Download or read book Human Sacrifice and Value written by Sean O'Neill and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-26 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present volume was made possible by the Norwegian Research Council’s generous funding of the Human Sacrifice and Value project (FRIPROHUMSAM 275947). It explores concepts of human sacrifice. This volume explores concepts of human sacrifice, focusing on its value – or multiplicity of values – in relative cultural and temporal terms, whether sacrifice is expressed in actual killings, in ideas revolving around ritualized, sanctioned or sanctified violence or loss, or in transformed and (often sublimated) undertakings. Bridging a wide variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, it analyses a spectrum of sacrificial logics and actions, daring us to rethink the scholarship of sacrifice by considering the oft hidden, subliminal and even paradoxical values and motivations that underlie sacrificial acts. The chapters give needed attention to pivotal questions in studies of sacrifice and ritualized violence – such as how we might employ new approaches to the existing evidence or revise long-debated theories about what exactly ‘human sacrifice’ is or might be, or why human sacrifice seems to emerge so often and so easily in human social experience across time and in vastly different cultures and historical contexts. Thus, the volume will strike a chord with scholars of sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, religious studies, political science and economics –wherever interest is focused on critically rethinking questions of sacred and sanctified human violence, and the values that make it what it is.
Download or read book Sacrifice and Value written by Sidney Axinn and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2010-10-14 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sacrifice and Value: A Kantian Interpretation argues that we create values by making sacrifices. Values don't exist outside of us; they exist only when we give a gift without expecting a return. As Sidney Axinn demonstrates, we must have values in order to make decisions, to have friends or lovers, and to choose goals of any sort. Sacrifice is basic to almost everything of importance: care, love, religion, patriotism, loyalties, warfare, friendship, gift giving, morality. Axin uses Aristotle, Cicero, and Kant, and contemporary philosophers Oldenquest, Frankfurt, Friedman, Starobinski and others to analyze the role of sacrifice. A novel feature is the attention given to Kant's use of sacrifice. Sacrifice and Value will interest advanced students and scholars of philosophy_particularly value theory and moral theory_as well as women's studies, religion, political theory, and psychology.
Download or read book On Sacrifice written by Moshe Halbertal and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-26 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea and practice of sacrifice play a profound role in religion, ethics, and politics. In this brief book, philosopher Moshe Halbertal explores the meaning and implications of sacrifice, developing a theory of sacrifice as an offering and examining the relationship between sacrifice, ritual, violence, and love. On Sacrifice also looks at the place of self-sacrifice within ethical life and at the complex role of sacrifice as both a noble and destructive political ideal. In the religious domain, Halbertal argues, sacrifice is an offering, a gift given in the context of a hierarchical relationship. As such it is vulnerable to rejection, a trauma at the root of both ritual and violence. An offering is also an ambiguous gesture torn between a genuine expression of gratitude and love and an instrument of exchange, a tension that haunts the practice of sacrifice. In the moral and political domains, sacrifice is tied to the idea of self-transcendence, in which an individual sacrifices his or her self-interest for the sake of higher values and commitments. While self-sacrifice has great potential moral value, it can also be used to justify the most brutal acts. Halbertal attempts to unravel the relationship between self-sacrifice and violence, arguing that misguided self-sacrifice is far more problematic than exaggerated self-love. In his exploration of the positive and negative dimensions of self-sacrifice, Halbertal also addresses the role of past sacrifice in obligating future generations and in creating a bond for political associations, and considers the function of the modern state as a sacrificial community.
Download or read book Diversity of Sacrifice written by Carrie Ann Murray and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2016-05-09 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term "sacrifice" belies what is a complex and varied transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon. Bringing together scholars from such diverse fields as anthropology, archaeology, epigraphy, literature, and theology, Diversity of Sacrifice explores sacrificial practices across a range of contexts from prehistory to the present. Incorporating theory, material culture, and textual evidence, the volume seeks to consider new and divergent data related to contexts of sacrifice that can help broaden our field of vision while raising new questions. The essays contributed here move beyond reductive and simple explanations to explore complex areas of social interaction. Sacrifice plays a key role in the overlapping sacred and secular spheres for a number of societies in the past and present. How religious beliefs and practices can be integral parts of life on individual and community levels is of fundamental importance to understanding the past and present. In addition to aiding scholarly research, Diversity of Sacrifice enables students to explore this rich theme across Europe and the Mediterranean with clear discussions of theory and data.
