"Why do human beings believe in divinities? Why do some seek eternal life, while others seek escape from recurring lives? Why do the beliefs and behaviors we typically call "religious" so deeply affect the human personality and so subtly weave their way through human society? Revised and updated in this fourth edition, Ten Theories of Religion considers how these fundamental questions have engaged the most important thinkers of the modern era. Accessible, systematic, and succinct, it considers the Victorian anthropology of E. B. Tylor and J. G. Frazer, the "reductionist" social science of Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, and Karl Marx, the non-reductionist approaches of Max Weber, William Janes, and Mircea Eliade, and the alternative paradigms that have arisen from the work of E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Clifford Geertz, and Mary Daly. Each chapter offers biographical background, theoretical exposition, conceptual analysis, and critical assessment"--Page 4 of cover.