The Sacred and the Profane by Eliade, Mircea - 1959

E-56: Harcourt Brace & Co. Very Good in Good+ dust jacket. 1959. First Edition; First Printing. Hardcover. Hardcover. 8vo. Harcourt, Brace and Company. 1959. 256 pgs. First Edition/First Printing. DJ has chipping, shelf-wear present to the DJ. Bound in cloth boards. Boards have shelf-wear present to the extremities (boards lightly bowed). Spine lightly cocked. No ownership marks present. Text is clean and free of marks. Binding tight and solid. In The Sacred and the Profane, Mircea Eliade observes that while contemporary people believe their world is entirely profane, or secular, they still at times find themselves connected unconsciously to the memory of something sacred. It's this premise that both drives Eliade's exhaustive exploration of the sacred—as it has manifested in space, time, nature and the cosmos, and life itself—and buttresses his expansive view of the human experience. Mircea Eliade (March 9 [O. S. February 24] 1907 – April 22, 1986) was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago. He was a leading interpreter of religious experience, who established paradigms in religious studies that persist to this day. His theory that hierophanies form the basis of religion, splitting the human experience of reality into sacred and profane space and time, has proved influential. One of his most influential contributions to religious studies was his theory of Eternal Return, which holds that myths and rituals do not simply commemorate hierophanies, but, at least to the minds of the religious, actually participate in them. E-56; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 256 pages .