Origins of the sacred : a conversation between Eric Gans and Mircea Eliade

Where Eric Gans's hypothesis of the origin of the human reconstructs a scenic event oriented around an aborted gesture of appropriation, Mircea Eliade's work can be seen as endorsing the applicability - even universality - of certain elements of Gans's hypothesis through the comparative study of archaic, classical, and world religions. Through a close analysis of Signs of Paradox by generative anthropologist Eric Gans and Rights and Symbols of Initiation, Images and Symbols and The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion by religious scholar Mircea Eliade, I will contrast and compare the two thinkers by focusing on Gans's conceptualisation of the "sacred centre" and "paradox," and Eliade's study of the plethora of cultures found throughout the world, whose participants attempt to access, I argue, a kind of Gansian sacred centre.