Anthropological debates on origin

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Anthropological debates on origin

• 11.10.2006

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Readings

• Tylor, E.B. Animism
• 1873 Primitive Culture (Chapter 11)
• Durkheim, É. Excerpts from The Elementary Forms
  of the Religious Life (1912)

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Discussion topics

• Roots of evolutionary approach to religion
• Darwin, Comte, Hegel, Engels
• Intellectualist (rationalist) explanations
• Müller, Spencer, Tylor, Frazer
• Functionalist explanations
• Robertson Smith, Durkheim
• Psychological explanations
• Freud

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Roots of evolutionary approach to religion
Darwin

• The Origin of Species (1859)
• theory of biological evolution
• interest in social evolution
• social darwinism (Spencer)
• moral and political legitimation for
  laissez-faire capitalism
• society evolves toward increasing freedom for
  individuals

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Roots of evolutionary approach to religion Comte

• father of sociology
• law of three phases
• Society has gone through three phases
• 1) Theological phase
• spiritual explanations of reality (supernatural
  beings)
• three subphases
• fetishism, polytheism, and monotheism.

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Roots of evolutionary approach to religion Comte

• 2) Metaphysical phase (transitional)
• gods replaced by philosophical abstractions
• Being, Substance, etc
• Eg. Greek idealist philosophers
• 3) Positivist/scientific phase
• science gains supremacy over philosophy
• observation and experiment
• sciences emerge in determinate order
• mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry,
  biology, and sociology

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Roots of evolutionary approach to religion Hegel

• Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (1821-31)
• three phases of religious consciousness
• 1) The religions of nature (Die Naturreligion)
• 2) The religions of spiritual individuality
• 3) Christianity

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Roots of evolutionary approach to religion Hegel

• 1) Die Naturreligion
• Spirit not distinct from nature
• Religions of magic
• Oriental religions
• Chinese religion - religion of measure
• Hinduism/brahmanism religion of fantasy
• Buddhism religion of inwardness
• Zoroastrianism religion of good
• first signs of spirit/nature
• Midway between 1) and 2)

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Roots of evolutionary approach to religion Hegel

• 2) The religions of spiritual individuality
• spirit a deity independent of the natural
  world
• Transcendental God vs world of humans and nature
• Jewish, Greek, and Roman religions
• religions of sublimity, beauty, and
  utility/intellect

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Roots of evolutionary approach to religion Hegel

• 3) Christianity
• Absolute religion
• separation between God and finite world is both
  annulled and preserved

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Roots of evolutionary approach to religion
Engels

• Anti-Dühring (1878)
• All religion is nothing but the fantastic
  reflection in mens minds of those external
  forces which control their daily life
• Three stages of evolution of religion
• 1) Personification of the forces of nature
• 2) Personification of social forces
• 3) One almighty god monotheism

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Roots of evolutionary approach to religion Engels

• Religion linked to social conditions
• E.g. Christianity
• originally a movement of the oppressed
• subjected communities of the Roman Empire
• Religion will disappear when social conditions
  that give rise to it have ceased to exist

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Debates on origin of religion in anthropology

• 19th c and early 20th c
• Evolutionary approach
• Main research questions
• How (Why) did religion evolve?
• How has religion changed in human evolution?
• Main research methods
• Comparative method
• Study of survivals
• Agreement on the universality of religion
• A primitive way of explaining the world existing
  everywhere
• Exceptions (Baker, 1866)

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Debates on origin of religion in anthropology

• Disagreement on how/ why evolved
• Intellectualist (rationalist) explanations
• Religion sprang from rational inferences based on
  individual human experiences of oneself or the
  world
• Spencer, Tylor, Müller, Frazer
• Functionalist explanations
• Religion evolved due to satisfying certain
  collective needs
• Robertson Smith, Durkheim
• Psychological explanations
• Religion evolved as a reaction to certain
  psychological states
• Freud

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Spencer

• Principles of Sociology (1876-96)
• The principle of progress as the guiding force of
  evolution
• all things, animate and inanimate move from
  simpler to more differentiated conmplex forms,
  from homogenienty to heterogeneity
• Also on religion and religious beliefs of
  preliterate people
• Assumes cultural and intellectual inferiority of
  preliterate people
• Yet admits that
• primitive people are not irrational
• Arguments valid and reasonable in their own
  context