Download or read book The Strange World of Human Sacrifice written by Jan N. Bremmer and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2007 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Strange World of Human Sacrifice is the first modern collection of studies on one of the most gruesome and intriguing aspects of religion. The volume starts with a brief introduction, which is followed by studies of Aztec human sacrifice and the literary motif of human sacrifice in medieval Irish literature. Turning to ancient Greece, three cases of human sacrifice are analysed: a ritual example, a mythical case, and one in which myth and ritual are interrelated. The early Christians were the victims of accusations of human sacrifice, but in turn imputed the crime to heterodox Christians, just as the Jews imputed the crime to their neighbours. The ancient Egyptians rarely seem to have practised human sacrifice, but buried the pharaoh's servants with him in order to serve him in the afterlife, albeit only for a brief period at the very beginning of pharaonic civilization. In ancient India we can follow the traditions of human sacrifice from the earliest texts up to modern times, where especially in eastern India goddesses, such as Kali, were long worshipped with human victims. In Japanese tales human sacrifice often takes the form of self-sacrifice, and there may well be a line from these early sacrifices to modern kamikaze. The last study throws a surprising light on human sacrifice in China. The volume is concluded with a detailed index
Download or read book Ritual Violence in the Ancient Andes written by Haagen D. Klaus and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditions of sacrifice exist in almost every human culture and often embody a society’s most meaningful religious and symbolic acts. Ritual violence was particularly varied and enduring in the prehistoric South American Andes, where human lives, animals, and material objects were sacrificed in secular rites or as offerings to the divine. Spectacular discoveries of sacrificial sites containing the victims of violent rituals have drawn ever-increasing attention to ritual sacrifice within Andean archaeology. Responding to this interest, this volume provides the first regional overview of ritual killing on the pre-Hispanic north coast of Peru, where distinct forms and diverse trajectories of ritual violence developed during the final 1,800 years of prehistory. Presenting original research that blends empirical approaches, iconographic interpretations, and contextual analyses, the contributors address four linked themes—the historical development and regional variation of north coast sacrifice from the early first millennium AD to the European conquest; a continuum of ritual violence that spans people, animals, and objects; the broader ritual world of sacrifice, including rites both before and after violent offering; and the use of diverse scientific tools, archaeological information, and theoretical interpretations to study sacrifice. This research proposes a wide range of new questions that will shape the research agenda in the coming decades, while fostering a nuanced, scientific, and humanized approach to the archaeology of ritual violence that is applicable to archaeological contexts around the world.
Download or read book Human Sacrifice and Value written by Sean ONeill and published by Studies in Death, Materiality and the Origin of Time. This book was released on 2023-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This volume explores concepts of human sacrifice, focusing on its value - or multiplicity of values - in relative cultural and temporal terms, whether sacrifice is expressed in actual killings, in ideas revolving around ritualized, sanctioned, or sanctified violence or loss, or in transformed and (often sublimated) undertakings"--
Download or read book Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos written by Kay Almere Read and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1998-07-22 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This introduction to the imaginative world of the Mexica (or Aztec) explores sacrifice in the richly textured life of 16th-century Mexico. Kay Almere Read describes a universe in which every object was timed by a given lifespan and in which sacrifice was the mechanism by which time functioned. This book makes a convincing case for what sacrifice meant religiously and for how it came to be that human sacrifice of staggering proportions could be accepted, matter-of-factly, by the Mexica people.
Download or read book Blood Sacrifice and the Nation written by Carolyn Marvin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1999-03-11 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling book argues that American patriotism is a civil religion of blood sacrifice, which periodically kills its children to keep the group together. The flag is the sacred object of this religion; its sacrificial imperative is a secret which the group keeps from itself to survive. Expanding Durkheim's theory of the totem taboo as the organizing principle of enduring groups, Carolyn Marvin uncovers the system of sacrifice and regeneration which constitutes American nationalism, shows why historical instances of these rituals succeed or fail in unifying the group, and explains how mass media are essential to the process. American culture is depicted as ritually structured by a fertile center and sacrificial borders of death. Violence plays a key part in its identity. In essence, nationalism is neither quaint historical residue nor atavistic extremism, but a living tradition which defines American life.
Download or read book Political Self Sacrifice written by K. M. Fierke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a variety of different forms of political self-sacrifice, including hunger strikes, self-burning, and non-violent martyrdom.
Download or read book Flesh and Blood Interrogating Freud on Human Sacrifice Real and Imagined written by Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fears and stories about an underground religion devoted to Satan, which demands and carries out child sacrifice, appeared in the United States in the late twentieth century and became the subject of media reports supported by some mental health professionals. Examining these modern fantasies leads us back to ancient stories which in some cases believers consider the height of religious devotion. Horrifying ideas about human sacrifice, child sacrifice, and the offering to the gods of a beloved only son by his father appear repeatedly in Western traditions, starting with the Greeks and the Hebrews. In Flesh and Blood: Interrogating Freud on Human Sacrifice, Real and Imagined, Beit-Hallahmi focuses on rituals of violence tied to religion, both imagined and real. The main focus of this work is the meaning of blood and ritual killing in the history of religion. The book examines the encounter with the idea of child sacrifice in the context of human hopes for salvation.
