MIRCIA ELIADE: a brief chronicle of life and work

1907. Born March 9 in Bucharest, in a military family, the second of three children. Father - Captain George Eliade, mother - Ioana Stoenescu.

1917-1925. Years of study at school, and then at the Spiru Haret Lyceum.

1921. Debut in the "Newspaper of People's Knowledge" - the article "Enemy of the silkworm". First prize for the story “How I Found the Philosopher's Stone” at a competition among lyceum students.

1922. Maintains regular columns in the same newspaper: "Entomological Conversations" and "From the Pathfinder's Notebook", where he describes his campaigns around the country.

1922-1923. He writes the first major work, which will see the light of day 64 years later, - “A novel about a short-sighted teenager”. By this time, he had already published about fifty articles and literary essays.

1925 Enters the Faculty of Philology and Philosophy at the University of Bucharest.

1926. Becomes the editor-in-chief of the university magazine, collaborates with the weekly "Kuvintul".

1928. Rome. Work on the diploma "Italian philosophy from Marsilio Ficino to Giordano Bruno".

Receives a degree in Philosophy.

November. Departs by ship for India. On the way stop in Egypt and Ceylon.

In Calcutta, he attends lectures by Surendranath Dasgupta and studies Sanskrit.

1930. First publications on the philosophy of Indian religions in Bucharest and Rome.

Literary debut at home: the novel "Isabelle and the waters of the devil."

Four months living in Rishikesh, in a Himalayan monastery. His "guru" is the famous Swami Sivananda. Practice yoga.

1931. Letter from my father with the news that he was urgently called up for military training.

December. Return to Bucharest.

1932. January-November. Military service: first in the anti-aircraft regiment, then in the translation bureau at the headquarters. He gives a series of lectures on the radio, collaborates in the weeklies Kuvyntul and Vremya, participates in the activities of the educational society Criterion, writes a dissertation on the history of yoga. The first collection of essays "Monologues".

1933 Maitreyi wins first prize in a manuscript competition. After the publication - a resounding success.

Defends a dissertation in philosophy.

Accepted as an assistant at the Department of Logic and Metaphysics of the University of Bucharest.

1934. Marriage to Nina Maresh.

The novels "Return from Paradise" and "The Fading Light"; collections of essays "Oceanography" and "India".

1935. Novels "Construction" and "Hooligans"; the first part of the monograph on oriental sciences "Asian alchemy".

1936. In Paris separate edition his doctoral dissertation “Yoga. An Essay on the Origins of Indian Mysticism.

The novel "Maiden Christina" causes a scandal in the press.

1937. Ministry public education demands removal of Eliade from teaching activities- for writing "pornographic literature".

The second part of the monograph on Eastern science "Babylonian Cosmology and Alchemy". During the French period of his life, both parts of this monograph, supplemented and corrected, will merge into the work Blacksmiths and Alchemists.

The novel "Serpent".

1938. July-November. He falls into a wave of government repressions against legionnaires, although he was not a member of the Iron Guard; is serving four months in a camp for political prisoners.

Novel "Wedding in Heaven".

1939. The first issue of the magazine he started on the history of religions, Zalmoxis, is published in Paris.

Collection of essays “Fragmentarium” (Bucharest).

Novels “The Mystery of Dr. Honigberger” and “Serampor Nights” (Bucharest).

1941. February. Cultural attaché in Lisbon. Meetings with J. Ortega y Gasset and E. d'Ors.

On the stage " National Theater” in Bucharest - the premiere of the play “Iphigenia”.

The essay “The Myth of Reunification” (Bucharest) is the basis of the future French work “Mephistopheles and the Androgyne”.

1943. “Comments on the legend of master Manol” and essay “Island of Euthanasia” (Bucharest).

1944. Death of wife Nina Maresh.

1945. Moving to Paris.

At the invitation of J. Dumézil, he lectures at the School of Higher Studies.

Elected member of the Asiatic Society in Paris.

1948. “Techniques of Yoga” (“Gallimar”).

Founds the journal of the Romanian emigration "Luceafarul".

1949. The Payot publishing house publishes a “Treatise on the History of Religions” (“Traite d "histoire des religions"), which in English is entitled “Patterns in comparative religion” (1958).

“The myth of the eternal return” (“Gallimard”).

1950. Marriage to Cristinel Cottescu.

At the Eranos conference in Ascona, he meets C. G. Jung for the first time.

1951. “Shamanism and Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy” (“Payo”).

1952. “Images and Symbols” (“Gallimard”).

1954. “Yoga. Immortality and freedom” (“Payo”).

1955. The French translation of the two-volume novel “Kupala Night” (“Noaptea de Sanziene”) is published in “Gallimare” under the title “Forest Interdite” (“Forest Interdite”).

Writes a chapter Oral Literature” for the “Encyclopedia of the Pleiades”.

1956. Essay "Blacksmiths and Alchemists" ("Flammarion").

First trip to the USA. Conducts "Haskell Readings"; their material is published under the title "Birth and Rebirth" ("Birth and Rebirth", 1958); French edition - “Mystical births” (“Naissances mystiques”, 1959); second English edition of "Rites and Symbols of Initiation" ("Rites and Symbols of Initiation", 1965).

1957. Heads the Department of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and also holds a professorship on the Committee public thought.

He writes for the Rowohlt Deutsche Enzyklopadie the essay “The Sacred and the Profane” (“Das Heilige und das Profane”), which will be translated into English in 1959, but will enter into scientific use only in the French version: “Le Sacre et le Profane” (“Gallimard”, 1965).

Essay "Myths, Dreams and Mysteries" ("Gallimard").

1959. Since that year, Eliade has been giving lectures and conducting seminars for 2 trimesters, the last trimester working with graduate students, spending the summer in Europe.

The Myth of Eternal Return has been republished in New York with a new foreword by the author under the title Space and History.

1960. Beginning of work on memoirs.

1960-1972. Together with Ernst Jünger, he publishes the annual almanac of mythological studies "Antaios" in Stuttgart.

1961-1986. Supervises the publication of the encyclopedia "History of Religions" in 16 volumes (together with J. Kitagawa and C. Long).

1962. "Patanjali and Yoga" (publishing house "Soy").

Essay "Mephistopheles and Androgyne" ("Gallimar"), to be published in English in New York in 1965 and reprinted in 1969 in London under the title "The Two and the One").

1963. "Aspects of Myth" - summary"Treatise on the History of Religions" ("Gallimar").

English versions of "Blacksmiths and Alchemists" under the title "The Forge and the Crucible" (London - New York) and "Aspects of Myth" - "Myth and Reality" (New York).

In Madrid, the émigré publishing house Destin publishes a collection of novels and short stories in Romanian.

The second volume of memoirs, which Eliade considers his main work at that time, has begun.

1964. Collaboration with the "Encyclopedia of World Art" (New York).

1966 Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In Madrid, the first volume of his memoirs is published in Romanian: “Amintiri. I. Mansarda.

1967. Reader of ancient texts "From Primitives to Zen" ("From Primitives to Zen", London - New York); reprinted in 1974 in four volumes: I. “Gods, Goddesses and Myths of Creation”; II.“Man and the Sacred”; III. “Death, Afterlife and Eschatology”; IV.“From Medicine Man to Muhammad.”

In Paris, the story "On the street of Myntulias" is printed in Romanian.

The University of Chicago publishes a volume of research on Eliade, Myths and Symbols.

