Towards a Natural History of Religion

Abstract

Taking as point of departure Walter Burkert's work, this article seeks to theorise the relationship between needing and getting, choreographed by ritual and mythology, and the formal excess that characterises religious practices. While the formal complexity that characterises ritual activity and doctrinal elaboration reminds us of the parallels between religions and the aesthetic realm, the fact that the satisfaction of the needs of organisms is sought against a background of scarcity reminds us of the role of power. It is, however, to work—that is, to what human organisms generally do in order to satisfy their needs—that one must turn, if one is to understand religion. Despite the formal parallels between the organisation of work and the organisation of rituals, and of the role played by rituals in the timing of agricultural and other kinds of labour, ‘work’ is largely absent from studies of religion. This absence, related to the turning away from concepts even vaguely connected with Marx, seems to go hand in hand with the repression of the working body in contemporary ‘theory’. Rejecting such repression, this article focuses on human labour as a key for understanding the emergence of religion.