Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World's Beliefs
Smart, one of the grandfathers of the study of the history of religion (along with Huston Smith and Mircea Eliade), offers a very interesting treatise on how the human animal has attempted to impose meaning on the paradox of the human condition: we are finite and time-bound, yet we are able to conceive of the eternal and the infinite. Smart walks the reader through a great mass of research, and for that alone we should be grateful. Through a series of chapters devoted to six dimensions of the world?Ritual, Mythic, Experiential and Emotional, Ethical and Legal, Social, Material?Smart delineates characteristics of religious worldviews. Two chapters, one on Doctrine and Philosophy and a final one on the Political Effects of Religion, provide bookends for his discussions. On the whole, Smart provides an extremely useful scheme for understanding the interrelationship among the various worldviews. A kind of anatomy of spirituality, designed to advance understanding of the practical and theoretical aspects of a variety of world religions, Smart's book is important reading for any serious student of religion.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.