Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T02:57:51.061Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Eliade, phenomenology, and the sacred

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2000

RANDALL STUDSTILL
Affiliation:
Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA 94709

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to clarify some of the areas considered most problematic in Mircea Eliade's approach to religion. One of its principal goals is to show that Eliade's method is primarily phenomenological rather than theological, as some interpreters of his work maintain. In presenting this phenomenological interpretation of Eliade four areas of his approach are addressed: (1) the extent to which it incorporates historical method; (2) the meaning of religion as sui generis and irreducible; (3) Eliade's use of the term ‘sacred’; and (4) Eliade's hierarchalizing of religious phenomena. Eliade's departure from phenomenology to explain the causes of religious experience is also addressed.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)