Mary Douglas highlighted the analogies between body and social body in her work on Levitical defilements. Protecting the integrity and wholness of the individual body symbolized the aspirations of Israelite society for a whole and well-protected social body, without intrusions from outside or seepage from inside.
At the same time, Douglas sees ethical interpretations of Levitical purity rules as a Hellenic intrusion into Judaism. But why? If the individual body is homologous with the social body, can’t it also be the individual as a moral being? If the purity rules project a symbolic social universe, why can’t they intro-ject a symbolic psychological universe?
The quadriga rescues from this oversight, since the allegory of body and social body opens immediately into an allegory of body and soul.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Moral Certitude and the Iran War
The current military engagement with Iran calls renewed attention to just war theory in the Catholic tradition.…
The Slow Death of England: New and Notable Books
The fate of England is much in the news as popular resistance to mass immigration grows, limits…
Ethics of Rhetoric in Times of War
What we say matters. And the way we say it matters. This is especially true in times…
