The Irreligiousness of Fascism
This essay aims to reexamine the debate on the impact of Fascism on religious studies, by reconstructing what Raffaele Pettazzoni, one of the founding fathers of this field of research in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century, meant by “religion of the state.” His research on the origin o...
| Published in: | Numen |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2016
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| In: |
Numen
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| Further subjects: | B
Raffaele Pettazzoni
history of religious studies
Fascism
political religion
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | This essay aims to reexamine the debate on the impact of Fascism on religious studies, by reconstructing what Raffaele Pettazzoni, one of the founding fathers of this field of research in Italy in the first half of the twentieth century, meant by “religion of the state.” His research on the origin of the religious state in Iranian history and in the Greek polytheistic prototype of the polis offers a key to the interpretation of his further analysis of the religious Fascist phenomenon. Mingling approaches of both political science and history of religions, this study constitutes an introduction to a new understanding — which remained hidden in Pettazzoni’s texts — of Fascism as a degeneration of state religiousness. While Fascism is an example of the sacralization of politics (according to one of the leading historians of Fascist ideology, Emilio Gentile), Pettazzoni showed how in other ways Fascism perpetuated the pre-Christian crisis of the religious state. |
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| ISSN: | 1568-5276 |
| Contains: | In: Numen
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15685276-12341437 |