The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
- Lingua:
- inglese
- Traduzione:
- J. W. Swain
- Stato:
- Opera completa
- Autorialità:
- Scritta dall'autore
- Stato del testo:
- Nessun rumore di scansione rilevato (misura automatica su tutto il testo, non verificata a mano)
- Estensione:
- ~270.000 parole · 1285 passi
Cita quest'opera
- APAÉmile Durkheim. (n.d.). The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (J. W. Swain, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/it/works/emile-durkheim/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life
- MLAÉmile Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by J. W. Swain. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/it/works/emile-durkheim/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life.
- ChicagoÉmile Durkheim. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Translated by J. W. Swain. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/it/works/emile-durkheim/the-elementary-forms-of-the-religious-life.
Riferimento dell'edizione che SigPhi riproduce: SigPhi ne è la riproduzione digitale, non l'editore. L'anno dell'edizione non figura nei metadati (da qui «n.d.») e il traduttore compare solo quando è noto.
Di che cosa tratta
Il libro in cui Durkheim cerca la forma più semplice di religione per capirle tutte, e conclude che ciò che una società adora, senza saperlo, è se stessa.
Contesto e storia
Uscito nel 1912. Prende come caso elementare il totemismo dei popoli aborigeni australiani, e qui serve una precisazione onesta: Durkheim non vi andò mai. Lavora su etnografie altrui, e quel materiale è stato assai contestato in seguito, sia per la qualità sia per il presupposto che quelle società fossero «elementari». L'argomento sociologico — il sacro come forza collettiva, il rito come ciò che la tiene viva — ha retto assai meglio del materiale su cui fu costruito.
Contesto editoriale, non una fonte citabile: a differenza dei passi dell'opera, questi dati non si possono verificare sul corpus.
the causes which called it into existence, though remaining active, are no longer perceived, except across a vast scheme of interpretations which quite transform them. Popular mythologies and subtile theologies have done their work: they have superimposed upon the primitive sentiments others which are quite different, and which, though holding to the first, of which they are an elaborated form, only allow their true nature to appear very imperfectly. The psychological gap between the cause and the effect, between the apparent cause and the effective cause, has become more considerable and more difficult for the mind to leap. The remainder of this book will be an illustration and a verification of this remark on method. It will be seen how, in the primitive religions, the religious fact still visibly carries the mark of its origins: it would have been well-nigh impossible to infer them merely from the study of the more developed religions. The study which we are undertaking is therefore a way of taking up again, _but under new conditions_, the old problem of the origin of religion. To be sure, if by origin we are to understand the very first beginning, the question has nothing scientific about it, and should be resolutely discarded. There was no given moment when religion began to exist, and there is consequently no need of finding a means of transporting ourselves thither in thought. Like every human institution, religion did not commence anywhere. Therefore, all speculations of this sort are justly discredited; they can only consist in subjective and arbitrary constructions which are subject to no sort of control. But the problem which we raise is quite another one. What we want to do is to find a means of discerning the ever-present causes upon which the most essential forms of religious thought and practice depend.…