For the first time since the war, two volumes of his fiction are published in Romania.

The book “Search. History and Meaning in Religion” (“The Quest. History and Meaning in Religion”, Chicago-London), reprinted in 1971 under the title “Nostalgia for Origins” (“La Nostalgie des origines”, “Gallimard”).

Corresponding Member of the British Academy.

Monograph “From Zalmoxis to Genghis Khan” (“Paio”) on Geto-Dacian myths and Balkan folklore.

1971. The novel “Kupala Night” is published in Romanian in Paris.

1972. Study "Australian Religions" (Paris).

Corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

September. Member of the Belgian Royal Academy

1973-1976. In three years, a 13-volume collection of works by Mircea Eliade was published in Japan.

Collection of essays "Occultism, witchcraft and fashion in culture" (Chicago - London).

The first volume of the monumental "History of Religious Ideas" ("Paio").

1977. In Paris, a collection of novels and short stories "At the court of Dionysus" is published in Romanian.

1978 Second volume of the History of Religious Ideas.

Ern publishing house publishes french translation“Snake” - “Andronic et le Serpent”.

The 33rd issue (“Cahiers de le Herne”) is dedicated to Mircea Eliade.

1980. University of Lyon. Jean Moulin nominates Eliade for the Nobel Prize.

In "Gallimare" the first part of the memoirs is published: "Memoires, I (1907-1937). Les promises de l"equinoxe".

In Romania they put on the play “Endless Column”.

An annotated bibliography of Eliade's writings is published in New York: Douglas Allen and Dennis Doeing. Mircea Eliade. An Annotated Bibliography”.

In Paris, the fantastic story “Youth Without Youth” is published in Romanian.

1981. English version of the first part of the memoirs under the title "Autobiography", New York.

“Youth without youth” comes out under the heading “Le temps d "un centenaire” (“Gallimard”).

1982. Eliade - 75 years old.

March. In the US, a commemorative volume is published in his honor: “Imagination and Meaning” (“Imagination and Meaning”). AT different countries symposiums and colloquia dedicated to him are held.

1983. The third volume of the "History of Religious Ideas" ("Payo").

1984. The publication of Eliade's complete works begins in Germany.

In Italy, he is awarded the international Dante Alighieri Prize.

Awarding the Order of the Legion of Honor.

1986. February. The last volume of his essay “Briser le toit de la maison. La creativeivite et ses symboles.”

April May. In Romania, France, Italy, the USA and in many other countries there are obituaries and articles dedicated to Mircea Eliade.

1987. On the occasion of Eliade's 80th birthday, colloquia in his honor are held all over the world, books are published, films are made.

In Italy, the collection Mircea Eliade and Italy is published, where, in addition to studies about him, Eliade's correspondence with prominent Italian, French and Romanian scientists is published.

The Georges Pompidou Center organizes Mircea Eliade Days.

A 16-volume "Encyclopedia of Religions" is published in New York, which Eliade managed to completely edit, provide a preface dated March 1986, and for which he wrote a number of articles.

In Bucharest they are publishing, according to the manuscript, “A novel about a short-sighted teenager” and the second volume of “Memoirs”.

1988. In Paris, on the house where Eliade lived (Charles Dullen Square), a memorial plaque was installed with the inscription: “Here lived Mircea Eliade, a Romanian writer and philosopher who was born in Bucharest in 1907 and died in Chicago in 1986.”

1990 Mircea Eliade was posthumously elected a member of the Romanian Academy.

Mircea Eliade in Russia:

Space and history: Selected works. M., Progress, 1987. Compilation, introductory article and comments by N. Ya. Daragan. Afterword by V. A. Chalikova. Under the general editorship of I. R. Grigulevich and M. L. Gasparov. Translation from French and English by A. A. Vasilyeva, V. R. Rokityansky, E. G. Borisova.

Sacred and mundane. M., Publishing House of Moscow University, 1994. Translation from French, foreword and comments by N. K. Garbovsky.

Yu. Stefanov, A. Tumansky. The Sacred in the Ordinary or the Mystical Dissidence of Mircea Eliade.

Dr. Tataru invented a revolutionary cancer treatment and successfully applied it to three of his patients. But the treatment had a side effect...

Mircea Eliade is one of the most popular culturologists of our time. His books devoted to various aspects of primitive culture, rituals, the modern existence of the myth, the archetypal components of the consciousness of modern man are well known to the Russian reader.

"... A certain doctor Rudolf, close to Goebbels, put forward a theory that at first glance is insane, but not without elements of scientific justification. Say, if an electric charge of at least a million volts is passed through a person, this can cause a radical mutation in the body. The charge supposedly not only does not kill such a force, but, on the contrary, it has a total regenerating effect ... As in your case ... "

Mircea Eliade is the successor of that trend in literature, which is commonly called " fantastic realism"and at the origins of which stood Gogol, Edgar Allan Poe, Dostoevsky ... Everyday details coexist in M. Eliade's short stories with fantastic images, which is why the line between reality and fiction is erased, and the reader is drawn into some new reality.

Fellow students drew attention to a surprising change in the eternal honors student Dayana: "As far as I know him, he always wore a black patch on his right eye, and now he has it on his left. That's what's suspicious!" But this was only the first sign of metamorphosis...

Mircea Eliade is a successor of that trend in literature, which is commonly called "fantastic realism" and at the origins of which were Gogol, Edgar Poe, Dostoevsky ... Everyday details in M. Eliade's short stories coexist with fantastic images, which is why the line between reality and fiction is erased, and the reader is drawn into a new reality.

Honigberger spent more than half of his long life in the East. He was at various times a court physician, pharmacist, director of the arsenal and admiral in Lahore under Maharaja Ranjit Singh, more than once made significant fortunes and lost them. A high class adventurer, Honigberger was never a charlatan.

In 1931 he returned to Bucharest. He served in the military: first in the anti-aircraft regiment, then served in the bureau of translators at the headquarters (1932). In 1933 he defended his thesis in philosophy and was accepted as an assistant at the Department of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Bucharest. In Paris, his doctoral dissertation “Yoga. An Essay on the Origins of Indian Mysticism” (1936). In July 1938, Eliade fell into a wave of government repressions against legionnaires, although he was not a member of the Iron Guard, and served four months in a camp for political prisoners. He served as a cultural attaché at the Romanian Embassy in London (1940), and then as a cultural attaché in Lisbon (1941).

Moved to Paris (1945), where, at the invitation of J. Dumezil, he lectured at the School of Higher Studies. He was elected a member of the Asiatic Society in Paris. In 1948 he was invited to lecture at the Sorbonne. He headed the Department of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago (1957), and also served as a professor on the Committee of Public Thought. Since 1959, Eliade lectured and taught seminars for two trimesters, the last trimester he worked with graduate students, spent the summer in Europe.

He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1966). In the same year he became Doctor honoris causa of Yale University. In 1970 - Doctor honoris causa of Loyola University (Chicago). Corresponding Member of the British Academy. He was a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, a member of the Belgian Royal Academy (1972). In 1976 - Doctor honoris causa of the Sorbonne. University of Lyon Jean Moulin nominated Eliade for the Nobel Prize (1980). Received the international Dante Alighieri award in Italy; (1984); was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor (1984). In 1985 - Doctor honoris causa of the University of Washington. The University of Chicago named the Department of the History of Religions after Mircea Eliade (1985). Died April 22, 1986 in Chicago.

Eliade Mircea (1907-1986) - rom. historian of religions and philosopher, researcher of religious symbolism, rituals, magic and occultism, shamanism, ancient techniques of ecstasy, myths, archaic consciousness and way of thinking. He graduated from the Bucharest University in 1928, receiving a Ph.D. He continued his studies in Calcutta, where he studied Sanskrit and Indus. philosophy. Having emigrated from Romania in 1945, until 1956 he lived and worked in Paris, and then in the USA, headed the Department of Comparative Religion at the University of Chicago, and published a journal. "History of Religions".

In the actual philosophy. heritage E. greatest interest was his original concept of archaic consciousness and way of thinking (see: Thinking archaic), as well as his views on the philosophy of history. For the first time, he was able to identify a number of cognitive characteristics of the archaic mentality as predominantly figurative thinking - operating with archetypes, patterns and categories, reducing the individual to exemplary, the presence of polarities and coincidences of opposites, cyclical perception of time, etc. The archetype, in the understanding of E., is not a structure of the collective unconscious (K. Jung), but rather a prototype, prototype, “plan”, acting as a model for imitation and endowed with a deep sacred meaning. That is why, in the archaic consciousness and thinking, emphasized E., objects outside world, like human actions, do not have their own, independent meaning and value. They acquire meaning and value for people only as an alien supernatural force that distinguishes them from environment. This force, as it were, resides in a natural object - in its material substance or in its form; direct manifestation of supernatural power, or indirectly, through ritual. A stone, for example, may turn out to be sacred due to the location of the soul of ancestors in it or as a place of a supernatural phenomenon, or, finally, due to its shape, indicating that it is part of a symbol that marks a certain mythical act, etc. According to E., archaic consciousness and thinking gradually form an all-encompassing "ontology" of meanings, a universal model of understanding, where the world around us, in which the presence and work of man is felt, has extraterrestrial archetypes, understood either as a "plan", as a "form", or like an ordinary double, but existing at a higher, cosmic level. Due to the semantic “primacy” of archetypes in the structure of archaic consciousness and thinking, the real here is predominantly sacred, which can be achieved only through imitation or “participation”. This explains the desire of a person of archaic mentality to become an archetypal, "exemplary" personality, devoid of c.-l. individual traits.

E. believed that the stage of archaic consciousness and way of thinking, the level of archetypes and repetitions was first surpassed by Judeo-Christianity, which introduced a new category into religious experience - faith. Indeed, he noted that medieval Europe the peasants continued to live in cyclical time, while their more educated contemporaries had already taken on the burden of historicism. According to him, even in the 20th century. a significant part of the population of Europe, not to mention other continents, still exists in the traditional non-historical perspective. The Christian faith proclaimed that not only for God, but also for man, everything is possible, that man is free from natural laws and can influence the ontological status of the Universe. Only such freedom, according to E., is able to protect modern man from the "horror" of history. After all, unlike a person of archaic and traditional cultures, he does not have at his disposal myths, rituals and rules of conduct. Therefore, for modern man, the existence of God is much more necessary. Lack of faith leads to despair caused by the presence of man in the historical world and the final loss of his paradise of archetypes and repetitions. The glorification of historical man, which is characteristic of adherents of a number of historicist concepts (Marxism, existentialism, etc.), gives only illusory freedom. In the best case, believed E. (referring to totalitarian societies), one has to choose between two possibilities: to oppose history, which makes an insignificant minority, or take refuge in a subhuman existence, or flee.

Philos. E.'s views were subjected to serious criticism from representatives of various philosophies. directions (structuralism, existentialism, Marxism, etc.). However, interest in his work since the 1970s. is steadily increasing.

Space and history. M., 1987; Muthes, reves et mysteres. Paris, 1967.

