superior civilztn”, w/ xnty as the very best
280-then others, to avoid imperialistic critique, use native cats (eg geertz)
-and in defining rel, some said its ppls world view, understanding of the universal--either theological and rejecting some views (eg Tillich) or not (eg smart), tho this kind can not easily be separated from other ideologies
281-pop anthrogy def is spiro 66—cultrual institution concerning superhuman beings—tho this makes culture very important
-leuba 12 gave 50 diff defs of rel
-“’Rel’ is not a native term; it is a term created by scholars for their intellectual purposes and therefore theirs to define. It is a second-order generic concept that plays the same role in establishing a disciplinary horizon that (282) a concept such as ‘lang’ plays in linguistics or ‘culture’ plays in anthrogy. There can b no disciplined study of rel w/out such a horizon”
Jaffrelot, Christophe, “Composite Culture is not Multiculturalism: A Study of the Indian Constituent Assembly Debates”
Jaffrelot, Christophe, “Composite Culture is not Multiculturalism: A Study of the Indian Constituent Assembly Debates” in India and the Politics of Developing Countries ed. Ashutosh Varshney (London: SAGE Publications, 2004), 126-149.
Summary: Essay looks at the debates and compromises for multiculturalism in the framing of the Indian Constitution, by examining the Constituent Assembly debates and other political arguments. The Universalists and Hindu traditionalists joined forces for different motives, but both helped push out Muslim culture from the state self-image.
126- For Michael Weiner 1989, the “American pattern of multiculturalism…partly relies on affirmative action programmes which may help ‘minorities’ to become ‘ethnics’.” and these generally “emphasized the need of officially granting protections to underprivileged groups”; another method is “the consociational way” that is used in Netherlands and Lebanon before the 1980s.
-French national identity ignores “multiculturalist recipes and its implications in terms of affirmative action”, though there is increasing debate w/ increasing number of immigrants; but overall they use the idea of integration republicaine—people should give up cultural identity (including religious identity, eg the hijab issue); (127) based on the idea of the “Republican utopia of a secularized individualism and the post-1789 discourse on equality” as well as the “Jacobin notion of a strong, centralized State that is in charge of building a united nation”
127-For jaffrelot, Indian national identity combines both “the multicultural one and the Jacobin one” w/ its (post-Independence) positive discrimination for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, but not for religious minorities which is a choice by the government to prevent potential “divisive” consequences and a desire for national unity
-“The place of the minorities in the Indian nation, as formulated by the Constituent Assembly also reflects long term ideological trends”
-“The Indian Nationalist movement, embodied since 1885 by the Indian National Congress, rapidly split into two currents” by the end of the 19th ce, (128) the moderates had a universalist perspective, “free from any reference to ethnicity”; the Extremists “lay claim to a prime status for the Hindu community”
128-in the 1920s, the Moderates branched further, w/ Gandhi promoting multicultural equality and Nehru epitomized the progressive intelligentsia which downplayed religion, advocating the individual as “the basic unit of the nation”—a view shared by representatives of the lower castes
-the Hindus separated into the Nationalists and the Traditionalists, then the Muslims in 1906 established the Muslim League and they acquired a “separate electorate for the Muslims in 1909.” Its leader, M. A. Jinnah said the Muslims and Hindus constituted “Two nations”—and w/ this theory the League demanded Pakistan in 1940; (129) independence and partition were concurrent in 1947
129-The Constituent Assembly was elected in 1946 under British rule and debates continued about that fact until the creation of “one of the longest Constitutions in the world on 26 January 1950.”
-“Gandhian influence declined to a large extent after the death of the Mahatma in January 1948.”
-the main players were people for universalist nationalism and Hindu traditionalists—though both groups said national unity was more important than cultural diversity
130-says that French universalist and German ethnic nationalisms are often seen as 2 opposite poles (cf Nationalsim: The Nature and Evolution 1973), “they can be regarded as two versions of the same phenomenon, primarily b/c of their emphasis on unity. Traditional-type social bonds have no real place in ethnic value of modernity…” b/c ethnic unity often tries to rule out hierarchical orders
131-though both groups still opposed “each other on a number of issues”, they were still responsible for emphasis on national unity in the Constitution
-The Universalist, modern discourse of the Congress “saw intermediary [ethnic/religious] bodies as weakening national cohesion” (eg G. B. Pant, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1947 who said that explicitly, and wanted “dissolution of the religious communities”)
-but a uniform nation requires a uniform culture
132-in 1962, future president S. Radhakrishnan suggested giving 10 more years for minority representation in the government and then eliminating those representatives (a move primarily aimed at Muslims though)
-many Congress members have attributed the “two-nation theory” “to the introduction of separate electorates by the British”, and the Congress tried to abolish it, though Muslims resisted b/c they felt they deserved that political protection for not leaving to Pakistan; (133) so they wanted either that or reserved seats in the government—though the Congress replied by urging them to forget their religious identity (eg K. M. Munshi, and Sardar Patel) and their demands were not put in the Constitution draft
Summary: Essay looks at the debates and compromises for multiculturalism in the framing of the Indian Constitution, by examining the Constituent Assembly debates and other political arguments. The Universalists and Hindu traditionalists joined forces for different motives, but both helped push out Muslim culture from the state self-image.
126- For Michael Weiner 1989, the “American pattern of multiculturalism…partly relies on affirmative action programmes which may help ‘minorities’ to become ‘ethnics’.” and these generally “emphasized the need of officially granting protections to underprivileged groups”; another method is “the consociational way” that is used in Netherlands and Lebanon before the 1980s.
-French national identity ignores “multiculturalist recipes and its implications in terms of affirmative action”, though there is increasing debate w/ increasing number of immigrants; but overall they use the idea of integration republicaine—people should give up cultural identity (including religious identity, eg the hijab issue); (127) based on the idea of the “Republican utopia of a secularized individualism and the post-1789 discourse on equality” as well as the “Jacobin notion of a strong, centralized State that is in charge of building a united nation”
127-For jaffrelot, Indian national identity combines both “the multicultural one and the Jacobin one” w/ its (post-Independence) positive discrimination for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, but not for religious minorities which is a choice by the government to prevent potential “divisive” consequences and a desire for national unity
-“The place of the minorities in the Indian nation, as formulated by the Constituent Assembly also reflects long term ideological trends”
-“The Indian Nationalist movement, embodied since 1885 by the Indian National Congress, rapidly split into two currents” by the end of the 19th ce, (128) the moderates had a universalist perspective, “free from any reference to ethnicity”; the Extremists “lay claim to a prime status for the Hindu community”
128-in the 1920s, the Moderates branched further, w/ Gandhi promoting multicultural equality and Nehru epitomized the progressive intelligentsia which downplayed religion, advocating the individual as “the basic unit of the nation”—a view shared by representatives of the lower castes
-the Hindus separated into the Nationalists and the Traditionalists, then the Muslims in 1906 established the Muslim League and they acquired a “separate electorate for the Muslims in 1909.” Its leader, M. A. Jinnah said the Muslims and Hindus constituted “Two nations”—and w/ this theory the League demanded Pakistan in 1940; (129) independence and partition were concurrent in 1947
129-The Constituent Assembly was elected in 1946 under British rule and debates continued about that fact until the creation of “one of the longest Constitutions in the world on 26 January 1950.”
-“Gandhian influence declined to a large extent after the death of the Mahatma in January 1948.”
