Robert N Bellah
Biographic Data
| ID | 91476 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert N Bellah |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert N |
| FAMILY NAME | Bellah |
| SIGNATURE | BELLAH R N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 96 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 791 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 92 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1957 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Challenging Modernity
"For the sociologist Robert Bellah, questions about the meaning and responsibility of human beings in the present emerge out of our self-awareness of our responsibilities to one another and the planet. He places religion as the central social institution through which this is understood. At the time of his passing in 2013, Bellah had begun formulating what would have been his next book, a narrative that demonstrated how the axial age (500 - 300 B…
Challenging Modernity
Challenging Modernity
Freedom, Coercion, and Authority
In The Archive we republish articles that, in hindsight, may have been ahead of their time in its prescience. Our pull for this issue is a 1999 piece by Robert N. Bellah, (February 23, 1927—July 30, 2013), former Elliott Professor of Sociology at the University of California in Berkeley, titled, “Freedom, Coercion and Authority.” In this article Bellah forwards the benefits of the self-understanding of society and defends the traditional purpose …
Individualism and Commitment in American Life
American cultural traditions define personality, achievement, and the purpose of human life in ways that leave the individual suspended in glorious, but terrifying, isolation. The two earliest traditions—puritan “biblical” and early “republican”—valued society as much as the individual. These two traditions survived but two other traditions had become far more dominant—“utilitarian individualism” and “expressive individualism”. Brian Palmer’s shi…
La religión en la evolución humana: Del Paleolítico a la era axial
La religión en la evolución humana es una obra de una ambición extraordinaria: una exploración amplia y matizada de nuestro pasado biológico para descubrir las formas de vida que los seres humanos imaginaron que merecía la pena vivir. Ofrece lo que se ve con frecuencia como una teoría prohibida del origen de la religión, al profundizar especialmente, pero no exclusivamente, en la evolución cultural. ¿Cómo nuestros primeros ancestros trascendieron…
Insan Evriminde Din - Eski Tas Cagindan Eksen Cagina
Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ideas about society, culture, and government are pivotal in the history of political thought. His works are as controversial as they are relevant today. This volume brings together three of Rousseau’s most important political writings The Social Contract and The First Discourse (Discourse on the Sciences and Arts) and The Second Discourse (Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality) and presents essays by major …
Religion: Evolution and Development
Confronting Modernity: Maruyama Masao, Jürgen Habermas, and Charles Taylor
The Heritage of the Axial Age: Resource or Burden?
The Heritage of the Axial Age: Resource or Burden?
The Axial Age and Its Consequences
Religion in human evolution revisited: Response to commentators
Das Ewig-weibliche: A reply to Karl Morrison
I am extremely grateful to Karl Morrison for this extended consideration of my recent book. I found it most interesting and I learned much from it. I was fascinated to learn of Frederick William Farrar, Dean of Westminster Abbey, of whom I had not previously heard, who so carefully arranged the grand funeral and interment in the Abbey of Charles Darwin, and whose remarks at the funeral became the basis of a book about Darwin. I am, as is Professo…
Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
Product Review: Commentary on Gorski and Eisenstadt
Ethical politics: Reality or illusion
whether the idea of ethical politics is a reality or an illusion, to consider briefly the meaning of ethical politics, or to put it bluntly, whether many Americans see any relation between ethics and politics.1 As we found out in our research for Habits of the Heart, most Americans think they know what they mean by politics (and by politicians), and it is not nice. Politics is the way some people get what they want by using undue influence, quest…
The Robert Bellah Reader
Perhaps best known for his coauthored bestselling books Habits of the Heart and The Good Society , Robert N. Bellah is a truly visionary leader in the social study of religion. For more than four decades, he has examined the role of religion in modern and premodern societies, attempting to discern how religious meaning is formed and how it shapes ethical and political practices. The Robert Bellah Reader brings together twenty-eight of Bellah’s se…
Durkheim and ritual
Although this chapter will begin with Émile Durkheim's ([1912] 1995) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Elementary Forms), I will focus on the place of ritual in the Durkheimian tradition, rather than add to the already enormous amount of explication of that book and the place of ritual in it. Even so, because of the vast influence of Durkheim on several disciplines, my treatment will be highly selective. I will focus on the ways in which ri…
Civil religion in America
The words and acts of the founding fathers, especially the first few presidents, shaped the form and tone of the civil religion as it has been maintained ever since. The God of the civil religion is not only rather Unitarian, he is also on the austere side, much more related to order, law, and right than to salvation and love. Until the Civil War, the American civil religion focused above all on the event of the Revolution, which was seen as the …
