{"title":"The Glory Jest and Riddle: Jonathan Z. Smith and an Aesthetic of Impossibles","authors":"Sam Gill","doi":"10.1163/15685276-20231702","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\nThe late Jonathan Z. Smith was a central influence in the development of a study of religion on a par with the social and even natural sciences. This article reexamines Smith’s legacy for the inspiration to build a proper academic study of religion. It looks to Smith’s common use of jokes and riddles, grounded in his early studies of Frazer’s The Golden Bough, in order to tease out not simply stylistic or methodological concerns, but fundamental philosophical shapings of religion theory. I develop a presentation of this position in what is termed an aesthetic of impossibles, the distinctively human capacity of considering things as equal or identical knowing full well that they are not and doing so without any necessity for reconciliation. This aesthetic is examined and illustrated in a consideration of Smith’s views of comparison and mapping. In an extended discussion, it is also considered in terms of human self-moving as the marker of vitality, established in both philosophy and biology.","PeriodicalId":45187,"journal":{"name":"NUMEN-INTERNATIONAL REVIEW FOR THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.7000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"NUMEN-INTERNATIONAL REVIEW FOR THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685276-20231702","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"HISTORY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The late Jonathan Z. Smith was a central influence in the development of a study of religion on a par with the social and even natural sciences. This article reexamines Smith’s legacy for the inspiration to build a proper academic study of religion. It looks to Smith’s common use of jokes and riddles, grounded in his early studies of Frazer’s The Golden Bough, in order to tease out not simply stylistic or methodological concerns, but fundamental philosophical shapings of religion theory. I develop a presentation of this position in what is termed an aesthetic of impossibles, the distinctively human capacity of considering things as equal or identical knowing full well that they are not and doing so without any necessity for reconciliation. This aesthetic is examined and illustrated in a consideration of Smith’s views of comparison and mapping. In an extended discussion, it is also considered in terms of human self-moving as the marker of vitality, established in both philosophy and biology.
已故的乔纳森·z·史密斯(Jonathan Z. Smith)对宗教研究的发展产生了核心影响,其影响力与社会科学甚至自然科学不相上下。本文重新审视了史密斯的遗产,以启发我们建立一个适当的宗教学术研究。它着眼于史密斯在早期对弗雷泽的《金枝》的研究中常用的笑话和谜语,不仅是为了梳理出风格或方法上的问题,而且是为了梳理出宗教理论的基本哲学形态。我用所谓的“不可能的美学”来阐述这一立场,这是人类特有的一种能力,即认为事物是平等或相同的,完全知道它们不是平等或相同的,而且这样做不需要任何和解。这种美学在考虑史密斯的比较和映射观点时得到了检验和说明。在进一步的讨论中,它也被认为是人类自我运动作为活力的标志,在哲学和生物学中都有确立。
期刊介绍:
Numen publishes papers representing the most recent scholarship in all areas of the history of religions. It covers a diversity of geographical regions and religions of the past as well as of the present. The approach of the journal to the study of religion is strictly non-confessional. While the emphasis lies on empirical, source-based research, typical contributions also address issues that have a wider historical or comparative significance for the advancement of the discipline. Numen also publishes papers that discuss important theoretical innovations in the study of religion and reflective studies on the history of the discipline.