This book is a great survey of world religions and a deep look into the phenomenology of belief. However, the way eliade analyzes religion is contrived—not tethered to biology. This, I know, is a trait of his field. Nevertheless, I think it would be helpful to address the underlying evolutionary mechanisms in play. Biology, like physics, is a foundational truth that one must accept when putting together hypothetical narratives. When dealing with humans, one must always remember our evolutionary origins and how present functions are driven by ancient mechanisms to further the propagation of lineage. This is foundational. Although culture may seem like a confounding variable at times, a critical analysis giving evolutionary reasoning it’s due will on average be more objectively accurate compared to misguided conspiracy about the meaning of abstract cultural phenomena. I am not saying this is what eliade does, and on some level I don’t think he is in pursuit of the truth, but would prefer to operate within a contrived domain to then map his findings on objective truth. He talks about religious ideas in a religious language and it’s product is equal to that which is truth but only after intense intellectual acrobatics.

Religion itself is a cultural mechanism, which in turn is a biological mechanism. That Eliade fails to maintain this truth is a bit disappointing. Reminding us of the evolutionary function, while not being reductive, is necessary to understand the necessity of religion for man to operate in the world, to tether him to meaning.

The greatest concept to take from this work is that profane, desacralized man, is still religious despite his attempts to remove himself from formal practice. After all, “[man] cannot utterly abolish his past, since he is himself the product of his past.” Although not explicit in eliade’s work, it is clear that our genetic makeup is such that our minds tend to religious orientation. To function in society and to make sense of ones position in relation to others and the cosmos, religious traditions are still used, manipulating our chemistries and aligning them with each other.

Oamenii de atunci încercau să trăiască într-o lume sacră, să trăiască în Realitate, nu în iluzia pe care hindușii o numesc Maya. Pentru ei totul revenea cumva la momentul Creației și, prin tot ce făceau, încercau să imite cosmogonia. Își doreau să fie contemporani cu zeii, să fie cu adevărat oameni. E adevărat că această imitare a dus uneori la lucruri fără sens sau odioase, dar ei, spre deosebire de noi, voiau să trăiască într-o lume pură, într-un timp ce se întoarce mereu la momentul Creației Universului, când lumea era cu desăvârșire pură.
https://adolescentacunasulincarti.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/sacrul-si-profanul-mircea-eliade-cat-de-mult-te-face-ignoranta-sa-pierzi/

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Nu te-ai aștepta ca același om care a scris Maitreyi — despre care ai putea spune că a "trăit" chiar gândurile protagonistului — să scrie o carte ca asta.

În continuare sunt reticentă când vine vorba de stil, însă acum nu mai e beletristic, ci pură analiza asupra religiei. E de apreciat obiectivitatea cu care Eliade privește subiectul pe care-l explorează. Mult mai bine pusă la punct decât mă gândeam.

Excellent anthropological analysis, but I would rate Eliade as a first-rate historian before approaching philosophy of religion. He conducts an analysis of the religious man based primarily of his views of a primordial worshipper and does not fully take into account how Christianity differs in terms of goals: the Christian man's goal is not necessarily to become the Center and return to the origin, although he does nod to the fact that the sacred time for Christianity is influenced more on the life of Jesus Christ than on the creation of the world. Eliade supports an argument that man cannot attain this sacred understanding if he continues along this line of "progress" that ever travels away from the Origin. He does not, however, provide any solution for the generation that moves away from the primitive into the future.

Though at times this classic gestures at useful or interesting theoretical frameworks, is failure to ground it's subject matter or engage in self critique hardly allow it to transcend the fascist subtext of both it's own content and it's authors life, in contrast to an author like Schmitt.

Interesting read, as long as you interpret it as a philosophy text, not as the "history of religion" text it pretends to be. There is no systematic or consistent historical analysis here. Instead, claims of a mostly speculative philosophical nature are made, and random examples from various cultures are thrown in ad hoc to lend these claims credence. I'm no expert in anthropology, but I couldn't help noticing how some ideas were corroborated mostly by Middle Eastern traditions, while others exclusively by Australian ones, and then another idea would be introduced and suddenly African myths were brought in as examples, whereas they were hardly even mentioned before... and so on. Basically, Eliade noticed some philosophical ideas cropping up here and there in various culture's religions, grabbed the ones he thought were the most interesting from a modern perspective, did some free-form extrapolation and syncretization to make it look like these ideas were universal... and there you go, we have a consistent, coherent philosophical framework on which "religious man" supposedly based their theological world view.

But what we actually have is the philosophical framework that Mircea Eliade THOUGHT religious people should have. Or would have, if all of the various religious traditions got together, pooled their philosophical resources, and made a commitment to come up with a consistent, coherent philosophical framework. Which of course never actually happened and probably never will. But I'm still glad Eliade went there and speculated about it. It's a valuable thought exercise, from a philosophical point of view. But a crappy way to do empirical research, from a historical point of view, for anyone who is actually looking for that kind of thing.

As for the book's style, it pretty much practices what it preaches. It presents its ideas about the circular and repetitive nature of the religious view of place/time... in a very circular and repetitive way. And this is probably hell on the nerves of any serious researchers trying to get any useful insights out of his book. But for a casual reader like me, who is hoping not just for information but also for entertainment... well, it makes the book both easy to follow and fun, so a great stylistic choice.