Premodern cultures operated under differently structured rationalities and value systems

Evidence

But the sacred had not been endowed with such a function in the past, and there was as yet no unitary domain in social life and thought that the concept of “the sacred” organized. Instead there were disparate places, objects, and times, each with its qualities, and each requiring conduct and words appropriate to it. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 131 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Pre-modern peoples understood humans and animals as one reversible cycle — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 435; Humans rationalize arbitrary customs as rational or biological after settling on them — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 117; Premodern environmental damage differs categorically from modern systematic destruction (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• No unified sacred domain organized premodern social life #complicates (0.82) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 131