Prologue: Encounters with Mircea Eliade and his legacy for the 21st century

To mark the centennial of Mircea Eliade, the articles in this special issue of Religion analyze various aspects of his life and his scholarship, and suggest what may be of value in Eliade's legacy for the study of religion in the 21st century. In my study, using one of Eliade's favorite terms, ‘the encounter,’ I suggest what my encounters with Eliade reveal about Eliade, his scholarship, and especially his legacy. By delineating and analyzing encounters that were remarkable, disturbing, complex, and contradictory, we may assess both strengths and weaknesses in Eliade's history and phenomenology of religion and what remains in Eliade's legacy that may be of value for the contemporary study of religion. Although Eliade's influence has certainly waned, my position is that there is much of value in his legacy, often in need of more critical reformulation, that offers a valuable critique of much of contemporary scholarship, provides valuable insights, and can serve as a catalyst allowing us to rethink our approaches to the study of religion.     

Love and anarchy in Romania : A critical review of Mircea Eliade's Autobiography, volume one, 1907–1937

Eliade is a problem: to at least half of today's historians of religion he embodies the discipline; to the other half he is anathema. I do not intend to review this debate here, nor to rehearse the themes of Eliade's massive oeuvre. I will, however, point over my shoulder to the mixed legacy of theoretical debts and doubts Eliade's work has inspired and try to bring them into relationship with the life story Eliade tells in the Autobiography. This review then attempts to show how Eliade's ‘life’ and ‘letters’ cohere and thus how in illuminating one we shed light on the other.     

The Study of Religions in the Third Reich: A Report on Work in Progress

Translator's Note. Possible connections between the study of religions and European fascism, if not indeed Nazism, have sparked considerable discussion and debate in the English-speaking world. Consider the celebrated cases of Mircea Eliade and Georges Dumézil.By contrast, the work of German scholars of religion during the NS period has been relatively little studied. Still, there have been exceptions. Burkhard Gladigow of Tübingen has published ‘Naturwissenschaftliche Modellvorstellungen in der Religionswissenschaft in der Zeit zwischen den Weltkriegen’.¹Recently, the study of religions during the Third Reich has become the subject of an ongoing seminar at Philipps-Universität Marburg. To date, one student has declared his intentions to write a thesis on the topic. Rainer Flasche, who convenes the seminar, has also worked on the topic extensively. The following essay is a preliminary indication of his results.Flasche, born in Hannover in 1942, studied theology, philosophy, German, and the history of religions in Marburg. He has taught history of religions there since 1971, making his habilitation in 1975. His best known work isDie Religionswissenschaft Joachim Wachs(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978).Readers may wish especially to note what emerges as the central principle of Nazi religio-historical hermeneutics: that only those who belong to a race (gender? class?) can understand it. Thus, only Germans can understand Germanic religion. The essay may also shed some light on the study of religions in Germany after the war. A reviewer of a recent book by Isaiah Berlin has noted how Berlin's lasting confidence in the liberal tradition perhaps derives from the usefulness of that tradition in Eastern Europe, where Berlin spent his formative years. In post-war Germany, the study of religions has emphasized a positivism that remains close to the sources and shuns explicit theorizing, an emphasis in which Flasche clearly concurs. The usefulness of this strategy should not be overlooked. It allowed German scholars of the NS period, but also later under communist rule in the Democratic Republic and to some extent within the confines of state-run theology programs in the Federal Republic, to work independently of and even oppose a sanctioned ideology. The strategy was not to champion competing theories but to oppose ideological claims with ‘facts’. This stance contrasts sharply with the theoretical richness that characterized German thought about religions before 1933, but—once burned, twice cautious.A note on terminology. The development of the nation-state took markedly different courses in the German and English speaking worlds. As a result, the wordVolkand the adjectivevölkischhave no entirely satisfactory English equivalents. The connotations of ‘nation’ are too limited, because the GermanVolkwas an ideal that transcended not only the principalities that dominated German political life from 1648 to 1866 but also the remnants of German glory that remained after World War I and even the extensive empire administered by Prussia from 1866 to 1918. Therefore, I have translatedVolkas ‘people’. But English ‘popular’ has quite a different sense fromVölkisch, so forvölkischI have used the adjective ‘national’ instead. Readers should keep in mind the direct verbal link between the two in the original.     

