Sacrifice and Modern Thought

This book brings together leading specialists from various academic disciplines to elucidate the modern debate about sacrifice for the first time. This debate has been fed by theological concerns, by the influence of literary and musical works, and by the encounter with non-European cultures since the Age of Discovery. While ritual sacrifice has been all but absent in European modernity, ideas, images, theories, and stories about sacrifice have been at the centreof academic, artistic, and public interest since the sixteenth century. Individual chapters discuss anthropological theories, theological controversies, philosophical interpretations, and literary usesof sacrifice. They result not in a single narrative but in a representation of the diverse factors and aspects that have contributed to modernity's obsession with the topic of sacrifice.