Introduction to the Sacred and the Profane

The introduction from Eliade’s mature work, The Sacred and the Profane (1959), serves as a useful introduction to his position and his methodology. In opposition to the Nietzschean refusal of the apparent/real distinction and a rejection of any non-empirical real (as in Twilight of the Idols) , Eliade agrees with Rudolf Otto in accepting as a fact that the sacred/real is other than the phenomenally apparent but impinges on subjective awareness with some criterion of distinction. This occurs in and through the profane objects of ordinary perception which are apprehended as revelatory of the true nature of the noumenal. The possibility of a wholly profane cosmos with no authentic experience of such revelation and thus no “sacred” Eliade sees as “a recent discovery in the history of the human spirit.” The analysis of the more prevalent state in which the experience of the sacred does occur is his primary concern.