The diplomatic career of Mircea Eliade: A response to Adriana Berger

Adriana Berger has attacked Mircea Eliade's connection with the Romanian right-wing movement, the Iron Guard, or Legion of the Archangel Michael. Her article ‘Fascism and religion in Romania’, makes much of certain British Foreign Office documents which I have inspected in detail. Not only do these documents fail to corroborate Berger's conclusions but they cast real doubt on Berger's critical detachment. Her claim that Eliade was detained in England because of his political activities on behalf of the Iron Guard, and also of Nazi Germany, is without foundation. Other insinuations which she has made about Eliade's political motivations are subject to alternative interpretations. Eliade undoubtedly was vehemently nationalist in his youth and gave some support to the Legion of the Archangel Michael. However, we must constantly guard against permitting our pre-existent judgements of nationalism and fascism to dictate our reading of historical event. Even if justified, prejudice is still prejudice and is not acceptable scholarship.     

A critical examination of Michael Polanyi's conception of skills

In this paper I will consider some of the main issues in Michael Polanyi's discussion of ‘Skills’ from Chapter 4 of his book Personal Knowledge published in 1958.The concept of ‘skill’ features prominently in psychological theories of human performance in activities such as games, gymnastics, swimming and dance; such theories are often applied to other spheres of human activity in which issues about skill acquisition arise. It is not surprising to discover that skill theory is considered to be essential to the study of human movement and physical education. Physical education teachers in schools have consistently maintained that ‘skill acquisition’ is a major objective for the P.E. curriculum — see Kane 1974. Yet concepts such as ‘skill’, ‘ability’ and ‘know-how’ are constituent features of practical knowledge therefore the notion of ‘skill acquisition’ on its own will not do as a curriculum objective since all instances of skill and practical knowledge are specific to their contexts, namely, to different practical activities. If particular activities are valued in schools in the pursuit of children's learning and education it seems necessary to clarify the epistemological features of such activities in order to understand what it means to teach them and what it means for children to learn and know-how to perform them successfully. It is in these respects that the concept of ‘skill’ in different human activities should attract the interest of physical education students. In order to draw attention to major features of Polanyi's thesis on the nature of ‘skill’ I shall consider the relevance of his ideas about skill and knowledge in relation to human action theory. I suggest that misconceptions may arise in teaching and learning theories relating to ‘playing soccer’ if the basic underlying ideas about ‘skill’ in human activities are inconsistent with ideas about human action or, say, practical reasoning. It is this issue that is not, in my view, attended to by Polanyi in his discussion of ‘skill’. Thus, if my criticisms of Polanyi's ideas are shown to be valid it will be necessary, by implication that is, to exercise caution before any attempt is made to use his thesis as a basis from which to formulate ideas about teaching skills and skill acquisition. The extensive use I make of quotations from Polanyi's writings is necessary because it is towards Polanyi's use of language in his explanation of ‘skills’ that much of my criticism is directed. It is hoped that what follows may provide students of human movement and physical education with an insight into Polanyi's view of ‘skills’ in particular and to issues related to skill theory and human action in general.     

‘The Trojan horse of philosophia perennis’: Mircea Eliade's quest of spiritual transformation

This essay highlights one of Mircea Eliade's most important legacies to Religious Studies. The Romanian scholar never reduced the spiritual history of humankind to a mere socio-cultural construction. He defended his stance against the naturalist scholars and resisted the stream of ‘scientific atheism’ that is now towering above Religious Studies departments. The article also underlines Eliade's early intellectual influences and his idea of ‘creative hermeneutics’. I hope that this essay will contribute to a better understanding of Eliade's philosophical presuppositions.     

Religion and Mestrovic's postemotional society: the manufacturing of religious emotion

Work on the social theory of emotion has been growing in the last decade, but few have considered how these studies relate to the field of religion. This article is a detailed critical examination of the work of the Croatian–American sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic and his idea of ‘postemotionalism’. It is an exploration of the implications of his work for understanding contemporary manifestations of religion. It first unfolds the context of Mestrovic's work on postemotionalism and then explores the development and meaning of the term. It follows a series of tensions in the concept between spontaneous and produced emotion and seeks to show how postemotionalism fails to consider adequately religious history, which has continually involved the process of repackaging ‘past emotions’. Despite these difficulties, Mestrovic's idea of postemotionalism is seen to provide not only a way to rethink emotion and rationality in religion, but a way of re-conceptualising so-called ‘individual’ religious emotion as part of wider political constructions developed through late capitalistic markets and the technology of mass media. Mestrovic's lack of concern with religion is considered, and the work of the French sociologist of religion Danièle Hervieu-Léger on ‘chain memory’ is introduced as a way of illuminating questions of religious tradition, memory and emotion in Mestrovic's work. The final section of the paper considers the ‘revivalist’ developments of Celtic Spirituality as an example of the micro-politics of postemotional religion.     

