Religion in Human Evolution : From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age / Robert N. Bellah.
2011
BL256 .B435 2011
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Details
Title
Religion in Human Evolution : From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age / Robert N. Bellah.
Author
Bellah, Robert N., author.
ISBN
9780674063099
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2011]
Copyright
©2011
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (784 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/harvard.9780674063099 doi
Call Number
BL256 .B435 2011
Dewey Decimal Classification
200.89/009
Summary
Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition-a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.How did our early ancestors transcend the "idian demands of everyday existence to embrace an alternative reality that called into question the very meaning of their daily struggle? Robert Bellah, one of the leading sociologists of our time, identifies a range of cultural capacities, such as communal dancing, storytelling, and theorizing, whose emergence made this religious development possible. Deploying the latest findings in biology, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology, he traces the expansion of these cultural capacities from the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (roughly, the first millennium BCE), when individuals and groups in the Old World challenged the norms and beliefs of class societies ruled by kings and aristocracies. These religious prophets and renouncers never succeeded in founding their alternative utopias, but they left a heritage of criticism that would not be quenched. Bellah's treatment of the four great civilizations of the Axial Age-in ancient Israel, Greece, China, and India-shows all existing religions, both prophetic and mystic, to be rooted in the evolutionary story he tells. Religion in Human Evolution answers the call for a critical history of religion grounded in the full range of human constraints and possibilities.
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Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Aug 2021)
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Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Religion and Reality
2. Religion and Evolution
3. Tribal Religion: The Production of Meaning
4. From Tribal to Archaic Religion: Meaning and Power
5. Archaic Religion: God and King
6. The Axial Age I: Introduction and Ancient Israel
7. The Axial Age II: Ancient Greece
8. The Axial Age III: China in the Late First Millennium BCE
9. The Axial Age IV: Ancient India
10. Conclusion
Notes
Index
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Religion and Reality
2. Religion and Evolution
3. Tribal Religion: The Production of Meaning
4. From Tribal to Archaic Religion: Meaning and Power
5. Archaic Religion: God and King
6. The Axial Age I: Introduction and Ancient Israel
7. The Axial Age II: Ancient Greece
8. The Axial Age III: China in the Late First Millennium BCE
9. The Axial Age IV: Ancient India
10. Conclusion
Notes
Index