Le Polythéisme chez Max Weber

Polytheism in the works of Max Weber has a dual importance. First, it is one of the essential categories in religious sociology, corresponding to one of the forms of all religious experience, opposed to monotheistic systems. As such, it is the expression, religiously sublimated, of the struggle freq...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Archives de sciences sociales des religions 1986-01, Vol.31 (61.1), p.51-61
Main Author: Freund, Julien
Format: Article
Language:fre
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Summary:Polytheism in the works of Max Weber has a dual importance. First, it is one of the essential categories in religious sociology, corresponding to one of the forms of all religious experience, opposed to monotheistic systems. As such, it is the expression, religiously sublimated, of the struggle frequently found in human existence between the principles representing different divinities each time, both protective and jealous of one another. Second, polytheism contains a paradigmatic meaning, indicative of the current state of civilization, torn between antagonistic values. From this point of view, our modern disenchanted intellectualism, in its search for abstract entities, is pitted against the tragedies of life, born of the merciless combat fought out by what have become the abstractions of peace, freedom, justice, equality and other notions of the same sort, of a universal nature. In this case, polytheism is simply a metaphor, often without religious content, of the unsurmountable rivalry charcteristic of tensions in the modern world
ISSN:0335-5985