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Dr. Levy-Bruhl presents a dramatic picture of the primitives who live in a world that is capricious, unpredictable, and unstable; under the power of spirits both good and evil, to be worshipped or propitiated by ceremonies, dances, and religious rites. Dr. Levy-Bruhl shows how the mind of the primitive has no conception of the world of abstract though, natural law, causation, and categories, which has been opened up to the mind by science and philosophy. In addition, the author explains omens, talismans, amulets, ancestor worship, witchcraft, insect, defilement, and purification as fundamental parts of the primitive existence.
Excerpt from Primitives and the Supernatural Researches such as these inevitably evoke in the mind vast problems, raised long ago and still vehemently discussed, such as: Have primitives a religion? If so, what? Do they enter tain the idea of a Supreme God? And so forth. These re searches seem indeed to border upon such questions, but they never enter into the discussion. Rightly speaking, they cannot do so, for they are upon another plane altogether. It may possibly be urged that in refusing to pose such prob lems and, as a consequence, to discuss their solution, I am thereby implicitly rejecting certain among them rather than others, and that I thus eliminate them by omission. Not at all. How can I take sides in a debate that I know nothing about? It is not this or that answer to the question that I am avoiding; it is the question itself that I have no right to treat. I could not treat it without abandoning the conception of primitive men tality which I believe to be in conformity with the facts, the method I have followed from the very beginning of these stud ies, and finally, the results which this method has enabled me to Obtain. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
This book describes aspects of the concept of the supernatural from the intellectual history of Euro-American cultures. These samplings shed light on issues in the study of religions and religion rather than attempting to provide either a lineally coherent or exhaustive account of a somewhat fraught and complicated notion. Observations include uses of the term among the ancient Greeks and medieval Christian theologians and 19th- and 20th-century social scientists. This book highlights more recent academics who draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences in attempting to make sense of recurrent features of the representations and meta-representations of different cultures. This includes such counter-intuitive notions as “the mysterious” among the Wayuu of Columbia and Venezuela and “vampires” in Europe and North America. These observations are concluded in a final essay – “Toward a Realistic and Relevant Science of Religion” – which presents considered opinions on how we might draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences to establish the foundations for a genuinely scientific study of religions and religion. Benson Saler sadly passed away shortly after writing this book. An appreciation of his work, written by Armin W. Geertz, is included in this volume.
The influential jurist Hans Kelsen [1881-1973] here applies his concept of the distinction between society and nature. He shows how primitive man developed his interpretation of nature, through the laws of retribution and of causality, to a modern concept of nature and society. He holds that the gradual emancipation of the law of causality from the principle of retribution is "the emancipation from a social interpretation of nature. The process shows a relation between social and natural science which is very important from the point of view of intellectual history." (Introduction p. viii) Extensively annotated. Kelsen is known for his theory of pure positive law, as postulated in General Theory of Law and State, which is also available in a reprint edition from The Lawbook Exchange.
Includes the object of Arunta and Luritcha ceremonies, black magic, bone pointing - Dieri tribe; Punishment for breaking marriage laws; Euahlayi and Kakadu - purification rite after death; Uses of blood - Kalkadoon; Central Australia; Wonkonguru; Quotes Spencer & Gillen, Roth & Parker.
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Dystopia: A Natural History is the first monograph devoted to the concept of dystopia. Taking the term to encompass both a literary tradition of satirical works, mostly on totalitarianism, as well as real despotisms and societies in a state of disastrous collapse, this volume redefines the central concepts and the chronology of the genre and offers a paradigm-shifting understanding of the subject. Part One assesses the theory and prehistory of 'dystopia'. By contrast to utopia, conceived as promoting an ideal of friendship defined as 'enhanced sociability', dystopia is defined by estrangement, fear, and the proliferation of 'enemy' categories. A 'natural history' of dystopia thus concentrates upon the centrality of the passion or emotion of fear and hatred in modern despotisms. The work of Le Bon, Freud, and others is used to show how dystopian groups use such emotions. Utopia and dystopia are portrayed not as opposites, but as extremes on a spectrum of sociability, defined by a heightened form of group identity. The prehistory of the process whereby 'enemies' are demonised is explored from early conceptions of monstrosity through Christian conceptions of the devil and witchcraft, and the persecution of heresy. Part Two surveys the major dystopian moments in twentieth century despotisms, focussing in particular upon Nazi Germany, Stalinism, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and Cambodia under Pol Pot. The concentration here is upon the political religion hypothesis as a key explanation for the chief excesses of communism in particular. Part Three examines literary dystopias. It commences well before the usual starting-point in the secondary literature, in anti-Jacobin writings of the 1790s. Two chapters address the main twentieth-century texts usually studied as representative of the genre, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. The remainder of the section examines the evolution of the genre in the second half of the twentieth century down to the present.