Author: René Girard
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 0826477186
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 361
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Book Description
René Girard (1923-) was Professor of French Language, Literature and Civilization at Stanford Unviersity from 1981 until his retirement in 1995. Violence and the Sacred is Girard's brilliant study of human evil. Girard explores violence as it is represented and occurs throughout history, literature and myth. Girard's forceful and thought-provoking analyses of Biblical narrative, Greek tragedy and the lynchings and pogroms propagated by contemporary states illustrate his central argument that violence belongs to everyone and is at the heart of the sacred. Translated by Patrick Gregory>
Author: René Girard
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801822181
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
His fascinating and ambitious book provides a fully developed theory of violence as the 'heart and secret soul' of the sacred. Girard's fertile, combative mind links myth to prophetic writing, primitive religions to classical tragedy.
Author: Ian Hodder
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108476023
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
This book is primarily for researchers and students in the archaeology of the Ancient Near East. The volume results from intense interaction between archaeologists at these sites and a group of theorists studying the scholarship of René Girard.
Author: R. Scott Appleby
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780847685554
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
This text explains what religious terrorists and religious peacemakers share in common and what causes them to take different paths in fighting injustice.
Author: Brent D. Shaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521196051
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 931
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Book Description
Employs the sectarian battles which divided African Christians in late antiquity to explore the nature of violence in religious conflicts.
Author: Margaret Pfeil and Tobias L. Winright
Publisher: Orbis Books
ISBN: 1608331318
Category : Violence
Languages : en
Pages : 252
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Book Description
Author: Pierpaolo Antonello
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628950358
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 364
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Book Description
Are religions intrinsically violent (as is strenuously argued by the ‘new atheists’)? Or, as Girard argues, have they been functionally rational instruments developed to manage and cope with the intrinsically violent runaway dynamic that characterizes human social organization in all periods of human history? Is violence decreasing in this time of secular modernity post-Christendom (as argued by Steven Pinker and others)? Or are we, rather, at increased and even apocalyptic risk from our enhanced powers of action and our decreased socio-symbolic protections? Rene Girard’s mimetic theory has been slowly but progressively recognized as one of the most striking breakthrough contributions to twentieth-century critical thinking in fundamental anthropology: in particular for its power to model and explain violent sacralities, ancient and modern. The present volume sets this power of explanation in an evolutionary and Darwinian frame. It asks: How far do cultural mechanisms of controlling violence, which allowed humankind to cross the threshold of hominization—i.e., to survive and develop in its evolutionary emergence—still represent today a default setting that threatens to destroy us? Can we transcend them and escape their field of gravity? Should we look to—or should we look beyond—Darwinian survival? What—and where (if anywhere)—is salvation?
Author: Robert Hamerton-Kelly
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Author: John Renard
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520274199
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 262
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Book Description
One of the critical issues in interreligious relations today is the connection, both actual and perceived, between sacred sources and the justification of violent acts as divinely mandated. Fighting Words makes solid text-based scholarship accessible to the general public, beginning with the premise that a balanced approach to religious pluralism in our world must build on a measured, well-informed response to the increasingly publicized and sensationalized association of terrorism and large-scale violence with religion. In his introduction, Renard provides background on the major scriptures of seven religious traditions—Jewish, Christian (including both the Old and New Testaments), Islamic, Baha’i, Zoroastrian, Hindu, and Sikh. Eight chapters then explore the interpretation of select facets of these scriptures, focusing on those texts so often claimed, both historically and more recently, as inspiration and justification for every kind of violence, from individual assassination to mass murder. With its nuanced consideration of a complex topic, this book is not merely about the religious sanctioning of violence but also about diverse ways of reading sacred textual sources.
Author: Kathryn McClymond
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801887763
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
Winner, 2009 Georgia Author of the Year Award for Creative Nonfiction For many Westerners, the term sacrifice is associated with ancient, often primitive ritual practices. It suggests the death—frequently violent, often bloody—of an animal victim, usually with the aim of atoning for human guilt. Sacrifice is a serious ritual, culminating in a dramatic event. The reality of religious sacrificial acts across the globe and throughout history is, however, more expansive and inclusive. In Beyond Sacred Violence, Kathryn McClymond argues that the modern Western world's reductive understanding of sacrifice simplifies an enormously broad and dynamic cluster of religious activities. Drawing on a comparative study of Vedic and Jewish sacrificial practices, she demonstrates not only that sacrifice has no single, essential, identifying characteristic but also that the elements most frequently attributed to such acts—death and violence—are not universal. McClymond reveals that the world of religious sacrifice varies greatly, including grain-based offerings, precious liquids, and complex interdependent activities. Engagingly argued and written, Beyond Sacred Violence significantly extends our understanding of religious sacrifice and serves as a timely reminder that the field of religious studies is largely framed by Christianity.
