Religio and the Definition of Religion Benson Saler Department of Anthropology ‘Brandeis University Despite caveats tothe effect that a category denominated religion is of du- bious analytical utility, and contrary to suggestions that would have us either drop the word religion from our investigative vocabulary (Smith 1962) or significantly curtail its usage (Needham 1981), many anthropologists continue to apply the term broadly ad to proffer or otherwise support explicit definitions. Itis perhaps the case that fr some the category religion is analogous tothe religion that Wil- liam James (1929-8) discerns among many religionist: it “exists,” that i, “asa dull habit” But for numbers of reflective anthropologists, there are at last two reasons that justify an ongoing, critical concer with how we define religion. First, as Spiro suecinetly puts it, “while a definition cannot take the place of in- ‘quiry, in the absence of definitions there can be no inguiry fortis the definition, either ostensive oF nominal, which designates the phenomenon to be invest- gated” (1966:90). And, second, many arguments or seeming disagreements about theoretical issues pivot on, or sometimes reduce to, variant definitional ‘commitments ‘Common contemporary acceptations of the word religion, itis generally ree- ‘ognized, derive from Westem cultural traitions and experiences. Many anthro- pologst tend to think of religion largely in terms of certain sorts of “beliefs” and of routinized behaviors associated with those beliefs. But an emphasis on isolating various beliefs and making them central tan analytically distinct de- partment of culture termed religion is not a markedly ancient tradition. There were, tobe sure, slow-moving cultural rivulets flowing in that direction even in classical antiquity, as evidenced by serous interest in Euhemerus’s romantic trav- cler’s tale and appreciation of the works of authors such as Cicero and Marcus ‘Terentius Varro. The emergence ofthe contemporary construct, however, was stimulated in significant measure by the Reformation, with its sectarian doctrinal controversies over justification, the resistiblty or iresitiblty of grace, and the like, and the development ofthat construct was carried further, and forged into a recognizably modern form, by the Enlightenment. But while our construct religion is of relatively recent provenience, the Latin ter religo, from which our term derives, i of considerable antiquity. Might not a tracing ofthe term's development as far back as possible asistin clarifying our understanding of what religion is all about—and by so doing perhaps suggest in ‘what specific senses we might best employ the term in contemporary research? 29s396 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY ‘That idea seems reasonable enough until we actually attempt to implement ‘When we do so, we soon discover thatthe semantic history of religio better serves us a8 cautionary parable than as an encouraging paradigm. ‘We begin by noting thatthe derivation of religio is hidden from our view by the layered fog of millennia, That fog, however, is not entirely impenetrable, But to the extent that we may pierce it, we do so largely by the power of plausible conjecture. Much ofthe scholarly literature directs our attention to two candidates from which religio may have derived: legere, ‘to gather together’, ‘to arrange’, a ‘proposed derivation that we associate with Cicero, and ligare, “to tie together’, “to bind’, a possibility entertained by Lucretius and favored by the Christian writ- crs, Lactantius and Tertullian (Fowler 1908:169; Benveniste 1969:268). Ovca- sionally one encounters alternative suggestions. Thus, for instance, Henry Wilt, in an unpublished dissertation, rejects the re- compounds of both lego and ligo and hypothecates “a re- compound of a simplex verb etymologically identical with the Greek verb alego, meaning ‘care for’, ‘have regard for’ (1954113). In any case, many Latinists suppose thatthe elemental meaning of refigio in its early usages was ‘scruple’, Fowler (1908:170) imagines that it may have stood for “a doubt or scruple of any kind, or for anything uncanny which creates such doubt of scruple."* He notes that the term is not found in the Corpus Inserip- tionum, where we should expect to fi it had had a technical or legal sense (1908:170). He remarks, moreover, that the Romans never personified religio as ‘adeity, an honor that they conferred on Pietas, Sanctitas, and other virtues; from this he concludes that religio was not deemed a virtue but was regarded asa feeling to which human nature is susceptible under certain circumstances (1908:171), Fowler supposes, indeed, that in its earlier meanings religio referred toa feeling of anxiety, awe, fear, or doubt aroused by something inexplicable (1908:169). Eventually, he maintains, the term took on meanings having to do with the forms ‘of culls and the harboring of scruples respecting accurate performance of man- dated rites (1908:172). Wilfced Cantwell Smith (1962) recognizes that religio and religiosus in Ro- ‘man usage sometimes referred to presumptive subjective states or dispositions. He weights his semantic history of religio, however, toward applications that point to public behavior and to socially recognized obligations. He does so, I think, partly to stress differences between meanings indicated by Roman usages of religio and popular, contemporary acceptations of the word religion that center ‘on systems of “beliefs.” Smith's semantic history forms part of a work that seeks to persuade us not to ascribe analytical utility to our category religion, and what the says about the semantic development of religia i largely intended to contribute to the advancement ofthat goal. In marshalling his arguments, he calls our atten tion to some ambivalent features of Roman usages. “To say," he writes, that such-and-such a thing was relisio for me [religio mii est] meant that it was ‘mightily incumbent upon metodo it (alternatively, not to doit: both ae found, as is ‘ot unusual with ‘mana, tabu’, the holy, the ssered). Oaths, family proprictis, cule observances and the like were each regio toa man; or, showing the ambiv Fence, one could easily say that to break a solemn oath i religio [1962:20}RELIGIO AND THE DEFINITION OF RELIGION. 