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Myth of the Eternal Return
Other products by Eliade, Mircea
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Product Description
This founding work of the history of religions, first published in English in 1954, secured the North American reputation of the Romanian emigre-scholar Mircea Eliade (1907-1986). Making reference to an astonishing number of cultures and drawing on scholarship published in no less than half a dozen European languages, Eliade's "The Myth of the Eternal Return makes both intelligible and compelling the religious expressions and activities of a wide variety of archaic and "primitive" religious cultures. While acknowledging that a return to the "archaic" is no longer possible, Eliade passionately insists on the value of understanding this view in order to enrich our contemporary imagination of what it is to be human. Jonathan Z. Smith's new introduction provides the contextual background to the book and presents a critical outline of Eliade's argument in a way that encourages readers to engage in an informed conversation with this classic text.
Product Details
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Format:
Paperback
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Number of pages:
212
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Publisher:
Princeton University Press
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Language:
English
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ISBN:
0691017778
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Full Title:
Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History
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This Edition Published:
Wednesday 07 March, 2001
- Weight: 0.240 kg
Product ReviewsAverage Customer Review:  5 of 5 Stars!
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Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!], Tuesday 19 March, 2002
Reviewer: denis abellio from , United States
Stated most simply, this is a study of two understandings of what it means to exist in time: the archaic or traditional and the modern. According to Eliade man has traditionally sought to conform his actions in time to primordial or mythic actions performed by gods or heroes in the beginning of time. By conforming his actions to those performed in the beginning or as Eliade puts it "in illo tempore", traditional man gives significance to those actions. He saves his life in time from the terrors of meaninglessness. Modern man on the other hand, has lost or rejected the archetypical world, the world of eternity. He sees nothing beyond the world of time. Modern man, according to Eliade is "historical man." Rather than seeking to transcend history, he "consciously and voluntarily creates history." He is "the man who is in so far as he makes himself, within history."
This neat division is complicated however, by the Judaic prophets and Christianity. The God of the Jewish people is a personal God who intervenes in history and reveals his will through events. "Historical facts thus become 'situations' of man in respect to God, and as such they acquire a religious value that nothing had previously been able confer on them." The relationship with Yahweh brings into play a new element according to Eliade--faith. Christianity takes up the Jewish understanding and amplifies it. For Christianity the meaning of history "is unique because the Incarnation is a unique fact." Yet the archaic understanding of returning to the archetype is not altogether rejected by Christianity, but woven into its' new understanding of the uniqueness of historical events.
This essay spans 162 pages that are divided into four large chapters with subheadings. The first chapter introduces the notions of the archetype, the return to the archetype, and their relation to sacred and profane time and place. The second chapter deals in depth with sacred time as a return to eternity. The third chapter examines suffering and the return to the archetype. The forth chapter looks at the modern understanding of history as it relates to the archaic. The book includes and extensive bibliography and an index.
No summary can do justice to the depth, range, and brilliance of Eliade's essay. His knowledge of religions is damn near encyclopedic. He opens up so many interesting avenues for further thought that reading him is like having your brain fertilized. This book is must reading for anyone interested in religion, myth, philosophy of history, personalism, liturgy, or the idea of progress. If you are interested in traditionalist thinkers such as Rene Guenon or Ananda Coomaraswamy you will also want to check out Eliade.
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