The Buddha counsels a theist: A reading of the Tevijjasutta (Dīghanikāya 13)

The dominant culture in India in the Buddha's day, Brahmanical culture, took as axiomatic the existence of a supernatural creator deity. This deity, termed ‘Brahmā’, was conceived as being ‘the all-seeing, the all-powerful, the Lord, the maker and creator, ruler, appointer and orderer, father of all that have been and will be’. Although the Buddha completely rejected such apparent metaphysical speculation as a ‘thicket of views’, he nowhere formulated a systematic repudiation of theism. In one canonical text, however, the Buddha, encountering a young Brahmin espousing theistic beliefs, gives a series of analogies and similes that help to illuminate his views on the matter. In short, the Buddha saw such a belief as being dangerously reflexive, and hence as a symptom of a debilitating conceptual and affective disorder. Thus, in the dialogue, the Buddha aims to ease this ailment of his interlocutor through a threefold strategy: (1) displaying the language usage that under girds the problem; (2) reorienting the interlocutor towards the primacy of his conceptual apparatus as the proper locus of concern; and (3) providing a practice through which the interlocutor may develop the skills necessary for conceptual and affective health. The parameters of the discussion in this sutta are wide enough to render it of relevance to contemporary debates on theism. That is, the issue at stake in the sutta may be read as being not only about a restricted local notion of deity, but about God, broadly conceived. The article contains fresh translations from the text under consideration, the Tevijjasutta of the Dīghanikāya (13).     

Inverse effectiveness, multisensory integration, and the bodily self: Some statistical considerations

A recent report in Consciousness and Cognition provided evidence from a study of the rubber hand illusion (RHI) that supports the multisensory principle of inverse effectiveness (PoIE). I describe two methods of assessing the principle of inverse effectiveness (‘a priori’ and ‘post-hoc’), and discuss how the post-hoc method is affected by the statistical artefact of ‘regression towards the mean’. I identify several cases where this artefact may have affected particular conclusions about the PoIE, and relate these to the historical origins of ‘regression towards the mean’. Although the conclusions of the recent report may not have been grossly affected, some of the inferential statistics were almost certainly biased by the methods used. I conclude that, unless such artefacts are fully dealt with in the future, and unless the statistical methods for assessing the PoIE evolve, strong evidence in support of the PoIE will remain lacking.     

The psychophysics of chasing: A case study in the perception of animacy

Psychologists have long been captivated by the perception of animacy – the fact that even simple moving shapes may appear to engage in animate, intentional, and goal-directed movements. Here we report several new types of studies of a particularly salient form of perceived animacy: chasing, in which one shape (the ‘wolf’) pursues another shape (‘the sheep’). We first demonstrate two new cues to perceived chasing – chasing subtlety (the degree to which the wolf deviates from perfectly ‘heat-seeking’ pursuit) and directionality (whether and how the shapes ‘face’ each other). We then use these cues to show how it is possible to assess the objective accuracy of such percepts, and to distinguish the immediate perception of chasing from those more subtle (but nevertheless real) types of ‘stalking’ that cannot be readily perceived. We also report several methodological advances. Previous studies of the perception of animacy have faced two major challenges: (a) it is difficult to measure perceived animacy with quantitative precision; and (b) task demands make it difficult to distinguish perception from higher-level inferences about animacy. We show how these challenges can be met, at least in our case study of perceived chasing, via tasks based on dynamic visual search (the Find-the-Chase task) and a new type of interactive display (the Don’t-Get-Caught! task).     

How magic survived the disenchantment of the world

This article argues that the process described by Max Weber as the ‘disenchantment of the world’ is compatible with the continued vitality of ‘the occult’ in contemporary western culture. Focusing on the example of ‘hermetic’ magical traditions in western culture before and after the pivotal period of the Enlightenment, the article analyses the relation between continuity and change in the development of these traditions from three angles: their theories of magical efficacy, the nature of their practices and the ways in which magicians seek to legitimate magic to the wider society as well as to themselves. The discussion demonstrates that the transformation of magic under the impact of modernization and secularization resulted in the paradoxical phenomenon of a ‘disenchanted magic’. The article concludes by proposing a theory that explains why it is actually quite natural for magic to have survived the disenchantment of the world.     

