The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Mircea Eliade
The Myth of the Eternal Return or,
Cosmos and History
Bollingen SeriesXLVI,
C
HAPTER FOURTHE TERROR OF
HISTORY
(pp. 139-162)
Survival of the Myth of Eternal
Return
*
Survival of the Myth of Eternal
Return
THE problem raised in this final chapter exceeds the limits
that we had assigned to the present essay. Hence we can only outline it. In short, it would be necessary to
confront “historical man” (modern man), who consciously and voluntarily creates
history, with the man of the traditional civilizations, who, as we have seen,
had a negative attitude toward history. Whether he abolishes it periodically,
whether he devaluates it by perpetually finding transhistorical models and
archetypes for it, whether, finally, he gives it a metahistorical meaning
(cyclical theory, eschatological significations, and so on), the man of the
traditional civilizations accorded the historical event no value in itself; in
other words, he did not regard it as a specific category of his own mode of
existence. Now, to compare these
two types of humanity implies an analysis of all the modern “historicisms,” and
such an analysis, to be really useful, would carry us too far from the principal
theme of this study. We are
nevertheless forced to touch upon the problem of man as consciously and
voluntarily historical, because the modern world is, at the present moment, not
entirely converted to historicism; we are even witnessing a conflict between the
two views: the archaic conception, which we should designate as archetypal and
anhistorical; and the modern, post-Hegelian conception, which seeks to be
historical. We shall confine
ourselves to examining only one aspect of the problem, but an important aspect:
the solutions offered by the historicistic view to enable modern man to tolerate
the increasingly powerful pressure of contemporary
history.
The foregoing chapters have abundantly illustrated the
way in which men of the traditional civilizations
tolerated
141
history. The reader will remember that they
defended themselves against it, either by periodica1ly abolishing it through
repetition of the cosmogony and a periodic regeneration of time or by giving
historical events a metahistorical meaning, a meaning that was not
only consoling but was above all coherent, that is, capable of being~ fitted
into a well-consolidated system in which the cosmos and man’s existence had each
its raison d’être. We must
add that this traditional conception of a defense against history, this way of
tolerating historical events, continued to prevail in the world down to a time
very close to our own; and that it still continues to console the agricultural
( = traditional) societies of Europe, which obstinately adhere to an
anhistorical position and are, by that fact, exposed to the violent attacks of
all revolutionary ideologies. The
Christianity of the popular European strata never succeeded in abolishing either
the theory of the archetype (which transformed a historica1 personage into an
exemplary hero and’ a historical event into a mythical category) or the
cyclical and astral theories (according to which history was justified, and the
sufferings provoked by it assumed an eschatological meaning). Thus - to give only a few examples - the
barbarian invaders of the High Middle Ages were assimilated to the Biblical
archetype Gog and Magog and thus received an ontological status and an
eschatological function. A few
centuries later, Christians were to regard Genghis Khan as a new David, destined
to accomplish the prophecies of Ezekiel. Thus interpreted, the sufferings and
catastrophes provoked by the appearance of the barbarians on the medieval
historical horizon were “tolerated” by the same process that, some thousands of
years earlier, had made it possible to tolerate the terrors of history in the
ancient East. It is such
justifications of historical catastrophes that today still make life possible
for tens of mil
142
lions of men, who continue to recognize, in the
unremitting pressure of events, signs of the divine will or of an astral
fatality.
