Ritual and its Consequences

Ritual is usually understood as pointing to some essence beyond the ritual act itself. This ambitious interdisciplinary study offers a convincing challenge to this understanding. The authors begin by seeking to explain how the conventional idea arose in the first place. They locate its origin in a post-Protestant and post-Enlightenment vision of ritual action that emphasizes rituals as merely external signs of interior states. This approach, say the authors, is partof a far larger way of relating to the self and to the world, which they label "sincerity." But ritual, they say, is the very opposite of sincerity because it consists of stylized, repetitive interactions that construct an "as if" world, a world of role, propriety, play, and even fantasy, rather thanpointing to the world as it actually is. In fact, that is ritual's great contribution. Ritual modes of behavior make a shared social world possible by helping to navigate between diverse people and groups, rather than attempting to transcend and efface boundaries. After setting forth this argument, the authors go on to build on it by showing how sincerity and ritual are stand-ins for two very different ways of being in the world. Although both modes are always present to some degree, modernityhas deeply privileged sincerity and authenticity. And, they say, we are now paying a heavy price for this extreme and often totalizing projection of personality in contemporary political life.

a superb defence of recourse to ritual propriety and doing the right thing, as against the embarrassing self-indulgences of modern sincerity and authenticity., exudes a breadth of expertise and experience rooted in a long and fruitful multidisciplinary conversation

Adam B. Seligman is Professor of Religion and Research Associate at the Institute for Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. Robert P. Weller is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Research Associate at the Institute for Culture, Religion, and World Affairs at Boston University. Michael J. Puett is Professor of Chinese History at Harvard University. Bennett Simon is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Training and Supervising Analyst at Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute.