ABSTRACT
Defending his understanding of sacrice in an exchange with Jean-Pierre Vernant at a conference on sacrice in antiquity, Walter Burkert said that he was in search of a ‘philosophy of the continuity of the living.’1 This concern with continuities has been central in Burkert’s work; it has led him back in time, from the study of the myths and rituals of Greece to those of ancient Near Eastern cultures, to the sacricial practices of Paleolithic hunters, to the ritual displays of apes; it has also taken him forward, to the present. According to Burkert, religion is connected with the propagation and maintenance of life, with procreation and sexuality. But just as reproduction is intimately connected with – indeed, presupposes – death, Burkert understands religion in its relation to death, specically, in its relation to killing. This connection is studied in early articles such as ‘Greek tragedy and sacricial ritual’ (1966), in which Burkert considers how the tradition of a goat sacrice ‘leads back to the depths of prehistoric human development’ (1966: 121 = 2007: 31), and, in more general terms, how ‘in the ambivalence of the intoxication of blood and the horror of killing, in the twofold aspect of life and death,’ ‘the rites of sacrice touch the roots of human existence’ (1966: 113 = 2007: 24).
