Duane Elgin’s Concept of the Living Universe from the Perspective of Neo-Romanticization Cover Image

Duane Elgin’s Concept of the Living Universe from the Perspective of Neo-Romanticization
Duane Elgin’s Concept of the Living Universe from the Perspective of Neo-Romanticization

Author(s): Andrzej Kasperek
Subject(s): History, Customs / Folklore, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Duane Elgin; living universe; occulture; neo-Romanticization; voluntary simplicity movement;

Summary/Abstract: The article is aimed at analyzing Duane Elgin’s concept of the living universe from the standpoint of neo-Romanticization. The analysis is based on an understanding of Romanticism as an epoch of reinterpretation of the Western esoteric tradition. The author notices in Elgin’s works the presence of ideas that were popularized in the Romantic period, thus emphasizing the motif of esoteric inspirations in his oeuvre. By turning against the idea of a non-living universe, understood as a mechanism, Elgin continues the esoteric tradition, the major ideas of which are organicism, holism and evolutionism. His works (and activity) discussed in this study are treated as factors of social change.

  • Issue Year: 50/2017
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 359-372
  • Page Count: 14
  • Language: English