Show simple item record

dc.contributor.authorJohnson, Paul Christopher
dc.date.accessioned2023-06-08T16:43:35Z
dc.date.available2023-06-08T16:43:35Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.identifierONIX_20230608_9780226749860_9
dc.identifier.urihttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/63446
dc.description.abstractWhat distinguishes humans from nonhumans? Two common answers—free will and religion—are in some ways fundamentally opposed. Whereas free will enjoys a central place in our ideas of spontaneity, authorship, and deliberation, religious practices seem to involve a suspension of or relief from the exercise of our will. What, then, is agency, and why has it occupied such a central place in theories of the human? Automatic Religion explores an unlikely series of episodes from the end of the nineteenth century, when crucial ideas related to automatism and, in a different realm, the study of religion were both being born. Paul Christopher Johnson draws on years of archival and ethnographic research in Brazil and France to explore the crucial boundaries being drawn at the time between humans, “nearhumans,” and automata. As agency came to take on a more central place in the philosophical, moral, and legal traditions of the West, certain classes of people were excluded as less-than-human. Tracking the circulation of ideas across the Atlantic, Johnson tests those boundaries, revealing how they were constructed on largely gendered and racial foundations. In the process, he reanimates one of the most mysterious and yet foundational questions in trans-Atlantic thought: what is agency?
dc.languageEnglish
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefsen_US
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QR Religion and beliefs::QRM Christianityen_US
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JH Sociology and anthropology::JHM Anthropology::JHMC Social and cultural anthropologyen_US
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHD European historyen_US
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHK History of the Americasen_US
dc.subject.otherbrazil
dc.subject.otherbrazilian
dc.subject.otherfrance
dc.subject.otherfrench
dc.subject.otherreligion
dc.subject.otherreligious studies
dc.subject.otherhistory
dc.subject.otherhistorical
dc.subject.otherhumanity
dc.subject.otherhumans
dc.subject.othernonhumans
dc.subject.otherfree will
dc.subject.otherfreedom
dc.subject.other19th century
dc.subject.otherautomatism
dc.subject.otherethnography
dc.subject.otherarchival research
dc.subject.otherphilosophy
dc.subject.othermorality
dc.subject.otherethics
dc.subject.othermorals
dc.subject.otherethical
dc.subject.otherlegalism
dc.subject.otherlegal
dc.subject.othergender
dc.subject.otherrace
dc.subject.otheranthropology
dc.subject.otherdeterminism
dc.subject.othercase study
dc.subject.otherculture
dc.subject.otheragency
dc.subject.otheraction
dc.subject.otherability
dc.subject.otherunderstanding
dc.titleAutomatic Religion
dc.title.alternativeNearhuman Agents of Brazil and France
dc.typebook
oapen.identifier.doi10.7208/chicago/9780226749860.001.0001
oapen.relation.isPublishedBy9ff930ac-8023-4fa3-80ee-d7b1cb3cd84f
oapen.relation.isbn9780226749860
oapen.relation.isbn9780226749693
oapen.relation.isbn9780226749723
oapen.collectionToward an Open Monograph Ecosystem (TOME)
oapen.imprintUniversity of Chicago Press
oapen.pages312
oapen.place.publicationChicago


Files in this item

Thumbnail

This item appears in the following Collection(s)

Show simple item record