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Book
Christian Smith · 2003
A sociological and philosophical work arguing that humans are fundamentally moral and believing animals whose lives are constituted by narrative traditions and moral orders. Smith critiques naturalistic social theories and advances an alternative account of human personhood and culture.
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What this book knows
Humans are inescapably moral and believing animals: culture, knowledge, and selfhood rest on faith in superempirical orders we cannot verify but cannot live without.
faith-and-doubt
All human persons, no matter how well educated, how scientific, how knowledgeable, are, at bottom, believers — creatures who must place faith in beliefs that cannot themselves be verified.
MBAH-RC-045Human faith in superempirical orders that make claims to organize and guide human life is not categorically different from the fundamental acts of presupposing and believing.
MBAH-RC-126The lives we live and the knowledge we possess are based crucially on sets of basic assumptions and beliefs that cannot be empirically verified.
MBAH-RC-123belonging
The broader categories of interpretive meaning that animate any society are organized at bottom in relation to sacred moral order.
MBAH-RC-063self-and-identity
Moral order permeates all aspects of the social order within which human lives are embedded and from which human animals draw their identities and capacities.
MBAH-RC-122A Mafia revenge murder discharges solemn duties upholding a moral order of honor and vindication — revealing the normatively informed motivations beneath seemingly brutal acts.
MBAH-RC-011Illuminates
6 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis
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