No abstract

No abstract

How do humans, who are materially composed biological constructs, come to transcend – that is, to see themselves as present in – the world? This article sustains that, in order to understand transcendence in personhood, we have to see the latter as a product of dividual not individual participation, as initially proposed by Lévy‐Bruhl and recently developed by a number of phenomenologically inspired cognitive scientists. This being the case, it becomes necessary to account for the relation between essence and existence in the case of metapersons (ghosts, deities, ancestors, some animals, etc.). In this essay, I suggest that this, too, must be explained by reference to the ontogeny of persons‐who‐wakingly‐live‐in‐the‐world. In order to explore this issue, I discuss an occurrence that took place in my presence without my noticing it at the time when I was visiting an Afro‐Brazilian temple compound in coastal Bahia (Northeast Brazil) in July 2011.

This paper focuses on the notion of ‘participation’ as it has been used in the social sciences throughout the 20th century. It proposes that there are two main traditions of use – an ‘individual’ one, and a ‘dividual’ one – and it argues in favour of the latter. It does this by examining how Simmel and Goffman, on the one hand, and Lévy-Bruhl and Durkheim, on the other, defined participation. Developed by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl in the first part of the last century, ‘participation’ in the dividual sense is today being given new life by sociocultural anthropologists such as Marshall Sahlins and phenomenologically inclined cognitive scientists such as Shaun Gallagher. The paper addresses the roots of the concept in Scholastic theology and proposes to show how central it can come to be to a sociocultural anthropology that is willing to take on frontally the challenges presently being posed by embodied cognition.

RESUMOO artigo propõe que seja aceito o desafio de recusar a noção de que os seres humanos sejam essencialmente "indivíduos" e que a sua verdadeira essência esteja escondida por "máscaras" impostas com a finalidade de criar uma categoria cuja existência seria essencialmente metafísica:a "sociedade" ou o "grupo".PALAVRAS-CHAVE: antropologia; dualidade; indivíduo; grupo social. SUMMARYThe article refuses the notion that the human beings are essentially "individuals" and defends that its true essence is hidden by "masks" imposed with the purpose to create a category whose reality would be essentially metaphysical:the "society" or the "group".KEYWORDS: anthropology; duality; individual; social group. NOVOS ESTUDOS 78 ❙❙ JULHO 2007A discussão que se segue gira em torno de um conceito cujo unanimismo se apresenta surpreendente para quem, como eu,começa tardiamente a dedicar-se ao estudo do Brasil:o tal "dilema brasileiro" que, entre outros, Roberto DaMatta famosamente teoriza em Carnavais,malandros e heróis:para uma sociologia do dilema brasileiro 2 -obra central na evolução subseqüente do pensamento antropológico brasileiro, que verifico continuar a constituir um marco miliário importante nos dias de hoje.Seguindo as pistas lançadas pelo próprio autor,pareceu-me necessário compreender o conceito à luz da polaridade "indivíduo/pessoa" 3 . Só quando já terminava o corpo do texto, porém, me foi dado perceber que, afinal, esta questão se prendia com alguns dos velhos temas do debate antropológico europeísta,no qual eu próprio me iniciei.