著者

奥山 倫明

出版者

東京大学文学部宗教学研究室

雑誌

東京大学宗教学年報 (ISSN:2896400)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.8, pp.55-73, 1991-03-20

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Focusing upon Eliade's study of religion, we can obtain the following perspective, with which to differentiate two planes of his argument. Discussed first is his theory of religious phenomena: the paradoxically constituted theory of religious experience and behavior. His argument of religious experience, categorized as hierophany, is paradoxical in that the sacred manifests itself in the profane, which restricts the former within the temporality of history. His argument of religious behavior is viewed in terms of the succession of death and rebirth. Both in shamanism and in yoga, the shaman and the yogin transcend history by symbolic death, as does the initiate in initiation. Thus, symbolic rebirth paradoxically necessitates symbolic death. Discussed next is his background of religious theory : the reintegration into the primordial interpreted in his religious symbolism by abolishing history. This recurrence of reintegration can be related to his thought on the origin of time and history. In his thought, human beings'restricted condition within time and history arises from their fall from paradise. This paradise lost also causes his nostalgia for that reintegration. These two planes are bridged with his view on the sacred in relation.to human beings as being ambiguous. The ambiguity is understood as follows. As the sacred transcendentally involves a negative phase, human beings have an ambivalence toward the sacred. In other words, the dual-phased sacred fascinates and terrifies us. Furthermore, that ambiguity, in Eliade's view, springs from the paradox in human beings'nature. We can almost state, moreover, that his view of-the ambiguity of the sacred originates with the fall of human beings from paradise ( and the totality of the sacred ) to the temporality of history.