Gilbert Durand: Religion After Religion

This article has two principal aims. First, it seeks to provide a succinct account of the genesis and some of the fundamental concepts of Gilbert Durand’s (1921–2012) symbolic anthropology: the imaginary, sermo mythicus, the anthropological trajectory, and the transcendental fantastic. Together, these concepts constitute what we consider to be the horizon of his open epistemology. Second, this article seeks to underscore the contemporary relevance of this “science of the imaginary” or symbolic hermeneutics of culture: an understanding of homo religiosus as a condition of human existence that still has much to contribute to the contemporary study of religions and to understanding the spiritual crisis of the West in our post-secular age, gravely marked by the tendency toward neo-totalitarianism, technological reconversion, and an unprecedented ecological crisis.