-the main players were people for universalist nationalism and Hindu traditionalists—though both groups said national unity was more important than cultural diversity
130-says that French universalist and German ethnic nationalisms are often seen as 2 opposite poles (cf Nationalsim: The Nature and Evolution 1973), “they can be regarded as two versions of the same phenomenon, primarily b/c of their emphasis on unity. Traditional-type social bonds have no real place in ethnic value of modernity…” b/c ethnic unity often tries to rule out hierarchical orders
131-though both groups still opposed “each other on a number of issues”, they were still responsible for emphasis on national unity in the Constitution
-The Universalist, modern discourse of the Congress “saw intermediary [ethnic/religious] bodies as weakening national cohesion” (eg G. B. Pant, Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 1947 who said that explicitly, and wanted “dissolution of the religious communities”)
-but a uniform nation requires a uniform culture
132-in 1962, future president S. Radhakrishnan suggested giving 10 more years for minority representation in the government and then eliminating those representatives (a move primarily aimed at Muslims though)
-many Congress members have attributed the “two-nation theory” “to the introduction of separate electorates by the British”, and the Congress tried to abolish it, though Muslims resisted b/c they felt they deserved that political protection for not leaving to Pakistan; (133) so they wanted either that or reserved seats in the government—though the Congress replied by urging them to forget their religious identity (eg K. M. Munshi, and Sardar Patel) and their demands were not put in the Constitution draft
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The Sociology of Rel by Weber transl Ephram Fischoff; 4th ed 1963, beacon press, boston; org 1922
The Sociology of Rel by Weber transl Ephram Fischoff; 4th ed 1963, beacon press, boston; org 1922
“Translator’s preface” ix-xvii
ix-weber first translated 2 english in 27 by frank h. knight—(gen ecoc history), then talcott parsons 30 pesoc
x-weber coined the term “Religionssoziologie” (socy of rel) (ptd out by j. wach), and weber w/ troeltsch and sombart “created the discipline”
-socy of rel was not an indp work but was part of his “massive but never completed” Wirtshaft und Gesellschaft (ecocs and society)—stopped b/c of his sudden death
-it is “a systematic summary of the socy of rel”
-ppl have misconstrued weber’s intentions for pesoc, and this underwent more, partly due to published parts of wirtshaft in diff orders, so diff ideas appeared contradictory—(xi) so it didn’t have as much influence as pesoc
xv-many say wirtshaft is greatest wrk in german socy
“Intro” by T. Parsons xix-lxvii
xx-Weber w/ durk and other mod anthros “inaugurated a new phase in the understanding of the relations btwn relus aspects and other aspects of human behavior”
-PESOC was not a “complete explanation” of society, it was “intended as no more than an essay in historical-sociglcl interp”, “fragment,” not “culminate”
xxii-weber moved away from historicism (pop way of study—based on german idealism) to comparative, creating constants and variables—based on “ideal type”, typical type
xxvi-a lot of his facts (from anthro and history) were wrong or outdated; (xxvii) web was evolst, tho it has lost its popularity; similar to durk tho neither influenced other
-web says all known human societies have rel ((xxviii) conceptions of supernat, or impersonal superior forces—all which give meaning to life)
xxix-web said ppl went thru “relus” breakthrus—(xxx) note #12 says it’s “prolly correct” to say that web looked at rel’s ability to change and durk looked at it as stabilizing—tho this is a simplification
-web has diff def of magic—it’s just for ad hoc, not a system, and its forces can b forced w/ rels forces must be worshipped or solicited—and only rel’s forces guide destiny
xxxiii-web did not invent concept of charisma, but it “has become part of the common lang of social and cultural discussion mainly thru his influence”
xxxiv-and charisma is not only in indvs, but is in a “normative order”, eg in lineages and “charisma of office”—the last is “identical w/ durk’s concept of the sacred”—“collective sacred”
xxxviii-parsons says, despite what critics say, web did not have a “naïve one-way conception of the dvlpmnt of human societies as the product of ‘ideas’”, after all, he emphasizes the change, the break in tradtl order; ea society is (xxxix) more sensitive to diff relus “stimuli”—and he calls that sensitivity “alienation”’ ea type of society has diff kind of alienation
xl-parsons interps web’s view to b that poll groups’ conservatism is a result of their need for legitimation which is necessary for longterm power
xli-word “pagan” originally meant “country man” for xns, who were urban
-web finds little relation btwn rel types and ecoc status and prophetic movmnts r not ecoc protests
xliii-“Web does not say much about science” here, tho he does in other places, and does not go far in explaining why it “seems to b a pre-eminent case of instittnlizng the dynamism of the process of rationaliztn”—which affects culture tho is on “elite element[s] in mod society”
xlv-Puritans “were by and large not centrally situated in the main prestige structure”
-web doesn’t say ppl r only predisposed to certain relus activities by their social world, but it provides a flexible range of action
liv-“…prolly no mod scholar has put forward a framework of such scope and conceptual clarity for the ordering of this central aspect of cultural and soclgcl analysis” [radical salvation]
*lix-emphasizes that captimalism doesn’t need Protestntism—but protsntsm helped make specifically “rtl bourgeois capitalism”
*-“more than any other singe writer in the background of our own (lx) generation, weber gave us the primar ref pts for analyzing the broad common patterns of mod social, poll, and ecoc devlpmnt”
-web insisted ideas came indp of rel
-he saw the protstn web word as “the vanguard of the most important gen evory trend”; (lxi) web wouldn’t claim his work is definitive
*lxii-US rel has changed a lot since w’s time—now ruled by lib protstnsm; jews more accepted, rc’s too—both w/out prophetic breaks w/ estd order
lxiii-“privatiztn” of faith spread to all—first noted in herberg 51
**lxiv-web’s rigid ideal types were too rigid, (lxv) so it doesn’t predict the actual change in the US very well, neglects “gradual and cumulative processes of change”; and reifies “profit motive” and “need for salvation”—not showing that ppl have many motives at once
lxv-tho SOR was “a great advance in its time” and “provided a foundation for further progress in socy, and remains relevant at its broadest morphological levels”, “it seems unlikely that the broadest outline of the evory pattern of the dvlpmnt of relus orientations, incl the onception of the 2 basic direction of rtlztn in the field of meaning, will b radically invalidated”
lxvi-“For scholars of lesser genius than web, it would b very difficult to get comparable results”
*-2 main theoretical difficulties w/ web: his idea that change has to b radical and motives r too idealized and not ordinary and mixed
*lxvii-“this book is the most crucial contribution of our century to the comparative and evory understanding of the relations btwn rel and society, even of society and culture generally”
1-says he won’t b able to define rel til concl—and its “not even our concern , as we make it our task to study the conditions of effects of a particular type of social behavior”—and thes “r so diverse that an understanding of this behavior can only b achieved from the vw pt. of the subjective exprcs, ideas, and purposes of the indvs concerned—in short, from the vw pt. of the relus behavior’s ‘meaning’”
-“The most elementary forms of behavior motivated by relus or magical factors r oriented to this world” cites deut 4:40; relus behavior is similar to purposeive conduct (eg rubbing sticks to make fire is “as ‘magical’” as rain caused by rainmaker), “the ends of the relus and magical actions r predominantly ecoc”
2-only us from our mod POV can judge “correct” from “fallacious attributions of causality”
-“extraordinary powers” in objects and ppl have been called mana, orenda—but he calls it “charisma” (2 types): 1)”where this appellation is fully merited, charisma is a gift that inheres in an object or person simply by virture of nat endowment. Such primary charisma cannot b acquired by any means. [2] But charisma of the other type may b produced artificially in an object or person thru some extraordinary means. Even then, it is assumed that charismatic powers can b devlped only in ppl or objects in which the germ already existed but would have remained dormant unless evoked by some ascetic or other regimen…”—there has always been [poll?] “forms of the doctrine of relus grace”—incl “salvation by good works”—and these continue today
3-and this makes a belief that a “spirit” is “’behind’ and responsible for the activity of the charismatically endowed nat objects”—this is not a “soul, demon, not god,” its indeterminate
-belief in spirits is more advanced in societies where only a few have “charismatic magical powers”—the odlest of “vocations” is the “professional necromancer”
-ecstacy—“the distinctive subjective condition that notably reps or mediates charisma”—a “psychological state” occurs in social—in “the orgy”; can use toxins or music to induce
4-and they also therefore believe in “soul”, “animistic” views; some more advanced ppl belief that spirits follow their own laws, they r more formed
-and they name the relus forces after “the process they control” (eg nature), or (5) after powerful ppl—“chieftans or prophets”
5-diff kinds of souls: 1 for life, 1 for esctacy, 1 for the shadows, dreams, etc—and these r “by no means universally accepted”
6-the distinctive element of this dvlpment of idea of soul is that these “new exprcs now play a role in life”—not just events that were already taking place, now there r events w/ symbolic meanings eg thinking a dead body must b buried w/ belongsins to have a “tolerable existence” after death
6-and then more advanced magic was dvlped to influence spirits, supplanting naturalism, and magica/rel becomes highly symbolic; says oldest paper money was used to pay the dead
-“more and more, things and events assumed significances other than the real potencies that actually or presumably in hered in them, and efforts were made to achieve real effects by means of various symbolically significant actions”; and when thot effective, these acts were repeated—and eventually “all areas of human activity were drawn into this circle of magical symbolism”—and they must b strictly adhered to w/out “slightest deviation”, that’s why changes in symbols cause so much controversy
8-and putting relus symbols on objects is “the oldest form of stylization”’ and exorcism replaced “previous empirical methods of medical treatment”
*9-so, in gen, rel evolved from pre-animistic to symbolism—that’s why “primitives” still eat foes, or keep their body parts—they believe spirit is directly in them and “primitives” war rites, however, can b seen as a “passage to symbolism”
*[then how do u know both things never co-existed? Diff than durk.
