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    ANIMISM

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    Amlan Baruah
    The document discusses the concepts of animism and monism. It defines animism as the belief that spirits exist in nature and objects, as seen in African traditional religions, ancient Guanche beliefs in the Canary Islands, and Shintoism in Japan. It also mentions some Hindu groups with animistic beliefs. Monism is defined as a worldview that all of reality can be reduced to a single substance, opposed to dualism and pluralism. Early Greek philosophers like Thales and Anaximenes tried to determine the single underlying substance of reality. The document then discusses how monistic societies emerged through states promoting a single dominant religion and coercing ethnic minorities to convert.

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    ANIMISM

    Uploaded by

    Amlan Baruah
    33 views2 pages
    The document discusses the concepts of animism and monism. It defines animism as the belief that spirits exist in nature and objects, as seen in African traditional religions, ancient Guanche beliefs in the Canary Islands, and Shintoism in Japan. It also mentions some Hindu groups with animistic beliefs. Monism is defined as a worldview that all of reality can be reduced to a single substance, opposed to dualism and pluralism. Early Greek philosophers like Thales and Anaximenes tried to determine the single underlying substance of reality. The document then discusses how monistic societies emerged through states promoting a single dominant religion and coercing ethnic minorities to convert.

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    The document discusses the concepts of animism and monism. It defines animism as the belief that spirits exist in nature and objects, as seen in African traditional religions, ancient Guanche beliefs in the Canary Islands, and Shintoism in Japan. It also mentions some Hindu groups with animistic beliefs. Monism is defined as a worldview that all of reality can be reduced to a single substance, opposed to dualism and pluralism. Early Greek philosophers like Thales and Anaximenes tried to determine the single underlying substance of reality. The document then discusses how monistic societies emerged through states promoting a single dominant religion and coercing ethnic minorities to convert.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    33 views2 pages

    ANIMISM

    Uploaded by

    Amlan Baruah
    The document discusses the concepts of animism and monism. It defines animism as the belief that spirits exist in nature and objects, as seen in African traditional religions, ancient Guanche beliefs in the Canary Islands, and Shintoism in Japan. It also mentions some Hindu groups with animistic beliefs. Monism is defined as a worldview that all of reality can be reduced to a single substance, opposed to dualism and pluralism. Early Greek philosophers like Thales and Anaximenes tried to determine the single underlying substance of reality. The document then discusses how monistic societies emerged through states promoting a single dominant religion and coercing ethnic minorities to convert.

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    ANIMISM- (given earlier)

    CONTEMPORARY ANIMIST TRADITIONS


     African traditional religions, a group of beliefs in various spirits of nature,
     In the Canary Islands (Spain), aboriginal Guanches professed an animistic religion.
     Shinto, the traditional religion of Japan, is highly animistic. In Shinto, spirits of
    nature, or kami, are believed to exist everywhere, from the major (such as the goddess
    of the sun), which can be considered polytheistic, to the minor, which are more likely
    to be seen as a form of animism.
     There are some Hindu groups which may be considered animist. The coastal
    Karnataka has a tradition of praying to spirits.
     The New Age movement commonly purports animism in the form of the existence of
    nature spirits and fairies.

    MONISM

    Monism is a religious-philosophical worldview in which all of reality can be reduced


    to one “thing” or “substance.” This view is OPPOSED TO DUALISM (in which all
    of reality is reducible to two substances, e.g., good and evil; light and darkness; form
    and matter; body and soul) AND PLURALISM (all of reality is comprised of
    multiple substances).

    Many of the early, pre-Socratic philosophers tried to understand the underlying nature
    of the reality that surrounded them. They wanted to determine what everything
    could be reduced to. For Thales (624–546 BC), the first principle of everything—
    that from which everything is derived—was water. For Anaximenes (585–528 BC) it
    was air.
    Broadly speaking, the concept of monism refers to faith in one God, one body of
    ritual, one set of ideology and moral doctrines. During medieval period religion
    offered a foundation to the formation of political state. It was believed that religious
    differences all over the world can only glorify the variations in political identity of
    the state. FOR EXAMPLE Roman Empire emerged as a Christian state. Middle East
    gave way to the rise of Islamic states what was known as post Egyptian civilization.

    However during 18th century slave trade, expansion of the territorial boundaries of
    the state because of warfare gave rise to the emergence of culturally pluralistic
    societies. However the major concern of the state was to transform multiculturalism
    into cultural uniformity. Therefore the state patronized one religion, permitted
    missionaries to lure ethnic minorities to go for religious conversions. As a result
    multi ethnic groups because of coercion & persuasion became a part of artificially
    constructed MONISTIC SOCIETIES.

    18th century Europe explains how cultural minorities were pushed into ghettos
    identified as slave race, forced to join warfare and heavy fines were imposed in them
    on a refusal to commanders dictates. That subsequently gave way to the rise of
    autocratic state striving for cultural unification.

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