When the two oppositional pairs sacred/profane and religious/profane are not mixed up, then an anthropological (and not merely religious) analysis of rituals becomes possible. The essay carries out such a detailed analysis and examines the subsequent developments from Durkheim to Habermas. Leggi tutto »
As it has been written, “Holidays are an invariant that has never stopped changing”. History, sociology, and anthropology have a legitimate predilection for variants; philosophy prefers the unchangeable ground. By this I do not mean that the former stop at the phenomena of holidays and the latter limits itself to an allegedly invariable essence. Leggi tutto »
Holidays are interruptions of ordinary time and life for the purpose of celebrating the sense, or a sense, of life itself. Holidays, which in their original sense are religious, consist of two forms, namely the sacred and the holy. Only in the form of the holy do holidays fulfill their overall purpose, which is that of giving meaning to the totality of human experience. Leggi tutto »