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Spencer

• Origin of religion
• Observation of the phenomena of nature
• death and dream experiences
• temporary insensibility
• ecstatic states
• reflections in the water
• the idea of duality
• body / soul or spirit

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Spencer

• Earliest religion
• manism worship of ancestors (ancestors ghosts)
• (totemism a form of ancestor worship)
• Evolution of religion
• Ghosts Gods
• ghosts of important ancestors divinities
• Gods God
• polytheism monotheism

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Tylor

• Most early anthropologists (eg. Müller, Spencer,
  Frazer)
• armchair scholars
• Tylor
• Traveled extensively, especially in Mexico
• a Quaker by religion, deeply anti-Catholic
• Influenced by Spencer
• primitive cultures survivals

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Tylor

• Primitive Culture (1871)
• ancient savage philosophers
• impressed by two groups of problems
• 1) what is it that makes the difference between
  a living body and a dead one and what causes
  sleep, trance, disease, death?
• 2) what are these human shapes which appear in
  dreams and visions?

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Tylor

• The idea of spirit or soul
• universal
• linguistic connection between certain ideas
• eg. shadow, life, breath / soul, spirit
• humans, animals, plants, inanimate objects
• minimal definition of religion
• belief in spiritual beings
• animism

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Tylor

• Evolution of religion
• 1) animism
• humans, animals, plants, and inanimate objects
  are endowed with souls
• 2) polytheism
• multiple spiritual beings to explain natural
  events and phenomena
• 3) monotheism
• animism of civilized man

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Tylor

• Primitive man
• a rationalist
• Preliterate religious beliefs and practices
• not ridiculous or a rubbish heap of
  miscellaneous folly
• essentially consistent and logical
• based on rational thinking

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Tylor

• Criticism
• Andrew Lang
• The Making of Religion (1898)
• the conception of high God / Supreme Being
• evident in many tribal communities
• Father Wilhelm Schmidt
• The Origin and Growth of Religion (1912)
• The Origin of the Concept of God (1955)
• Urmonotheismus theory
• monotheism evident among the most archaic
  peoples
• the Tasmanians and the Andaman Islanders
• later became overlaid with polytheistic
  conceptions

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Tylor

• Criticism
• Robert Marett
• primitive man not that rational
• preanimistic stage
• animatism
• an impersonal supernatural force
• Eg. orenda among the Iroquois
• Eg. mana in Melanesia

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Müller

• Linguist and a leading Sanskrit scholar
• translations of the Vedic scriptures
• Sacred Books of the East (fifty volumes)
• Father of comparative religion
• Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873)

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Müller

• General arguments
• belief in divinity is universal
• there is truth in all religions, even in the
  lowest
• primitive religions
• not the work of the devil
• but undeveloped conceptions of god
• However childish a religion may be, it always
  places the human soul in the presence of god

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Müller

• Origin of religion
• experience of awe when confronting forces of
  nature
• Fire, sun, wind, rivers, etc.
• nature worship
• personification of natural phenomena
• naturism

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Müller

• Origin on religion
• focus on Vedic scriptures
• We see in the Vedic hymns the first revelation
  of Deity, the first expressions of surprise and
  suspicion, the first discovery that behind this
  visible and perishable world there must be
  something invisible, eternal or divine.
• No one who has read the hymns of the Rig-Veda can
  doubt any longer as to what was the origin of the
  earliest Aryan religion and mythology
• The deities very names tell us that they were
  all in the beginning names of the great
  phenomenon of nature, of fire, water, rain and
  storm, of sun and moon, of heaven and earth.

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Müller

• Indo-European father-god
• appears under various names Zeus, Jupiter, Dyaus
  Pita
• 'Dyaus' (Sanskrit) 'shining, 'radiance,
  light
• 'deva', 'deus', 'theos' as generic terms for a
  god
• 'Zeus' and 'Jupiter' (deus-pater)

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Müller

• Criticism
• Lang, Durkheim
• accused of racism
• interest in Aryan culture
• Opposition of Indo-European and Semitic religions
  
• never as influential as Spencer and Tylor

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Frazer

• Evolution of ways of explaining the world
• Magic religion science
• Magic logically more primitive than religion
• a bastard sister of science
• Both based on manipulation of natural laws
• Magic
• similarity or contiguity of ideas
• imitative magic
• contagious magic
• Religion
• the conception of personal agents/spirits

