Mircea Eliade and Anthropology

This paper studies Eliade's opinions of human being. Eliade’s historico-religious hermeneutic method explores the meaning and interpretation of messages hidden in religious myths, symbols and rituals. According to him, question of the meaning of human being is an important and fundamental question. He divides human beings into two categories in terms of their perspective on existence: the man of traditional society, who is definitely religious and the modern man. Eliade's understanding of human being is studied in two sections: First, the human condition in a fallen state and second, human being as a religious man. The theme of descent will reveal Eliade's shrewd analysis of the negative aspects of secular profane existence in three aspects: descent from paradise, secularization, and fall into time and history. Fall from paradise is a loss of that primordial perfection. Secularization is a fall into secular culture and desacralized cosmos. Fall into time and history is dwelling in an unholy time, that is an ontologically nonexistence, unreality. The religious man has a meaningful existence and a sacred mode of being in the "wasteland history". He is exactly what he was given in the beginning. He has an occupation which bestows meaning to life. For him, the only real act is an imitation of the divine act. Every behavior must be the imitation of archetype.