Download or read book Sacrifice in Judaism Christianity and Islam written by David L. Weddle and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the practice and philosophy of sacrifice in three religious traditions In the book of Genesis, God tests the faith of the Hebrew patriarch Abraham by demanding that he sacrifice the life of his beloved son, Isaac. Bound by common admiration for Abraham, the religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam also promote the practice of giving up human and natural goods to attain religious ideals. Each tradition negotiates the moral dilemmas posed by Abraham’s story in different ways, while retaining the willingness to perform sacrifice as an identifying mark of religious commitment. This book considers the way in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims refer to “sacrifice”—not only as ritual offerings, but also as the donation of goods, discipline, suffering, and martyrdom. Weddle highlights objections to sacrifice within these traditions as well, presenting voices of dissent and protest in the name of ethical duty. Sacrifice forfeits concrete goods for abstract benefits, a utopian vision of human community, thereby sparking conflict with those who do not share the same ideals. Weddle places sacrifice in the larger context of the worldviews of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, using this nearly universal religious act as a means of examining similarities of practice and differences of meaning among these important world religions. This book takes the concept of sacrifice across these three religions, and offers a cross-cultural approach to understanding its place in history and deep-rooted traditions.
Download or read book King of Sacrifice written by Sarah Hitch and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Descriptions of animal sacrifice in Homer offer detailed accounts of this attempt at communication between man and gods. Hitch explores the structural and thematic importance of animal sacrifice as an expression of the quarrel between Akhilleus and Agamemnon through the differing perspectives of the primary narrative and character speech.
Download or read book Not Sparing the Child Human Sacrifice in the Ancient World and Beyond written by Vita Daphna Arbel and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-26 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The role of human sacrifice in the ancient Mediterranean world and its implications continue to be topics that fire the popular imagination and engender scholarly discussion and controversy. This volume provides balanced and judicious treatments of the various facets of these topics from a cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural perspective. It provides nuanced examinations of ancient ritual, exploring the various meanings that human sacrifice held for antiquity, and examines its varied repercussions up into the modern world. The book explores evidence to shed new light on the origins of the rite, to whom these sacrifices were offered, and by whom they were performed. It presents fresh insights into the social and religious meanings of this practice in its varied biblical landscape and ancient contexts, and demonstrates how human sacrifice has captured the imagination of later writers who have employed it in diverse cultural and theological discourses to convey their own views and ideologies. It provides valuable perspectives for understanding key cultural, theological and ideological dimensions, such as the sacrifice of Christ, scapegoating,self-sacrifice and martyrdom in post-biblical and modern times.
Download or read book Sacrifice in the Modern World written by David Pan and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-24 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the continuing emphasis, in modern times, on sacrifice. The author takes a close look at Nazi Germany and discusses the ways in which sacrifice was distributed and structured within that society.
Download or read book Bonds of Blood written by Caroline Dodds Pennock and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-11-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of the Aztecs has been haunted by the spectre of human sacrifice. Reinvesting the Aztecs with a humanity frequently denied to them, and exploring their spectacular religious violence as a comprehensible element of life, this book integrates a fresh interpretation of gender with an innovative study of the everyday life of the Aztecs.
Download or read book Human Sacrifice in Ancient Greece written by Dennis D. Hughes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Numerous ancient texts describe human sacrifices and other forms of ritual killing: in 480 BC Themistocles sacrifices three Persian captives to Dionysus; human scapegoats called pharmakoi are expelled yearly from Greek cities, and according to some authors they are killed; Locrin girls are hunted down and slain by the Trojans; on Mt Lykaion children are sacrificed and consumed by the worshippers; and many other texts report human sacrifices performed regularly in the cult of the gods or during emergencies such as war and plague. Archaeologists have frequently proposed human sacrifice as an explanation for their discoveries: from Minoan Crete children's bones with knife-cut marks, the skeleton of a youth lying on a platform with a bronze blade resting on his chest, skeletons, sometimes bound, in the dromoi of Mycenaean and Cypriot chamber tombs; and dual man-woman burials, where it is suggested that the woman was slain or took her own life at the man's funeral. If the archaeologists' interpretations and the claims in the ancient sources are accepted, they present a bloody and violent picture of the religious life of the ancient Greeks, from the Bronze Age well into historical times. But the author expresses caution. In many cases alternative, if less sensational, explanations of the archaeological are possible; and it can often be shown that human sacrifices in the literary texts are mythical or that late authors confused mythical details with actual practices.Whether the evidence is accepted or not, this study offers a fascinating glimpse into the religious thought of the ancient Greeks and into changing modern conceptions of their religious behaviour.