If we turn to the other traditional conception - that of cyclical time and the periodic regeneration of history, whether or not it involves the myth of eternal repetition - we find that, although the earliest Christian writers began by violently opposing it, it nevertheless in the end made its way into Christian philosophy. We must remind ourselves that, for Christianity, time is real because it has a meaning - the Redemption. “A straight line traces the course of humanity from initial Fall to final Redemption. And the meaning of this history is unique, because the Incarnation is a unique fact. Indeed, as Chapter 9 of the Epistle to the Hebrews and I Peter 3 :18 emphasize, Christ died for our sins once only, once for all (hapax, ephapax, semel); it is not an event subject to repetition, which can be reproduced several times (pollakis). The development of history is thus governed and oriented by a unique fact, a fact that stands entirely alone. Consequently the destiny of all mankind, together with the individual destiny of each one of us, are both likewise played out once, once for all, in a concrete and irreplaceable time which is that of history and life.” [1] It is this linear conception of time and history, which, already outlined in the second century by St. Irenaeus of
But despite the reaction of the orthodox Fathers, the
theories of cycles and of astral influences on human destiny and historical
events were accepted, at least in part, by
1. Henri-Charles Puech, “Gnosis and Time,” in Man and
Time (New York and London, 1957), pp. 48 if. Cf. also the same author’s “Temps,
histoire et mythe dans le christianisme des premiers siècles,” Proceedings of
the VIIth Congress for the History
of Religion (
other Fathers and ecclesiastical writers, such as
Clement of Alexandria, Minucius Felix, Arnobius, and Theodoret. The conflict between these two
fundamental conceptions of time and history continued into the seventeenth
century. We cannot even consider
recapitulating the admirable analyses made by Pierre Duhem and Lynn Thorndike,
and resumed and completed by Pitirim Sorokin. [2] We must remind the reader
that, at the height of the Middle Ages, cyclical and astral theories begin to
dominate historiological and eschatological speculation. Already popular in the twelfth
century, [3] they undergo systematic elaboration in the next, especially
after the appearance of translations from Arabic writers. [4] Increasingly precise correlations
are attempted between the cosmic and the geographical factors involved and the
respective periodicities (in the direction already indicated by Ptolemy, in the
second century of our era, in his Tetrabiblos). An Albertus Magnus, a St. Thomas, a
Roger Bacon, a Dante (Convivio, II, Ch. 14.), and many others
believe that the cycles and periodicities of the world’s history are governed by
the influence of the stars, whether this influence obeys the will of God and is
his instrument in history or whether - a hypothesis that gains increasing
adherence - it is regarded as a force immanent in the cosmos. [5] In short, to adopt Sorokin’s
formulation, the Middle Ages are dominated by the eschatological concept (its
two essential moments: the creation and the end of the world), complemented by
the theory of cyclic undulation that ex plains the periodic return of events.
This twofold dogma dominates
speculation down to the seventeenth century, although, at the same time, a
theory of
2.Pierre Duhem, I.e Système du monde (Paris,
1913-17); Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science
(New York, 1929-41); Pitirim A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics,
II (New York, 1937-41).
3. Thorndike, 1, pp. 455 ff.; Sorokin, p.
371.
4. Duhem, V, pp. 223 ff
5. Ibid., pp. 225 ff.; Thorndike, II, pp. 267 ff, 416
ff., etc.; Sorokin, p. 371.
144
the linear progress of history begins to assert itself.
In the Middle Ages, the germs of
this theory can be recognized in the writings of Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas;
but it is with the Eternal Gospel of Joachim of Floris that it appears in
all its coherence, as an integral element of a magnificent eschatology of
history, the most significant contribution of Christianity in this field since
St. Augustine’s. Joachim of Floris
divides the history of the world into three great epochs, successively inspired
and dominated by a different person of the Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Ghost.
In the Calabrian abbot’s vision,
each of these epochs reveals, in history, a new dimension of the divinity and,
by this fact, allows humanity to perfect itself progressively until finally, in
the last phase - inspired by the Holy Ghost - it arrives at absolute spiritual
freedom. [6
But, as we said, the tendency which gains increasing
adherence is that of an immanentization of the cyclical theory. Side by side with voluminous astrological
treatises, the considerations of scientific astronomy assert themselves. So it is that in the theories of Tycho
Brahe, Kepler, Cardano, Giordano Bruno, or Campanella, the cyclical ideology
survives beside the new conception of linear progress professed, for example, by
a Francis Bacon or a Pascal. From
the seventeenth century on, linearism and the progressivistic conception of
history assert themselves more and more, inaugurating faith in an infinite
progress, a faith already proclaimed by Leibniz, predominant in the century of
“enlightenment,” and popularized in the nine-
6. It was a real tragedy for the Western world that
Joachim of Floris’ prophetico-eschatological speculations, though they inspired
and fertilized the thought of a St. Francis of Assisi, of a Dante, and of a
Savonarola, so quickly sank into oblivion, the Calabrian monk surviving only as
a name to which could be attached a multitude of apocryphal writings. The immanence of spiritual freedom, not
only in respect to dogma, but also in respect to society (a freedom that Joachim
conceived as a necessity of both divine and historical dialectics), was again to
be professed, at at a later period, by the ideologies of the Reformation and the
Renaissance, but in entirely different terms and in accordance with different
spiritual views.
