Sui Generis Religion , Experience , Ascription , and Art

DESPITE HIS FAULTS AND HIS ANTIQUITY, Mircea Eliade (19071986) had insights to which we would do well to attend. Our epistemological ancestors bequeath our situation to us and we need to respect them — which does not mean adopting or ignoring their vices but cultivating their virtues. The danger is not so much of throwing out the baby with the bathwater but — in a perhaps even more grotesque image — throwing out Grandpa with the bathwater, which is all too often done in the iconoclastic style of scholarship most popular in the contemporary academy. One of Eliade’s chief but largely ignored insights was that reality is always an interpretation rather than a matter of empirical perception or direct and unmediated experience. This means that, despite the popular wisdom to the contrary, he is not best seen as proponent of the “sui generis discourse on religion” but an early forebear of “attribution theory,” who can contribute something that we might otherwise miss. I will attempt to support these contentious claims and to argue that Eliade’s contribution may best occur in our consideration of religion and the arts. To do so I will make reference to Ann Taves’ recent Religious Experience