Religion in the service of an elite: A sociologicallydefined imposture. the case of ancient Sparta

The following article is based upon the socio-theological framework elaborated in mybook, Heilsgeschidllicht verfasste Theologie and Männerbiinde, (Theology based on the History of Salvation versus ‘Märmerbünde‘). It attempts to correlate the recurring appearance of a gnostic worldview with the socio-psychological structures of ‘Männerbünde’ or ‘male-groups’. In doing so, it traces the gnostic method of interpreting the human condition from efforts to build an ideological superstructure in order to secure the interests of solely secular groupings; the so-called “Männerbünde’. By developing pseudo-theological constructions with their hint of true ‘theo’-logy, these secular groupings attempt to seduce people into following these newly-developed pseudotheological systems which in fact deliver them helplessly into the grip of the ‘Männerbünde’. It is through means such as these pseudo-theologies that the ‘Männerbünde’ endeavour to win almost unlimited power over the common people; hence the article's title, ‘Religion in the service of an elite’.The second element of the title, ‘A sociologically defined imposture’, refers to myunderstanding that the creation of the pseudo-theology by the ‘Minnerbünde’ does not follow the demands of theological truth but is instead ‘defined’ by the sociological rules which are to be observed if one wants to subject others to one's own private aims.Whereas the book exemplifies the proposed ideas on a larger scale by centring on historical situations taken principally from ancient and modern indo-european contexts, the present article focuses on one of the best known ‘Männerbünde’, namely, the Spartan commonwealth. Sparta's special structures, which are highly relevant in illustrating this thesis, were not considered in the book.Finally, the analysis of the Spartan material has been effected through an abstractgeneral approach, and through a socio-psychological exposition of the structures which underly and interpret the ‘Männerbünde’ text, which mainly consists of historical arguments. It is this general approach which I shall consider first.     

The self and dreams during a period of transition

The content of dreams and changes to the self were investigated in students moving to University. In study 1, 20 participants completed dream diaries and memory tasks before and after they had left home and moved to university, and generated self images, “I am…” statements (e.g. I am an undergraduate), reflective of their current self. Changes in “I ams” were observed, indicating a newly-formed ‘university’ self. These self, images and related autobiographical knowledge were found to be incorporated into recent dreams but not into dreams from other periods. Study 2 replicated these findings in a different sample (N = 55). We suggest that these data reflect a period of self-consolidation in which new experiences and self images are incorporated into autobiographical memory knowledge structures representing personal goals during sleep.     

Tradition, Authority and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed into law in 1990 and since that time has been implemented in ways that merit attention from scholars of religion. This article explores the legislative history of the law, analysing Native American appeals to ‘tradition’ in their quest to establish authority over disputed human and cultural remains. After a preliminary theoretical section that sets out relevant issues and questions, the essay engages a close reading of pivotal legislative hearings and reports, with attention to uses of religious and moral language. Building upon this reading, a dual analysis of Native American ‘traditional’ rhetoric is developed that examines the persuasive features of minority-specific claims, majority-inclusive claims and the combined force of these. Next, this line of analysis is framed in comparative and historical terms through a consideration of ‘revitalisation movements’. In light of this comparison, a case is made for interpreting NAGPRA and related movements as a primary means by which Native Americans manage their relationship to modernity, acting as critical citizens who demand their rights as Indians, Americans and human beings. The essay concludes by arguing for an understanding of social and discursive boundaries that neither limits nor is limited by ‘tradition’.     

Intelligence, reaction time (RT) and a new ‘odd-man-out’ RT paradigm

A sample of adult Ss of reasonably normal intelligence were given an ‘IQ’ test, a series of RT tests using 0, 1, 2, 3 bits of information in a Hick paradigm and an RT task requiring choice of 1 of 3 lights as an ‘odd-man-out’ on the basis of its relative position. Negative correlations were found between both RT and measures of variation in RT and ‘IQ’ for both of the two tasks. Recent results showing no correlation between Hick slope and ‘IQ’ and no increase in correlation between ‘IQ’ and RT with increasing number of bits, are confirmed. An explanation for findings of Ss whose RT data do not conform to Hick's law is tested and found inadequate. The ‘odd-man-out’ task is found to show an effect of ‘learning’ across the period of the task, the size of the learning effect was found also to correlate with ‘IQ’, but no evidence for learning was found with the choice RT task.