Action as the Way of Transcendence

There are a few really basic works in the field of African religions which have the power to alter permanently our understanding of the subject, works whose insights have provided unexpected new ways of seizing African realities. Everyone's list of these works must be a little different. Mine would include Evans-Pritchard's Nuer Religion, Marcel Griaule's Conversations with Ogotemmeli (and even more Griaule and Dieterlen's Le Renard Pale), Bernard Maupoil's La Geomancie de l'ancienne Cote des Esclaves, and Victor Turner's Forest of Symbols. A few more monographs might be added, but not many. Each of these works has the merit of going deeply behind the surface of the religion they describe, to such a depth that scientific rigour itself ends up becoming a testimony to the spirit. Each work also opens up new methodologies. To my way of thinking, there is a new book to add to this exclusive list, a work more radical in its implications than most already on it. The book has already been out a number of years, but apparently its importance has not been as widely appreciated as some of the other studies I have mentioned above, perhaps largely due to its unpretentious format. I have in mind Daniel Biebuyck's Lega culture: art, initiation, and moral philosophy among a Central African people. 1 Unlike, say, Evans-Pritchard's work on Nuer religion, Biebuyck's report on Lega religion does not pursue every implication to its furthest conclusion, so there is still a little work for the reader to do. But in the final analysis Biebuyck's study may be even more important than Evans-Pritchard's

Action (physics) · Cult · Epistemology · History of religions · Sociology · Theology · Transcendence (philosophy) · African cultural and philosophical studies · African history and culture analysis · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Philosophy · Religious studies