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

Abstract

The article is aimed at analysing 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.