The notion of archetype in Eliade's writings

The notion of archetype is of crucial importance in Eliade's historical-religious perspective, although he never provides a clear definition. The aim of this paper is to discuss the origins of the notion of archetype and clarify its meanings. Starting from the first occurrences of the term 'archetype' in 1937, and taking into account the issue of the relations of the Eliadean archetype with those of C.G. Jung, K. Kerényi, A.K. Coomaraswamy and E. D'Ors, three meanings of the notion of 'archetype' can be identified in his works, where it is used systematically since 1942. The first of these three meanings is the 'descriptive' meaning (the archetype as the expression of an 'archaic ontology', possessing a 'Platonic structure'); the second is the 'existential' meaning (the archetype as a consequence of boundary situations that a human being discovers at the moment of reaching an awareness of his or her own position in the universe); the third is the 'morphological' meaning (the archetype as a structural and structuring element of the religious phenomenon). In order to understand the third concept, it is necessary to address the problem of the relation between Eliade's concept, J.W. Goethe's morphology and E. Husserl's philosophical phenomenology.