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Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2024
Abstract
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What is true of the natural and biological heritage is also the case with cultural diversity: efforts to conserve national languages, rites and traditions are swept along by the rising tide of globalization. But at the same time fashions come and go, buildings rise out of the ground, theories are constructed, new techniques result in hitherto unknown lifestyles. The cultural patchwork is like a shifting kaleidoscope. Of course this does not prevent losses from seeming to accelerate more rapidly than new creations, so that laws have become necessary to put a brake on these destructive developments.
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References
Notes
1. What memory transmits intact has in fact been more worked and reworked than what is passed on distorted: individual distortion, therefore an increasing diversity, is a normal trend where beliefs are concerned. See Pascal Boyer (2001), Et l’homme créa les dieux. Comment expliquer la religion, Paris, Robert Laffont, p. 44.
2. See in particular A. M. Hocart (2004), The Life-giving Myth and Other Essays, London, Routledge; (1970), Kings and Councillors, London/Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
3. See M. Gauchet (1985), Le Désenchantement du monde. Une histoire politique de la religion, Paris, Gallimard.
4. E. Durkheim (1911), Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris; M. Mauss (1968), ‘Essai sur le don’ [1924], in Sociologie et anthropologie, Paris, PUF (with an Introduction by C. Lévi-Strauss).
5. See especially Boyer, quoted earlier, note 1. This approach seems at first sight very regressive since it dismisses the wealth of ethnographic observations and historical data as well as advances made in analysing them, and takes into consideration only the most ephemeral aspects of the religious phenomenon: beliefs, intellectual representations and emotions. It is true that, in doing so, it follows the ‘hard’ sciences in its methods and uses experimental manipulation.
6. Here we refer the reader to the many stories of the punishment of sacrilege. For an ancient view of the issue, see for example Plutarch, On the delays of divine justice.
7. See J. Michelet (1862), La Sorcière, Paris.
8. See at the end of this issue the review of Philippe Borgeaud’s (2004) book, Aux origines de l’histoire des religions, Paris, Seuil.
9. See Plato, Socrates’ Apology, and also Florus, I.40 (3, 5), 30.
10. Plato, Laws XII, 948 c 4-7, see Republic II, 365 d 7-8.
11. Without this indifference the gods could not live in peace and happiness! See D. Obbink (1989), ‘The atheism of Epicurus’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 30(2), pp. 187-223.
12. At Eleusis, for example.
13. See L. Bruit (2001), Le Commerce des dieux. Eusebeia. Essai sur la piété en Grèce ancienne, Paris, Éditions La Découverte.
14. French archaeology has recently made public, for example, an extract from Aristotle’s exoteric work, which was found at Aï Khanoum in northern Afghanistan, or an epigrammatic poem in Kandahar, in an excellent Greek hand, which appears to be the work of an educated local summarizing the odyssey of his own life.
15. A remarkable document, discovered in 1962 and probably dating back to the 4th century BC: see for instance text, translation and commentaries by Fabienne Jourdan (2003), Paris, Les Belles Lettres.
16. Seneca, De beneficiis, I.3.
17. In French reconnaissance means both gratitude and recognition/acknowledgement (translator’s note).
18. Plato, Timaeus, 53c-54d.
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