Anthropopathism (from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
ἄνθρωπος ''anthropos'', "human" and πάθος ''pathos'', "suffering") is the attribution of human
emotion
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is currently no scientific ...
s, or the ascription of
human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, cultu ...
feelings or
passions
''Passions'' is an American television soap opera that originally aired on NBC from July 5, 1999, to September 7, 2007, and on DirecTV's The 101 Network from September 17, 2007, to August 7, 2008. Created by screenwriter James E. Reilly and ...
to a non-
human being, generally to a
deity.
By comparison, the term
anthropomorphism originally referred to the attribution of human form to a non-human being, but in modern usage anthropomorphism has come to encompass both meanings.
Religion
This is a technique prevalent in religious writings, where, for instance,
human
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, cultu ...
emotion
Emotions are mental states brought on by neurophysiology, neurophysiological changes, variously associated with thoughts, feelings, behavioral responses, and a degree of pleasure or suffering, displeasure. There is currently no scientific ...
is attributed to
God
In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...
, where he would not normally experience emotion in this sense.
This technique is particularly notable in the book of
Genesis, as an example of the theme of God as a
personal god
A personal god, or personal goddess, is a deity who can be related to as a person, instead of as an impersonal force, such as the Absolute, "the All", or the "Ground of Being".
In the scriptures of the Abrahamic religions, God is described as b ...
. Some Bible scholars, however, argue that human emotions ascribed to God are indicative of divine responses within the matrix of human history that are in fact analogous to human emotions though not univocal.
See also
*
Frankenstein complex
*
Pathetic fallacy
The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen ...
*
Philo's view of God
Philo (c. 30 BCE – c. 50 CE) was a leading writer of the Hellenistic Jewish community in Alexandria, Egypt. He wrote expansively in Koine Greek on the intersection of philosophy, politics, and religion in his time, specifically he explored ...
*
Uncanny valley
In aesthetics, the uncanny valley ( ja, 不気味の谷 ''bukimi no tani'') is a hypothesized relation between an object's degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to the object. The concept suggests that humanoid object ...
*
Theopaschism
Theopaschism is the belief that a god can suffer. Owing to controversies about the passion of Jesus and his divinity, this doctrine was a subject of ecumenical councils which affirmed the theopaschite formula.
Christology
In Christian theol ...
References
Anthropomorphism
Emotion
Philosophy of religion
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