Captive Gods: Religion and the Rise of Social Science

In this stimulating intellectual history, Appiah (The Lies That Bind), a philosopher and author of the New York Times Magazine column “The Ethicist,” examines the central importance of the study of religion to the thinkers who established the modern social sciences. Moreover, he posits a kind of “conceptual ouroboros”: as “religion gave definition to the social sciences,” so too the social sciences “gave definition to religion.” Appiah explores this feedback loop through a “conceptual genealogy” of thinkers who helped establish the modern social sciences, primarily Edward B. Tylor, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel, while touching on others from the Enlightenment era through William James and Karl Marx. What is true of all these thinkers, Appiah argues, is that “when we think about society, we still use their lenses... and the concept of religion was used to grind those lenses.” The concepts of society and religion were likewise, he astutely observes, being molded by the framework of “scholarly attention,” itself a new invention of the modern era. Appiah also brings his own religious background to bear on his subject. Reflecting on his Ghanian father—“a good Christian” but also “a proud Asante man” who poured libations to his ancestors—Appiah notes the “discontinuities” between these traditions as openings for new understandings of both the sacred and society. It’s a rich and enchanting work of scholarship. (Oct.)