Since its publication in 1912, Durkheim's "Elementary Forms" has been scrutinized in great detail, but researchers have mostly neglected or accepted uncritically Durkheim's brief discussion of Buddhism at the beginning of Book One. Such disregard is remarkable since Durkheim relied on his interpretation of Buddhism to support two crucial claims in his definition of religious phenomena: that gods or spirits are not essential to religion, for Buddhism has no meaningful gods or spirits; and that the sacred-profane dichotomy is characteristic of all religions, since it is found even in an atheistic religion like Buddhism. We examine Durkheim's discussion to show that, despite qualifications and caveats, his claims regarding Buddhism are flawed on both counts. On the one hand, we show that Buddhism admits the existence of supra-mundane beings not as a secondary, but as a primary component of its religion; on the other hand, we demonstrate that the distinction between sacred and profane is marginal to Buddhist thought.
目次
INTRODUCTION 47 DURKHEIM'S DEFINITION OF RELIGION 48 THE SUPRA-HUMAN IN BUDDHISM 50 Archaic Buddhism 52 Scholastic Buddhism 53 Mahayana Buddhism 53 SACRED AND PROFANE IN BUDDHISM 54 The Four Noble Truths 55 The Conditioned and the Unconditioned 56 LESSONS FROM BUDDHISM 58 REFERENCES 60
