Abstract
As a beginning we want to distinguish rational action from rational belief. An action is rational, by and large, if it is goal-directed;1 a belief is rational if it satisfies some standard or criterion.2 When we deem a person ‘rational’ we mean he acts rationally, or he holds rational beliefs, or both. Let us call the rationality that consists in acting rationally the weak sense of ‘rationality’; and the rationality that consists in acting rationally on the basis of rationally held beliefs the strong sense of ‘rationality’. Now our thesis in this study can be formulated so: magic is rational in the weak sense, but not in the strong sense; this demarcates it from science which is rational in the strong sense.
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References
See T. Parsons and E.A. Shils, eds., Towards a General Theory of Action, Cambridge (Mass.), 1951, part 2, Ch. 1
and K.R. Popper, The Poverty of Historicism, London 1957, p. 140–2
and The Open Society and Its Enemies, London 1945 (1962 ed.), vol. ii, pp. 95–97.
See W.W. Bartley III, The Retreat to Commitment, NY 1962, ‘Rationality versus The Theory of Rationality’, in, M. Bunge, ed., The Critical Approach, Glencoe 1964, and Theories of Demarcation between Science and Metaphysics’, in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave, eds., Problems in The Philosophy of Science, Amsterdam, 1968.
The locus classicus is of course his monumental The Golden Bough, 3rd edition, London 1936, in 12 volumes plus The Aftermath. This edition is so well indexed that detailed references are almost unnecessary.
Frazer, op.cit., vol. I, pp. 423ff, Appendix ‘Hegel on Magic and Religion.’
St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part 1, Question 1, The Nature and Extent of Sacred Doctrine (in Ten Articles)’, Second Article, ‘Whether Sacred Doctrine is a Science’, Objection 2, et seq.
See M. Polanyi, The Logic of Liberty, Chicago 1951, esp. pp. 23ff.
E.R. Leach has disputed this in ‘Frazer and Malinowski’, Encounter, Nov. 1965, Vol. 15, pp. 24–36.
See Jarvie’s rebuttal ‘Academic Fashions and Grandfather Killing — In Defense of Frazer’s, Encounter, February 1966, vol. 26, pp. 53–55. “We must remember that at bottom… the laws of nature are merely hypotheses to explain that ever-shifting phantasmagoria of thought which we dignify with the high-sounding names of the world and the universe… and as science has supplanted its predecessors, so it may hereafter by itself superseded by some more perfect hypothesis… of which we in this generation can form no idea.” (The Golden Bough, op.cit., Vol. XI, p. 306).
For a very clear setting-out of this matter see C.G. Hempel, ‘Rational Action’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, Vol. XXXV, 1962, pp. 5–23.
Evans-Pritchard sums up when he says ‘It was Durkheim and not the savage who made society into a god’ in Nuer Religion, Oxford 1956, p. 313.
Evans-Pritchard’s Marrett Lecture ‘Social Anthropology Past and Present’ is reprinted in his Essays in Social Anthropology, London 1964. Apart from the works of his colleagues mentioned below, the view is to be found in D.F. Pocock’s Social Anthropology, London 1961, G. Lienhardt’s Divinity and Experience: Religion Among the Dinka, Oxford 1961, and ‘Religion’, chapter XIV in Man, Culture and Society, ed. H.L. Shapiro, New York, 1956
and Social Anthropology, London 1964
J.H.M. Beattie, Other Cultures, London 1964.
R. Firth, Essays in Social Organisation and Values, London 1964, pp. 235–7.
See Bartley, The Retreat to Commitment, op. cit.
Yet see the puzzling remark by Lienhardt, To show a religion to be reasonable, and to suggest that it is the result of reasoning from faulty premisses, as Tylor and Frazer did, are not the same thing’, ‘Religion’, op. cit., p. 315.
Evans-Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande, op. cit., especially chapter IV.
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© 1987 Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht
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Jarvie, I.C., Agassi, J. (1987). The Problem of the Rationality of Magic. In: Agassi, J., Jarvie, I.C. (eds) Rationality: The Critical View. Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, vol 23. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3491-7_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-3491-7_24
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