Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West
Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West
$74.00
USDRobin Horton's critical and creative writings on African religious thought have influenced anthropologists, philosophers, and all those interested in the comparative study of religion and thought. This selection of some of his classic papers, with a new introduction and postscript by the author, traces Horton's theoretical ideas over thirty years. In attempting to understand African religious thought, he also tackles broader issues in the history and sociology of thought, such as secularisation and modernisation. Part I is a critical assessment of two established interpretive approaches, the Symbolist and the Theological. Part II proposes an alternative 'Intellectualist' approach that emphasises the structural and processual similarities between religious and scientific thinking. The postscript appraises the Intellectualist approach in the light of theorising about religion and world views.
Reviews & endorsements
"The reader is quickly drawn into Horton's world of intellectual debates on African belief, ritual and cosmology in the context of closed and open systems. The result is an intellectual feast which weaves human nature, idea, belief and action through classical, modern and postmodern theory." African Studies Review
"This is a profound, provocative, detailed and absorbing book, which deserves a wide readership." Expository Times
"The reader is quickly drawn into Horton's world of intellectual debates on African belief, ritual and cosmology in the context of closed and open systems. The result is an intellectual feast which weaves human nature, idea, belief and action through classical, modern and postmodern theory." African Studies Review
"The 1993 publication of Robin Horton's Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West, which collects some of his most important essays on African religion and modern science, offers an occasion to review the lifelong effort of this distinguished anthropologist and philosopher to demonstrate the kinship between primitive and modern thought and, more generally, between religion and science. Horton, who is English, has lived and taught for many years in Nigeria and is an expert on the Kalabari people, from whom he draws many of his examples of religious thinking." Robert S. Segal, Annals of Scholarship
Product details
July 1997Paperback
9780521369268
484 pages
229 × 152 × 27 mm
0.71kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. Beginnings: l. A definition of religion, and its uses
- Part II. Mainly Critical:
- 2. Neo-Tylorianism: sound sense or sinister prejudice?
- 3. Levy-Bruhl, Durkheim and the scientific revolution
- 4. Back to Frazer?
- 5. Professor Winch on safari
- 6. Judaeo-Christian spectacles: boon or bane to the study of African religions?
- Part III. Mainly Constructive:
- 7. African traditional thought and Western science
- 8. Paradox and explanation: a reply to Mr Skorupski
- 9. Tradition and modernity revisited
- Postscript.
