This chapter turns directly to the tension between sincerity and ritual. Sincerity often appears as a reaction against the perceived hypocrisy of ritual; these reactions in turn tend to ritualize over time. Sincerity offers the world “as is” instead of ritual's “as if”, a world of discursive meanings and unique selves instead of repeated acts and fragmented worlds. Modernity has brought an especially powerful turn toward sincerity. One crucial implication has been a utopian search for wholeness as part of a general dissolution of social boundaries in principle, even as people constantly reassert them in fact. It is suggested that phenomena like “fundamentalism” are more usefully understood in relation to this dynamic than the more usual claim that they are returns to tradition.
This book shows how rituals allow us to live in a perennially imperfect world. The book, building on anthropological theories, draws examples of ritual attitudes from a variety of cultural settings, including original comparisons of Chinese and Jewish discussions of ritual and its importance. The book utilizes psychoanalytic and anthropological perspectives on how ritual, like play, creates “as if” worlds, drawing upon the imaginative capacity of the human mind to create a subjunctive universe. This ability to cross between imagined worlds is central to the human capacity for empathy. The limits of this capacity mark the boundaries of empathy. The chapters juxtapose this ritual orientation to a “sincere” search for unity and wholeness. The sincere world sees fragmentation and incoherence as signs of inauthenticity that must be overcome. Our modern world has accepted the sincere viewpoint, at the expense of ritual, to a degree rarely seen in other times. It has often dismissed ritual as mere convention. The chapters point to the modern disavowal of ritual in the creation of fundamentalist movements as well as other extremist positions. Portions of the book take up questions of music, architecture, and literature, which also show the tensions between ritual and sincerity. The book shows that ritual, at least in its relationship to the rest of experience, is never totally coherent and never complete. Ritual is work, endless work. But it is among the most important things that we humans do.
This is a discussion of possible approaches for the critical study of Chinese religions.
The goal of this paper is to explore some of the theories that arose in classical China concerning the ways in which normativity could be construed in ritual terms. I focus particular attention on the theories that were developed in portions of the Book of Rites (Liji), which would become one of the most influential bodies of ritual theory throughout East Asia. I will argue that some of these theories deserve to be incorporated into our contemporary philosophical understandings of normativity. To make this argument, I will be turning to some rather-given my ultimate goals in this paper-counterintuitive material, including early Chinese discussions of mourning rituals. But I will try to argue that this material has something to offer contemporary discussions. 1 Rituals and Norms Let me begin by mentioning one of the common criticisms made against the argument that we should take theorists of ritual seriously when discussing norms. Perhaps one of the reasons we often denigrate the significance of rituals is that we think rituals essentially function to socialize us into a way of thinking and acting. In other words, rituals tell us what to do. So, if the norms embedded within a given ritual are good, then the ritual would perhaps be acceptable. But what if the norms are not, from our point of view, acceptable? Following them would then entail submitting ourselves to "traditional" values, as opposed to having norms that could at least potentially be rationally adjudicated and altered. It is, of course, entirely possible to have ritual traditions that become rigidified and function in a top-down way to instill values on a population. But thinking that
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