Religious Tradition and the Archaic Man

Abstract

My article – as a first step in a comprehensive research program – attempts to verify the hypothesis according to which M. Eliade’s morphological and historical investigations of archaic religiousness reveal the outlines of an archaic ontology. For this purpose, the article focuses upon Eliade’s conception of religious tradition as the carrier of the indivisible unity of sacred existence and religious experience. The ontological difference found in religious existence and revealed by religious experience is rooted in the essentially hermeneutic nature of religious tradition. Therefore the perspective of philosophical hermeneutics proves very productive in the investigation of this problem.