The Sacred: Representations and Conceptual Systems

This article presents some perspectives on diachronic changes in the field of meanings of the sacred concept, starting from its etymology, its original meanings. The notion is studied through the prism of the studies of some romarkable anthropologists, philosophers of religion such as Ernst Cassirer, Gilbert Durand, Robert Muchembled, Denis de Rougemont, Jean-Jaques Wunenburger etc. It is thus found that the semantic ambivalence of the notion sacred, originating from a pre-Christian background, is preserved in the significant substrata of sacred symbols. The author traces the way in which the idea of the sacred is nuanced in the evolution of conceptions of good and evil in religious thinking.