This book argues that the uniquely human phenomenon of representation, as manifested in language, art, and ritual, is a scenic event focused on a central object designated by a sign. The originary hypothesis posits the necessity of conceiving the origin of the human as such an event. In traditional societies, the scenic imagination through which this scene of origin is conceived manifests itself in sacred creation narratives. Modern thought is defined by the independent use of the scenic imagination to create anthropological models of the origin of human institutions, beginning with the social ... More

This book argues that the uniquely human phenomenon of representation, as manifested in language, art, and ritual, is a scenic event focused on a central object designated by a sign. The originary hypothesis posits the necessity of conceiving the origin of the human as such an event. In traditional societies, the scenic imagination through which this scene of origin is conceived manifests itself in sacred creation narratives. Modern thought is defined by the independent use of the scenic imagination to create anthropological models of the origin of human institutions, beginning with the social contract scene in Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan that puts an end to the reciprocal violence of the state of nature. The book follows the work of the scenic imagination in selected writings of twenty thinkers including John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Emile Durkheim, Franz Boas, and Sigmund Freud, and concludes with a critical examination of contemporary writing on the origins of religion and language. In the process, it demonstrates that the originary hypothesis offers the most cohesive explanation of the origin and function of these fundamental institutions.