Le metarappresentazioni, il lavoro e l’insorgere della religione, traduzione dall'inglese di Gustavo Benavides, Meta-representations, Labor and the Rise of Religion

The presentation deals with the emergence of religion as the result of the interaction of (1) the human propensity to recognize agency and intentionality, or to postulate them when they are not present; (2) the tendency to play with the components of our everyday world – with shapes, colors, sounds, movements, tactility, smells and tastes – creating a formal surplus; (3) the proclivity to play with reality itself, indulging in “as if” situations. The capacity to recognize or to postulate agency – without which it would be impossible to imagine gods – is related to our ability to engage in meta-representations. “As if” scenarios are equally dependent on the capacity to take distance from what is given. That without these propensities religion would not have emerged is a relatively uncontroversial proposition; what is less obvious is that the elements that give rise to religion also give rise to labor. Labor presupposes, on the one hand, the exercise of agency, that is, the ability to act in a purposeful, self-conscious manner; on the other, work is inextricably linked to the capacity to engage in meta-cognition, as the putting aside of present leisure is due to our ability to imagine ourselves as subject to future need.