The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

Abstract

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Sacrificial Symbolism in Animal Experimentation: Object or Pet?

“…Things can become sacred without becoming religious. The sacred encompasses an area larger than the religious by uniting things into a single moral community (Durkheim, 1965).…”

Taking Animism Seriously, but Perhaps Not Too Seriously?

“…But of what? … Th e totemic principle can … be nothing else than the clan itself, personifi ed and represented to the imagination under the visible form of the animal or vegetable which serves as totem" (Durkheim [1912(Durkheim [ ] 1976.…”

Ta' Pinu

“…Each person has his/ her own unique problems, but along the lines that persons are linked together as 'brothers and sisters', the dialectic between the individual and society is coloured by a Catholic ideology in the context of Ta' Pinu. This is not to suggest that religion is the ritual realisation of communitas or society over the individual (Turner 1967;Durkheim 1976), but rather that it is through the individual that religion is reproduced, and the individual replicates the greater Christian world in him/herself by opening up, empathising and sympathising with others, whilst leaving open the possibility of receiving God's graces. There is also community healing, not in the Pentecostal form, but in the sense that people are interceding and praying for others, whilst others are praying for them as well.…”