teenth century ,by the triumph of the ideas of the
evolutionists. We must wait until
our own century to see the beginnings of certain new reactions against this
historical linearism and a certain revival of interest in the theory of cycles;
[7] so it is that, in political economy, we are witnessing the
rehabilitation of the notions of cycle, fluctuation, periodic oscil1ation; that
in phi1osophy, the myth of the eternal return is revivified by Nietzsche; or
that in the philosophy of history, a Spengler or Toynbee concern themselves with
the problem of periodicity. [8
In connection with this rehabilitation of cyclical conceptions, Sorokin rightly observes [9] that present theories concerning the death of the universe do not exclude the hypothesis of the creation of a new universe, somewhat after the fashion of the Great Year in Greco-Oriental speculation or of the yuga cycle in the thought of
7. Sorokin, pp. 379 ff..
8. Cf. A. Rey, I.e Retour eternel et la philosophie
de la physique (Paris, 1927); Pitirim A. Sorokin, Contemporary
Sociological Theories (New York, 1928), pp. 728-41; Arnold J. Toynbee, A
Study of History, III (London, 1934); Ellsworth Huntington, Mainsprings
of Civilization (New York, 1945), especially pp. 453 ff.; Jean Claude
Antoine, “L’Eternel Retour de l’histoire deviendra-t-il objet de science?,”
Critique (Paris), XXVII (Aug., 1948), 723 ff.
9. Sorokm, p. 383, note 80.
146
ent model; the wars, famines, and wretchedness
provoked by contemporary history were at most only the repetition of an
archetype, itself determined by the stars and by celestial norms from which the
divine will was not always absent. As at the close of antiquity, these new
expressions of the myth of eternal return were above all appreciated among the
intellectual elites and especially consoled those who directly suffered the
pressure of history. The peasant
masses, in antiquity as in modern times, took less interest in cyclical and
astral formulas; indeed, they found their consolation and support in the concept
of archetypes and repetition, a concept that they “lived” less on the plane of
the cosmos and the stars than on the mythico-historical level (transforming
heroes, historical events into mythical categories, and so on, in accordance
with the dialectic which we defined above, pp. 37
ff.).
The Difficulties of
Historicism
T
HE REAPPEARANCE of cyclical theories in contemporary thought is pregnant with meaning. Incompetent as we are to pass judgment upon their validity, we shall confine ourselves to observing that the formulation, in modern terms, of an archaic myth betrays at least the desire to find a meaning and a transhistorical justification for historical events. Thus we find ourselves once again in the pre-Hegelian position, the validity of the “historicistic” solutions, from Hegel to Marx, being implicitly called into question. From Hegel on, every effort is directed toward saving and conferring value on the historical event as such, the event in itself and for itself. In his study of the German Constitution, Hegel wrote that if we recognize that things147
are necessarily as they are, that is, that they are not
arbitrary and not the result of chance, we shall at the same time recognize that
they must be as they are. A
century later, the concept of historical necessity will enjoy a more and more
triumphant practical application: in fact, all the cruelties, aberrations, and
tragedies of history have been, and still are, justified by the necessities of
the “historical moment.” Probably
Hegel did not intend to go so far. But since he had resolved to reconcile
himself with his own historical moment, he was obliged to see in every event the
will of the Universal Spirit. This
is why he considered “reading the morning papers a sort of realistic benediction
of the morning.” For him, only
daily contact with events could orient man’s conduct in his relations with the
world and with God.
