Preanimism

Pre-animism is a religious-scientific and religious-ethnological term that describes an assumed religious stage that precedes animism . The various pre-animist theories are now considered obsolete.

Pre-animistic assumptions

The term preanimism was introduced by Robert Ranulph Marett when, in 1899, on the anniversary of the Anthropological Section of the British Association, he gave a sensational lecture on preanimistic religion that had to be understood as a challenge to Edward B. Tylor 's theory of animism. In the following years, however, Marett 's theory was referred to as animatism , while the term pre-animism was extended to all theories that suspected the origin of religion a stage before animism.

Besides animatism, this state is sought, for example, in a magical belief in power and magic (dynamism) or in totemism . The theory of primeval monotheism (including Andrew Lang , Wilhelm Schmidt ), on the other hand, assumes an original belief in one God that preceded animistic and magical ideas. In any case, the problem turned out to be the hypothetical character of these constructions, the difficult comparability of religious phenomena and, in particular, the assumption of a regular chronological succession where they actually exist side by side (see also: Dead ends in ethnological research on religion ).

literature

• Alfred Bertholet : Dictionary of Religions , Alfred Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1952, third edition, newly edited., Erg. U. ed. by Kurt Goldammer 1976, ISBN 3-520-12503-X
• Kurt Goldammer : The world of forms of the religious , Alfred Kröner Verlag, Stuttgart 1960, p. 102 f.