What Is Axial About the Axial Age
the idea of an axial age in the mid-first millennium b.c. has a long history but was crystallized by karl jaspers in his 1949 book the meaning and goal of history. since then, voegelin, eisenstadt and many others have contributed to clarifying the four cases of axial "breakthrough", to use jaspers's term, namely ancient israel, greece, india, and china. a number of significant background conditions - economic, social, and political - have been id…
The Ritual Roots of Society and Culture
There is probably no better place to begin a discussion of the place of ritual in the sociology of religion than with a famous passage in Emile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life : Life in Australian [Aboriginal] societies alternates between two different phases. In one phase, the population is scattered in small groups that attend to their occupations independently. Each family lives by itself, hunting, fishing–in short, striving …
Continuity and Change in Japanese Society
Civil religion in America
The words and acts of the founding fathers, especially the first few presidents, shaped the form and tone of the civil religion as it has been maintained ever since. The God of the civil religion is not only rather Unitarian, he is also on the austere side, much more related to order, law, and right than to salvation and love. Until the Civil War, the American civil religion focused above all on the event of the Revolution, which was seen as the …
Religious Evolution
Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age
Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World
In Beyond Belief, Robert N. Bellah continues his exploration of the connections between personal and social change, first undertaken in Habits of the Heart. Here he focuses on religion, arguing that even in a world in which the old certainties of religious belief have been shaken, religious yearnings persist. Bellah examines the ways in which Americans seek meaning in their lives, drawing on interviews, popular culture, and classic religious text…
What Is Axial About the Axial Age
the idea of an axial age in the mid-first millennium b.c. has a long history but was crystallized by karl jaspers in his 1949 book the meaning and goal of history. since then, voegelin, eisenstadt and many others have contributed to clarifying the four cases of axial "breakthrough", to use jaspers's term, namely ancient israel, greece, india, and china. a number of significant background conditions - economic, social, and political - have been id…
Emile Durkheim on Morality and Society
Reflections on the Protestant Ethic Analogy in Asia
Durkheim and History
The New religious consciousness
Religious Aspects of Modernization in Turkey and Japan
The process of modernization involves changes in values as well as political and economic changes. One aspect of this change is the shift from a "prescriptive" to a "principal" type of value system, wich also seems to involve a differentiation of religion and ideology. In Turkey and Japan this transition was begun by religio-political movements, which challenged the traditional value system but were themselves in turn responsible for new problems
Religion and Progress in Modern Asia
Religion and legitimation in the American Republic
Christianity and Symbolic Realism
l7here is probably nothing more important than intellectual history to help us understand how our culture has become so fragmented and dissociated that we find it almost impossible to communicate the integrated meaning our young people so passionately require of us. Aware of my lack of competence in intellectual history I must nonetheless venture into it in order to deal with one central aspect of this fragmentation, namely, the split between the…
Morale, religion et société dans l'œuvre durkheimienne / Morality, Religiosity and Society in Durkheim's Works
Bellah Robert N., Benoît Denis. Morale, religion et société dans l'œuvre durkheimienne / Morality, Religiosity and Society in Durkheim's Works. In: Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n°69, 1990. Relire Durkheim. pp. 9-25
Japan's Cultural Identity: Some Reflections on the Work of Watsuji Tetsuro
It has become customary among many Western scholars to consider Japan as part of an East Asian cultural area, or as a participant in Chinese or Sinic civilization. In a general conception of Asian culture viewed as consisting of East Asian, South Asian, and Middle Eastern cultural areas dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Islamic civilizations respectively, it seems obvious that Japan belongs in the first category. Yet most Japanese scholars use an…
The Limits of Social Cohesion: Conflict and Mediation in Pluralist Societies: A Report of the Bertelsmann Foundation to the Club of Rome
Response to the Panel on Civil Religion
La Religion civile en Amérique (Civil Religion in America)
Bellah Robert N., Terrenoire Gwen. La Religion civile en Amérique (Civil Religion in America). In: Archives de sciences sociales des religions, n°35, 1973. pp. 7-22
Sociological Approach to Religion
Journal Article Sociological Approach to Religion. By Louis Schneider, The Sociological Interpretation of Religion. By Roland Robertson and Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World. By Robert N. Bellah Get access Michael R. Brendle Michael R. Brendle Fordham University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 31, Issue 4, Winter 1970, Pages 220-223, https://doi.org…
Tokugawa Religion. The Values of Pre-Industrial Japan
Ethical politics: Reality or illusion
