Semitic Religion<i>Lectures on the Religion of the Semites</i>. W. Robertson Smith

Smith, Henry Preserved

doi:10.1086/369119

Cited by 9 publications

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“…The concept of temporal liminality has been further pursued by contemporary anthropologists such as Leach (1963) and Turner (1969Turner ( ,1974; for the latter, the ideas of liminality and "communitas" are an integral part of conflicts-a major focus of his investigations. Drawing upon inspirations from Steiner (1967) and Robertson Smith (1972[1889 1, Douglas (1966Douglas ( , 1975) also made a major contribution on the topic. Her pangolin of the Lele is a feted example of juxtaposed categories.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

phases in human perception/conception/symbolization processes: cognitive anthropology and symbolic classification

Ohnuki‐Tierney

1981

American Ethnologist

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(1961:5) once declared that "the whole aim of theoretical science is . . . the perceptual reduction of chaos" and that "the most basic postulate of science is that nature is orderly." In anthropology, the role of culture in providing people with the order in their universe has been of central and perennial interest to the discipline.The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it attempts to compare and contrast two major anthropological approaches to the problem of culture and order. The approaches under consideration are those of cognitive anthropology and of so-called symbolic classification. A comparison is made in regard to their assumptions, scope of inquiry, methodology, and the nature of evidence used. The comparison serves the second and more important purpose of the paper-the delineation of several distinct phases involved in the processes of human perception, conception, and symbolization. These phases represent different levels of abstraction in the ordering of our universe. I interpret cognitive anthropology and symbolic classification as covering separate phases of these processes. This division of labor, so to speak, enables the two approaches to complement each other in an anthropological quest for the role of culture in ordering the universe. In addition, a certain vagueness with which such terms as "cognition" and "symbols" have been used in anthropology has contributed to muddling and misunderstanding.The immediate goal of this paper is to compare and contrast two a p proaches in anthropology that are concerned with the role of culture in ordering a people's universe-cognitive anthropology and symbolic classification. A larger aim is to propose a schema of human perception, conception, and symbolization, delineating different phases in these processes that represent distinct levels of abstraction in our concept formation. I argue that cognitive anthropology focuses upon the phases in which memory codes are established, whereas symbolic classification deals with the phases in which analogy codes are formulated. Each may thereby be seen to complement the other in our effort to understand the role of culture in the ordering of the universe. pharos In cognition and symbolism 461After a brief comparison of the two approaches the second section is devoted to the elucidation of the nature of each phase in the human perception, conception, and symbolization processes. In the last section, scholarly debates over the role of linguistic labels in conceptualization, taxonomic versus symbolic anomaly, and the like, are discussed in order to further explicate the distinct nature of each phase, and also to identify the phases that cognitive anthropology and symbolic classification examine respectively.Needless to say, an in-depth discussion of the processes of human perception, conceptualization, and symbolization requires at least a book. In this short article, I can simply outline my preliminary interpretations of the subject matter. Since the article is not meant to survey the entire fields of cognitive a...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

phases in human perception/conception/symbolization processes: cognitive anthropology and symbolic classification

Ohnuki‐Tierney

1981

American Ethnologist

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“…202 In the foreword to the first edition of his book, Robertson Smith made clear that he was continuing with the material assembled by Frazer and also made grateful use of other historical-critical studies. 203 Robertson Smith sought to study the great Semitic religions in their entirety on the basis of commonalities. These religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) were the positive religions, that is to say, they were all established by religious innovators (Moses, Jesus and Mohammed).…”

Section: An Ancient Guiltmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast to Horney and Jones (who in "The Early Development of Female Sexuality" had made the case for Horney's views), Freud held onto the idea that little girls' penis envy is more determinative than the perception of her own sexual organs. 203 The reason for this is actually that in the pre-Oedipal relationship of the little girl with her mother he emphasized the ambivalent feelings regarding the mother. In short, just as little boys' ambivalent relationships with their father is determinative, the same is true of little girls' relationships with their mother.…”

Section: A New Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

A Dark Trace

Westerink¹

2021

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Sigmund Freud, in his search for the origins of the sense of guilt in individual life and culture, regularly speaks of “reading a dark trace”, thus referring to the Oedipus myth as a myth on the problem of human guilt. The sense of guilt is indeed a trace that leads deep into the individual’s mental life, into his childhood life, and into the prehistory of culture and religion. In this book this trace is followed and thus Freud’s thought on the sense of guilt as a central issue in his work is analyzed, from the earliest studies on the moral and “guilty” characters of the hysterics, via the later complex differentiations in the concept of the sense of guilt, unto the analyses of civilization’s discontents and Jewish sense of guilt. The sense of guilt is a key issue in Freudian psychoanalysis, not only in relation to other key concepts in psychoanalytic theory, but also in relation to debates with others, such as Carl Gustav Jung or Melanie Klein, Freud was engaged in.

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“…It does not help that the participants themselves tend to describe them in this way. As W. Robertson Smith showed over a century ago, religion is primarily a matter of practice, not theory (Smith 1956(Smith [1894). Adherents are told what to do, not what to think.…”

Section: Balancing Description and Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Unravelling Ritual

Metcalf

2008

Suomen Antropologi

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As a pioneer in the interpretation of ritual, Victor Turner showed us how to access other peoples’ deepest understandings about the nature of life. In the process, he encountered problems of presentation that ethnographers still have to confront. This paper explores Turner’s solutions to these problems, and how subsequent authors have modified them. Keywords: ritual, ethnography, Victor Turner

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Semitic ReligionLectures on the Religion of the Semites. W. Robertson Smith

Cited by 9 publications

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phases in human perception/conception/symbolization processes: cognitive anthropology and symbolic classification

phases in human perception/conception/symbolization processes: cognitive anthropology and symbolic classification

A Dark Trace

Unravelling Ritual

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