Antaios: a mythical and symbolic Hermeneutics

Luca Siniscalco

Antaios: a mythical and symbolic Hermeneutics

Article

25/1 – Spring 2020, pages 123-139

Date of online publication: 25 juin 2020

Date of publication: 25 juin 2020

Abstract

The aim of my research is to define the Religious Hermeneutics that can be identified as the specific core of Antaios (1959-1971), the German journal directed by the historian of religions Mircea Eliade and the writer and philosopher Ernst Jünger. We’ll focus on the philosophical-religious interpretation of Antaios contents: the so called “mythical-symbolic hermeneutics” is probably the most interesting theoretical theme connected to the Weltanschauung of Antaios. This cultural journal could embodies a counter-philosophical perspective that is at the same time intrinsic to Western speculation. This position has been repeatedly emerged in many phases of our cultural history. I am referring to a mythical-symbolic thought, characterized by an analogical interpretation of the world, whose structure is considered as a stratification of truth levels, that are complementary ontological levels of reality. This tradition sees reality as a specific kind of totality that allows human perception to take place through the structures of myth and symbols. The theoretical unity of the project is rooted in the mythical-symbolic tradition that, starting from the religious and esoteric pre-philosophical meditations, crosses the Platonic thought, the various neoplatonisms, passes through medieval mysticism and alchemy, reappears in Romanticism and is revealed in the twentieth century by the reflections of the “thinkers of Tradition”.

With this paper I would like to communicate the main topics that from this Hermeneutics can be identified: speculations about symbol, myth, coincidentia oppositorum (coincidence of opposites), archetypes, ontological pluralism are at the core of this paradigm.

Keywords

Cite this article

Siniscalco, Luca. 2020. Antaios: a mythical and symbolic Hermeneutics Forum Philosophicum 25, no. 2 (2020): 123–139. doi:10.35765/forphil.2020.2501.8

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