Myth as source of knowledge in early western thought

the quest for historiography, science and philosophy in Greek antiquity

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Last edited by ImportBot
June 17, 2023 | History

Myth as source of knowledge in early western thought

the quest for historiography, science and philosophy in Greek antiquity

"The perception of intellectual life in Greek antiquity by the representatives of the European Enlightenment of the 18th century favoured the establishment of the cult of reason. Myth as a potential source of knowledge was disregarded; instead, the monopoly of truth-finding through pure rationalisation was asserted. This tendency, positing, as it did, reason in opposition to myth, did a signal disservice to the realities of intellectual life among the ancient Greeks. Nevertheless, these distortions of the Enlightenment have conditioned our approach to education and have led to our privileging of reason as a mode of enquiry right up to the present day. The ancient Greek intellectuals (i.e. the pre-Socratic philosophers, the early historiographers, philosophers of the classical age) did not set myth (mythos) and reason (logos) in opposition to each other. In fact, they benefited from both as differing modes of enquiry, each in its own right and possessing its own value. Plato, in his reasoning, was much concerned with the proper use of mythical narrative. In one of his dialogues, he even coined a new term for explaining how mythical topics and motifs should be exploited as a source of knowledge. This term is mythologia, and it first occurs in Plato's Republic (394b). The present study aims to offer a corrective to traditional clichés and received wisdom about intellectual life in ancient Greece. The work proposes, and aims to reconstruct, a mental landscape in which myth and reason connect and vividly interact, and in which the concepts of mythos and logos are intertwined in the terminological network of the ancient Greek language"--

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
282

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Book Details


Table of Contents

Myth through the ages : crafting realities in a mythopoetic key
Myth and knowledge : an intimage yet little known relationship
Exploring the world through myth : the organic whole and its mythopoeic conceptualizations
History before writing : foundational myths as building-blocks for knowledge-construction
Myth-making as social and political agency : myths as vehicles for group solidarity and wthnic self-identification
Preconditions for the making of history and of philosophy : the interrelation of orality and literacy
Conceptualizing divinely inspired order : the endeavour of pre-Socratic philosophers to rationalize mythical truths
Myth into historiography : Herodotus and his mytho-historical world
Myth into philosophy : Plato as mythologist
Hellenistic transformations : stigmatizing myth as source of knowledge
Epilogue : the ideology of myth-dismissal and the cult of reason in the New Era.

Edition Notes

Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-273) and index.

Published in
Wiesbaden

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
938
Library of Congress
B181 .H33 2015, B181.H33 2015

The Physical Object

Pagination
viii, 282 pages
Number of pages
282

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL28412176M
ISBN 10
3447103620
ISBN 13
9783447103626
LCCN
2015398293
OCLC/WorldCat
907173310

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June 17, 2023 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
March 16, 2023 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
July 28, 2020 Created by MARC Bot import new book