How could Hegel know what was necessary in
history, what, consequently, must occur exactly as it had occurred? Hegel believed that he knew what the
Universal Spirit wanted. We shall
not insist upon the audacity of this thesis, which, after all, abolishes
precisely what Hegel wanted to save in history - human freedom. But there is an aspect of Hegel’s
philosophy of history that interests us because it still preserves something of
the Judaeo-Christian conception: for Hegel, the historical event was the
manifestation of the Universal Spirit. Now, it is possible to discern a parallel
between Hegel’s philosophy of history and the theology of history of the Hebrew
prophets: for the latter, as for Hegel, an event is irreversible and valid in
itself inasmuch as it is a new manifestation of the will of God - a proposition
really revolutionary, we should remind ourselves, from the viewpoint of
traditional societies dominated by the eternal repetition of archetypes. Thus, in Hegel’s view, the destiny of a
people still preserved a transhistorical significance, because all history
revealed a
148
new and more perfect manifestation of the Universal
Spirit. But with Marx, history cast
off all transcendental significance; it was no longer anything more than the
epiphany of the class struggle. To
what extent could such a theory justify historical sufferings? For the answer, we have but to turn to
the pathetic resistance of a Belinsky or a Dostoevski, for example, who asked
themselves how, from the viewpoint of the Hegelian and Marxian dialectic, it was
possible to redeem all the dramas of oppression, the collective sufferings,
deportations, humiliations, and massacres that fill universal
history.
Yet Marxism preserves a meaning to history. For Marxism, events are not a succession
of arbitrary accidents; they exhibit a coherent structure and, above all, they
lead to a definite end - final elimination of the terror of history,
“salvation.” Thus at the end of the
Marxist philosophy of history, lies the age of gold of the archaic
eschatologies. In this sense it is
correct to say not only that Marx “brought Hegel’s philosophy back to earth” but
also that he reconfirmed, upon an exclusively human level, the value of the
primitive myth of the age of gold, with the difference that he puts the age of
gold only at the end of history, instead of putting it at the beginning
too. Here, for the militant
Marxist, lies the secret of the remedy for the terror of history: just as the
contemporaries of a “dark age” consoled themselves for their increasing
sufferings by the thought that the aggravation of evil hastens final
deliverance, so the militant Marxist of our day reads, in the drama provoked by
the pressure of history, a necessary evil, the premonitory symptom of the
approaching victory that will put an end forever to all historical
“evil.”
The terror of history becomes more and more intolerable
from the viewpoints afforded by the various historicistic philosophies. For in them, of course,
every
149
historical event finds its full and only meaning in its
realization alone. We need not here
enter into the theoretical difficulties of historicism, which already troubled
Rickert, Troeltsch, Dilthey, and Simmel, and which the recent efforts of Croce,
of Karl Mannheim, or of Orrtega y Gasset have but partially
overcome. [10] This essay does not require us to
discuss either the philosophical value of historicism as such or the possibility
of establishing a “philosophy of history” that should definitely transcend
relativism. Dilthey himself, at
the’ age of seventy, recognized that “the relativity of all human concepts is
the last word of the historical vision of the world.” In vain did he proclaim an allgemeine
Lebenserfahrung as the final means of transcending this relativity.
In vain did Meinecke invoke
“examination of conscience” as a transsubjective experience capable of
transcending the relativity of historical life. Heidegger had gone to the trouble of
showing that the historicity of human existence forbids all hope of transcending
time and history.
For our purpose, only one question concerns us: How can
the “terror of history” be tolerated from the viewpoint of historicism? Justification of a historical event by
the simple fact that it is a historical event, in other words, by the simple
fact that it “happened that way,” will not go far toward freeing humanity from
the terror that the event inspires. Be it understood that we are not here
concerned with the problem of evil, which, from whatever
10. Let us say, first of all, that the terms “historism”
or “historicism” cover many different and antagonistic philosophical currents
and orientations. It is enough to
recall Dilthey’s vitalistic relativism, Croce’s storicismo, Gentile’s
attualismo, and Ortega’s “historical reason” to realize the multiplicity
of philosophical valuations accorded to history during the first half of the
twentieth century. For Croce’s
present position, see his La storia come pensiero e come azione (Bari,
1938; 7th rev. edn., 1965). Also J.