(1907-198 6) - Romanian scholar, anthropologist, historian of religion. He studied the topic of myth and mythologism in the literature of the 20th century. Doctor of Philosophy (1928). Prepared a dissertation on yoga while living in India (1928-193 2). He taught at the University of Bucharest (1933-194 0), at the Paris School of Higher Studies, at the Sorbonne (1945-195 6). Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago (1957-198 6). Major works on the history of religion, mythology, philosophy: Essay on the Origin of Indian Mysticism (1936), Yoga Technique (1948), The Myth of Eternal Return. Archetypes and repetition” (1949), “Essays on the history of religions” (1949), “Yoga. Immortality and Freedom (1951), Images and Symbols (1952), Shamanism and the Archaic Technique of Ecstasy (1954), Forbidden Forest (1955), Blacksmiths and Alchemists (1956), Sacred and Worldly (1956), Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1957), Birth and New Birth (1958), Mystical Births. An Essay on Some Types of Initiation" (1959), "Mephistopheles and Androgyne" (1962), "Varieties of Myth" (1963), "Patanjali and Yoga" (1965), "Nostalgia for Origins" (1971), "Initiations, Rituals, secret societies. Mystical Births (1976) and others (more than 30 books by E. have been published in French alone). Without limiting his interests to the concept of "history of religion", E. emphasized that religion "does not necessarily involve faith in God, gods or spirits, but means the experience of the sacred and, therefore, is associated with the ideas of existence, meaning and truth." According to E., “... the activity of the unconscious feeds the unbelieving person of modern societies, helps him, without leading him, however, to a proper religious vision and knowledge of the world. The unconscious offers a solution to the problems of its own being and, in this sense, performs the function of religion, because before making existence capable of creating values, religion ensures its integrity. In a sense, it can even be argued that among those of our contemporaries who declare themselves unbelievers, religion and mythology are "hidden" in the depths of the subconscious. It also means that the opportunity to rejoin the religious experience of life is still alive in the depths of their "I". If we approach this phenomenon from the positions of Judeo-Christianity, then we can also say that the rejection of religion is tantamount to a new “fall” of a person, that an unbeliever has lost the ability to consciously live in religion, i.e. understand and share it. But in the depths of his being, a person still keeps the memory of her, just like after the first “fall into sin”. His ancestor, the first man Adam, also spiritually blind, still retained his mind, which allowed him to find the traces of God, and they are visible in this world. After the first "fall" religiosity sank to the level of a torn consciousness, after the second it fell even lower, into the abyss of the unconscious; she was "forgotten". This concludes the reflections of historians of religions. This opens up the problems of philosophers, psychologists, and also theologians. "Crypto-religiosity" (subconsciously inherent in every person) - occupies an important place in the work of E. Clarification of the inevitability of its existence (even in the conditions of the activity of ostentatious atheism and godlessness), its connection with mythology and culture - were the pathos of many works of E. According to E., space - as a world order, established from the ages and organizing all relations in the universe, opposing chaos, defeated, but not destroyed by the act of peacemaking, acted for ancient man the dominant principle of perception of everything that exists. Cosmogony acted for him as a tuning fork and a paradigm for interpreting any significant life phenomena. The cosmos constituted an imperishable present, independent of the past and not implying an inevitable future. The perception of modern man himself as a "subject in history", according to E., imposes on him an everlasting burden of universal responsibility, but at the same time allows you to feel like a creator of history. E., in particular, reconstructs changes in people's perception of historical time, associated with the evolution of models of their self-awareness, by studying the corresponding symbols and rituals in philosophical, religious and mythological systems. In the book “The Myth of the Eternal Return. Archetypes and repetition ”E. succinctly outlined the essence of his philosophical and historical views in the context of the problem of fate European civilization, and also outlined the foundations of a certain "archaic ontology". This term E. meant special form philosophical anthropology, developed by him on the basis of speculative traditionalist metaphysics and in accordance with which the works of Husserl, J. Dumezil, Durkheim, Freud, Heidegger, Jung are rethought. central theme of this work - the meaning and relationship of the two types of worldview that have manifested themselves in world history: “archaic”, “traditional”, “eastern”, “prehistoric” (i.e. “cyclical”, due to the myth of the cyclical nature of time) and “modern”, “ Western”, “historicist” (i.e. Judeo-Christian, based on the idea of ​​the progressive development of history towards a specific goal). E. shows that archaic man gives reality, significance and meaning only to those objects and actions that are involved in transcendental, sacred, mythological reality. This reality is perceived primitive society(or religious consciousness in general) through the intentional experience of the absolute object - the "archetype". The terms “theophany,” “epiphany,” and “hierophany” are used to designate such acts, the theological origin of which corresponds to the basic idea of ​​E. phenomenology—the assertion of the identity of certain timeless religious structures and structures of pure consciousness. At the moment of mystical (“hermeneutic”, “intuitive”) comprehension of the manifestations of the sacred or sacred (E. borrows this concept from R. Otto), the distinction between subject and object, man and the absolute is practically eliminated. Structurally conditioned striving religious person("Homo religiosus") to constantly renew these states is the reason for the existence cultural universals(“culture of archetypes”). Having singled out as a criterion the archaic way of understanding a thing and endowing it with the status of “really existing”, E. identifies and describes the following classes of universal mythological symbols: temples; 2. symbols of the "center of the world" as the points of connection of the areas of the immanent and transcendent - myths about the "navel of the Earth", about the world tree or mountain, about the sacred marriage of Earth and Heaven; 3. symbols of the repetition of the archetypal gesture in the "center of the world" ("imitatio dei", "repetition of cosmogony") - cosmological myths, primordial rituals and ceremonies. Describing the latter, E. outlines his theory of ritual, the central position of which reads: the function of the ritual is to eliminate the flow of concrete historical (“profane”) time and replace it with tradition time (“sacred time”). E. supplements these reflections with the formulation of the problem of the correlation of being and time, for which ideas, symbols and rituals associated with the interpretation of time in various mythological, religious and philosophical systems are considered. This consideration is used by E. as analytical material for solving the fundamental problem of traditionalist anthropology - a way out of the crisis. modern world with the help of overcoming historicism (“the abolition of history”), and it is precisely historicism that is declared the main negative component of the self-consciousness of modern Western European culture. E. is convinced that the refusal of archaic man to realize his being as historical allows him to slip out of the pressure of history, to overcome its horror. It is this circumstance that makes the study of ethnography and the history of religion relevant for a philosopher who is concerned about the growing sense of fear of the absurdity of being, which is so characteristic of modern man. Accordingly, the following archaic methods of protection from history are distinguished: firstly, the “concept of archetypes”, according to which the historical character turns into an exemplary hero, and historical event- into myth or legend, and secondly, cyclical or astral theories, thanks to which history is justified, and the torments caused by its pressure and even violence acquire an eschatological meaning. The search by archaic man for a way to “cancel history” forms an important fragment of E.’s reasoning. The key concepts in this context are “Year”, “ New Year”, “Cosmogony”, so that when studying the corresponding rituals and rites, special attention is drawn to their cyclical nature, which is associated with the idea that the world is created not once, but periodically. In the light of this understanding, E. seeks to explain the origin of the basic elements of human culture, in particular, agriculture. It, contrary to the popular point of view, is declared to have arisen by no means from purely practical needs. Agriculture, according to E., refers not only to real, but also to the symbolic actions of "vegetation vegetation", which are included in the ritual of the periodic rebirth of time. Such a revival is opposed to the creation of history, and here the emphasis is noticeably shifted in accordance with the system of value preferences of the philosopher. E. draws a distinction between "historical" and "non-historical" times and peoples, which corresponds to the more familiar distinction between "civilized" and "primitive" peoples. Only the latter, in his opinion, are able to truly stay in the "paradise of archetypes", i.e. exist without historical memory and in ignorance of the irreversibility of events in time. E. was convinced that within the framework of such a philosophical and historical approach, it is appropriate to state the implementation of the original yoke of history from its birth to its transformation into the evil Chronos. He showed that the process of “historicization” of consciousness was once initiated by the messianic-minded Hebrew prophets, and the Greek rationalist philosophers and the Christian elite, who sacralized the suffering and oppression of history, made the introduction of “historicism” an almost irreversible event. On the example of the analysis of the sermons of the Israeli prophets and the biblical myth about the sacrifice of Abraham, it is considered how the cyclic time was opened, as a result of which the events of history gained value, how the actions of the cultural hero were discredited, and the hierophany of unchanging sacredness turned into the theophany of the changing will of Yahweh. E. believes that the faith "invented" by Jews and Christians for some time allows you to endure the oppression of history, but as soon as the process of secularization, generated by the same historical consciousness, man is faced with the prospect of despair, which is caused by constant horror of the inhuman forces of history. Modern man , according to E., is experiencing incredible suffering and, as a result, is exhausted by the urgent question of how he can endure the growing oppression of history. After discussing the struggle between two concepts - "non-historical archaic" and "Judeo-Christian historical" - E. moves on to the theme of the guilt of the Jewish, Christian and philosophical elites in the destruction of the archaic culture of archetypes. It is argued that the Hebrew prophets and Christian theologians created the danger of profanation of the sense of time, because. they relied on Old Testament historicism and rejected mystical unity with cosmic cyclical rhythms. The rural strata of the population of Europe for a long time remained outside this danger, because. showed no inclination towards historically and morally colored Christianity. According to this point of view, the peasants combined the cosmism of paganism and the monotheism of Judeo-Christianity into a kind of religious formation, within which the cosmos is again spiritualized by the idea of ​​worshiping a cultural hero who set the original norms of behavior, and it is they that are expressed in the rituals of eternal return. Thus, E. attempts to point to more or less modern ways to overcome the horror of history, which became a symbol of the two world wars. The cause of these unprecedented catastrophes is the historicist ambitions of Hegel, Marx and Hitler. In particular, E. accused Hegel of the fact that his concept of historical necessity justified all the cruelties, perversions and tragedies of history, and his doctrine of the Absolute Spirit deprived the history of human freedom. These ideas are compared with the teaching of the Hebrew prophets about the event as the will of Yahweh. Their similarity is proved on the basis that both teachings, according to E., contributed to the destruction of the myth of the eternal return. Thus, in the context of an outwardly neutral generalization of a huge array of E.'s empirical material, a whole complex of ideas of traditionalist metaphysics was presented and an attempt was made to introduce into the mass consciousness the value orientations accompanying such metaphysics. The relationship between the sacred and the profane in the context of the reality of both “dominant” and “overcome” time has also outlined another problematic field of a number of E.’s studies. at the level of the collective unconscious. Profane time is historical, linear, irreversible, available for fixation by the potential of individual memory. The scoring of the myth, according to E., is a breakthrough of the "sacred", a peculiar "epiphany". E. describes the cyclical perception of time by mythological peoples (on the materials of Indian yoga, the Hebrew olam, the ancient zone, etc.). At the same time, E. draws attention to the fact that in the context of the relationship between the sacred and the profane as “spatial” (and not temporal) principles, the fundamental achievability of their neighborhood and “side by side” among archaic peoples (the Tigris and Euphrates, originating in heaven, and the above-ground arrangement of ideal "forms" in Plato). Sacred space, from the point of view of E., certainly has a certain Center - a place where the earth communicates with heaven (painted pillars of archaic Australians, shaman's yurts or christian churches). Although in Christianity, only in the procedures of the sacraments of the liturgy, the closure of sacred and profane time brings the other worlds and this worlds closer together. History, which is created in profane time, is thereby cut off from the "higher" world. Judaism and Christianity, seeking to legitimize history as one of the hypostases of God's providence, pointed to the presence in it of the ultimate goal (the concept of messianism) and a special, higher meaning (guiding God's will). Retribution by Divine mercy - it and only it, according to E., can give history the meaning that will allow human psyche overcome the inescapable despair and fear of the eternity of being and the finiteness of individual existence. "... The man in traditional societies could live only in a space “opened” upwards, where the division of levels was symbolically provided and where communication with the other world was made possible thanks to rituals. Already the Italian humanists, according to E., sought to universalize Christianity, to overcome its European provinciality, creating a universal, non-human, cosmic, non-historical myth. E.'s Bruno is, first of all, a religious ascetic who rebels against the peripheral nature of Christian dogma, against the partiality of the models of the world order proposed by papal Rome. Heliocentrism acted for Bruno as a "hieroglyph of divine mystery" on a universal scale. Modern man, from the point of view of E., emerges from the inhuman rhythm of his own existence through "cryptomythological" scenarios of behavior (theater and reading). E. gave European intellectuals the 20th century. (prepared for this discovery at the actual philosophical level by the ideas of Nietzsche and Spengler) the myth of the East - the world of absolute spiritual freedom and harmony established once and for all. Having devoted a number of works to the study of myth, E. formulated the thesis that myth is a "sacred history" of acts of creation with the participation of supernatural beings, thus constituting the only true spiritual reality for primitive man. Myth, according to E., is a prototype, a sample of any human rituals and a "tracing paper" of the vast majority of types of "profane" activities. Dominating in the philosophy of antiquity, in popular medieval Christianity, mythological consciousness, according to E., is experiencing a renaissance in philosophy and art of the 20th century, in the production of modern media. E. paid special attention to the spirit of historicism in the 20th century. “Historicism,” he noted, “is a typical product of those nations for which history has not been a continuous nightmare. Perhaps they would have a different worldview if they belonged to nations marked by the fatality of history. The "forbidden forest" for E. is archaic, Latin-speaking Romania, formed from the Dacians and Roman colonists, forgotten by history for many centuries and retaining its national unity only thanks to the rituals that united the people (N. Smart). An attempt to constructively overcome the traditional epistemological opposition “knowable - unknowable” is inherent in E.; for him, in the spirit of the Platonic worldview, a different dynamic is essential: “recognized - unrecognized”. Combat of memory and unconsciousness is the basis for the existence of people as a specific creativity that finds its expression, according to E. , in cultural phenomena to be deciphered. Paying tribute within this intellectual tradition to both psychoanalysis and structuralism, E. did not accept their limitations: commenting on Freud’s “purely sexual” interpretation of the image of a child’s attraction to his mother, he pointed out that “translate the image into specific terminology, introduce it into only one arbitrarily chosen context means to destroy the image as an instrument of knowledge. The implicit metaphysics of E. took the form of an aesthetic ontology based on the idea of ​​creativity, in which the imagination is both a way of knowing and a way of being. Only imagination can comprehend the universality of creativity, which is the meaning of human life (M. Calinescu). Structuralism, trying to subordinate myth to logic, is likened, according to E., to an attempt to “dissolve individual consciousness in the anonymous, and the latter in nature, which physics and cybernetics have reduced to “basic structures”. Absolutism and “autocracy” of strict rules of organization and evolution of forms of language and thought were unacceptable and unbearable for E. In his work, E. remained committed to the idea of ​​the irremovability of myth (belief in the Eternal Return) from the totality of attributes of genuine human spirituality. "Periodic return to the sacred Time of Beginning" or "ontological obsession" - the main distinguishing feature, according to E., archaic and ancient man. The desire to recreate the Time when the gods were present on Earth is a thirst for the sacred, an eternal "nostalgia for Genesis."

