Mircea Eliade’s Philosophy of Religion
The Reality and Relevance Today
Keywords:
Eliade, Nature, Philosophy of Religion, Pilgrimage, Popular Religiosity, Profane, Sacred, Shrine, Space, TimeAbstract
Mircea Eliade (1907-1986) speaks of religion as the ‘experience of the sacred’; the sacral character is the unique feature and the distinct nature of religion. This element of sacred can be located in any person, at any place or in any situation, because all have experienced and manifested the sense of the sacred through signs, symbols or rituals at some time in history. The popular religiosity which is the living religion of the people exhibits the characteristics of religion as presented by Mircea Eliade. A detailed and critical analysis of the Eliade’s concept of the sacred is studied in the context of field studies of popular religious practices of Catholics in Kalghatgi, Dharward, Karnataka, and shrines near Chennai, India. This study, while testing the applicability of Eliade’s theory to popular religious practices, will also make a critical analysis of the study of religion as presented by Eliade in light of the reality of religion as lived in Kalghatgi.
References
Babu Joseph, “Mircea Eliade’s Phenomenological Description of “the Sacred” in Romancing the Sacred? Towards an Indian Christian Philosophy of Religion, George Karuvelil, ed., Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 2007, 97-98.
Mircea Eliade, The Quest: History and Meaning in Religion, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, i. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, New York: Harvest Book, 1959, 10.
Lawrence Fernandes, “The Sacred in Popular Religiosity,” Asian Journal for Priests and Religious 52, 3 (May 2007), 14.
Abraham Ayrookuzhiel, The Sacred in Popular Hinduism, Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1983, 1.
Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, New York: World Publishing Company, 1963, 2.
James C. Livingston, Anatomy of the Sacred: An Introduction to Religion, New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1989, 56.
