Anthropology as Ethics. T. M. S. (Terry) Evens

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      ANTHROPOLOGY AS ETHICS

      Nondualism and the Conduct of Sacrifice

      T. M. S. Evens

      Published in 2008 by

       Berghahn Books

       www.berghahnbooks.com

      © 2008, 2009 T. M. S. Evens

       First paperback edition published in 2009

      First ebook edition published in 2011

      All rights reserved.

      Except for the quotation of short passages

       for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book

       may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or

       mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information

       storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,

       without written permission of the publisher.

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Evens, T. M. S.

      Anthropology as ethics : nondualism and the conduct of sacrifice / by T. M. S. Evens. p. cm.

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-1-84545-224-7 (hbk : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-84545-629-0 (pbk : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-85745-006-7 (ebk)

       1. Ethics. 2. Dualism. 3. Sacrifice. 4. Anthropology—Philosophy. I. Title.

      BJ1031.E94 2007

       301.01—dc22

      2006100541

       British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from

       the British Library.

      ISBN 978-1-84545-224-7 hardback

      ISBN 978-1-84545-629-0 paperback

      ISBN 978-0-85745-006-7 ebook

      For Susan, my beloved—we grow old together.

      CONTENTS

       Preface

       Acknowledgments

       Organization and Key Usages

       Introduction: Nondualism, Ontology, and Anthropology

       PART I The Ethnographic Self: The Socio-political Pathology of Modernity

       1. Anthropology and the Synthetic a Priori: Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty

       2. Blind Faith and the Binding of Isaac—the Akedah

       3. Excursus I: Sacrifice as Human Existence

       4. Counter-Sacrifice and Instrumental Reason—the Holocaust

       5. Bourdieu's Anti-dualism and “Generalized Materialism”

       6. Habermas's Anti-dualism and “Communicative Rationality”

       PART II The Ethnographic Other: The Ethical Openness of Archaic Understanding

       7. Technological Efficacy, Mythic Rationality, and Non-contradiction

       8. Epistemic Efficacy, Mythic Rationality, and Non-contradiction

       9. Contradiction and Choice among the Dinka and in Genesis

       10. Contradiction in Azande Oracular Practice and in Psychotherapeutic Interaction

       PART III From Mythic to Value-Rationality: Toward Ethical Gain

       11. Epistemic and Ethical Gain

       12. Transcending Dualism and Amplifying Choice

       13. Excursus II: What Good, Ethics?

       14. Anthropology and the Generative Primacy of Moral Order

       Conclusion: Emancipatory Selfhood and Value-Rationality

       Notes

       References

       Index

      PREFACE

      I

      The problem set that serves to guide my work centers on the basic anthropological question of what makes human beings tick. For me, that question is posed best in terms of how humans do what they do rather than why. By formulating the question in this way, I bracket the matter of motivation, putting it aside. I thus wittingly pre-judge the answer to my question and highlight the irony of asking what makes human beings tick. If motivation, in the causal sense of the term, is a secondary consideration only, then specifically human conduct is in the end incomprehensible in terms of one thing or part moving another. Rather, it must be grasped ‘holistically’, as self-movement of a peculiar kind, the kind in which, oxymoronically, ‘free will’ remains tied to external agency. The movement that concerns me, then, belongs at bottom not to a clock but to a kind of self.

      Logically, such movement, where cause and effect are both different from and identical to each other, is exemplarily paradoxical. This circumstance obliges the anthropologist to investigate basic self-identifying, which is to say, the meanings imprisoned in our actions. Such lived or tacit meanings implicate self-identifying because they disclose the sense of our selves—personal, social, and cultural—as


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