Shamanism and the spiritual exercises of the ancient Greece

Main Article Content

Ginna Fernanda García Aguilar

Abstract

The author tries to differentiate clearly the spiritual exercises of the Greek philosophical schools from the shamanic practices. In the author´s opinion the comparison between the two phenomena is a reductionism in which incurred some researchers. The sense of the spiritual exercises in ancient Greece was the transformation of the subject by himself; a practice oriented to educate better citizens in a specific kind of political structure and social praxis. Though shamanistic rituals are connected with the operation of the political community, too, these are based on a balance between gods and human beings and they are aimed to search knowledge that operate as a device of symbolic order for the community´s activities.

Author Biography

Ginna Fernanda García Aguilar, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Politóloga de la Universidad de los Andes, Magistra Histoire Et Actualité de La Philosophie de la Universite De Paris X (Paris-Nanterre) y Doctorando en Filosofía de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia.