Robert Bellah’s New Book “Religion in Human Evolution”

Looking back at the year 2011, I think Robert Bellah’s book Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Harvard University Press, 2011) is arguably the most important book published last year. I hope the word “religion” in the title would not stop readers of this blog, who are interested in Chinese philosophy, from reading it. The book is really about civilization or culture (wen), which includes both religion and philosophy. One could understand the term “religion” in a very broad sense, which seems to be what Habermas does. In his blurb for Bellah’s book, Habermas says, “In the second part of his book, he succeeds in a unique comparison of the origins of the handful of surviving world-religions, including Greek philosophy.” In fact, since many of our readers believe that early Chinese thought is often both religion and philosophy, they might find this book especially stimulating.