ePub Salvaged Pages: Young Writers' Diaries of the Holocaust; Second Edition by From Yale University Press in History

Description

For much of the past two centuries; religion has been understood as a universal phenomenon; a part of the “natural” human experience that is essentially the same across cultures and throughout history. Individual religions may vary through time and geographically; but there is an element; religion; that is to be found in all cultures during all time periods. Taking apart this assumption; Brent Nongbri shows that the idea of religion as a sphere of life distinct from politics; economics; or science is a recent development in European history—a development that has been projected outward in space and backward in time with the result that religion now appears to be a natural and necessary part of our world.Examining a wide array of ancient writings; Nongbri demonstrates that in antiquity; there was no conceptual arena that could be designated as “religious” as opposed to “secular.” Surveying representative episodes from a two-thousand-year period; while constantly attending to the concrete social; political; and colonial contexts that shaped relevant works of philosophers; legal theorists; missionaries; and others; Nongbri offers a concise and readable account of the emergence of the concept of religion.