RELG 456 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Metaphysics, Clifford Geertz, General Order

• School: McGill University
• Department: Religious Studies
• Course: RELG 456
• Professor: Jim Kanaris

Document Summary

Opponent of functionalist-reductionism (marx, durkheim, and freud): rejects explanation of religion, rejects the notion that religion is any human cultural system. Particularist : does not search for a universal theory. Culture: an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men [and women] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life (geertz, 3). Culture patterns: systems or complexes of symbols (geertz, 6). 1. are extrinsic sources of information : provide ( ) programs for the institution of the social and psychological processes which shape public behavior , they are both a model of reality and a model for reality. Symbol: an object, act, event, quality, or relation which serves as a vehicle for conception. The conception is the is the symbol"s meaning (geertz, 5). Cultural acts: the construction, apprehension, and utilization of symbolic forms, are social events like any other (geertz, 5).