Jobian principle

is the idea that individuals assume responsibility for their lives and believe that events are shaped by human actions which are only mediated in part by supernatural forces and divine justice.

In a classic essay entitled Oedipus and Job in the West African Religion, pulbished in 1959, Fortes exames the way in which the Tallensi people of Ghana use religious concepts to order and exlain key aspects of an individual's passage through the cycle of life.He identified two sociological concepts, abstracted from African religions in general, which help explicate different types of structural relationships between humans and gods. In the first relationship, which he calls the Oedipal principle, human actions are governed by fate and destiny. Individuals are believed to take no personal responsibility for their lives, and thus place all actions and consequences in the hands of omnipotent gods and spiritual forces which are outside the realm of human influence. . . In the second type of relationship, which Fortes calls the Jobian principle, individuals assume responsibility for their lives and believe that events are shaped by human actions which are only mediated in part by supernatural forces and dividne justice.

jobian principle, n.All

jobian principle