ABSTRACT
Mircea Eliade distinguishes archaic, "traditional," mythic, religious human beings from "modem," nonmythic, nonreligious human beings. Eliade does not claim that every contemporary. Western human being is a "modem" person. He refers to two, general orientations or human modes of being in the world: two radically different ways of conceiving of human nature, the human condition, and how human beings are existentially, temporally, and historically related to reality. In presenting these two essential types, Eliade formulates clear-cut traditional versus modem contrasts and dichotomies: affirming or rejecting the reality of the sacred; affirming the mythic and living myths versus identification with a demythologized reality; devaluing or abolishing time and history and upholding atemporal, nonhistorical, exemplary, mythic and religious models versus identifying with the temporal and historical dimensions of existence.