whether the idea of ethical politics is a reality or an illusion, to consider briefly the meaning of ethical politics, or to put it bluntly, whether many Americans see any relation between ethics and politics.1 As we found out in our research for Habits of the Heart, most Americans think they know what they mean by politics (and by politicians), and it is not nice. Politics is the way some people get what they want by using undue influence, quest…
Are Americans Still Citizens
Central to the argument of Democracy in America is Tocqueville's description of American individualism and his analysis of its consequences for the mores and ultimately for political life. Since Tocqueville believed that individualism might ultimately threaten the conditions for citizenship in America, it is not inappropriate, in this 150th year after the publication of Democracy in America, to ask the question. Are Americans still citizens? I wo…
La religion civile aux États-Unis
Il existe aux Etats-Unis une religion civile bien etablie et bien differenciee des autres confessions. Le discours inaugural du president J. F. Kennedy sert de fil conducteur a toute cette etude. La religion civile confere une dimension religieuse a la politique| elle est de conception surtout utilitaire. Ses idees sont analogues a celles que l'on trouve dans le Contrat Social de J.-J. Rousseau. Le Dieu de la religion civile est austere, plus sou…
Moral Education: A Study in the Theory adn Application of the Sociology of Education
The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism
Tokugawa Religion: The Values of Pre-Industrial Japan
Religion, Society, and the Individual . J. Milton Yinger
Tokugawa Religion. The Values of Pre-Industrial Japan
Ethnology and Ethnography: The Western Apache Clan System: Its Origins and Development. Charles R. Kaut
Religious Aspects of Modernization in Turkey and Japan
The process of modernization involves changes in values as well as political and economic changes. One aspect of this change is the shift from a "prescriptive" to a "principal" type of value system, wich also seems to involve a differentiation of religion and ideology. In Turkey and Japan this transition was begun by religio-political movements, which challenged the traditional value system but were themselves in turn responsible for new problems
The Japanese Factory: Aspects of Its Social Organization. James G. Abegglen
The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism
The Origin of Modern Capitalism and Eastern Asia
Durkheim and History
The Religious Situation in the Far East
Reflections on the Protestant Ethic Analogy in Asia
Religious Evolution
Religion and Progress in Modern Asia
Japan's Cultural Identity: Some Reflections on the Work of Watsuji Tetsuro
It has become customary among many Western scholars to consider Japan as part of an East Asian cultural area, or as a participant in Chinese or Sinic civilization. In a general conception of Asian culture viewed as consisting of East Asian, South Asian, and Middle Eastern cultural areas dominated by Chinese, Indian, and Islamic civilizations respectively, it seems obvious that Japan belongs in the first category. Yet most Japanese scholars use an…
Religion and Progress in Modern Asia
The Politics of Modernization
The Sociology of Religion: A Study of Christendom
The Sociology of Religion: A Study of Christendom. By Werner Stark. New York: Fordham University Press, 1966. Vol. I, Established Religion, 235 pp., $5.95; Vol. II, Sectarian Religion, 357 pp., $6.95 Get access Robert N. Bellah Robert N. Bellah University of California, Berkeley Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 28, Issue 4, Winter 1967, Pages 229–230, https://doi.org/10.2307/37…
Religion and Progress in Modern Asia
Meaning and Modernisation
Modernisation, whatever else it involves, is always a moral and a religious problem. If it has sometimes been hailed as an exhilarating challenge to create new values and meanings it has also often been feared as a threat to an existing pattern of values and meanings. In either case the personal and social forces called into play have been powerful
The Sociology of Religion: A Study of Christendom, Vol. III, The Universal Church
Journal Article The Sociology of Religion: A Study of Christendom, Vol. III, The Universal Church. By Werner Stark. New York: Fordham University Press, 1967. Pp. 454. $7.95 Get access Robert N. Bellah Robert N. Bellah University of California at Berkeley Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 29, Issue 3, Fall 1968, Pages 160–161, https://doi.org/10.2307/3710149 Published: 01 October…
Religion in America
Japan, Asia, Religion
"Response to Comments on "Christianity and Symbolic Realism
Father Burtchaell has raised some important issues with respect to evil temper which often infects methodological disagreement in study of religion and has briefly suggested some of structural grounds for it. The subject is importantand explosive-and would itself serve as basis of a joint session of American Academy of Religion and Society for Scientific Study of Religion. Perhaps for too long we have discussed this issue in corridors and coffee …
The Resurrection of the Body Love's Body . Norman O. Brown
Sociological Approach to Religion
Journal Article Sociological Approach to Religion. By Louis Schneider, The Sociological Interpretation of Religion. By Roland Robertson and Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World. By Robert N. Bellah Get access Michael R. Brendle Michael R. Brendle Fordham University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Sociology of Religion, Volume 31, Issue 4, Winter 1970, Pages 220-223, https://doi.org…
Sociology (56 works) · Philosophy (50 works) · Political science (40 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (31 works) · Law (25 works) · Epistemology (23 works) · History (22 works) · Religious studies (19 works) · Psychology (17 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (13 works)