Philosophy and the End of Sacrifice: Disengaging Ritual in Ancient India, Greece and Beyond 2015 (The Study of Religion in a Global Context) - Softcover

Peter Jackson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1781791252 ISBN 13: 9781781791257

Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2016

Synopsis

This volume addresses the means and ends of sacrificial speculation by inviting a selected group of specialists in the fields of philosophy, history of religions, and indology to examine philosophical modes of sacrificial speculation - especially in Ancient India and Greece - and consider the commonalities of their historical raison d'etre. Scholars have long observed, yet without presenting any transcultural grand theory on the matter, that sacrifice seems to end with (or even continue as) philosophy in both Ancient India and Greece. How are we to understand this important transformation that so profoundly changed the way we think of religion (and philosophy as opposed to religion) today? Some of the complex topics inviting closer examination in this regard are the interiorisation of ritual, ascetism and self-sacrifice, sacrifice and cosmogony, the figure of the philosopher-sage, transformations and technologies of the self, analogical reasoning, the philosophy of ritual, vegetarianism, and metempsychosis.

About this title

About the Author

Peter Jackson is Professor at the department of History of Religions at Stockholm University, Sweden. His most recent book is The Transformations of Helen: Indo-European Myth and the Roots of the Trojan Cycle (2007). Anna-Pya Sjodin is Senior lecturer in the study of religions at Mid- Sweden University in the department of Humanities and affiliated researcher at Uppsala University in the department of Linguistics and Philology.

Edition details

• Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1781791252
• ISBN 13: 9781781791257
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 244
• Editor: Peter Jackson, Anna-Pya Sjodin