ebook img

Sacrifice and Modern Thought PDF

290 Pages·2013·1.828 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Sacrifice and Modern Thought

SACRIFICE AND MODERN THOUGHT This page intentionally left blank Sacrifi ce and Modern Th ought EDITED BY JULIA MESZAROS AND JOHANNES ZACHHUBER 1 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Oxford University Press 2013 Th e moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2013 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2013940151 ISBN 978–0–19–965928–9 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. Preface Recent scholarship has increasingly brought to mind the extent of the impact religious and theological ideas have had on all aspects of modern European cul- ture. Th e very diversity of this infl uence, which touches on philosophical and scientifi c theories as much as on literature, music, art, and architecture means that its interpretation and appreciation today needs interdisciplinary collabo- ration. Th e present collection of essays is the product of one such attempt. Th e contributors seek to explore together ways in which the perception of, and ideas about, sacrifi ce have developed since the beginning of early modernity and how they have in their turn shaped various cultural practices. Few other religious ideas would invite such study in quite the same way. Sacrifi ce has always arrested the European mind partly because of its controversial assess- ment in Christian theology, partly because of its central importance for Greek tragedy, partly because of its evident centrality to so many diff erent historical religions. W hile our collaboration, which stretches back to an initial series of events in 2008/9, has helped us widen our individual disciplinary scope, it has also repeatedly exposed the diffi culties any such attempt encounters: the discipli- nary context within which each of us work determines not only the selection of reality that we study, but oft en also imposes normative or quasi-normative assumptions about this reality and consequently about the methodologies most suitable to understanding it. Th e resulting volume therefore does not present a single narrative of sac- rifi ce in modernity. Rather, we respect the variety and polyphony of contem- porary approaches to religion and to its presence in human culture but at the same time seek to engage them in conversation. In this process we were able to discover many areas of commonality, oft en surprising overlaps and mutual interferences between individual areas of specialization. While then the book does not claim to present a single story let alone a single theory of sacrifi ce and modern thought, it aims at more than a display of the diff erent forms of con- temporary scholarly engagement with sacrifi ce. Without imposing on them a unity they do not possess, the book hopes to show them as interlocking and mutually illustrative endeavours to come to an understanding of the complex phenomenon that is European modernity. Th e editors could not have produced this book without the help of many individuals and institutions. Th e original research for this book was funded by the British Academy. A crucial editorial meeting of all contributors was only made possible by the generous support of Oxford’s John Fell Fund. Trinity College proved a splendid host to all events that took place in preparation of vi Preface the fi nal publication. Most important, however, was the constant willingness of so many colleagues to devote their valuable time and intellectual energy to this project. Th is book is far more than the sum of its parts, and we are very conscious at this point how much we owe to the advice, criticism, feedback, and stimulation we received from all individual contributors. From a publisher’s point of view, an edited volume inevitably causes some concern, so we are all the more grateful for the helpful and supportive way Oxford University Press has dealt with our proposal right from the beginning. Th e critical response from their anonymous readers has been instrumental in improving the internal coherence of the collection. Lizzie Robottom in par- ticular has proved a constant source of advice and encouragement during the fi nal stages of producing the manuscript. Oxford, Julia Meszaros Johannes Zachhuber Contents List of Contributors ix 1. Introduction 1 Johannes Zachhuber and Julia Meszaros 2. Modern Discourse on Sacrifi ce and its Th eological Background 12 Johannes Zachhuber 3. Sacrifi ce as Self-destructive ‘Love’: Why Autonomy Should Still Matter to Feminists 29 Pamela Sue Anderson 4. Sacrifi ce, Atonement, and Renewal: Intersections between Girard, Kristeva, and Balthasar 48 Paul S. Fiddes 5. Sacrifi ce and the Self 66 Julia Meszaros 6. Sacrifi cial Cults as ‘the Mysterious Centre of Every Religion’: A Girardian Assessment of Aby Warburg’s Th eory of Religion 83 Wolfgang Palaver 7. From Slaughtered Lambs to Dedicated Lives: Sacrifi ce as Value-Bestowal 100 Jessica Frazier 8. Sacrifi ce as Refusal 115 Gavin Flood 9. Sacrifi ce in Recent Roman Catholic Th ought: From Paradox to Polarity, and Back Again? 132 Philip McCosker 10. Using Hubert and Mauss to think about Sacrifi ce 147 Nick Allen 11. Th e Aztec Sacrifi cial Complex 163 Laura Rival 12. Human Sacrifi ce and Two Imaginative Worlds, Aztec and Christian: Finding God in Evil 180 David Brown viii Contents 13. Blood Sacrifi ce as a Symbol of the Paradigmatic Other: Th e Debate about Ebó-Rituals in the Americas 197 Bettina E. Schmidt 14. Apocalypse and Sacrifi ce in Modern Film: American Exceptionalism and a Scandinavian Alternative 214 Jon Pahl 15. Human Sacrifi ce and the Literary Imagination 231 Derek Hughes Bibliographical References 249 Index 2 71 List of Contributors Nick Allen was formerly Reader in Social Anthropology of South Asia at the University of Oxford. Pamela Sue Anderson is Reader in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Oxford, and Fellow in Philosophy at Regent’s Park College. David Brown is Professor of Th eology, Aesthetics, and Culture in the Institute for Th eology, Imagination, and the Arts, and Wardlaw Professor at St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews. Paul S. Fiddes is Professor of Systematic Th eology at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow (and former Principal) of Regent’s Park College. Gavin Flood is Professor of Hindu Studies and Comparative Religion at the University of Oxford, and Academic Director of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Jessica Frazier is Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent, and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. Derek Hughes is Professor Emeritus of English and former Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies at the University of Aberdeen. Philip McCosker is Research Associate to the Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge. Julia Meszaros is Postdoctoral Researcher in Th eological Anthropology at the Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven. Jon Pahl is Professor in the History of Christianity at Th e Lutheran Th eological Seminary, Philadelphia. Wolfgang Palaver is Professor of Systematic Th eology, and Chair of the Institute of Systematic Th eology at the University of Innsbruck. Laura Rival is University Lecturer in Anthropology and Development at the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. Bettina E. Schmidt is Senior Lecturer in the Study of Religions at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Johannes Zachhuber is Reader in Th eology at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow and Tutor at Trinity College, Oxford.

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.