Abstract
Animism is the belief that human beings have souls, or, by extension, the belief that animals, plants or even rocks have souls; that is, that they are subjects of feeling or consciousness, or display intelligence, in ways that ensouled human beings do. This extended view is sometimes called animatism or panpsychism, in order to distinguish it from the more restricted view, though in common usage ‘animism’ seems typically to embrace the broader view, often preceded by the adjective ‘primitive’, to suggest that a belief in the souls of plants is something that has been largely outgrown.
What am I believing in when I believe that men have souls? What am I believing in, when I believe that this substance contains two carbon rings? In both cases there is a picture in the foreground, but the sense lies far in the background; that is, the application of the picture is not easy to survey. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, § 422)
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Notes
G.T. Fechner, Religion of a Scientist, trans. W. Lowrie (New York: 1946), pp. 176–7; cited in Paul Edwards, ‘Panpsychism’, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1967), vol. 6, p. 22B.
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans. R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp (London: 1883), Book II, section 23; cited in Edwards, ‘Panpsychism’, p. 25A.
Hermann Lotze, Mikrokosmus (Leipzig: 1856–64); Microcosmus, trans. E. Hamilton and E.E.C. Jones (New York: 1890), vol. I, p. 363; cited in Edwards, ‘Panpsychism’, pp. 22B-23A, 23B.
Northcote Whitbridge Thomas, ‘Animism’, Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edition (New York: The Encyclopedia Britannica Company, 1910), p. 52A.
David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 7.
T.H. Huxley, Nature (1881), no. 615, p. 344; cited in The Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘animism’, p. 336B.
Bryan Wilson, Contemporary Transformations of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 116.
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Paul Feyerabend, ‘Realism and the Historicity of Knowledge’, The Journal of Philosophy LXXXVI, 8 (August 1989), pp. 398, 400.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), §§ 6.371–2, p. 143.
Robin Horton, ‘African Traditional Thought and Western Science’, in Rationality, ed. Bryan R. Wilson (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970), pp. 133, 134, 136.
Wittgenstein, ‘Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough’, trans. John Beversluis, in Wittgenstein: Sources and Perspectives, ed. C.G. Luckhardt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 71.
Peter Winch, ‘Eine Einstellung zur Seele’, in Trying to Make Sense (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 146.
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), p. 213.
Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), PP. 43, 42.
V.Y. Mudimbe and Kwame Anthony Appiah, ‘The Impact of African Studies on Philosophy’, in Africa and the Disciplines, ed. Robert H. Bates, V.Y. Mudimbe and Jean O’Barr (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 126.
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), pp. 203, 204, 205.
G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, trans. T.M. Knox (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1952), para. 185, p. 123.
Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, trans. H.T. Lowe-Porter (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), p. 94.
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Eldridge, R. (1996). Is Animism Alive and Well?. In: Phillips, D.Z. (eds) Can Religion be Explained Away?. Claremont Studies in the Philosophy of Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24858-2_1
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