From the Greek “model”, most often the Platonic Ideas (archetypes). An archetype, etymologically: primitive type, is an original that serves as a model.
An archetype can be a universal symbol: the tree of life, the serpent, a cross, the sea… insofar as it carries similar meanings in different cultures. Typical examples of archetypes: the Hero, the Sage, the Shadow, the Mother…
More specifically:
From the Greek arkhḗ (“principle,” “beginning”) and týpos (“imprint,” “model”), the term archetype literally means a primordial model or original pattern. In Plato’s philosophy, the Ideas or Forms are true archetypes—eternal realities of which the sensible world is only a shadow or reflection. Every particular thing participates in an archetype that expresses its essence and confers upon it intelligible being.
An archetype may also be understood as a universal symbol—the tree of life, the serpent, the mountain, the sea, the fire, the cross—each recurring across cultures and epochs with similar meanings. These forms reveal a common symbolic substratum of humanity: myths and symbols are the language through which archetypes manifest the deepest structures of experience.
In the Jungian perspective, archetypes are innate patterns of the collective unconscious. They precede individual experience and emerge through dreams, religious images, artistic creations, and myths. Among the most well-known are the Hero, the Mother, the Wise Old Man, the Shadow, the Divine Child, the Anima and Animus. Archetypes guide the psychic process toward integration—the reconciliation of consciousness with its center, the Self.
On a metaphysical level, the archetype is not merely psychological but ontological: it refers to the order of formal causes pre-existing in the Divine Intellect. Plotinus, St. Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas all describe these archetypal ideas as exemplary forms through which creation participates in the intelligible order of Being. The archetype is thus the seal of the Principle within the multiplicity of forms.
To speak of archetypes, then, is to evoke both the symbolic memory of humanity and the intelligible structure of reality—the bridge between being, consciousness, and the transcendent order.
Further reading:
– Plato, Republic VI–VII; Phaedo – on the theory of eternal Forms.
– Plotinus, Enneads V.9 – on archetypes in the Divine Intellect.
– St. Augustine, De ideis – on exemplary forms in the mind of God.
– Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, q. 15 – on divine ideas as exemplary causes.
– Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return.
– Bruno Bérard, Metaphysics for Everyone (Angelico Press), trad. of Métaphysique pour tous (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2021); It. Sui sentieri della metafisica; Sp. ¿Qué es la metafísica?; Ger. Was ist Metaphysik? – on the metaphysical understanding of archetypes as universal principles linking being, consciousness, and symbol.