Valentin Cioveie, Cosmic religiosity and apophatic experience
The author investigates a part of Mircea Eliade’s work in the light of the experience of an opposition couple (and its manifestation in the language of symbols, rituals etc.) which he called cosmic religiosity (in Eliade’s own words) and apophatic experience. This thematic binomial does not exist as such in Eliade’s analysis, but its presence is tacitly detectable everywhere. The two ways of relating to reality is the main tension that secretly hunted Eliade all his lifetime. If the great phenomenologist and historian of religions had recognized it as such, his existential path would have probably been different. The author proposes a rewriting of Eliade’s Treaty on history of religions, of the transcendental anthropology in Sacred and Profane, as well as a fundamental criterion for a discerning judgement of other religious traditions.

Keywords: Mircea Eliade, cosmic religiosity, apofatism, history of religions

VALENTIN CIOVEIE