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lIe distinguishes "ethos" from worldview," the one relating to the normative, and the olher
to the cognitive perceptions of a people, a distinction which Clifford Gecrtz has since
qualified:
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A people's ethos is the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral
and aesthetic style and mood; it is the underlying attitude towards
themselves and their world that life reflects. Their world view is their
picture of the way things in sheer actuality are, their concept of nature, of
self, of society. It comprehends their most comprehensive ideas of
ardeLl
Both anthropologists remark that worldview and ethos arc nonetheless morc similar than
different. Redfield suggests that they border and tend 10 blur with each other;2 Gecnz
points out that if il is convenient 10 treat Ihe cognitive and Ihe normalive separately at the
level of analysis, Ihey are in circular relation 10 each other at the empirical leveL3 lago
Galdston enlightens the relation of "worldview" to "cognition":
In essence, world view is the end result of a process whereby man
imposes a pattern of relatedness, order, and meaning upon the primary
chaotic miscellany of experience and impressions to which he is subjected
throughout his life. 4
Dllndes's and Toelken's folkloristic definitions of "worldview" both rely on the teachings
of cultural anthropology:
... a cognitive set by means of which people perceive, consciously or
unconsciously, relationships between self, others, cosmos, and the dayto-day
living of life. 5
a general way of referring 10 the manner in which a culture sees and
expresses its relation 10 the world around it. 6
IOecrtz, "Ethos, Worldvicw, and the Analysis of Sacred Symbols," Interpreul/ion 127.
2 Redfield, Lillfe R(;.
30ecrtz, "Ethos" 141.
4W.T. Jones, "World Views: Their Nature and Their Function," Current I\nlhropology 13
(1972): 95.
5 Dundes, "Thinking" 54.
6Toelken, Dynamics 225.