Mircea Eliade’s Dialectic of the Sacred and Martin Heidegger ’s Metaphysics

Although Mircea Eliade used concepts and notions specific to Western historical and philosophical thinking in his studies and research, he is an author whose intellectual formation owes much to the traditional Indian metaphysical schools, especially Sāṃkhya and Yoga. This is the main reason why the surprising way in which he interprets European philosophy is of particular interest. Whether analyzing classical authors such as Plato, Aristotle, or St. Augustine, or contemporary thinkers like Edmund Husserl or Martin Heidegger, Eliade applies a type of interpretation to their metaphysical conceptions inspired by his own understanding of the function of religious initiatory rites.

If Hans-Georg Gadamer is the one who observed that the translation of Heidegger’s work Was ist Metaphysik? into non-European languages “denotes that Heidegger’s problematic departs from the traditional framework of Western thought and creates points of contact with a broader spirituality,” Eliade outlined a possible interpretation from the perspective of a non-European culture. Thus, he pursued the constant interest manifested in the work of the philosopher from Freiburg, an interest crystallized in an original reading applied to the influential author of the famous treatise on metaphysics Sein und Zeit.

In the fall of 1954, Eliade delivered a highly successful conference titled “Religious Symbolism and the Valorization of Anxiety” in Geneva – included in the 1957 volume Mythe, Reves et mystère. Here, he proposes “not only to understand the religious values of other cultures but especially to place ourselves in their perspective and see ourselves as they see us.” The chosen culture for this dialogic exercise is the Indian culture.

Taking the attitude of members of the two major civilizations, European and Indian, as a starting point, Eliade shows that, unlike the religious person embedded in the frameworks of a traditional culture, such as Hinduism, where “death is rather a ritual of passage to another way of being,” for the modern European, “death is emptied of its religious meaning, and because of this, assimilated to Nothingness; and in the face of Nothingness, modern man is paralyzed.” Confronted with “non-being,” modern individuals attempt to save themselves either by embracing pseudo-hedonistic philosophies or by the ultimate act of being “condemned to freedom” (Jean-Paul Sartre): suicide. Faced with such solutions, the classical Indian philosophers would be astonished. Why? Because Hindu metaphysics understands the evanescent and transient dimension of existence into non-being. However, the path of man does not end here.

Death is attributed to the “illusory” existence in Māyā, conditioned by time and history. This tragic condition can be overcome through a sustained search for the ultimate Being, Brahman. This is the reason why India has never shown interest in chronology, in history, which from the Hindu perspective represents forms of Nothingness. This does not mean that Indian mysticism is unaware of historical existence. On the contrary, its specific spiritual techniques are consistently and deeply engaged in meditations on being-in-the-world, with the goal of transcending this “profane” mode of human condition. It does not admit nihilistic solutions, so frequently encountered in European philosophers of the last two centuries. Anxiety can be overcome by facing it through rituals, not by fleeing from it. This would be the perspective that members of a traditional community, such as the Indian one, would oppose to modern European nihilism.

At this point, the disciple of Surendranath Dasgupta believes that the metaphysics of Martin Heidegger and the age-old Eastern philosophy converge:

When yoga or Buddhism says that everything is suffering, that everything is transient, the meaning is that of Sein und Zeit, i.e., the temporality of any human existence gives rise to fatal anxiety and pain. In other words, the discovery of historicity as a specific mode of human existence in the world corresponds to what Indians have long called the situation in Māyā. And the Indian philosopher will say that European thought has understood the precariousness and paradoxical condition of man who becomes aware of his temporality poorly. Anxiety stems from this tragic discovery: man is a being destined for death, emerging from Nothingness and on the way to Nothingness.

To highlight Mircea Eliade’s interpretation, I will outline Heidegger’s main ideas presented in What is Metaphysics?, an inaugural lecture delivered in 1929. Here, the author asserts that “nothing is the total negation of being, absolute non-being.” Contrary to Hegel’s statement that “pure Being and pure Nothingness are one and the same,” for Heidegger, Nothingness and Being are not identical. Although he acknowledges that “Being and Nothingness constitute a whole,” Heidegger completely separates from Hegel, showing that this is true “not because they coincide in their indeterminacy and immediacy, as they appear in the Hegelian concept of thinking, but because being itself is essentially being and reveals itself only in the transcendence of Dasein maintained in the sphere of Nothingness.”