“The interest in alchemy of scientists and intellectuals in general was aroused primarily by the “scientific” fragments of alchemical literature. Alchemy was studied solely as a herald of chemistry.

I have repeatedly tried to prove that this approach to alchemy is not always justified; that by no means always and everywhere was it a prologue to chemistry; that if at some point a new scientific technique separated from alchemical techniques, giving rise to modern chemistry, this does not mean that all alchemical techniques were pragmatic.

Aspects of myth

Mircea Eliade is one of the most popular culturologists of our time. His books, devoted to various aspects of primitive culture, rituals, the modern existence of the myth, the archetypal components of the consciousness of modern man, are well known to the Russian reader.

The proposed book is a presentation of the main theoretical views of one of the largest culturologists of our time concerning the problems of archaic culture and mythological thinking which, according to the author, are the archetypal foundations of the consciousness of modern man.

Stone fortune teller. Collection

Mircea Eliade is the successor of that trend in literature, which is usually called "fantastic realism" and at the origins of which were Gogol, Edgar Allan Poe, Dostoevsky ...

Everyday details in M. Eliade's short stories coexist with fantastic images, which is why the line between reality and fiction is erased, and the reader is drawn into some new reality.

History of faith and religious ideas. Volume 1

The first volume covers the history religious beliefs humanity, from the Stone Age to the Eleusinian mysteries.

History of faith and religious ideas. Volume 3

The last three-volume work of the Romanian philosopher and writer Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) summarizes his entire life in science.

Volume 3, following the designated theme, also includes additional chapters on the religions of ancient Eurasia, Tibet, on magic, alchemy and the hermetic tradition.

Yoga: immortality and freedom

This book is considered a classic exploration of the horizons of the Indian spirit.

Mircea Eliade creates an idea of ​​yoga as a holistic, universal spiritual world, the different elements of which correspond to different cultural levels and states of consciousness.

Space and history

Mircea Eliade is a prominent scientist dealing with the theory of myth, the history of religion, and the methodology of religious studies.

Space and history. Selected works

The collection includes works: "The Myth of the Eternal Return (Archetypes and Repetitions)", "Shamanism and Cosmology", "Parallel Existing Myths, Symbols and Rites", "Prolegomena of Religious Dualism: Dyads and Opposites".

Contains an essay on the life and work of Mircea Eliade N.Ya. Daragan, afterword by V.A. Chalikova.

Maitreya

The Maitreyi novel is the first significant attempt at the artistic interpretation of the impressions that fell upon the author in India. This novel is considered to be autobiographical, realistic, since in it the “sacred”, “other-being” is not revealed as openly as in the later works of Eliade.

On a superficial reading, and even with an eye on Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham, one can perceive it as another version of the sentimental and tragic story about the love of a white man for a “beautiful native” - a story spiced with satirical notes, designed to expose all the spiritual insignificance of the notorious "pioneers" spending time in night drinking parties with cheerful girls.

In Eliade's novel, some notions about the erotic side of Tantra Yoga are given in semi-hints, but this is done very delicately, because piece of art carries a completely different load than an esoteric treatise or a scientific monograph.