-web does not admit to probs w/ animism or naturalism so prob w/ idea of causation and what separates man from animal r not explained]
-calls “mythological thinking” is “the fully dvlped circle of symbolic concepts”
10-analogic thinking (later also used for law) “originated int eh region of magic, which is based completely upon analogy, rtlzed into symbolism”
-ideas of indv gods evolved to a pantheon
11-“the scope of the Roman numina is incomparably more fixed and unequivocal than that of Hellenistic gods”—whose g’s were more anthropomorphic and repd as real personalities
*-says sociologclly, the basis for this is that Roman g’s were ntl g’s, while grk g’s repd the “regional and knightly culture”, tho roman ritual practices didn’t change. Diff than grks, “the Roman attitude remained permanently adverse to rels of the orgiastic or mystery type. Roman rel remained religio (whether the wrd be derived etymologically from religare or from relegere); it denoted a tie with tested cultic formulae and a concern for spirits (numina) of all types which are active everywhere”
*-and romans had g’s for every action—unlike grks
12-this roman pantheon was sacred law, “ratl casuistry of sacred law”, which led to “sacred jurisprudence”—“In this way, sacred law became the mother of rtl justice thinking” cf Livy, that’s why romans were overly concerned w/ “legal etiquette, not ?s of sin, punishment, penitence, and salvation” tho both trads allowed for rtlztn
*13-specific g’s and demons dvlped w/ relation to endemic ecoc and historic situs, eg a g may have achieved eminence b/c he was of an important nat object; chthonic g’s r more inagricultural societies; celestial g’s in feudal society
14-and w/ increasing specializtn of gs, 1 led to rule others
-family cults dvlpd; (15) and adultery was dislike b/c adulteress could improperly make a sacrifice to a wrong ancestor—angering them—tho fam gods were overtaken by tribe gods
16-or when a fam took over their g became the supreme in the pantheon (eg the roman ruler as genius)
-and w/ a poll formation, “it is a universal phena” that it “entails subordination to a tribal g” and (17) worship of outside g’s is restricted
17-this results not in monotheism, but “poll particularism” and w/in a polis, (18) every clan, fam, and house had their own god that was subordinated to polis’—thts why in grk and rome if u did not have a household g, u couldn’t hold office
18-this led to g’s of land area, when other conditions were met like “foundation of the state as a separate poll assoc w/ corporate rts, indp of the court and the person of the ruler”—that’s why it didn’t happen in india, asia, iran (19) tho did in Egypt
19-and occupations had their own g’s
21-criticizes max muller for saying the rise of a universal god was b/c of nat evo—web says that when it came to rts, which ever g’s powers appeared most consistent, they became the ones worshipped—and these were celestial g’s (this is a rtls reason)—(22) tho this doesn’t garauntee primacy—universal g’s weren’t always ruling—and it also depended of ecoc needs, warrior classes wanted hi war g, priest w/ celestial ones
22-and b/c rel was rtlztn, prest were relsts and therefore they rtlly subordinated other g’s, (23) so th hi g always eventuall y became universal
23-and if they’re universal, that means other ppls g’s r the same just w/ diff names (eg grk thot this), and universal g must b controlling other ppls too (poll and historical)
24-several reasons why monotheism didn’t dvlp everywhere, but main one is priests who wanted to maintain power by controlling cults to g’s, (25) and the need of common ppl for personal g’s who have “magical influences”
25-the power to coerce g’s is universal; eventually g’s r seen to have powers in themselves—so they r seen like earthly rulers who req devotion
26-prayer and sacrifice “have their origin in magic”, and this desire (27) for ecoc goals is irrational and comes to (28) “represent what is distinctive in relus behavior”
28-diffc btwn rel and magic is rel is “relationship of men to supernat forces”—incl worship and prayer while magic is simply “coercision”—and about all rels have magical *components—and the sharp distinction others make is the result of new rels suppressing inherent magical elements, and distinction btwn priest and sorcerer is not sharp either; (30) “There can b no priesthood w/out a cult, although there may well b a cult w/out a specialized priesthood”
30-“rtlztn of relus life” depends on if priesthood become its own separate class, (31) and this depends on 1) ethical prophets and/or 2) laity devotees
32-if efforts to get a g to do smthing fail over and over, either it is abandoned or g is seen to b impotent and he is abandoned, (33) or priest says ppl r behaving badly
33-good g’s and evil demons is an early idea in rel—so g’s r seen to possess ethics (legislation)—and in monotheism this becomes very important
35-and in many rels, the ethics g was not the most powerful—they were only ethical cuz they were the most predictable—and old rels didn’t rely on it
*-and man’s demands of ethical g increased as legal system and society got more complex and interdpndnt and increased reliance (36) on ppls wrd for ecoc reasons (transactions, debt, etc)
36-and then even the g’s r subject to a moral order, tho it can even come in the form of fate (eg for warriors, or rtl ordering of world (bureaucrats); (37) and g will protect against injury in that order
38-and violation of that order is what is “taboo”, and this extends therefore to ecoc and social events—(30) leads to an ethical system
39-“The controversy concerning the dvlpmnt of these widely diffused totemic brotherhoods is still unresolved”, (40) says it will suffice to say its just a form of animism
*-“The belief in the universality of totemism, and certainly the belief in the derivation of virtually all social grps and all rels from totemism, constitutes a tremendous exaggeration that has been completely rejected by now”, tho it does explain division of labor of sexes in terms of magic [and several editors notes indicate that most of SOR was written before 1914]
*40-taboos limited change eg Shiites not trading w/ outsiders, hindu caste—they r (42) not rtl; and only ascetic prtstnsm provides “ethical sanction for ecoc rtls and for the entrepreneur” [only protestnsm?]
42-and in hindu castes, efforts to go higher resulted in evil, (43) so no revolts, ppl just stuck to caste and hope to b born higher
44-out of allthis dvlps concept of salvation to gain awareness of virtues
46-def of prophet—“a purely indv bearer of charisma, who by virtue of his mission proclaims to relus doctrine or divine commandmnt”—ho harsh distinction btwn a “renewer of rel” and a “founder of rel”—esp b/c a new relus community can b made by “non-prophetic reformers”, and don’t concern if followers r more attracted to the person or the doctrine. Ddecisive element btwn him and priest is “the personal call” from sacred, not just service to trad—so “almost no prophets have emerged from the priestly class”; (47) and unlike magician he “claims definite revelations” and “the core of his mission is doctrine “, not magic—tho he seldom ests authority w/out magic; and does so w/out pay, (48) which influenced xn priestly poverty
49-prophets r also legislators—one who is “codifying a law systematically or of reconstituting it”, (50) resolve class conflict and “to produce a new sacred law of eternal validity”—“leveling of classes stimulated expansion” for moses, as it did for Athens and rome—but this “social reform” is unique to Hebrews and it was only a means to an end (51) and most didn’t go for social reform, not even j., they were simply worried about “injustice as a violation of the mosaic code”
52-and the philosophical ethicist is nto a prophet either b/c they wer taught by others, and (53) they lack “vital emotional preaching”00a trait of prophets
54-personal divine revelation is the “decisive hallmark of prophecy”
-mystagogues—ppl who have special ability to perform sacraments—not prophets (55) b/c they often made a living as it
55-only 2 kinds of prophets: “ethical prophet” who is “primarily…an instrument for the proclamation of a g and his will, b this a concrete demand or an abstract norm…he demands obedience as an ethical duty”; 2) “exemplary” prophet is “an exemplary man who, by personal example, demonstrates to others the way to relus salvation, as in the case of the Buddha. The preaching of this type says nothing about a divine mission or an ethical duty of obedience, but raterh directs itself to the self-interest of those who crave salvation, recommending to them the same path as he himself trasversed.”
