Society and Spirit: Religion in Classical Social Thought

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The purpose of this course is, in the setting of a small seminar, to engage students in close reading and broad discussion of sociological writings about religion by classical theorists of the discipline. Works that may be nominated for treatment include such mainstays as The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life and other studies of religion by Emile Durkheim; The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and The Sociology of Religion by Max Weber; portions of The German Ideology by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, as well as excerpts from Marx's Capital; The Future of an Illusion and Civilization and Its Discontents by Sigmund Freud; and various essays on religion by Georg Simmel. The course also will cover more recent works, both in the sociology of religion and in related fields, incorporating assumptions about and approaches to religion that can be traced to these pioneering authors.