Mephistopheles and androgyne

Mephistopheles and Androgyne” is one of the key works in the work of one of the most original thinkers of the 20th century, Mircea Eliade. Written in the late 50s, it had a significant impact on a variety of intellectual movements and schools, causing fierce debate both about the essence of the concept presented in the book, and about the personality of the author himself.

Deliberately deviating from the main line of development of Western philosophy as a whole, Eliade forces his reader to take a fresh look at familiar things. A private task this study, according to the author, is "an illustration of the approach of the historian of religion, trying to interpret a number of types of religious behavior and spiritual values ​​inherent in non-Europeans."

The myth of the eternal return

`The myth of the eternal return. Archetypes and repeatability` - special book, distinguished by the clarity of thought and the harmony of the concept.

It examines the fundamental theories of the life order of the tribes that are at the archaic stage of development, their inherent negative attitude towards concrete historical time, their nostalgia for the Great Time, expressed in the periodic resurrection of the mythical primal time.

Myths. Dreams. mysteries

The book of the famous ethnographer and anthropologist M. Eliade "Myths, Dreams and Mysteries" contains a large amount of mythological material of both primitive communal peoples and ancient civilizations, considers the cosmogonic idea of ​​the separation of heaven and Earth - spiritual and material.

Mystical sensations, magical warmth, the mystery of flight, the work of dreams, the path of a warrior, creation and sacrifice, cannibalism, suffering and the symbolism of death in initiations, male and female secret societies - these and a wide range of other issues are covered in the book.

Nostalgia for origins

Eliade reflects on the connection between man and the cosmos, on the involvement of man in cosmic processes.

His interest in myths is not accidental. A myth in modern society is not equivalent to a myth in "traditional" societies. Something from the former mythological worldview is irretrievably lost. Many modern thinkers believe that the troubles and crises of our time are explained precisely by the absence of a mythological vision.

Mircea Eliade is sure that the myth is not subject to the flow of calendar, profane time, it exists in a different time dimension, the dimension of the sacred.

Essays in Comparative Religion

Mircea Eliade's fundamental monograph on the history of religions summarizes data from ethnology, comparative religion and mythology. From the analysis of specific material associated with certain norms of the cult (sky, luminaries, earth, water, etc.), the author proceeds to the most general problems of the history of religions, the functions of myth and symbolic structures as universal ways of orienting a person in space and time.

Religions of Australia

This book is based on a course of lectures given by the author at the University of Chicago in 1964.

Supernatural beings and higher deities. Cultural heroes and mythological. Rites of initiation and secret cults. Magicians-healers and their sacral models. Death and Eschatology.

sacred and profane

Based on extensive knowledge in the field of ethnography, theology, history of religions, the author analyzes the behavior and feelings of a person in a world filled with religious significance.

Why are we in awe of the new house that has been built; why every person has a place on earth where he constantly wants to return; why a child is immersed in water at baptism; why we look forward to the new year, pinning many hopes on it; what is real and imaginary reality, real and imaginary time for the believer; what do some religious holidays mean and how they affect the consciousness and actions of a person. These and many other questions are answered in this book.

Sacred texts of the peoples of the world

One of the masters of the minds of the educated public of the sixties and seventies, Mircea Eliade (1907-1986), was the most original researcher of the mythological traditions of mankind. He taught the history of religions for many years at the University of Chicago.

"Sacred Texts of the Peoples of the World" is an extensive anthology, which includes sacred texts from a huge variety of sources of world culture: the Koran, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Rig Veda, the Bhagavad Gita, the Popol Vuh, etc.

Eliade, Mircea

Eliade Mircea (March 9, 1907, Bucharest - April 23, 1986, Chicago) - Romanian philosopher, historian of religion, ethnographer, writer. In 1928 he graduated from the University of Bucharest, in 1931 he went to Bengal and the Himalayas, where he studied Sanskrit and Indian philosophy for two years, and studied yogic practice. In 1933-39 he taught courses in Indian philosophy and the general history of religions at the University of Bucharest. In 1938 he founded a journal dedicated to the publication of religious studies. From 1940 - cultural attaché at the Romanian Embassy in Lisbon, from 1941 - cultural adviser to the ambassador. In 1945-56 - professor at the Sorbonne; from 1957 until the end of his life - head of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Chicago, founder of the so-called. Chicago School of the History of Religions, which is characterized by a comprehensive study of mythology, anthropology, symbolism and traditional forms culture. One of Eliade's main themes is the problem of the ambiguity of spatio-temporal categories in the minds of man and society, to which his "trilogy" is devoted: "The Myth of the Eternal Return" (1949; Russian translation 1987), "Images and Symbols" (1952), "Sacred and mundane" (1965; Russian translation 1994). The concepts of "sacred" space and time are inherent in traditional cultures: space in them is thought to be heterogeneous, some of its parts are qualitatively different from others, in some there is a structure and spiritual content, others are called "chaos", a formless and hostile to man extension, the abode of demons and monsters. Each section of the "sacred" space has a "center", a point where the earthly comes into contact with the heavenly. This "center" can be a stove in a hut, a shaman tree, similar to the world tree, and any temple building. Time in traditional cultures it is also heterogeneous: it is able to speed up and slow down, to be regularly updated, returning back to its source, which is ensured by the active intervention of people in its course - rituals, festivities, religious ceremonies. In contrast to this, "worldly" space is amorphous, unformed and, as it were, "essential", while time is unilinear, irreversible and invariably hostile to man. One of the indispensable conditions for spiritual realization Eliade considers not only liberation from the "horror of time", but also the destruction of time duration in its bad aspect through various forms of asceticism and ecstasy. This idea is developed in such works as Yoga, Immortality and Freedom (1948), Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (1957, Russian translation 1998), Shamanism and Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1951, Russian translation . 1998). Another favorite theme of Eliade is the theme of "hierophany", the manifestation of the divine in the earthly world, when any mundane reality - a stone, a tree or a person, without losing its material nature, turns into a supernatural reality. The highest example of hierophany is Theophany, the Incarnation of Christ. These theoretical constructions are clothed in artistic flesh in Eliade's novels, novellas and short stories: Maitreyi (1933), Maid Christina (1936), Bengal Night (1960). See also Art. Sacred.

Op. in Russian trans.: Space and history. M., 1987; Under the shade of a lily. M., 1996.

Literature: Nesterov A. Nirvana, Underworld, Heaven, - "Literary Review", 1998, No. 2; Kasatkina T. On the verge of two worlds, - "New World", 1997, No. 4.

Yu. N. Stefanov

New Philosophical Encyclopedia. In four volumes. / Institute of Philosophy RAS. Scientific ed. advice: V.S. Stepin, A.A. Huseynov, G.Yu. Semigin. M., Thought, 2010, vol. IV, p. 431.