**-exemplary is common in india, some in china (lao tzu); “ethical type is confined to the Near East” no matter race—b/c (56) in the E. they didn’t have a “personal, transcendental, and ethical g”, ethics in china eg was following the tao, and Chinese emporer performed sacfricies for rain instead of depending solely on irrigation, (57) while near e. kings freely used irrigation (they had to in a desert)—so man was thot to have more free action, then g is seen to b more “feely acting, transcendental,a nd personal”
57-and e. societies had distinct classes who were the “bearers” of ethics (w/out gods), (58) while YHWH to Zoroaster were seen as ethical deity kings (like neighboring Egypt, Persia) **[but web doesn’t explain whence diff social systems came, like castes]
59-both kinds of prophets have “a unified view of the world derived from a consciously integrated and meaningful attitude toward life…both the life of man and the world, both social and cosmic events, have a certain systematic and coherent meaning.” And man must orient itself to this to bring salvation, organizes “practical behavior into direction of life”
-and the conflict btwn this idea of a meaningful world and “empirical reality” “produces the strongest tensions in man’s inner life as well as his external relationship to the world”—in fact prophets aren’t the only ones who deal w/ it—so do priests and philosophers. “The ultimate ? of all metaphysics has always been something like this: if the world as a whole and life in particular were to have meaning, what might it b, and how would the world have to look in order to correspond to it?”—and philosophers took “issue w/ the antecedent thot of relus functionaries”—so there was a struggle btwn them
60-a prophet’s helpers r “personal devotees”, no priests or soothsayers; permanent helpers “genlly also posses some special charismatic qualifications”; and there r also other followers who give money, etc
-a relus “community”/”congregation” “does not arise solely in connection w/ prophecy in the particular sense used here”, nor w/ every kind of prophecy. It “arises…as a result of routinization, i.e., as a result of the process whereby either the prophet himself or his disciples secure the permanence of his preaching and the congregation’s distribution of grace, hence insuring the ecoc existence of the enterprise and those who man it, (61) and thereby monopolizing as well the priveleges reserved for those charged w/ relus functs” (and this can happen around mystagogues and priests)
61-exemplary prophets get the followers of local gods; its unorganized at first, but (62) becomes fixed w/ followers gaining roles of mystagogues, teachers, priests, etc.
62-priests were genlly sons “of landed priestly fams, domestic court priests of landed magnates or noblemen, or trained preists of a sacrificial cult” which was its own class and (63) indvs went to them for assistance—no congregations except when cults were formed
63-sometimes priests were kept in power by conquerors to pacify the colonized
65-all priesthoods “must frequently meet the needs of the laity,” esp their a) prophecy, b) their tradlsm, c) and lay intellectualism
66-propphecy “by its very nature devalues the magical elements of the priestly enterprise”—salvation only by “meaningful relationship to the eternal”
67-for priests “to secure its onw position” had to codify a new doctrine that either accepted or rejected prophet’s ideas; this included canons and dogmas
68-says all priesthoods dvlpd from guilds of magicians who had animistic secret lore, that eventually became public [problematic, as w/ this whole book, its not systematic]
69-says Q was quickly canonized b/c “the semi-literate m. held that the existence of a holy book automatically carries w/ it the mark of prestige for a rel”—[does not go w/ what we know about uthman who did it, like other rels, for poll reasosn—makes assumptions that r debateable]
70-estblshmnt of relus doctrine followed desire to differentiate self from others, and smtimes for nonrelus reasons (eg charlemagne’s insistence on doctrine of filioque to separate Frankish church from byzantium’s control); and they made tattoos to make changing difficult (71)
74-preaching “is collective instruction concerning relus and ethical matters”, (75) it “declines in importance whenever a revealed rel has been transformed into a priestly enterprise by routinization, and the importance of preaching stands in inverse proportion to the magical components of a rel”, that’s why protestsm has no priests, only preachers
75-“pastoral care” is “the relus cultivation of the indv”, (76) and is most powerful “when rel has achieved an ethical character”
76-and it had great influence when it combined “ethical casuistry” (eg roman law) w/ “a rtlzed system of ecclesiastical penances”
*-and so “it is these same practical responsibilities of preaching and pastoral care which brot in their wake the substantive routinization of prophetic demands into specific prescriptions of a casusistical, and hence more rtl, character, in contrast to the prophetic ethics. But at the same time this dvlpment resulted in the loss of that unity which the prophet had introduced into the ethics—the derivation of a standard of life out of a distinctive ‘meaningful’ relationship to one’s g, such as he himself had possessed and by means of which he assayed not the the external appearance of a single act, but rather its meaningful significance for the total relationship to g”; rel couldn’t just (77) focus on inwardness
77-prophets opposed magical rel, w/ its emphasis on everything (incl ppl) being in its rt place (making it easy for preist to obtain power and hold masses in bondage) (78) but after routinization, and the re-emergence of priests, it did that bondage again—it is “practically unavoidable”
78-unavoidable b/c, tho prophet preaches indp, laity’s acceptance of him is based on his charisma—he is seen as simply a great magician, so the massis habits just endure
80-peasant life is very unbureaucratic and therefore opposes rtl systematiztn (rel as we know it) that they only take it up when forced to, to survive
-eg for poll or ecoc reasons, like jews resistance to enslavement/oppression by philistines and Canaanites
*83-“That the peasant has become the distinctive prototype of the pious man who is pleasing to g is a thoroughly mod phenn” w/ a few exceptions; in fact, in E. rels, the peasant is suspect b/c he kills animals (remember rust=paganus for early xns), even aqui said rural ppl were of lower esteem, worshipping weather and nature g’s
84-it was praised by luther and mod Russian rel—it was b/c of their ”struggle against the rtlsm of the intellectuals, and against poll liberalism”—and cities were seen as carriers of it
-“xnty was an urband rel” (cf harneck), congregations couldn’t dvlp anywhere else—and xnty presupposes community orgztn
85-warrior nobles and most feudal powers didn’t need “rtl relus ethic”’ warriors don’t want a rel w/ “sin, salvation, and relus humility”—these go against their trade, they must consistently face their destiny, at most he wants “protection against evil magic” or “priestly prayers for victory or for a blissful death” and nothing else
-and grks were mostly warriors
86-tho strong reform mvmnts pull nobles into a “prophetic ethical rel”, tho they r often excluded form it by relus leadership
-and warriors can adopt it to call others “unveleivers” (says islam was first to), tho (87) xns first fot other ppl of the book ruthelessly in crusades
89-the “dominant bureaucracy” “is always the carrier of a comprehensive sober rtlsm and, at the same time, of the ideal of a disciplined ‘order’ and security as absolute standards of value. The bureaucratic class is usually characterized by a profound disesteem of all irrational rel, combined, however, w/ a recognition of the usefulness of this type of rel as a device for controlling the ppl” (eg in Romans and todays military and civil bureaucracy)
-90 they also eliminate emotionalism and irrational manifestations, and distance from spirits and ancestral cults
-the mid class is not so consistent tho, often (91) b/c that they r depends on the ecoy (eg maybe either merchants or wandering peddlars) and this also affects their social privilege—the more privileged, the less other worldy, ethical rel
93-but capitalism and ecoc rtlsm go together w/ emergence of non-poll capitalism—middle class
95-the lower mid class (esp the artisans) r the most rlusly diverse, and often most pious, uslly most orthodox too; but others were (96) reformers, exorcists, monastics, etc.