Ortega y Gasset, Historia
150
angle it be viewed, remains a philosophical and religious problem; we are concerned with the problem of history as history, of the “evil” that is bound up not with man’s condition but with his behavior toward others. We should wish to know, for example, how it would be possible to tolerate, and to justify, the sufferings and annihilation of so many peoples who suffer and are annihilated for the simple reason that their geographical situation sets them in the pathway of history, that they are neighbors of empires in a state of permanent expansion. How justify, for example, the fact that southeastern
We know how, in the past, humanity has been able to
endure the sufferings we have enumerated: they were regarded as a punishment
inflicted by God, the syndrome of the decline of the “age,” and so on. And it was possible to accept them
precisely because they had a metahistorical meaning, because, for the greater
part of mankind, still clinging to the traditional viewpoint, history did not
have, and could not have, value in itself. Every hero repeated the archetypal
gesture, every war rehearsed the struggle between good and evil, every fresh
social injustice was
151
identified with the sufferings of the Saviour (or, for
example, in the pre-Christian world, with the passion of a divine messenger or
vegetation god), each new massacre repeated the glorious end of the martyrs.
It is not our part to decide
whether such motives were puerile or not, or whether such a refusal of history
always proved efficacious. In our
opinion, only one fact counts: by virtue of this view, tens of millions of men
were able, for century after century, to endure great historical pressures
without despairing, without committing suicide or falling into that spiritual
aridity that always brings with it a relativistic or nihilistic view of
history.
Moreover, as we have already observed, a very
considerable fraction of the population of Europe, to say nothing of the other
continents, still lives today by the light of the traditional,
anti-”historicistic” viewpoint. Hence it is above all the “elites” that
are confronted with the problem, since they alone are forced, with increasing
rigor, to take cognizance of their historical situation. It is true that Christianity and the
eschatological philosophy of history have not ceased to satisfy a considerable
proportion of these elites. Up to a
certain point, and for certain individuals, it may be said that Marxism -
especially in its popular forms - represents a defense against the terror of
history. Only the historicistic
position, in all its varieties and shades - from Nietzsche’s “destiny” to
Heidegger’s “temporality” - remains disarmed. [11] It is by no means mere fortuitious
coincidence that, in this philoso-
11. We take the liberty of emphasizing that
“historicism” was created and professed above all by thinkers belonging to
nations for which history has never been a continuous terror. These thinkers would perhaps have adopted
another viewpoint had they belonged to nations marked by the “fatality of
history.” It would certainly be
interesting, in any case, to know if the theory according to which everything
that happens is “good,” simply because it has happened, would have been
accepted without qualms by the thinkers of the Baltic countries, of the Balkans,
or of colonial territories.
phy, despair, the amor fati, and pessimism are
elevated to the rank of heroic virtues and instruments of
cognition.
Yet this position, although the most modern and, in a
certain sense, almost the inevitable position for all thinkers who define man as
a “historical being,” has not yet made a definitive conquest of contemporary
thought. Some pages earlier, we
noted various recent orientations that tend to reconfer value upon the myth of
cyclical periodicity, even the myth of eternal return. These orientations disregard not only
historicism but even history as such. We believe we are justified in seeing in
them, rather than a resistance to history, a revolt against historical time,
an attempt to restore this historical time, freighted as it is with human
experience, to a place in the time that is cosmic, cyclical, and infinite. In any case it is worth noting that the
work of two of the most significant writers of our day - T.S. Eliot and James
Joyce – is saturated with nostalgia for the myth of eternal repetition and in
the last analysis, for the abolition of time. There is also reason to foresee that, as
the terror of history grows worse, as existence becomes more and more precarious
because of history, the positions of historicism will increasingly lose in
prestige. And, at a moment when
history could do what neither the cosmos, nor man, nor chance have yet succeeded
in doing - that is, wipe out the human race in its entirety - it may be that we
are witnessing a desperate attempt to prohibit the “events of history” through a
reintegration of human societies within the horizon (artificial, because
decreed) of archetypes and their repetition. In other words, it is not inadmissible to
think of an epoch, an epoch not too far distant, when humanity, to ensure its
survival, will find itself reduced to desisting from any further “making” of
history in the sense in which it began to make it from the creation of
the first empires,, will confine itself to re-
153
peating prescribed archetypal gestures, and will strive
to forget, as meaningless and dangerous, any spontaneous gesture which might
entail “historical” consequences. It would even be interesting to compare
the anhistorical solution of future societies with the paradisal or
eschatological myths of the golden age of the beginning or the end of the world.
