Soziobiologie als moralische oder religiöse Kommunikation? Überlegungen zu biologischen Selbstbeschreibungen unserer Gesellschaft
When sociobiologists formulate self-descriptions of human beings in order to explain social behaviour, morals, ethics and religion the sociological observer can ask him- or herself the question as to whether the claim to establishing an evolutional explanation for ethics and religion is not in fact...
| Published in: | Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | German |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Diagonal-Verlag
2012
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| In: |
Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | When sociobiologists formulate self-descriptions of human beings in order to explain social behaviour, morals, ethics and religion the sociological observer can ask him- or herself the question as to whether the claim to establishing an evolutional explanation for ethics and religion is not in fact itself a form of moral or religious communication. Starting from Luhmann's observation on religious and moral codes the author presents an attempt to establish the semantics of sociobiological self-descriptions and to show which ciphers are employed and what paradoxes are evolved in the process. Sociobiological thinking is first considered in the strict sense (Wilson's version in particular). This is then contrasted with broader human ethological approaches and the biological epistemological reflections of Bateson, Maturana and Varela. The analysis reveals that these modes of thinking contain different forms of meaning which can be reconstructed as different kinds of ethical and moral models, some of which have semantics which a sociological observer could identify as religious. Biological self-descriptions seem all the more enticing when the secret of being is not expressed too explicitly. The concluding discussion situates the results in a broader social context, thereby attempting to do justice to the irreducible essence of religious communication. |
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| ISSN: | 2194-508X |
| Contains: | In: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1515/zfr.2001.9.1.3 |