In this era of increased knowledge the essence of religious phenomena eludes the psychologists, sociologists, linguists, and other specialists because they do not study it as religious. According to Mircea Eliade, they miss the one irreducible element in religious phenomena—the element of the sacred. Eliade abundantly demonstrates universal religious experience and shows how humanity’s effort to live within a sacred sphere has manifested itself in myriad cultures from ancient to modern times; how certain beliefs, rituals, symbols, and myths have, with interesting variations, persisted.

"The world is configured in ways that seem systematically hospitable to life forms, especially the human race. Is this the outcome of divine planning or simply of the laws of physics? Ancient Greeks and Romans famously disagreed on whether the cosmos was the product of design or accident. In Creationism and Its Critics in Antiquity, David Sedley examines this question and illuminates new historical perspectives on the pantheon of thinkers who laid the foundations of Western philosophy and science. Versions of what we call the "creationist" option were widely favored by the major thinkers of classical antiquity, including Plato, whose ideas on the subject prepared the ground for Aristotle's celebrated teleology. But Aristotle himself excluded any role for divine intervention, in this respect aligning himself with the anti-creationist lobby, whose most militant members - the atomists - sought to show how a world just like ours would form inevitably by sheer accident, given only the infinity of space and matter. This study explores seven major thinkers and philosophical movements enmeshed in the debate: Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Socrates, Plato, the atomists, Aristotle, and the Stoics. An epilogue considers their debate from the viewpoint of Galen, the great second-century A.D. doctor, who was also a leading voice of creationism."--BOOK JACKET.

Myths have intrigued scholars throughout history. 'Twentieth Century Mythologies' traces the study of myth over the last century, presenting the key theories of mythology and critiquing traditional definitions of myth. The volume presents the work of influential scholars in the noted Indo-Europeanist Georges Dumezil, the structuralist anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss, and the historian of religions Mircea Eliade. 'Twentieth Century Mythologies' is an indispensable resource for scholars of religion and myth and for all those interested in the history of ideas.

Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph. The Philosophy of Art. Edited, translated, and introduced by Douglas W. Stott. Foreword by David Simpson. First Edition. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1989. 15 x 22,5 cm. LV, 342 pages. Original Softcover. Excellent condition with only minor signs of external wear. Includes for example the following Construction of Art As Such and in General; Construction of the Content of Art; Derivation of Mythology as the Content of Art; Contrast between Ancient and Modern Poesy in Relation to Mythology etc.