Volume 17, Number 8 · November 18, 1971
The Politics of Karma
By Edmund R. Leach
Buddhism and Society
by Melford E. Spiro
Harper & Row, 524 pp., $17.95
Religion and Change in Contemporary Asia
edited by Robert F. Spencer
University of Minnesota Press, 172 pp., $6.50
Islam Observed
by Clifford Geertz
Yale University Press, 136 pp., $6.50
The three volumes noted here are part of a flood of recent English-language writing on Eastern religions. The stimulus seems to come from two main sources. On the one hand there is a genuine interest in how far these systems of thought offer intellectually satisfying alternatives to the Jewish and Christian theological traditions familiar to the West. The emphasis is on theodicy—the explanation of evil—and soteriology—the theory of personal salvation. These are also what interested Max Weber, and it is no doubt relevant that an English translation of The Sociology of Religion[1] first appeared in 1963.
Review, 2885 words
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