摘要：Plato may be best known as a ph ilosopher, but his depiction s of people's involvements in reli-gion are i mportant for social scientists not on ly because of the transcultural and tran sh istori-cal resources that they offer those in the sociology of religion, but also because of their more general pragmatist contributions to the study of human group life.Thus, although Plato (a) exempts religion from a more thorough going dialectic analysis of the sort to which he subjects many other realms of human knowing and acting (e.g., truth, justice, courage, rhetoric), (b) explicitly articulates and encourages theological viewpoints in some of h is texts, and (c) someti mes writes as though thi ngs can be known only as ideal types or pure forms in an afterlife existence, Plato also (d) engages a number of consequentia l prag-matist (also pluralist, secular) aspects of people's experiences with religion.In developing his materials on religion, Plato rejects the (popular) notions of the Olympian gods described by Homer and Hesiod as mythical as well as sacrilegious. Still, it is instructive to be mi ndful of Plato's notions of divinity when consideri ng the more distinctively socio-logical matters he addresses (as in the problematics of promoting and maintaining religious viewpoints on both collective a nd individual levels and discussions of the interlinkages of religion, morality, and deviance).Still, each of the four texts introduced here assume sign ificantly different emphases a nd those interested in the study of huma n group life should be prepared to adjust accordingly as they exami ne these statements. All four texts are con sequential for a broader "sociology of reli-gion," but Timaeus and Phaedo are not ably mor e t heolo gical in emphase s whe re as Republic and Laws provide more extended in sight into religion as a humanly engaged real m of endeavor.The paper concludes with a n abbreviated comparison of Plato's notion s of religion with Ch i-cago-style symbolic interactionist (Mead 1934; Blumer 1969; Prus 1996; 1997; 1999; Prus and Grills 2003) approaches to the study of religion. Addressing some related matters, an epilogue briefly draws attention to some of the affin ities of Emile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life with Plato's analysis of religion
