An account of the philosophical conceptions of power held by the Amuesha, a priestly society of the Peruvian Amazon. It reveals the relationship the Amuesha see between cosmogony and political morality. Love is a crucial component of both legitimate knowledge and legitimate power. The distinction between divine and mortal love pervades this priestly cosmology and moral philosophy, making it central both to the playing out of hierarchical relationships in everyday life and to a millenaristic theology of salvation. This volume will be important to students of Amozonian and Andean peoples, to specialists in comparative religion, and to those more generally interested in the complex relationship between systems of morality and political power.
