Origins of the Sacred: A Conversation between Eric Gans and Mircea Eliade

摘要

Where Eric Gans’s hypothesis of the origin of the human reconstructs a scenic eventoriented around an aborted gesture of appropriation, Mircea Eliade’s work can be seen asendorsing the applicability—even universality—of certain elements of Gans’s hypothesisthrough the comparative study of archaic, classical, and world religions. Through a closeanalysis of Signs of Paradox by generative anthropologist Eric Gans and Rights and Symbolsof Initiation, Images and Symbols and The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religionby religious scholar Mircea Eliade, I will contrast and compare the two thinkers by focusingon Gans’s conceptualisation of the “sacred centre” and “paradox,” and Eliade’s study of theplethora of cultures found throughout the world, whose participants attempt to access, Iargue, a kind of Gansian sacred centre.