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Durkheim

• evolutionary approach to social life in general
• mechanical and organic solidarity
• traditional vs modern societies
• Traditional societies
• a system of homogeneous segments
• Social solidarity achieved by a common value
  system, shared beliefs
• Modern societies
• a system of heterogeneous segments
• solidarity is the outcome of mutual
  interdependence

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Durkheim

• Durkheims theory of religion
• The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912)
• Influenced by
• McLennan
• Fustel de Coulanges
• W. Robertson Smith

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Robertson Smith

• The Religion of the Semites (1889)
• Semitic societies of ancient Arabia
• Most primitive
• matrilineal clans
• totemism
• Clan totemism
• the earliest form of religion
• sacrifice - main ritual
• joint participation in eating sacramental meal
• communication between the god and worshipers
• expression of unity and solidarity
• binding clan members to each other and to their
  god.

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Robertson Smith

• Important conclusions for Durkheim
• Analysis of religion
• in terms of the social group
• rather than as a form of speculative thought
• Primacy of ritual over belief
• Functionalist approach to rituals
• bind people together in the community
• religion did not exist for saving of souls but
  for the preservation and welfare of society

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Durkheim

• The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912)
• study of religion in its most primitive and
  simple form
• dissatisfied with animism and naturism
• totemism of the Australian aborigenes
• following McLennan and Robertson-Smith
• Based on the studies by Baldwin Spencer and F.J.
  Gillin
• Religion
• too widespread a human institution
• cannot be based on pure illusion
• even the most barbaric and fantastic religious
  rites and myths must be based on some human
  need.

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Durkheim

• Sacred as essential to religion
• All known religious beliefs, whether simple or
  complex, present one common characteristic they
  presuppose a classification of all the things,
  real or ideal, of which men think into two
  classes generally designated by two distinct
  terms which are translated well enough by the
  words profane and sacred.
• Sacred ? divine
• Not just gods and spirits but also rocks, trees
  etc.
• What makes something sacred is not the connection
  to the divine but prohibitions setting it apart

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Durkheim

• Durkheims definition of religion
• a unified set of beliefs and practices relative
  to sacred things, that is to say, things set
  apart and forbidden, - beliefs and practices
  which unite one single moral community (Church)
  all those who adhere to them.
• religion is essentially a collective
  phenomenon
• inseparable from the idea of cult or moral
  community
• Different from magic
• Magic is an individualistic enterprise

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Durkheim

• Origin of religion
• collective tribal life-style
• Ritual mass gathering
• generate a heightened emotional state
• delirium or collective effervescence
• The function of rituals
• strengthen the bonds attaching the believer to
  god
• strengthen the bonds attaching the individual to
  the social group
• Through ritual, the group becomes conscious of
  itself.

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Durkheim

• Critique of animism and naturism
• animists
• dream experiences
• naturists
• experience of awe in the face of mighty forces of
  nature
• derive the idea of the sacred out of sensations
  aroused by natural phenomena
• give religious notions an illusory status

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Durkheim

• Totemism
• the elementary form of religous life
• a complex of beliefs, taboos and rituals
• underlying features
• cult groups (initiated men)
• each group is associated with a specific totem
• dietary restrictions
• rituals (at totemic sites that are deemed sacred)
• The essence of totemism
• not about the totemic entity
• but about the clan itself
• Totem as the symbol of the group

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Durkheim

• Criticism
• Rigid separation between the sacred and the
  profane
• religion establishes and reaffirms group
  solidarity
• society is not homogeneous
• sex, class, ethnic affiliation etc.
• Religious beliefs have an ideological function
• legitimate the domination of one group or class
  over another

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Freud

• Totem and Taboo (1913)
• a work that no ethnologist can afford to
  neglect (Kroeber)
• Psychoanalytical explanation of the origin of
  sacrifice
• Ambivalence of sacrificial rituals
• Death wish vs admiration/guilt
• Totemism
• most primitive form of religion
• explainable through Oedipus complex

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Freud

• Earliest family (primal horde) - patriarchal
• violent, jealous father
• keeps all women for himself
• parricide
• brothers kill and eat the father
• guilt and remorse
• Apotheosis of the father
• Institution of various moral edicts and rites
• eg. incest taboo
• rites to commemorate the parricide
• Eg. animal sacrifices, the Christian Eucharist