Furthermore, earlier, Heidegger stated that “the totality of being must be found first so that it can then fall, as such, under the negation in the light in which Nothingness itself is to be revealed.” Nothingness itself can never be directly touched; it is revealed to us through an intermediary – anxiety:

Nothingness is revealed in anxiety—but not as something of the order of being. Just as little can we say that it is given to us as an object. Anxiety is not a grasp of Nothingness. And yet, Nothingness comes to be revealed through it and in it, even if not in such a way that it appears independently, ‘alongside’ being, which, in its entirety, is under the sign of unsettling ugliness.

What makes the manifestation of Nothingness possible? Our limitation, our finitude in relation to the entire Being, “Nothingness manifests itself precisely along with being and on account of being, as something that escapes us by slipping into its entirety.”

Once revealed through anxiety, it annuls itself because “Nothingness does not attract to itself but, by its essence, repels.” Therefore, Nothingness is not revealed to us directly; Being is the one that reveals itself. But not in its entirety. The fear in the face of Being appears as a sign of our limitation, making it impossible to comprehend it entirely. To better understand Heidegger’s thinking, we must constantly remember the essence of Nothingness: annihilation. Because Nothingness is not; “it reveals itself to us in fear, in anxiety, due to the primordial gesture of Being that reveals itself to us.”

Thus, according to Heidegger, knowledge is an act, a transition from Non-being, revealed in anxiety, to Being, which is given to us as much as possible––within the limits of our capabilities. Our own “loneliness is what makes our soul embrace infinity. (…) We feel in the presence of the divine truth when we withdraw from the world and false situations to take refuge in the infinity of our consciousness, face to face with ourselves, (…) we and the mystery of our being,” adds Giovanni Gentile in an explanatory commentary. The conclusion of Heidegger’s meditations on the essence of Nothingness is, however, optimistic, “In the luminous night of Nothingness, born with anxiety, the original state of openness of being as being is born: the fact that it is being––and not nothingness.”

Reminding us that, for Heidegger, the state of a person facing death provokes anxiety, revealing the Nothingness that will elevate them toward Being, let’s now explore the Hindu conception of death, as presented by Eliade.

For those who are getting through an authentic initiatory rite, the decisive test is that of mystical death and resurrection. When faced with a symbolic, figurative death during the penetration into the cave or forest, traversed by demonic beings as well as ancestral souls, the fear of Nothingness (i.e., Hell) paralyzes the neophyte. However, as in Heidegger’s conception, only when the anguish reaches unbearable proportions, revealing the “Void,” does the fullness of Being burst forth in the soul of the initiated.

Death is not synonymous with the idea of Nothingness, just as Nothingness is not synonymous with the idea of Being. It represents an end, but an end followed by a new beginning, on another ontological level. You must sacrifice what you believe you are (a status designated by Heidegger through the concept of das Man) to rediscover yourself in the truth of your existence: that which is in Being (a state of being indicated by the concept of Dasein). As already seen, this transition is based on sacrifice, as illustrated by Eliade in terms that are specific to the metaphysics of Heidegger:

Sacrifice is the self-dispersion through the gift of human being, a dispersion that is free from any constraint, because it arises from the abyss of freedom and leads to the true preservation of the truth of being for being. (…) Sacrifice is the separation from being on the path to the preservation and affirmation of the goodwill of Being.

The fact that Eliade paved the way for a new interpretation of Heidegger’s metaphysics, starting from his own Hindu concepts, indicates, on the one hand, his constant interest in aligning his own path with that of contemporary European philosophy, but, on the other hand, his familiarity with the practice of correlating the terms of his religious phenomenology (the Sacred, the Profane) with those specific to modern metaphysics (Being, Nothingness). In this sense, Heidegger’s speculations can be read in the key of the Eliadian dialectic of the Sacred, which, when applied, transforms into the “dialectic of Being.” This, like the sacred embodied in various religious acts, can be discovered in the banality of everyday events only after being recognized under the camouflage of Nothingness, which becomes known to us in anguish because it is ontologically inconsistent. In the end, after such a passage through death or annihilation, the liberating revelation of Being takes place.

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