96-but in constrast to peasants, “a definite tendency towards congregational rel, towards rel of salvation, and finally towards rtl ethical rel”—tho its not purely uniform
-congregationalism”was a nat consequence of the relative recession of the importance of blood groupings; esp in the w.—esp w/ occupational orgs which had a “cultic significance”, tho in e. fam was more important, (97) Indian castes prevented congregationalism
97-and “rtl ethical rel” is important b/c of less connection/ nature means less use for magic and rtlsm in gen is more important in city life (eg calculability and capacity for purposeive manipulation), and ecoc existence requires that “honesty is the best policy”—fulfiling obligations is important—that’s why warriors and financial magnates don’t need it—they have power
-and “the artisan is very frequently active in effecting the elimination of this very process of magic”, esp b/c eg art “comes from (98) a special charisma, usally passed on hereditarily, and guarded by magical means (taboos, totems)—but when employed in the city, he starts thinking about his trade more rtlly—but not always (eg Chinese articsans still believed in karma) or (99) in india w/ its caste taboo and magic), so it only really emerged w/ congregational rtlzed ethical rel
99-and lowest classes (slaves and day laborers) never followed a strict rule for rel (it usually depended on what class they were most closely associated w/)
100-and the “wandering handifcraft apprenticies” (b/c they had to wait longer to get permanent jobs) were often the missionaries “of every mass congregationl rel”
101-and if anything, they r more prone to emotional/magical rel b/c rtlsm plays so little influence on their lives
102-“the transfer of salvation doctrines to the masses practically always results in the emergence of a savior, or at least in an increase of emphasis upon the concept of savior”—(103) and for the bourgeoisie this become domesticated “sentimental legend” and iconic g’s re-emerge
104-lower class rel is more = to women than higher (incl priests)
*106-and salvation gives esteem to high classes for what they r and low classes for what they will becom
107-legitimization—its based in “universal” “psychological patterns”—I’m happy—he’s not—I must be doing right
*-“What the privileged classes req of rel, if anything at all, is this psychological reassurance of legitimacy”—tho not every class feels this to some degree
108-lower class wants relief from suffering and punishment of wrong doers (“just compensation”); (109) and the more oppressed they r, the more they cling to their status for future salvation, (110) but a relus resentment/vengeance against privileged ppl for unequal distribution of goods occurs only in (111) certain cultures
112-tho vengeance is most extreme w/ jews, (114) and faced w/ not achieveing it they tried harder to ensure g’s favor, so emphasizing success in occupation, tho the self-fulfilment (calling) and inner-worldly asceticism was not as important for them—it was tradlstic (magical) and not psychological
116-and resentment is not universal, jesus said all could get to heaven
118-orginally, priests were most important carriers of intellectualism, esp where there is sacred text, and a guild for intrp dvlps—but this didn’t happen for Phoenicians, grks, romans or china—they had non-priests dvlp “all metaphysical and ethical thot” and even theology (eg Hesiod)—did happen in india, Egypt, Babylon, zoroastriansim, ism, xnty—where priesthood monopolized metaphysics and ethics; (119) and in budd, islam and ancient medieval xnty—monks did it,a dn art too
120-all great rlus doctrines in asia r products of intellectuals trained (eg budd and jainist were trained in Vedas—they were non-brahman nobels), same for china
121-all possessed philosophic training comparable to grks, and they were “bearers of the ethic or the salvation doctrine” and “these classes took no official position regarding existing relus practice”
122-salvation rel emerges for priveledged grps when nation demilitarizes and poll action is little; and when ruling classes have lost power to state—usully tho not always, esp in times of social change (tho this is genlly underground)
123-these high class quests for salvation have a “disposition toward and ‘illumination’ mysticism…a distinctively intellectual qualification for salvation”
-devalues “nat, sensual, and physical”, refinement of sexuality—(124) rel is irrationalized, then rtlzed to give it meaning; (125) seeks a “casuistry of which extends into infinity”—inner need, as opposed to external need of low classes; and things must match up to empirical reality; may b “world-fleeing”
*126-there is also mid class and pariah intellectualism (lower-class self taught, scribes, small officials, teachers, poets, etc)—tho this didn’t exist in E. b/c (127) it lacked “the communal feeling of an urban citizenry, which is a necessity for mid-class intellectualism”
131-despite paul, xnty genlly taught anti-intellectualsim
*132-Web characterizes the propagators of the “so-called world resl”—eg “Judaism, the wandering trader”, “islam, the warror seeking to conquer the world”, “Xnty, the itinerant journeyman”
134-puritanism “created a pop relus intellectualism never found since” the 17th ce comparable only to late Judaism and “Pauline missionary communities”
*137-he says that elites’ preventing masses from being educated, and the fashion of “conversation and journalism” will prevent rel to come again from intellectuals
138-only Judaism is truly monotheistic in the strictest sense, (139) and the more monotheistic a rel, the more probs reconciling “imperfection of the world that he has created and rules over”
143-eventually ppl thot “God must b envisaged as beyond all the ethical claims of creatures, his counsels impervious to human comprehension”, and from this comes redestination (it also opposes magic)
144-other explanations: dualism, manicheism (dualism that will end); (145) or karma (word is sealed)
147-most rels combine theories b/c of mutual interaction and to satisfy sundry beliefs of adherents
*164-paths to salvation vary widely btwn rels (the chapter basically just describes diff kinds, and next chapter describes diff kinds of asceticism, (179) esplly emphasizing diffc btwn oriental (otherworldly) and occidental (this worldly)—and this (181) is b/c web has a church w/ rtl org and a monarchical head while e. doesn’t, “parly for historical reasons, partly b/c of the nature of the rels in ?”, b/c (182) e. relus leaders still had magical function while xn monks didn’t, then ascentic prtstntsm made it this-worldly vocation for relus salvation [still flawed for not explaining why societies developed diffly]
263-“…Islam was never really a rel of salvation…An essentially poll character marked all the chief ordinances of Islam”
269-ascetic prtstntsm wrked well w/ capitalism and “There is no proof whatever that a weaker nat potentiality for technical and ecoc rtlsm was responsible for actualdiffcs in this respect”—impediment is regid trads, such as existed in the mid ages
“Translator’s preface” ix-xvii
ix-weber first translated 2 english in 27 by frank h. knight—(gen ecoc history), then talcott parsons 30 pesoc
x-weber coined the term “Religionssoziologie” (socy of rel) (ptd out by j. wach), and weber w/ troeltsch and sombart “created the discipline”
-socy of rel was not an indp work but was part of his “massive but never completed” Wirtshaft und Gesellschaft (ecocs and society)—stopped b/c of his sudden death
-it is “a systematic summary of the socy of rel”
-ppl have misconstrued weber’s intentions for pesoc, and this underwent more, partly due to published parts of wirtshaft in diff orders, so diff ideas appeared contradictory—(xi) so it didn’t have as much influence as pesoc
xv-many say wirtshaft is greatest wrk in german socy
“Intro” by T. Parsons xix-lxvii
xx-Weber w/ durk and other mod anthros “inaugurated a new phase in the understanding of the relations btwn relus aspects and other aspects of human behavior”
-PESOC was not a “complete explanation” of society, it was “intended as no more than an essay in historical-sociglcl interp”, “fragment,” not “culminate”
xxii-weber moved away from historicism (pop way of study—based on german idealism) to comparative, creating constants and variables—based on “ideal type”, typical type
xxvi-a lot of his facts (from anthro and history) were wrong or outdated; (xxvii) web was evolst, tho it has lost its popularity; similar to durk tho neither influenced other
-web says all known human societies have rel ((xxviii) conceptions of supernat, or impersonal superior forces—all which give meaning to life)
xxix-web said ppl went thru “relus” breakthrus—(xxx) note #12 says it’s “prolly correct” to say that web looked at rel’s ability to change and durk looked at it as stabilizing—tho this is a simplification
-web has diff def of magic—it’s just for ad hoc, not a system, and its forces can b forced w/ rels forces must be worshipped or solicited—and only rel’s forces guide destiny
xxxiii-web did not invent concept of charisma, but it “has become part of the common lang of social and cultural discussion mainly thru his influence”
xxxiv-and charisma is not only in indvs, but is in a “normative order”, eg in lineages and “charisma of office”—the last is “identical w/ durk’s concept of the sacred”—“collective sacred”
xxxviii-parsons says, despite what critics say, web did not have a “naïve one-way conception of the dvlpmnt of human societies as the product of ‘ideas’”, after all, he emphasizes the change, the break in tradtl order; ea society is (xxxix) more sensitive to diff relus “stimuli”—and he calls that sensitivity “alienation”’ ea type of society has diff kind of alienation
xl-parsons interps web’s view to b that poll groups’ conservatism is a result of their need for legitimation which is necessary for longterm power
xli-word “pagan” originally meant “country man” for xns, who were urban
-web finds little relation btwn rel types and ecoc status and prophetic movmnts r not ecoc protests
xliii-“Web does not say much about science” here, tho he does in other places, and does not go far in explaining why it “seems to b a pre-eminent case of instittnlizng the dynamism of the process of rationaliztn”—which affects culture tho is on “elite element[s] in mod society”
xlv-Puritans “were by and large not centrally situated in the main prestige structure”
-web doesn’t say ppl r only predisposed to certain relus activities by their social world, but it provides a flexible range of action
liv-“…prolly no mod scholar has put forward a framework of such scope and conceptual clarity for the ordering of this central aspect of cultural and soclgcl analysis” [radical salvation]
*lix-emphasizes that captimalism doesn’t need Protestntism—but protsntsm helped make specifically “rtl bourgeois capitalism”
*-“more than any other singe writer in the background of our own (lx) generation, weber gave us the primar ref pts for analyzing the broad common patterns of mod social, poll, and ecoc devlpmnt”
-web insisted ideas came indp of rel
-he saw the protstn web word as “the vanguard of the most important gen evory trend”; (lxi) web wouldn’t claim his work is definitive
*lxii-US rel has changed a lot since w’s time—now ruled by lib protstnsm; jews more accepted, rc’s too—both w/out prophetic breaks w/ estd order