But as we have it in mind to pursue
these speculations elsewhere, let us now return to our problem: the position of
historical man in relation to archaic man, and let us attempt to understand the
objections brought against the latter on the basis of the historicistic
view.
I
N HIS rejection of concepts of periodicity and hence, in the last analysis, of the archaic concepts of archetypes and repetition, we are, we believe, justified in seeing modern man’s resistance to nature, the will of “historical man” to affirm his autonomy. As Hegel remarked, with noble self-assurance, nothing new ever occurs in nature. And the crucial difference between the man of the archaic civilizations and modern, historical man lies in the increasing value the latter gives to historical events, that is, to the “novelties” that, for traditional man, represented either meaningless conjunctures or infractions of norms (hence “faults,” “sins,” and so on) and that, as such, required to be expelled (abolished) periodically. The man who adopts the historical viewpoint would be justified in regarding the traditional conception of archetypes and repetition as an aberrant reidentification of history (that is, of “freedom” and “novelty”) with nature (in which everything repeats itself). For, as modern man can observe, archetypes themselves constitute a “history” insofar as they are154
made up of gestures, acts, and decrees that, although
supposed to have been manifested in illo tempore, were nevertheless
manifested, that is, came to birth in time, “took place,” like any other
historical event. Primitive myths
often mention the birth, activity, and disappearance of a god or a hero whose
“civilizing” gestures are thenceforth repeated ad infinitum. This comes down to saying that
archaic man also knows a history, although it is a primordial history, placed in
a mythical time. Archaic man’s
rejection of history, his refusal to situate himself in a concrete, historical
time, would, then, be the symptom of a precocious weariness, a fear of movement
and spontaneity; in short, placed between accepting the historical condition and
its risks on the one hand, and his reidentification with the modes of nature on
the other, he would choose such a reidentification.
In this total adherence, on the part of archaic man, to
archetypes and repetition, modern man would be justified in seeing not only the
primitives’ amazement at their own first spontaneous and creative free gestures
and their veneration, repeated ad infinitum, but also a feeling of guilt
on the part of man hardly emerged from the paradise of animality (i.e., from
nature), a feeling that urges him to reidentify with nature’s eternal repetition
the few primordial, creative, and spontaneous gestures that had signalized the
appearance of freedom. Continuing
his critique, modern man could even read in this fear, this hesitation or
fatigue in the presence of any gesture without an archetype, nature’s tendency
toward equilibrium and rest; and he would read this tendency in the anticlimax
that fatally follows upon any exuberant gesture of life and that some have gone
so far as to recognize in the need felt by human reason to unify the real
through knowledge. In the last
analysis, modern man, who accepts history or claims to
155
accept it, can reproach archaic man, imprisoned within
the mythical horizon of archetypes and repetition, with his creative impotence,
or, what amounts to the same thing, his inability to accept the risks entailed
by every creative act. For the
modern man can be creative only insofar as he is historical; in other words, all
creation is forbidden him except that which has its source in his own freedom;
and, consequently, everything is denied him except the freedom to make history
by himself.
To these criticisms raised by modern man, the man of the
traditional civilizations could reply by a countercriticism that would at the
same time be a defense of the type of archaic existence. It is becoming more and more doubtful, he
might say, if modern man can make history. On the contrary, the more modern [12] he becomes - that is,
without defenses against the terror of history - the less chance he has of
himself making history. For history
either makes itself (as the result of the seed sown by acts that occurred in the
past, several centuries or even several millennia ago; we will cite the
consequences of the discovery of agriculture or metallurgy, of the Industrial
Revolution in the eighteenth century, and so on) or it tends to be made by an
increasingly smaller number of men who not only prohibit the mass of their
contemporaries from directly or indirectly intervening in the history they are
making (or which the small group is making), but in addition have at their
disposal means sufficient to force each individual to endure, for his own part,
the consequences of this history, that is, to live immediately and continuously
in dread of history. Modern man’s
boasted freedom to make history is illusory for nearly the whole of the human
race. At
most.
12 It is well to make clear
that, in this context, “modern man” is such in his insistence upon, being
exclusively historical; i.e., that he is, above all, the “man” of historicism,
of Marxism, and of existentialism. It is superfluous to add that not
all of our contemporaries
recognize themselves in such a man.
