ABSTRACTThis paper presents a Kierkegaardian critique of Roy A. Rappaport’s classic treatment of religious rituals. It discusses Rappaport’s claim that public and outward acceptance of a religious ritual is sufficient for successfully enacting it – even where such acceptance is devoid of any personal commitment on the participants’ part. To interrogate Rappaport, the paper develops Jonathan Lear’s reading of Kierkegaard and builds on the Danish theologian’s remarks on the Christian sacraments to argue that, pace Rappaport, personal engagement is necessary to (...) the successful enactment of religious rituals. In this sense, I will show with Kierkegaard how inner belief is a necessary pre-requisite for the performance of any religious ritual whereas in Rappaport’s view it is ritual action itself which creates a posteriori the possibility for personal religious faith. (shrink)

In "primitive" cultures, dual symbolic classification systems draw rigid temporal and spatial boundaries between the sacred and the profane. The right and left hands are described as sacred and profane, respectively. Durkheim saw a weakening of these systems as an aspect of modernization. A weakening of such dichotomous reason is shown in two examples. First, Hertz's study of the suppression of the left hand among the Maori links the left hand to the right cerebral hemisphere of the brain. The further (...) inference he might have drawn, but did not, is that the right hemisphere and its pattern thinking might play a significant role in magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. The Maori physical confinement of the left hand is no longer practiced. Second, in the United States, Hugdahl et al. present data from eight one‐decade cohorts showing that the decrease in left‐handedness by age was countered by a corresponding increase in left‐to‐right hand switching. A lower life‐span by left handers might account for some of the change across age cohorts, but at least half of the decrease in manifest left‐handedness was accounted for by a gradual decrease in social pressure not to use the left hand. Implications for the moral solidarity of postmodern society are discussed. (shrink)