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Proto-Indo-European society = Keirsey's temperaments?

Zeego

Mind Wanderer
Joined
Apr 15, 2016
Messages
390
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
I was reading the Wikipedia article on the trifunctional hypothesis, which is the theory that Proto-Indo-European society had a three-caste system. At one point, the article mentions that one of the castes had two separate parts, which would technically make it a four-caste system:
According to Dumézil, Proto-Indo-European society comprised three main groups corresponding to three distinct functions:

  1. the function of sovereignty
  2. the military function
  3. the function of productivity
Sovereignty fell into two distinct and complementary sub-parts, one formal, juridical and priestly but worldly, the other powerful, unpredictable, and also priestly but rooted in the supernatural world. The second main social division was connected with force, the military and war while the role of the third, ruled by the other two, was productivity, herding, farming and crafts.

This got me thinking that perhaps the four castes line up with Keirsey's temperaments: the "formal, juridical and priestly but worldly" caste sounds like NT, the "powerful, unpredictable, and also priestly but rooted in the supernatural world" caste sounds like NF, the "force, the military and war" caste sounds like SP, and the "productivity, herding, farming and crafts" caste sounds like SJ.
 

Norrsken

self murderer
Joined
Nov 27, 2015
Messages
3,633
MBTI Type
ENFJ
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
No doubt that the Myers Briggs/Jung theory may have been inspired from that hypothesis, but I suppose not every correlation implies causation.
Interesting find, though!
 
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