397 Emile Benveniste argucs impressively that religi derives from legere, ‘to collet He writs that that derivation yields “to re-cllect," that i, “to take up pain fora new choice, to reconsider a previous step” ‘To begin aguin with a choice already made . .. to revise the decision that results from it, such s the proper sense of religio. It indicates an interior disposition and not an objective property of certain things or an ensemble of beliefS and practices, {1969:272), He also states that *‘supersitio’” inthe sense of "contemptible religious beliefs" was a “contrary"” of rligio that was recognized as such by the Romans them- selves (1969:272): that supersttio was in opposition ("ils oppose") to religio (1969:273). Not surprisingly, Benveniste does not address the possibility that religio may itself have been employed in some contexts to mean what we normally understand by superstition and what the Romans, on his testimony, sometimes meant by su- perstcio. In an earlier work, “Remarks on the Funetion of Language in Freudian “Theory” (1971), Benveniste expresses doubt that a word might include two con- traditory senses inthe same language, a possibility that be distinguishes from the possible operation of “cultural conditions" that may determine “two opposed atitudes” toward an object described by that word (1971:70). He maintains that language “operates ona world considered tobe ‘eal’ and refletsa‘eal” worl,” and that language categories tend to be consistent. “It is thus a prior improba- ble—and an attentive examination confirms it,” he states, that ancient or ar- chaic languages—or any other examples of what he calls “organized” lan- _guages—“escape the “principle of contradiction’ by using the same expression for two mutually exclusive or simply contrary notions” (1971:71). Benveniste's remarks, we note, are focused on certain ideas expressed by Freud in his 1910 paper, “The Antithetial Sense of Primal Words” (Gegensinn der Urworte) (1957). Freud maintain in tat work that the apparent insensitivity to contradiction found in dreams matches a peculiarity in certain ancient lan- guages described ina study by Karl Abel—a peculiarity consisting inthe use of 4 single term to state both one thing and its opposite. But while Benveniste vig- corously atacks “the etymological speculations of Karl Abel that intrigued Freud” (1971:69) and the ses that Freud made of them in his 1910 paper, he makes no explicit reference to Freud's 1919 essay, “The Uncanny” (Das Unheimliche) (1955). The latter work, drawing ona range of literary materials, makes an inter- esting eas in suppor of the ida that words ean sometimes be invested with log- ically related but seemingly opposite meanings. Inthe case of regio, at any rate, there is some evidence that points to per- haps opposable uses ofthe term (contemporary semantic theories may persuade uson occasion to regard a word in one determined sense as constituting “a marked form” of that same word eredited with some other sense). Caesar (De Bello Gal- lico VI:37), for example, employs the term in a way that pus us in mind of su- perstition: he relates that when some Germans suddenly attacked & Roman fort feation located on a site that many of its gartison deemed unlucky, there was398 CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY widespread panic among the defenders, most of whom conjured up novas reli- Biones, which we may gloss as “fresh superstitions’, or ‘fresh superstitious dreads’, regarding the place "‘plerique novas sibi ex loco religiones fingunt”). In later periods, religio and its derivatives in various European languages encompassed a variety of meanings: piety, a life lived in accordance with sup- positions about God’s will and ordinances, absorption in spiritual concerns (the ‘monastic life during much of the Middle Ages was termed religio),cultic observ- ances, and so on. ‘The fact that religio could and sometimes did mean different—and differ- ently valued—things testifies to its semantic suppleness. We gain further appre- ciation ofthat by turning tothe entry on religio inthe triple columns of The Oxford Latin Dictionary (pp. 1605-1606): we find there a number of usages subsumed under ten senses, and the evidence unmistakably points to a certain complexity and subtlety of meanings for religio both diachronically and (most clearly in late Republican and subsequent periods) synchronically. Religio, indeed, was atleast as multivocal among the later Romans as religion is among us. Those who de- ‘mand some unitary, stable, and comprehensive sense of religion, and who despai of obtaining it from contemporary social scientists, are thus unlikely to find what they require by tracing out the roots ofthe word among the Senate and the Roman People. ‘An inquiry into the history of religio is one of a multitude of inquiries that right serve to disabuse us of a longing for the authority of pedigree in the fash joning of our analytical categories. Many of the constructs and terms that we em ploy in the study of religion ae taken from cultural traditions where meanings are not only multiplied and accreted overtime, but where their impacted complexities and subtleties are preserved for us by texts and by the diligent labors of genera- tions of humanist scholars. Yet while a cultivated appreciation of ther histories ‘enlarges our understandings and heightens our sensibilities, our analytical cate- gories must be pointed to the issues at hand. The power of religion as an analytical ‘category, we might well affirm, depends on its instrumental value in facilitating the formulation of interesting statements about human beings, the phenomenal subjects of anthropological research. To borrow an adjective from the Romans, the anthropologist needs to be “‘religiosus""—'scrupulous’, ‘conscientious’ the shaping of cross-cultural instruments, While we should be knowledgeable about words, we must also strugele against a facile surrender to their authority, ‘an authority that all too often turns out to be unstable or evanescent when probed. Notes Acknovledgments. This paper was read atthe 85th Annual Mecting ofthe American An- thropological Association, Philadelphia, December 7, 1986. I is adapted from a book- length manuscript entitled Religion and the SupernaturalRELIGIO AND THE DEFINITION OF RELIGION 399 References Cited Benveniste, Emile - 1969 Le Vocabulaire des Institutions Indo-Européennes, Vol. 2. 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