Theories of Religion - Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade's (1907–1986) approach grew out of the phenomenology of religion. Like Otto, he saw religion as something special and autonomous, that cannot be reduced to the social, economical or psychological alone. Like Durkheim, he saw the sacred as central to religion, but differing from Durkheim, he views the sacred as often dealing with the supernatural, not with the clan or society. The daily life of an ordinary person is connected to the sacred by the appearance of the sacred, called hierophany. Theophany (an appearance of a god) is a special case of it. Eliade wrote that archaic men wish to participate in the sacred. Archaic men long to return to lost paradise, outside the historic time, as explained in Eliade's book Eternal return (Eliade) to escape meaninglessness. The primitive man could not endure that his struggle to survive had no meaning. He wrote that man had a nostalgia (longing) for an otherworldly perfection. Archaic man wishes to escape the terror of time and saw time as cyclic. Historical religions, like Christianity, Judaism revolted against this older concept of cyclic time. They provided meaning and contact with the sacred in history through the god of Israel.

Eliade sought and found patterns in myth in various cultures, e.g. sky god. Zeus is an example of a sky god.

Eliade's methodology was studying comparative religion of various cultures and societies more or less regardless of other aspects of these societies, often relying on second hand reports. He also used some personal knowledge of other societies and cultures for his theories, among others his knowledge of Hindu folk religion.

He has been criticized for vagueness in defining his key concepts. Like Frazer and Tylor he has also been accused of out-of-context comparisons of religious beliefs of very different societies and cultures. He has also been accused of having a pro-religious bias (Christian and Hindu), though this bias does not seem essential for his theory.