Jackson/Philosophy and the End of Sacrifice, 5. The Crisis of Sacrifice

The final contribution to the first section also functions as a prelude to the next section. Peter Jackson compares early Greek and Indic examples of a sacrificial ideology. Its dynamics seem to result from these two similar sacrificial institutions, both of which were based on the contract between patrons and ritual specialists. He thereby attempts to emphasize the tension between a civic religiosity, celebrating and seeking to consolidate an existing community, and a sectarian religiosity seeking emancipation from the civic community. The latter mode of religiosity was characterized by voluntary ordeals of initiation and asceticism in a quest for values of a purportedly stable nature (truth, immortality, salvation, and so on).