lxiii-“privatiztn” of faith spread to all—first noted in herberg 51
**lxiv-web’s rigid ideal types were too rigid, (lxv) so it doesn’t predict the actual change in the US very well, neglects “gradual and cumulative processes of change”; and reifies “profit motive” and “need for salvation”—not showing that ppl have many motives at once
lxv-tho SOR was “a great advance in its time” and “provided a foundation for further progress in socy, and remains relevant at its broadest morphological levels”, “it seems unlikely that the broadest outline of the evory pattern of the dvlpmnt of relus orientations, incl the onception of the 2 basic direction of rtlztn in the field of meaning, will b radically invalidated”
lxvi-“For scholars of lesser genius than web, it would b very difficult to get comparable results”
*-2 main theoretical difficulties w/ web: his idea that change has to b radical and motives r too idealized and not ordinary and mixed
*lxvii-“this book is the most crucial contribution of our century to the comparative and evory understanding of the relations btwn rel and society, even of society and culture generally”
1-says he won’t b able to define rel til concl—and its “not even our concern , as we make it our task to study the conditions of effects of a particular type of social behavior”—and thes “r so diverse that an understanding of this behavior can only b achieved from the vw pt. of the subjective exprcs, ideas, and purposes of the indvs concerned—in short, from the vw pt. of the relus behavior’s ‘meaning’”
-“The most elementary forms of behavior motivated by relus or magical factors r oriented to this world” cites deut 4:40; relus behavior is similar to purposeive conduct (eg rubbing sticks to make fire is “as ‘magical’” as rain caused by rainmaker), “the ends of the relus and magical actions r predominantly ecoc”
2-only us from our mod POV can judge “correct” from “fallacious attributions of causality”
-“extraordinary powers” in objects and ppl have been called mana, orenda—but he calls it “charisma” (2 types): 1)”where this appellation is fully merited, charisma is a gift that inheres in an object or person simply by virture of nat endowment. Such primary charisma cannot b acquired by any means. [2] But charisma of the other type may b produced artificially in an object or person thru some extraordinary means. Even then, it is assumed that charismatic powers can b devlped only in ppl or objects in which the germ already existed but would have remained dormant unless evoked by some ascetic or other regimen…”—there has always been [poll?] “forms of the doctrine of relus grace”—incl “salvation by good works”—and these continue today
3-and this makes a belief that a “spirit” is “’behind’ and responsible for the activity of the charismatically endowed nat objects”—this is not a “soul, demon, not god,” its indeterminate
-belief in spirits is more advanced in societies where only a few have “charismatic magical powers”—the odlest of “vocations” is the “professional necromancer”
-ecstacy—“the distinctive subjective condition that notably reps or mediates charisma”—a “psychological state” occurs in social—in “the orgy”; can use toxins or music to induce
4-and they also therefore believe in “soul”, “animistic” views; some more advanced ppl belief that spirits follow their own laws, they r more formed
-and they name the relus forces after “the process they control” (eg nature), or (5) after powerful ppl—“chieftans or prophets”
5-diff kinds of souls: 1 for life, 1 for esctacy, 1 for the shadows, dreams, etc—and these r “by no means universally accepted”
6-the distinctive element of this dvlpment of idea of soul is that these “new exprcs now play a role in life”—not just events that were already taking place, now there r events w/ symbolic meanings eg thinking a dead body must b buried w/ belongsins to have a “tolerable existence” after death
6-and then more advanced magic was dvlped to influence spirits, supplanting naturalism, and magica/rel becomes highly symbolic; says oldest paper money was used to pay the dead
-“more and more, things and events assumed significances other than the real potencies that actually or presumably in hered in them, and efforts were made to achieve real effects by means of various symbolically significant actions”; and when thot effective, these acts were repeated—and eventually “all areas of human activity were drawn into this circle of magical symbolism”—and they must b strictly adhered to w/out “slightest deviation”, that’s why changes in symbols cause so much controversy
8-and putting relus symbols on objects is “the oldest form of stylization”’ and exorcism replaced “previous empirical methods of medical treatment”
*9-so, in gen, rel evolved from pre-animistic to symbolism—that’s why “primitives” still eat foes, or keep their body parts—they believe spirit is directly in them and “primitives” war rites, however, can b seen as a “passage to symbolism”
*[then how do u know both things never co-existed? Diff than durk.
-web does not admit to probs w/ animism or naturalism so prob w/ idea of causation and what separates man from animal r not explained]
-calls “mythological thinking” is “the fully dvlped circle of symbolic concepts”
10-analogic thinking (later also used for law) “originated int eh region of magic, which is based completely upon analogy, rtlzed into symbolism”
-ideas of indv gods evolved to a pantheon
11-“the scope of the Roman numina is incomparably more fixed and unequivocal than that of Hellenistic gods”—whose g’s were more anthropomorphic and repd as real personalities
*-says sociologclly, the basis for this is that Roman g’s were ntl g’s, while grk g’s repd the “regional and knightly culture”, tho roman ritual practices didn’t change. Diff than grks, “the Roman attitude remained permanently adverse to rels of the orgiastic or mystery type. Roman rel remained religio (whether the wrd be derived etymologically from religare or from relegere); it denoted a tie with tested cultic formulae and a concern for spirits (numina) of all types which are active everywhere”
*-and romans had g’s for every action—unlike grks
12-this roman pantheon was sacred law, “ratl casuistry of sacred law”, which led to “sacred jurisprudence”—“In this way, sacred law became the mother of rtl justice thinking” cf Livy, that’s why romans were overly concerned w/ “legal etiquette, not ?s of sin, punishment, penitence, and salvation” tho both trads allowed for rtlztn
*13-specific g’s and demons dvlped w/ relation to endemic ecoc and historic situs, eg a g may have achieved eminence b/c he was of an important nat object; chthonic g’s r more inagricultural societies; celestial g’s in feudal society
14-and w/ increasing specializtn of gs, 1 led to rule others
-family cults dvlpd; (15) and adultery was dislike b/c adulteress could improperly make a sacrifice to a wrong ancestor—angering them—tho fam gods were overtaken by tribe gods
16-or when a fam took over their g became the supreme in the pantheon (eg the roman ruler as genius)
-and w/ a poll formation, “it is a universal phena” that it “entails subordination to a tribal g” and (17) worship of outside g’s is restricted
17-this results not in monotheism, but “poll particularism” and w/in a polis, (18) every clan, fam, and house had their own god that was subordinated to polis’—thts why in grk and rome if u did not have a household g, u couldn’t hold office
18-this led to g’s of land area, when other conditions were met like “foundation of the state as a separate poll assoc w/ corporate rts, indp of the court and the person of the ruler”—that’s why it didn’t happen in india, asia, iran (19) tho did in Egypt
19-and occupations had their own g’s
21-criticizes max muller for saying the rise of a universal god was b/c of nat evo—web says that when it came to rts, which ever g’s powers appeared most consistent, they became the ones worshipped—and these were celestial g’s (this is a rtls reason)—(22) tho this doesn’t garauntee primacy—universal g’s weren’t always ruling—and it also depended of ecoc needs, warrior classes wanted hi war g, priest w/ celestial ones
22-and b/c rel was rtlztn, prest were relsts and therefore they rtlly subordinated other g’s, (23) so th hi g always eventuall y became universal
23-and if they’re universal, that means other ppls g’s r the same just w/ diff names (eg grk thot this), and universal g must b controlling other ppls too (poll and historical)
24-several reasons why monotheism didn’t dvlp everywhere, but main one is priests who wanted to maintain power by controlling cults to g’s, (25) and the need of common ppl for personal g’s who have “magical influences”
25-the power to coerce g’s is universal; eventually g’s r seen to have powers in themselves—so they r seen like earthly rulers who req devotion
26-prayer and sacrifice “have their origin in magic”, and this desire (27) for ecoc goals is irrational and comes to (28) “represent what is distinctive in relus behavior”
28-diffc btwn rel and magic is rel is “relationship of men to supernat forces”—incl worship and prayer while magic is simply “coercision”—and about all rels have magical *components—and the sharp distinction others make is the result of new rels suppressing inherent magical elements, and distinction btwn priest and sorcerer is not sharp either; (30) “There can b no priesthood w/out a cult, although there may well b a cult w/out a specialized priesthood”
30-“rtlztn of relus life” depends on if priesthood become its own separate class, (31) and this depends on 1) ethical prophets and/or 2) laity devotees
32-if efforts to get a g to do smthing fail over and over, either it is abandoned or g is seen to b impotent and he is abandoned, (33) or priest says ppl r behaving badly
33-good g’s and evil demons is an early idea in rel—so g’s r seen to possess ethics (legislation)—and in monotheism this becomes very important
35-and in many rels, the ethics g was not the most powerful—they were only ethical cuz they were the most predictable—and old rels didn’t rely on it
*-and man’s demands of ethical g increased as legal system and society got more complex and interdpndnt and increased reliance (36) on ppls wrd for ecoc reasons (transactions, debt, etc)
36-and then even the g’s r subject to a moral order, tho it can even come in the form of fate (eg for warriors, or rtl ordering of world (bureaucrats); (37) and g will protect against injury in that order
38-and violation of that order is what is “taboo”, and this extends therefore to ecoc and social events—(30) leads to an ethical system
39-“The controversy concerning the dvlpmnt of these widely diffused totemic brotherhoods is still unresolved”, (40) says it will suffice to say its just a form of animism
*-“The belief in the universality of totemism, and certainly the belief in the derivation of virtually all social grps and all rels from totemism, constitutes a tremendous exaggeration that has been completely rejected by now”, tho it does explain division of labor of sexes in terms of magic [and several editors notes indicate that most of SOR was written before 1914]
*40-taboos limited change eg Shiites not trading w/ outsiders, hindu caste—they r (42) not rtl; and only ascetic prtstnsm provides “ethical sanction for ecoc rtls and for the entrepreneur” [only protestnsm?]
