Concept
Animism
Overview
religious worldview
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Animism is discussed.
Animism is a system of thought, it gives not only the explanation of a single phenomenon, but makes it possible to comprehend the totality of the world from one point, as a continuity. Writers maintain that in the course of time three such systems of thought, three great world systems came into being: the animistic (mythological), the religious, and the scientific.
Sigmund Freud, Totem and taboo
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
We have seen that the postulate at the basis of animism is that religion, at least in its origin, expresses no physical reality. But Max Müller commences with the contrary principle. For him, it is an axiom that religion reposes upon an experience, from which it draws all its authority.
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
The believer in animism was not in the least aware of any contradiction in holding, as he did for a long time, that these two forms, the corporeal soul and the breath soul, exist side by side. His concern was not with concepts that might be scientifically examined in such a way as to effect a reconciliation of the separate ideas or a resolution of their contradictions.
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
author linked in the graph; opens on it; names the idea
When practice has cooerdinated activity, and reflection distinguished places, animism proper arises. First the environment is felt as the soul's kindred; then its operations are fancied in terms dramatic and personal.
John Dewey, Creative Intelligence
opens on it; names the idea
almost to the æon "of chaos and eternal night,"—at any rate, to an abysm of time which is such that neither linguistic palæontology nor any other science has dared "to venture down The dark descent and up to reascend." But if the proposition submitted in the previous sections be sound, if in early but still historic times Italian religion was still in a stage anterior to polytheism, then Aryan animism is no longer a…
Plutarch, Plutarch's Romane Questions
states what it is; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Animism
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Place in the tradition
Part of Outline of philosophy.
Narrower topics:
- Animal
- Anthropomorphism
- Arctic
- Auguste Comte
- Avatar
- Biocentrism (ethics)
- Bruno Latour
- Cartesianism
- Chinese folk religion
- Chinua Achebe
- Columbia University Press
- Culture
- Darwinism
- Divination
- Edward Burnett Tylor
- Ghaznavid Empire
- Giordano Bruno
- Guinness World Records
- Gujarat
- Incarnation (Christianity)
- Indian religions
- Indigenous peoples
- Infobase
- Inuit