Eliade, Mircea (1907-1986) - Romanian scholar, anthropologist, historian of religion. Studied the topic myth and mythologism in the literature of the 20th century. Doctor of Philosophy (1928). Prepared a dissertation on yoga while living in India (1928-1932). He taught at the University of Bucharest (1933-1940), at the Paris School of Higher Studies, at the Sorbonne (1945-1956). Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago (1957-1986). Major works on the history of religion, mythology, philosophy: Essay on the Origin of Indian Mysticism (1936), Yoga Technique (1948), The Myth of Eternal Return. Archetypes and Repetition (1949), Essays on the History of Religions ( 1949), "Yoga. Immortality and Freedom" (1951), "Images and Symbols" (1952), "Shamanism and the Archaic Technique of Ecstasy" (1954), "Forbidden Forest" (1955), "Blacksmiths and Alchemists" (1956) , "Sacred and mundane" (1956), "Myths, dreams and mysteries" (1957), "Birth and new birth" (1958), "Mystical births. Essay on some types of initiation" (1959), "Mephistopheles and Androgyne" (1962), Varieties of Myth (1963), Patanjali and Yoga (1965), Nostalgia for Origins (1971), Initiations, Rituals, Secret Societies. Mystical Births (1976), etc. (only on French published more than 30 books by E.).

Without limiting his interests to the concept of "history of religion", E. emphasized that religion "does not necessarily involve faith in God, gods or spirits, but means the experience of the sacred and, therefore, is associated with the ideas of existence, meaning and truth." According to E., "... the activity of the unconscious feeds the unbelieving person of modern societies, helps him, without leading him, however, to a proper religious vision and knowledge of the world. The unconscious offers a solution to the problems of his own being and in this sense performs the function of religion, because before making existence capable of creating values, religion ensures its integrity.In a sense, it can even be argued that even among those of our contemporaries who declare themselves unbelievers, religion and mythology are "hidden" in the depths of the subconscious. This also means that the possibility of again to join the religious experience of life is still alive in the depths of their "I". If we approach this phenomenon from the standpoint of Judeo-Christianity, we can also say that the rejection of religion is tantamount to a new "fall" of a person, that an unbeliever has lost the ability to consciously live in religion , i.e. understand and share it.But in the depths of his being, a person still keeps the memory of her, in the same way as after the first "fall". His ancestor, the first man Adam, also spiritually blind, still retained his mind, which allowed him to find the traces of God, and they are visible in this world. After the first "fall" religiosity sank to the level of a torn consciousness, after the second it fell even lower, into the abyss of the unconscious; she was "forgotten". This concludes the reflections of historians of religions. This opens up the problems of philosophers, psychologists, and also theologians." "Crypto-religiosity" (subconsciously inherent in every person) - occupies an important place in the work of E.

Clarification of the inescapability of its existence (even in the conditions of activity of ostentatious atheism and atheism), its connection with mythology and culture - acted as the pathos of many works of E. According to E., the cosmos is like a world order established from time immemorial and organizing all relations in the universe, resisting chaos, defeated, but not destroyed by the act of peacemaking, acted for the ancient man as the dominant principle of perception of everything that exists. Cosmogony acted for him as a tuning fork and a paradigm for interpreting any significant life phenomena. The cosmos constituted an imperishable present, independent of the past and not implying an inevitable future. The perception of modern man himself as a "subject in history", according to E., imposes on him an everlasting burden of universal responsibility, but at the same time allows you to feel like a creator of history. E., in particular, reconstructs changes in people's perception of historical time, associated with the evolution of models of their self-awareness, by studying the corresponding symbols and rituals in philosophical, religious and mythological systems.

In the book "The Myth of the Eternal Return. Archetypes and Repetition" E. succinctly outlined the essence of his philosophical and historical views in the context of the problem of the fate of European civilization, and also outlined the foundations of a certain "archaic ontology". With this term, E. designated a special form of philosophical anthropology, which he developed on the basis of speculative traditionalist metaphysics and in accordance with which the works of Husserl, J. Dumezil, Durkheim, Freud, Heidegger, Jung are rethought. The central theme of this work is the meaning and relationship between the two types of worldview that have manifested themselves in world history: "archaic", "traditional", "eastern", "prehistoric" (i.e. "cyclical", due to the myth of the cyclical nature of time) and "modern" , "Western", "historicist" (i.e. Judeo-Christian, based on the idea of ​​the progressive development of history towards a specific goal). E. shows that archaic man gives reality, significance and meaning only to those objects and actions that are involved in transcendental, sacred, mythological reality. This reality is comprehended by primitive society (or religious consciousness in general) through the intentional experience of the absolute object - the "archetype". To designate such acts, the terms "theophany", "epiphany", "hierophany" are used, the theological origin of which corresponds to the main idea of ​​E.'s phenomenology - the assertion of the identity of certain timeless religious structures and structures of pure consciousness. At the moment of mystical ("hermeneutic", "intuitive") comprehension of the manifestations of the sacred or sacred (E. borrows this concept from R. Otto), the distinction between subject and object, man and the absolute is practically eliminated. Due to the structure of the unconscious desire of a religious person ("Homo religiosus") to constantly renew these states is the reason for the existence of cultural universals ("culture of archetypes"). Having singled out as a criterion the archaic way of understanding a thing and endowing it with the status of "really existing", E. identifies and describes the following classes of universal mythological symbols: temples; 2. symbols of the "center of the world" as the junction points of the immanent and transcendent areas - myths about the "navel of the Earth", about the world tree or mountain, about the sacred marriage of Earth and Heaven; 3. symbols of the repetition of the archetypal gesture in the "center of the world" ("imitatio dei", "repetition of cosmogony") - cosmological myths, primordial rituals and ceremonies. Describing the latter, E. outlines his theory of ritual, the central position of which reads: the function of ritual is to eliminate the flow of concrete historical ("profane") time and replace it with tradition time ("sacred time"). E. supplements these reflections with the formulation of the problem of the correlation of being and time, for which ideas, symbols and rituals associated with the interpretation of time in various mythological, religious and philosophical systems are considered. This consideration is used by E. as analytical material for solving the fundamental problem of traditionalist anthropology - overcoming the crisis of the modern world by overcoming historicism ("cancellation of history"), and it is historicism that is declared the main negative component of the self-consciousness of modern Western European culture. E. is convinced that the refusal of archaic man to realize his being as historical allows him to slip out from under the pressure of history, to overcome its horror. It is this circumstance that makes the study of ethnography and the history of religion relevant for a philosopher who is concerned about the growing sense of fear of the absurdity of being, which is so characteristic of modern man. Accordingly, the following archaic methods of protection from history are distinguished: firstly, the "concept of archetypes", according to which a historical character turns into an exemplary hero, and a historical event into a myth or legend, and secondly, cyclic or astral theories, thanks to by which history is justified, and the torments caused by its pressure and even violence acquire an eschatological meaning.

