The acclaimed American sociologist and cultural thinker Philip Rieff received nice educational status along with his thesis at the emergence of ‘Psychological guy’ in western tradition and along with his vintage ebook, Freud: The brain of the Moralist, released in 1959. during this paintings and the later The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966) he not just provided a hugely unique interpretation of the paintings of Sigmund Freud, yet significantly evaluated the large impression of psychotherapeutic pondering on Western tradition. in spite of the fact that, Rieff’s later paintings at the conception of tradition didn't garner a similar awareness, and his most up-to-date writings have acquired little or no severe engagement. In Sociology and the Sacred, Antonius A.W. Zondervan units out to treatment this overlook, arguing that Rieff’s paintings is ripe for highbrow reconsideration.

Zondervan starts via providing an summary of Rieff’s complete physique of labor, targeting his concept of tradition, and explaining how the sacred is a key thought, pivotal to the general figuring out of Rieff’s paintings. the writer argues that the current upsurge in faith, in lots of types in the course of the international, can't be defined by means of the classical secularization thesis, making Rieff's concept of sacred order in tradition an important contribution to a brand new social thought of faith.

Including fabric from own interviews with Rieff that enabled Zondervan to explain vital facets of his paintings, Sociology and the Sacred is an important contribution to the knowledge of up to date culture’s upkeep of its ties to religion.