156
man is left free to choose between two positions: (1) to
oppose the history that is being made the very small minority (and, in this
case, he is free to choose between suicide and deportation); (2) to take refuge
in a subhuman existence or in flight. The “freedom” that historical existence
implies was possible - and even then within certain limits - at the beginning of
the modern period, but it tends to become inaccessible as the period becomes
more historical, by which we mean more alien from any transhistorical model.
It is perfectly natural, for
example, that Marxism and Fascism must lead to the establishment of two types of
historical existence: that of the leader (the only really “free” man) and that
of the follower, who find, in the historical existence of the leader, not an
archetype of their own existence but the lawgiver of the gestures that are
provisionally permitted them.
Thus, for traditional man, modern man affords the type
neither of a free being nor of a creator of history. On the contrary, the man of the archaic
civilizations can be proud of his mode of existence, which allows him to be free
and to create. He is free to be no
longer what he was, free to annul his own history through periodic abolition of
time and collective regeneration. This freedom in respect to his own
history - which, for the modern, is not only irreversible but constitutes human
existence - cannot be claimed by the man who wills to be historical. We know that the archaic and traditional
societies granted freedom each year to begin a new, a “pure” existence, with
virgin possibilities. And there is
no question of seeing in this an imitation of nature, which also undergoes
periodic regeneration, “beginning anew” each spring, with each spring recovering
all its powers intact. Indeed,
whereas nature repeats itself, each new spring being the same eternal spring
(that is, the repetition of the Creation), archaic
157
man’s “purity” after the periodic abolition of time and
the recovery of his virtualities intact allows him, on the threshold of each
“new life,” a continued existence in eternity and hence the definitive
abolition, hic et nunc, of profane time. The intact “possibilities” of nature each
spring and archaic man’s possibilities on the threshold of each year are, then,
not homologous. Nature recovers
only itself, whereas archaic man recovers the possibility of definitively
transcending time and living in eternity. Insofar as he fails to do so, insofar as
he “sins,” that is, falls into historical existence, into time, he each year
thwarts the possibility. At least
he retains the freedom to annul his faults, to wipe out the memory of his “fall
into history,” and to make another attempt to escape definitively from time.
[13
Furthermore, archaic man certainly has the right to
consider himself more creative than modern man, who sees himself as creative
only in respect to history. Every
year, that is, archaic man takes part in the repetition of the cosmogony, the
creative act par excellence. We may even add that, for a certain
time, man was creative on the cosmic plane, imitating this periodic cosmogony
(which he also repeated on all the other planes of life, cf. pp. 80 ff.) and participating in
it. [14] We should, also bear in mind
the “creationistic” implications of the Oriental philosophies and techniques
(especially the Indian), which thus find a place in the same traditional
horizon. The East unanimously
rejects the idea of the ontological irreducibility of the existent, even though
it too sets out from a sort of “existentialism” (i.e., from acknowledging
suffering as the situation of any possible cosmic condition). Only, the East does not accept the
destiny of the human being as final and irreducible. Oriental techniques attempt above all
to’
13. On this, see our
Patterns in Comparative Religion
(English
trans., London and New York, 1958), pp. 398 ff.
14. Not to mention the
possibilities of “magical creation,” which exist in traditional societies,
and which are real.
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annul or transcend the human condition. In this respect, it is justifiable to
speak not only of freedom (in the positive sense) or deliverance (in the
negative sense) but actually of creation; for what is involved is creating a new
man and creating him on, a suprahuman plane; a man-god, such as the imagination
of historical man has never dreamed it possible to create.
