Eternal Return (Eliade) - Scholarly Criticism

Scholarly Criticism

Although immensely influential in religious studies, the ideas behind Eliade's hypothesis of the eternal return are less well accepted in anthropology and sociology. According to the classicist G. S. Kirk, this is because Eliade overextends the application of his ideas: for example, Eliade claims that the modern myth of the "noble savage" results from the religious tendency to idealize the primordial, mythical age. Kirk claims that Eliade's relative unpopularity among anthropologists and sociologists also results from Eliade's assumption — essential for belief in the eternal return as Eliade formulates it — that primitive and archaic cultures had concepts such as "being" and "real", although they lacked words for them.

Kirk thinks Eliade's theory of eternal return applies to some cultures. Specifically, he agrees that Australian Aborigines used myths and rituals "to bring the Dreamtime" (the Australian mythical age) "into the present with potent and fruitful results". However, Kirk argues, Eliade takes this Australian phenomenon and applies it to other cultures uncritically. In short, Kirk sees Eliade's theory of eternal return as a universalization of the Australian Dreamtime concept.

As two counterexamples to the eternal return, Kirk cites Native American mythology and Greek mythology. The eternal return is nostalgic: by retelling and reenacting mythical events, Australian Aborigines aim to evoke and relive the Dreamtime. However, Kirk believes that Native American myths "are not evocative or nostalgic in tone, but tend to be detailed and severely practical". In many Native American mythologies, animals once acted like humans, during the mythical age; but they don't any longer: the division between animals and men is now a firm one, and according to Kirk, "that in itself reduces the effectiveness of myth-telling as a reconstitution" of the mythical age. As for Greek myths, many of them fall outside any sacred age of origins: this challenges Eliade's claim that almost all myths are about origins, and that people retell and reenact myths to return to the time of origins. (Note that the classicist Kirk uses a much broader definition of "myth" than many professional folklorists. According to the classical definition used by folklorists, many Greek stories conventionally called "myths" are not myths, precisely because they fall outside a sacred age of origins.)

Even Wendy Doniger, a religious-studies scholar and Eliade's successor at the University of Chicago, claims (in the Introduction to Eliade's own Shamanism) that the eternal return does not apply to all myths and rituals, although it may apply to many of them.