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Monday, 18 July 2016

What is tradition?

Religion and Cultural Memory (tr. Rodney Livingstone),
Jan Assmann, Stanford University Press, 2006, page 63

Tradition, Assmann explains, has two very different meanings, depending on the perspective from which you are looking.

If ... we look at it from the standpoint of memory, it appears to us as the antithesis of what is lived, embodued and communicated, and as the summation of the knowledge laid out in symbolic forms and administered by institutions.

But if, on the other hand you look at it from the position of writing ...

it appears as the antithesis of what has been fixed in writing and as the quintessence of knowledge bound to and incarnate in living agents.

Posted By Jonathan, 8:03am Comment Comments: