Neoanimism and its Limits. Critical Reading on the Anthropological Origin of Religiosity by Gonzalo Puente Ojea

Abstract

This article has two aims. First, to value the religious anthropology of the Spanish thinker, Gonzalo Puente Ojea (1924-2017), which has not yet received the academic attention it deserves. Secondly, to analyze a thesis that we can consider as bold in the measure that claims the recovery of the animism of E. B. Tylor. To achieve this, after a brief introduction that contextualizes the problem we are addressing, we begin by drawing a cartography of the thought on the religion of our author. Next, a tour of his reading of Tylorian animism is made, evaluating his main theses in correspondence with the theories and results of recent ethnographic research. After this, we extend our critical reading to the main dialogues he had with authors opposed to animist theory and, in particular, with the angular theory of religion of Gustavo Bueno. It concludes with some final considerations on the limits of neoanimism as an explanatory hypothesis of the origin of religiosity and its meaning in the realm of the irreligious conception of reality proper to Puente Ojea.