The search by archaic man for a way to “cancel history” forms an important fragment of E. is associated with the idea that the world is created not once, but periodically. In the light of this understanding, E. seeks to explain the origin of the basic elements of human culture, in particular, agriculture. It, contrary to the widespread point of view, is declared to have arisen by no means from purely practical needs. Agriculture, according to E., refers not only to the real, but also to the symbolic actions of "vegetation vegetation", which are included in the ritual of the periodic rebirth of time. Such a revival is opposed to the creation of history, and here the emphasis is noticeably shifted in accordance with the system of value preferences of the philosopher. E. draws a distinction between "historical" and "non-historical" times and peoples, which corresponds to the more familiar distinction between "civilized" and "primitive" peoples. Only the latter, in his opinion, are able to truly stay in the "paradise of archetypes", i.e. exist without historical memory and in ignorance of the irreversibility of events in time. E. was convinced that within the framework of such a philosophical and historical approach, it is appropriate to state the implementation of the original yoke of history from its birth to the transformation into the evil Chronos. He showed that the process of "historicization" of consciousness was once initiated by the messianic-minded Hebrew prophets, and the Greek rationalist philosophers and the Christian elite, who sacralized the suffering and oppression of history, made the introduction of "historicism" an almost irreversible event. On the example of the analysis of the sermons of the Israeli prophets and the biblical myth about the sacrifice of Abraham, it is considered how the cyclic time was opened, as a result of which the events of history gained value, how the actions of the cultural hero were discredited, and the hierophany of unchanging sacredness turned into the theophany of the changing will of Yahweh. E. believes that the faith "invented" by Jews and Christians for some time allows you to endure the oppression of history, but as soon as the process of secularization, generated by the same historical consciousness, gains momentum, a person faces the prospect of despair, which is caused by constant horror of the inhuman forces of history . Modern man, according to E., is experiencing incredible suffering and, as a result, is exhausted by the urgent question of how to endure the growing oppression of history. After discussing the struggle between two concepts - "non-historical archaic" and "Jewish-Christian historical" - E. moves on to the theme of the guilt of the Jewish, Christian and philosophical elites in the destruction of the archaic culture of archetypes. It is argued that the Hebrew prophets and Christian theologians created the danger of profanation of the sense of time, because. they relied on Old Testament historicism and rejected mystical unity with cosmic cyclical rhythms. The rural strata of the population of Europe for a long time remained outside this danger, because. showed no inclination towards historically and morally colored Christianity. According to this point of view, the peasants combined the cosmism of paganism and the monotheism of Judeo-Christianity into a kind of religious formation, within which the cosmos is again spiritualized by the idea of ​​worshiping a cultural hero who set the original norms of behavior, and it is they that are expressed in the rituals of eternal return. Thus, E. attempts to point to more or less modern ways of overcoming the horror of history, symbolized by the two world wars. Historicist ambitions are claimed to be the cause of these unprecedented catastrophes. Hegel , Marx and Hitler .

In particular, E. accused Hegel that his concept of historical necessity justified all the cruelties, perversions and tragedies of history, and his doctrine of the Absolute Spirit deprived the history of human freedom. These ideas are compared with the teaching of the Hebrew prophets about the event as the will of Yahweh. Their similarity is proved on the basis that both teachings, according to E., contributed to the destruction of the myth of the eternal return. Thus, in the context of an outwardly neutral generalization of a huge array of E.'s empirical material, a whole complex of ideas of traditionalist metaphysics was presented and an attempt was made to introduce into the mass consciousness the value orientations accompanying such metaphysics. The relationship between the sacred and the profane in the context of the reality of both “dominant” and “overcome” time has also outlined another problematic field of a number of E.’s studies. at the level of the collective unconscious. Profane time is historical, linear, irreversible, available for fixation by the potential of individual memory. The scoring of the myth, according to E., is a breakthrough of the "sacred", a peculiar "epiphany". E. describes the cyclical perception of time by mythological peoples (on the materials of Indian yoga, the Hebrew olam, the ancient zone, etc.). At the same time, E. draws attention to the fact that in the context of the relationship between the sacred and the profane as “spatial” (and not temporal) principles, the fundamental achievability of their neighborhood and “neighborhood” among archaic peoples (the Tigris and Euphrates, originating in heaven, and the above-ground arrangement of ideal "forms" in Plato). Sacred space, from the point of view of E., certainly has a certain Center - a place where the earth communicates with heaven (painted pillars of archaic Australians, shaman's yurts or Christian churches). Although in Christianity, only in the procedures of the sacraments of the liturgy, the closure of sacred and profane time brings the other worlds and this worlds closer together. History, which is created in profane time, is thus cut off from the "higher" world. Judaism and Christianity, seeking to legitimize history as one of the hypostases of God's providence, pointed to the presence in it of the ultimate goal (the concept of messianism) and a special, higher meaning (guiding God's will). Retribution by Divine mercy - it and only it, according to E., can give history the meaning that will allow the human psyche to overcome the inescapable despair and fear of the eternity of being and the finiteness of individual existence.

"... A person in traditional societies could only live in a space "open" upwards, where the division of levels was symbolically provided and where communication with the other world was made possible thanks to rituals." Already the Italian humanists, according to E., sought to universalize Christianity, to overcome its European provinciality, creating a universal, non-human, cosmic, non-historical myth. E. Bruno is, first of all, a religious ascetic who rebels against the peripheral nature of Christian dogmas, against the partiality of the models of the world order proposed by papal Rome. Heliocentrism acted for Bruno as a "hieroglyph of divine mystery" on a universal scale. Modern man, from E.'s point of view, emerges from the inhuman rhythm of his own existence through "cryptomythological" scenarios of behavior (theater and reading). E. gave European intellectuals the 20th century. (prepared for this discovery at the philosophical level proper by the ideas of Nietzsche and Spengler) the myth of the East - the world of absolute spiritual freedom and harmony established once and for all. Devoting a number of works to the study of myth, E. formulated the thesis that myth is a "sacred history" of acts of creation with the participation of supernatural beings, thus constituting the only true spiritual reality for primitive man. Myth, according to E., is a prototype, a sample of any human rituals and a "tracing paper" of the vast majority of types of "profane" activities. Dominating in the philosophy of antiquity, in popular medieval Christianity, mythological consciousness, according to E., is experiencing a renaissance in philosophy and art of the 20th century, in the production of modern media. E. paid special attention to the spirit of historicism in the 20th century. "Historicism," he noted, "is a typical product of those nations for which history has not been a continuous nightmare. Perhaps they would have a different worldview if they belonged to nations marked by the fatality of history." The "Forbidden Forest" for E. is archaic, Latin-speaking Romania, formed from the Dacians and Roman colonists, forgotten by history for many centuries and retaining its national unity only thanks to the rituals that united the people (N. Smart). E. is characterized by an attempt to constructively overcome the traditional epistemological opposition "knowable - unknowable", for him, in the spirit of the Platonic worldview, a different dynamic is essential: "recognized - unrecognized". Combat of memory and unconsciousness is the basis for the existence of people as a specific creativity that finds its expression, according to E. , in cultural phenomena to be deciphered.

Paying tribute within the framework of this intellectual tradition to both psychoanalysis and structuralism, E. did not accept their limitations: commenting on Freud's "purely sexual" interpretation of the image of a child's attraction to his mother, he pointed out that "translate the image into specific terminology, introduce it into only one arbitrarily chosen context means to destroy the image as an instrument of knowledge. The implicit metaphysics of E. took the form of an aesthetic ontology based on the idea of ​​creativity, in which the imagination is both a way of knowing and a way of being. Only imagination can comprehend the universality of creativity, which is the meaning of human life (M. Calinescu). Structuralism, trying to subordinate myth to logic, is likened, according to E., to an attempt to "dissolve individual consciousness in the anonymous, and the latter in nature, which physics and cybernetics have reduced to" basic structures ". Absolutism and" autocratic "strict rules of organization and evolution forms of language and thinking were unacceptable and unbearable for E. In his work, E. remained committed to the idea of ​​the irreducibility of myth (belief in the Eternal Return) from the totality of the attributes of genuine human spirituality. a trait, according to E., of an archaic and ancient man.The desire to recreate the Time when the gods were present on Earth is a thirst for the sacred, eternal "nostalgia for Genesis."

A.A. Gritsanov, A.I. Makarov, A.I. Pigalev

The latest philosophical dictionary. Comp. Gritsanov A.A. Minsk, 1998.

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