42-and in hindu castes, efforts to go higher resulted in evil, (43) so no revolts, ppl just stuck to caste and hope to b born higher
44-out of allthis dvlps concept of salvation to gain awareness of virtues
46-def of prophet—“a purely indv bearer of charisma, who by virtue of his mission proclaims to relus doctrine or divine commandmnt”—ho harsh distinction btwn a “renewer of rel” and a “founder of rel”—esp b/c a new relus community can b made by “non-prophetic reformers”, and don’t concern if followers r more attracted to the person or the doctrine. Ddecisive element btwn him and priest is “the personal call” from sacred, not just service to trad—so “almost no prophets have emerged from the priestly class”; (47) and unlike magician he “claims definite revelations” and “the core of his mission is doctrine “, not magic—tho he seldom ests authority w/out magic; and does so w/out pay, (48) which influenced xn priestly poverty
49-prophets r also legislators—one who is “codifying a law systematically or of reconstituting it”, (50) resolve class conflict and “to produce a new sacred law of eternal validity”—“leveling of classes stimulated expansion” for moses, as it did for Athens and rome—but this “social reform” is unique to Hebrews and it was only a means to an end (51) and most didn’t go for social reform, not even j., they were simply worried about “injustice as a violation of the mosaic code”
52-and the philosophical ethicist is nto a prophet either b/c they wer taught by others, and (53) they lack “vital emotional preaching”00a trait of prophets
54-personal divine revelation is the “decisive hallmark of prophecy”
-mystagogues—ppl who have special ability to perform sacraments—not prophets (55) b/c they often made a living as it
55-only 2 kinds of prophets: “ethical prophet” who is “primarily…an instrument for the proclamation of a g and his will, b this a concrete demand or an abstract norm…he demands obedience as an ethical duty”; 2) “exemplary” prophet is “an exemplary man who, by personal example, demonstrates to others the way to relus salvation, as in the case of the Buddha. The preaching of this type says nothing about a divine mission or an ethical duty of obedience, but raterh directs itself to the self-interest of those who crave salvation, recommending to them the same path as he himself trasversed.”
**-exemplary is common in india, some in china (lao tzu); “ethical type is confined to the Near East” no matter race—b/c (56) in the E. they didn’t have a “personal, transcendental, and ethical g”, ethics in china eg was following the tao, and Chinese emporer performed sacfricies for rain instead of depending solely on irrigation, (57) while near e. kings freely used irrigation (they had to in a desert)—so man was thot to have more free action, then g is seen to b more “feely acting, transcendental,a nd personal”
57-and e. societies had distinct classes who were the “bearers” of ethics (w/out gods), (58) while YHWH to Zoroaster were seen as ethical deity kings (like neighboring Egypt, Persia) **[but web doesn’t explain whence diff social systems came, like castes]
59-both kinds of prophets have “a unified view of the world derived from a consciously integrated and meaningful attitude toward life…both the life of man and the world, both social and cosmic events, have a certain systematic and coherent meaning.” And man must orient itself to this to bring salvation, organizes “practical behavior into direction of life”
-and the conflict btwn this idea of a meaningful world and “empirical reality” “produces the strongest tensions in man’s inner life as well as his external relationship to the world”—in fact prophets aren’t the only ones who deal w/ it—so do priests and philosophers. “The ultimate ? of all metaphysics has always been something like this: if the world as a whole and life in particular were to have meaning, what might it b, and how would the world have to look in order to correspond to it?”—and philosophers took “issue w/ the antecedent thot of relus functionaries”—so there was a struggle btwn them
60-a prophet’s helpers r “personal devotees”, no priests or soothsayers; permanent helpers “genlly also posses some special charismatic qualifications”; and there r also other followers who give money, etc
-a relus “community”/”congregation” “does not arise solely in connection w/ prophecy in the particular sense used here”, nor w/ every kind of prophecy. It “arises…as a result of routinization, i.e., as a result of the process whereby either the prophet himself or his disciples secure the permanence of his preaching and the congregation’s distribution of grace, hence insuring the ecoc existence of the enterprise and those who man it, (61) and thereby monopolizing as well the priveleges reserved for those charged w/ relus functs” (and this can happen around mystagogues and priests)
61-exemplary prophets get the followers of local gods; its unorganized at first, but (62) becomes fixed w/ followers gaining roles of mystagogues, teachers, priests, etc.
62-priests were genlly sons “of landed priestly fams, domestic court priests of landed magnates or noblemen, or trained preists of a sacrificial cult” which was its own class and (63) indvs went to them for assistance—no congregations except when cults were formed
63-sometimes priests were kept in power by conquerors to pacify the colonized
65-all priesthoods “must frequently meet the needs of the laity,” esp their a) prophecy, b) their tradlsm, c) and lay intellectualism
66-propphecy “by its very nature devalues the magical elements of the priestly enterprise”—salvation only by “meaningful relationship to the eternal”
67-for priests “to secure its onw position” had to codify a new doctrine that either accepted or rejected prophet’s ideas; this included canons and dogmas
68-says all priesthoods dvlpd from guilds of magicians who had animistic secret lore, that eventually became public [problematic, as w/ this whole book, its not systematic]
69-says Q was quickly canonized b/c “the semi-literate m. held that the existence of a holy book automatically carries w/ it the mark of prestige for a rel”—[does not go w/ what we know about uthman who did it, like other rels, for poll reasosn—makes assumptions that r debateable]
70-estblshmnt of relus doctrine followed desire to differentiate self from others, and smtimes for nonrelus reasons (eg charlemagne’s insistence on doctrine of filioque to separate Frankish church from byzantium’s control); and they made tattoos to make changing difficult (71)
74-preaching “is collective instruction concerning relus and ethical matters”, (75) it “declines in importance whenever a revealed rel has been transformed into a priestly enterprise by routinization, and the importance of preaching stands in inverse proportion to the magical components of a rel”, that’s why protestsm has no priests, only preachers
75-“pastoral care” is “the relus cultivation of the indv”, (76) and is most powerful “when rel has achieved an ethical character”
76-and it had great influence when it combined “ethical casuistry” (eg roman law) w/ “a rtlzed system of ecclesiastical penances”
*-and so “it is these same practical responsibilities of preaching and pastoral care which brot in their wake the substantive routinization of prophetic demands into specific prescriptions of a casusistical, and hence more rtl, character, in contrast to the prophetic ethics. But at the same time this dvlpment resulted in the loss of that unity which the prophet had introduced into the ethics—the derivation of a standard of life out of a distinctive ‘meaningful’ relationship to one’s g, such as he himself had possessed and by means of which he assayed not the the external appearance of a single act, but rather its meaningful significance for the total relationship to g”; rel couldn’t just (77) focus on inwardness
77-prophets opposed magical rel, w/ its emphasis on everything (incl ppl) being in its rt place (making it easy for preist to obtain power and hold masses in bondage) (78) but after routinization, and the re-emergence of priests, it did that bondage again—it is “practically unavoidable”
78-unavoidable b/c, tho prophet preaches indp, laity’s acceptance of him is based on his charisma—he is seen as simply a great magician, so the massis habits just endure
80-peasant life is very unbureaucratic and therefore opposes rtl systematiztn (rel as we know it) that they only take it up when forced to, to survive
-eg for poll or ecoc reasons, like jews resistance to enslavement/oppression by philistines and Canaanites
*83-“That the peasant has become the distinctive prototype of the pious man who is pleasing to g is a thoroughly mod phenn” w/ a few exceptions; in fact, in E. rels, the peasant is suspect b/c he kills animals (remember rust=paganus for early xns), even aqui said rural ppl were of lower esteem, worshipping weather and nature g’s
84-it was praised by luther and mod Russian rel—it was b/c of their ”struggle against the rtlsm of the intellectuals, and against poll liberalism”—and cities were seen as carriers of it
-“xnty was an urband rel” (cf harneck), congregations couldn’t dvlp anywhere else—and xnty presupposes community orgztn
85-warrior nobles and most feudal powers didn’t need “rtl relus ethic”’ warriors don’t want a rel w/ “sin, salvation, and relus humility”—these go against their trade, they must consistently face their destiny, at most he wants “protection against evil magic” or “priestly prayers for victory or for a blissful death” and nothing else
-and grks were mostly warriors
86-tho strong reform mvmnts pull nobles into a “prophetic ethical rel”, tho they r often excluded form it by relus leadership
-and warriors can adopt it to call others “unveleivers” (says islam was first to), tho (87) xns first fot other ppl of the book ruthelessly in crusades
89-the “dominant bureaucracy” “is always the carrier of a comprehensive sober rtlsm and, at the same time, of the ideal of a disciplined ‘order’ and security as absolute standards of value. The bureaucratic class is usually characterized by a profound disesteem of all irrational rel, combined, however, w/ a recognition of the usefulness of this type of rel as a device for controlling the ppl” (eg in Romans and todays military and civil bureaucracy)
-90 they also eliminate emotionalism and irrational manifestations, and distance from spirits and ancestral cults
-the mid class is not so consistent tho, often (91) b/c that they r depends on the ecoy (eg maybe either merchants or wandering peddlars) and this also affects their social privilege—the more privileged, the less other worldy, ethical rel
93-but capitalism and ecoc rtlsm go together w/ emergence of non-poll capitalism—middle class
95-the lower mid class (esp the artisans) r the most rlusly diverse, and often most pious, uslly most orthodox too; but others were (96) reformers, exorcists, monastics, etc.