H
OWEVER this may be, our dialogue between archaic man and modern man does not affect our problem. Whatever be the truth in respect to the freedom and the creative virtualities of historical man, it is certain that none of the historicistic philosophies is able to defend him from the terror of history. We could even imagine a final attempt to save history and establish an ontology of history, events would be regarded as a series of “situations” by virtue of which the human spirit should attain knowledge of levels of reality otherwise inaccessible to it. This attempt to justify history is not without interest, [15] and we anticipate returning to the subject elsewhere. But we are able to observe here and now that such a position affords a shelter from the terror of history only insofar as it postulates the existence at least of the Universal Spirit. What consolation
15. “It is only through some
such reasoning that it would be possible to found a sociology of knowledge that
should not lead to relativism and skepticism. The
“influences” - economic, social,
national, cultural - that affect “ideologies” (in the sense which Karl Mannheim
gave the term) would not annul their objective value any more than the fever or
the intoxication that reveals to a poet a new poetic creation impairs the value
of the latter. All these social,
economic, and other influences would, on the contrary, be occasions for
envisaging a spiritual universe from new angles. But it goes without saying that a
sociology of knowledge, that is, the study of the social conditioning of
ideologies, could avoid relativism only
by affirming the autonomy of the
spirit - which, if we understand him aright, Karl Mannheim did not dare to
affirm.
should we find in knowing that the sufferings of
millions of men have made possible the revelation of a limitary situation of the
human condition if, beyond that limitary situation, there should be only
nothingness? Again, there is no
question here of judging the validity of a historicistic philosophy, but only of
establishing to what extent such a philosophy can exorcise the terror of
history. If, for historical
tragedies to be excused, it suffices that they should be regarded as the means
by which man has been enabled to know the limit of human resistance, such an
excuse can in no way make man less haunted by the terror of
history.
Basically, the horizon of archetypes and repetition cannot be transcended with impunity unless we accept a philosophy of freedom that does not exclude God. And indeed this proved to be true when the horizon of archetypes and repetition was transcended, for the first time, by Judaeo-Christianism, which introduced a new category into religious experience: the category of faith. It must not be forgotten that, if Abraham’s faith can be defined as “for God everything is possible,” the faith of Christianity implies that everything is also possible for man. “. . . Have faith in God. For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith. Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them” (Mark
16. Such affirmations must
not be complacently dismissed merely because they imply the possibility of
miracle. If miracles have been so
rare since the appearance of Christianity, the blame rests not on Christianity
but on Christians.
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stitution of the universe. It is, consequently, a preeminently
creative freedom. In other words,
it constitutes a new formula for man’s collaboration with the creation - the
first, but also the only such formula accorded to him since the traditional
horizon of archetypes and repetition was transcended. Only such a freedom (aside from its
soteriological, hence, in the strict sense, its religious value) is able to
defend modern man from the terror of history - a freedom, that is, which has its
source and finds its guaranty and support in God. Every other modern freedom, whatever
satisfactions it may procure to him who possesses it, is powerless to justify
history; and this, for every man who is sincere with himself, is equivalent to
the terror of history.
We may say, furthermore, that Christianity is the
“religion of modern man and historical man, of the man who simultaneously
discovered personal freedom and continuous time (in place of cyclical time).
It is even interesting to note that
the existence of God forced itself far more urgently upon modern man, for whom
history exists as such, as history and not as repetition, than upon the man of
the archaic and traditional cultures, who, to defend himself from the terror of
history, had at his disposition all the myths, rites, and customs mentioned in
the course of this book. Moreover,
although the idea of God and the religious experiences that it implies existed
from the most distant ages, they could be, and were, replaced at times by other
religious forms (totemism, cult of ancestors, Great Goddesses of fecundity, and
so on) the more promptly answered the religious needs of primitive humanity.
In the horizon of archetypes and
repetition, the terror of history, when it appeared, could be supported. Since the “invention” of faith, in the
Judaeo-Christian sense of the word (= for God all is possible), the man who has
left the
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horizon of archetypes and repetition can no longer
defend himself against that terror except through the idea of God. In fact, it is only by presupposing the
existence of God that he conquers, on the one hand, freedom (which grants him
autonomy in a universe governed by laws or, in other words, the “inauguration”
of a mode of being that is new and unique in the universe) and, on the other
hand, the certainty that historical tragedies have a transhistorical meaning,
even if that meaning is not always visible for humanity in its present
condition. Any other situation of
modern man leads, in the end, to despair. It is a despair provoked not by his own
human existentiality, but by his presence in a historic universe in which almost
the whole mankind lives prey to a continual terror (even if not always conscious
of it).
In this respect, Christianity incontestably proves to be
the religion of “fallen man”: and this to the extent to which modern man is
irremediably identified with history and progress, and to which history and
progress are a fall, both implying the final abandonment of the paradise of
archetypes and repetition.
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