Robert Ranulph Marett

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Robert Ranulph Marett (born June 13, 1866 in Saint Brélade on Jersey , † February 18, 1943 in Oxford ) was a British philosopher , ethnologist , folklorist and religious scholar .

Life

Marett's parents were the successful lawyer and future governor of Jersey Sir Robert Pipon Marett and his wife Julia Anne Marett. He attended school in Jersey and then studied classical languages ​​and philosophy at Balliol College , Oxford. While traveling through France, Italy, Germany and Switzerland, he learned German and Italian and improved his French. In Berlin he later studied philosophy at the Humboldt University and worked as a tutor in Rome for a year.

In 1891 he became a fellow and lecturer in philosophy at Exeter College , Oxford, where he was rector from 1928. His personal interests led him further and further into ethnology, and in 1893 he won the three-year Green Moral Philosophy Prize on the given topic The Ethics of Savage Races . One of the jurors was Edward Tylor , with whom Marett worked for years from then on, despite different views.

Marett, whose scientific career was very straightforward, became a tutor for philosophy in 1893. In 1899, on the anniversary of the Anthropological Section of the British Association, he gave a sensational lecture on Preanimistic Religion , which had to be understood as a challenge to Tylor's theory of animism . From then on, as the founder of pre-animism , Marett was a fixture in the scientific discussion about the beginnings of religion.

In 1910, Marett succeeded Edward Tylor as University Reader in Social Anthropology. He stayed in this position until 1936. In 1931 he was elected a member ( Fellow ) of the British Academy . His numerous writings are mainly published lectures given on the occasion of a variety of honors that have been bestowed upon him. At the same time, these numerous honors, including two honorary doctorates, show that Marett only expanded and refined his approach, but was no longer innovative.

Marett was an internationally recognized scholar who had many personal contacts with colleagues. He had been married to Nora Kirk since 1898 and had four children.

Work and effect

Marett played a major role in the ethnology of religion , he was one of the most frequently cited scholars of religion until the First World War . Marett has been referred to in all of Western religious studies, ethnology, sociology, and folklore. His work is in the study of religion an important milestone from evolutionism to functionalism and an intellectual individual psychology to affectively oriented social psychology . In this social psychological effort he shows up strongly from the English psychologist William McDougall , the only pupil of Franz Brentano in Anglo-American, influenced.

Marett's religious ethnology is shaped by a naturalistic and evolutionist anthropology oriented towards Darwin . He differentiates the biological principle of evolution from the philosophical concept of progress and he does not equate indigenous peoples (at that time still called "savages") with prehistoric groups, as was common in his time. He starts out from traditionalist and collectivist societies in relation to indigenous peoples.

In religious studies, Marett criticized conventional theories of religion such as that of Edward Tylor's animism as the original religion , because this did not take into account elementary religious phenomena such as reverence for animals, blood or impersonal forces such as thunderstorms. To James Frazer that this intellectualism on the basis of an obsolete psychology speculation instead criticized Marett about the beginnings of religion, and that he Religion and Magic separate, although both were complexed. At Émile Durkheim , Marett criticized social determinism and the assumption of social homogeneity and integration.

Marett's own theory of religion represents a transition from evolutionism to functionalism. According to Marett, there are two different dimensions of human experience, the everyday (such as the familiar, normal, predictable and controllable) and the extraordinary (such as the unknown, dangerous, life-threatening, unexpected), whereby religion psychologically based on these crisis experiences, since the extra-ordinary, uncontrollable is ascribed to superhuman or supernatural powers. Marett captured this basis of religion in the pair of terms mana - taboo and coined the term animatism . The extra-ordinary experience or encounter with a superhuman power creates the idea of ​​mana, while taboo describes the aspect of fear and avoidance of contact due to danger. Religion thus serves to overcome crises and the existential situation is shaped culturally and socially in all societies. The practices for communicating with the powers that be or for manipulating them would become routine and stereotyped and thus become a ritual . According to Marett, religion and magic cannot be differentiated on the basis of cognitive categories, but only on the basis of socio-moral evaluation. A distinction is made in societies between desirable and socially beneficial and undesirable and anti-social practices. The socially beneficial practices are valued as religion, the anti-social as magic. In the course of religious development, according to Marett, an increasing ethicization of religion sets in, which develops with advancing reflection and individualization.

Although Marett was received internationally in his time, he no longer plays a role in contemporary religious studies, as his premises are now outdated and unacceptable. Marett's work is shaped by the assumption that Western civilization is the peak of evolution, and his concepts are based on valuations that assume a religious development that he equates with increasing intellectualization and ethicalization of religion (see also: Dead-ends in ethnological research on religion ) .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed July 4, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Marett, Robert Ranulph
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British philosopher, ethnologist, folklorist and religious scholar
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH jersey
DATE OF DEATH February 18, 1943
Place of death Oxford