96-but in constrast to peasants, “a definite tendency towards congregational rel, towards rel of salvation, and finally towards rtl ethical rel”—tho its not purely uniform
-congregationalism”was a nat consequence of the relative recession of the importance of blood groupings; esp in the w.—esp w/ occupational orgs which had a “cultic significance”, tho in e. fam was more important, (97) Indian castes prevented congregationalism
97-and “rtl ethical rel” is important b/c of less connection/ nature means less use for magic and rtlsm in gen is more important in city life (eg calculability and capacity for purposeive manipulation), and ecoc existence requires that “honesty is the best policy”—fulfiling obligations is important—that’s why warriors and financial magnates don’t need it—they have power
-and “the artisan is very frequently active in effecting the elimination of this very process of magic”, esp b/c eg art “comes from (98) a special charisma, usally passed on hereditarily, and guarded by magical means (taboos, totems)—but when employed in the city, he starts thinking about his trade more rtlly—but not always (eg Chinese articsans still believed in karma) or (99) in india w/ its caste taboo and magic), so it only really emerged w/ congregational rtlzed ethical rel
99-and lowest classes (slaves and day laborers) never followed a strict rule for rel (it usually depended on what class they were most closely associated w/)
100-and the “wandering handifcraft apprenticies” (b/c they had to wait longer to get permanent jobs) were often the missionaries “of every mass congregationl rel”
101-and if anything, they r more prone to emotional/magical rel b/c rtlsm plays so little influence on their lives
102-“the transfer of salvation doctrines to the masses practically always results in the emergence of a savior, or at least in an increase of emphasis upon the concept of savior”—(103) and for the bourgeoisie this become domesticated “sentimental legend” and iconic g’s re-emerge
104-lower class rel is more = to women than higher (incl priests)
*106-and salvation gives esteem to high classes for what they r and low classes for what they will becom
107-legitimization—its based in “universal” “psychological patterns”—I’m happy—he’s not—I must be doing right
*-“What the privileged classes req of rel, if anything at all, is this psychological reassurance of legitimacy”—tho not every class feels this to some degree
108-lower class wants relief from suffering and punishment of wrong doers (“just compensation”); (109) and the more oppressed they r, the more they cling to their status for future salvation, (110) but a relus resentment/vengeance against privileged ppl for unequal distribution of goods occurs only in (111) certain cultures
112-tho vengeance is most extreme w/ jews, (114) and faced w/ not achieveing it they tried harder to ensure g’s favor, so emphasizing success in occupation, tho the self-fulfilment (calling) and inner-worldly asceticism was not as important for them—it was tradlstic (magical) and not psychological
116-and resentment is not universal, jesus said all could get to heaven
118-orginally, priests were most important carriers of intellectualism, esp where there is sacred text, and a guild for intrp dvlps—but this didn’t happen for Phoenicians, grks, romans or china—they had non-priests dvlp “all metaphysical and ethical thot” and even theology (eg Hesiod)—did happen in india, Egypt, Babylon, zoroastriansim, ism, xnty—where priesthood monopolized metaphysics and ethics; (119) and in budd, islam and ancient medieval xnty—monks did it,a dn art too
120-all great rlus doctrines in asia r products of intellectuals trained (eg budd and jainist were trained in Vedas—they were non-brahman nobels), same for china
121-all possessed philosophic training comparable to grks, and they were “bearers of the ethic or the salvation doctrine” and “these classes took no official position regarding existing relus practice”
122-salvation rel emerges for priveledged grps when nation demilitarizes and poll action is little; and when ruling classes have lost power to state—usully tho not always, esp in times of social change (tho this is genlly underground)
123-these high class quests for salvation have a “disposition toward and ‘illumination’ mysticism…a distinctively intellectual qualification for salvation”
-devalues “nat, sensual, and physical”, refinement of sexuality—(124) rel is irrationalized, then rtlzed to give it meaning; (125) seeks a “casuistry of which extends into infinity”—inner need, as opposed to external need of low classes; and things must match up to empirical reality; may b “world-fleeing”
*126-there is also mid class and pariah intellectualism (lower-class self taught, scribes, small officials, teachers, poets, etc)—tho this didn’t exist in E. b/c (127) it lacked “the communal feeling of an urban citizenry, which is a necessity for mid-class intellectualism”
131-despite paul, xnty genlly taught anti-intellectualsim
*132-Web characterizes the propagators of the “so-called world resl”—eg “Judaism, the wandering trader”, “islam, the warror seeking to conquer the world”, “Xnty, the itinerant journeyman”
134-puritanism “created a pop relus intellectualism never found since” the 17th ce comparable only to late Judaism and “Pauline missionary communities”
*137-he says that elites’ preventing masses from being educated, and the fashion of “conversation and journalism” will prevent rel to come again from intellectuals
138-only Judaism is truly monotheistic in the strictest sense, (139) and the more monotheistic a rel, the more probs reconciling “imperfection of the world that he has created and rules over”
143-eventually ppl thot “God must b envisaged as beyond all the ethical claims of creatures, his counsels impervious to human comprehension”, and from this comes redestination (it also opposes magic)
144-other explanations: dualism, manicheism (dualism that will end); (145) or karma (word is sealed)
147-most rels combine theories b/c of mutual interaction and to satisfy sundry beliefs of adherents
*164-paths to salvation vary widely btwn rels (the chapter basically just describes diff kinds, and next chapter describes diff kinds of asceticism, (179) esplly emphasizing diffc btwn oriental (otherworldly) and occidental (this worldly)—and this (181) is b/c web has a church w/ rtl org and a monarchical head while e. doesn’t, “parly for historical reasons, partly b/c of the nature of the rels in ?”, b/c (182) e. relus leaders still had magical function while xn monks didn’t, then ascentic prtstntsm made it this-worldly vocation for relus salvation [still flawed for not explaining why societies developed diffly]
263-“…Islam was never really a rel of salvation…An essentially poll character marked all the chief ordinances of Islam”
269-ascetic prtstntsm wrked well w/ capitalism and “There is no proof whatever that a weaker nat potentiality for technical and ecoc rtlsm was responsible for actualdiffcs in this respect”—impediment is regid trads, such as existed in the mid ages
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