Imagining Karma

Ethical Transformation in Amerindian, Buddhist, and Greek Rebirth

By:

Gananath Obeyesekere

Format:

Paperback / softback

Series:

Comparative Studies in Religion and Society

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Description

Exploring the beliefs of small-scale societies of West Africa, Melanesia, traditional Siberia, Canada, and the northwest coast of North America, this text compares their ideas with those of ancient and modern Indic civilizations and with the Greek rebirth theories of Pythagoras, Empedocles, Pindar, and Plato. The discussion decentres the popular notion that India was the origin and locus of ideas of rebirth. As Obeyesekere compares responses to the most fundamental questions of human existence, he challenges readers to re-examine accepted ideas about death, cosmology, morality, and eschatology. The text shows that diverse societies have come through independent invention or borrowing to believe in reincarnation as an integral part of their larger cosmological systems. In a contemporary intellectual context that celebrates difference and cultural relativism, this book makes a case for disciplined comparison, a humane view of human nature, and a theoretical undersanding of "family resemblances" and differences across great cultural divides.

Author Biography:

Gananath Obeyesekere is Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, at Princeton University. He is the author of The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific (1997), The Cult of the Goddess Pattini (1984), Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience (1984), and The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology (1990).

Release date Australia

November 11th, 2002

Author

Gananath Obeyesekere

Audience

Professional & Vocational

Illustrations

11 line illustrations

Pages

477

Series

Comparative Studies in Religion and Society

Dimensions

152x229x28

ISBN-13

9780520232433

Product ID

25213451

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