Inventing superstition
from the hippocratics to the christians
- ISBN: 9780674015340
- Editorial: Harvard University Press
- Fecha de la edición: 2004
- Lugar de la edición: Cambridge (Massachusetts). Estados Unidos de Norteamérica
- Encuadernación: Cartoné
- Medidas: 22 cm
- Nº Pág.: 307
- Idiomas: Inglés
Provides a detailed genealogy of the idea of superstition, its history over eight centuries, from classical Greece to the Christianized Roman Empire of the 4th Century AD. This work demonstrates that the concept of superstition was invented by Greek intellectuals to condemn popular religious practices and beliefs
Superstitious Christians
Problems of definition
Inventing Deisidaimonia: Theophrastus, religious etiquette, and theological optimism
Dealing with disease: the Hippocratics and the divine
Solidifying new sensibility: Plato and Aristotle on the optimal universe
Diodorus Siculus and the failure of philosophy
Cracks in the philosophical system: Plutarch and the philosophy of demons
Galen on the necessity of nature and theology and teleology
Roman superstitio and Roman power
Celsus and the attack on Christianity
Origen and the defense of Chrisianity
The philosophers turn: philosophical daimons in late antiquity
Turning the tables: Eusibius, the triumphy in Christianity, and the superstition of the Greeks
Conclusion: the rist and fall of a grand optimal illusion
