Religion, Emergence, and the Origins of Meaning : Beyond Durkheim and Rappaport.

Intro -- Religion, Emergence, and the Origins of Meaning: Beyond Durkheim and Rappaport -- Copyright -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- PART 1: The Emergent Dynamics of Religion -- 1: Religion as an Emergent Phenomenon -- Introduction -- An Overview of the Argument -- Background to the Emergent Theories of Durkheim and Rappaport -- Assumptions I will Make in this Study -- 2: Rappaport, Revisited -- Introduction -- Rappaport's Theory of Religion -- An Alternative Account of Rappaport -- The Example of Haitian Voodoo -- Summary -- 3: Emergence and Semiotics - a Primer -- Emergent Systems -- Semiotics -- Important Ideas from Other Theorists -- Summary -- 4: Religion's Emergent Characteristics -- The Importance of Human Culture -- The Emergent Dynamics of Human Culture -- Teleodynamic Religion and the Role of Symbolic Reference -- Semantic Closure, Strange Loops, and the Creation of a Social 'Self' -- PART 2: The Emergence of Meaning in Religion -- 5: David Sloan Wilson and Daniel Dennett - Religion without Meaning -- Wilson's Thesis -- Is Religion Best Assessed by a Biological Theory? -- Daniel Dennett's View of Religion -- Response from an Emergent Approach to Religion -- 6: Émile Durkheim and the Emergence of Meaningful Social Agency -- Emergence and Cultural Sociality -- Why Religion? -- The Problem with Durkheim's Conception of Religion -- Durkheim and Emergent Meaning -- 7: Varieties of Religious Meaning -- Religion offers 'Therapeutic Truth' -- Social Orientation -- Emergent Selves needing Orientation -- Different Ways of Considering the 'Spiritual Map', and Their Implications -- Summary -- Appendix: Confucianism as a Test Case -- Works Cited -- Index.

In Religion, Emergence, and the Origins of Meaning, Paul Cassell uses 'emergence theory' to explain why religion is so meaningful to individuals and central to social life, going beyond the foundational explanations of Émile Durkheim and Roy Rappaport.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.