Myth and the Limits of ReasonRodopi, 1996 - 133 pages Traditionally understood as pre-critical, even pre-rational, mythical thought has in fact played a critical role in post-Enlightenment intellectual history. Modernists in philosophy and literature have used the depictive rationality of myth to disclose, in self-reflective ways, the limits of discursive sense-making in various domains of human experience. In so doing, they have effectively furthered, without resort to analytical abstractions, the epistemological critique of reason begun during the Enlightenment. Stambovsky illustrates four widely diverse examples of this critical form of mythical thinking in works by Kierkegaard, Miguel de Unamuno, Henry James, and Margaret Atwood. The selected texts focus respectively on religious, national-cultural, psychosocial, and psychobiological realms of experience. These illustrations follow an inquiry into why the very possibility of critical, mythically inventive (mythopoetic) reflection is unsatisfactorily explained by leading rationalist accounts of myth. It is with this problem in mind that Stambovsky begins his monograph with observations on the origins of rationalist and counter-rationalist conceptualizations of myth in the fragments of Xenophanes (the father of rationalist mythology) and in Plato's Phaedrus. Of pivotal import is the early rationalist discrimination of mythos from logos and its epistemological implications (the rationalist legacy) in the history of the idea of myth. Following his look at paradigmatic classical precedents, Stambovsky traces the influence of the rationalist legacy in the myth theory of Malinowski, Lévi-Strauss, Cassirer, Ricoeur, and Blumenberg. The aim is to reveal how this influence in different ways limits these theories as instruments for detecting and explaining the seminal critical and historical significance of modern mythopoeia. This study will be of particular interest to teachers and students of myth theory in departments of philosophy, religion, literature, and cultural anthropology. |
From inside the book
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Phillip Stambovsky. values . The Upanishad's " Shantih shantih shantih , " which appears at the close of The Waste Land and which T. S. Eliot translates as the " Peace which passeth understanding , " is the paradigmatic counsel of ...
Phillip Stambovsky. values . The Upanishad's " Shantih shantih shantih , " which appears at the close of The Waste Land and which T. S. Eliot translates as the " Peace which passeth understanding , " is the paradigmatic counsel of ...
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... appears inferior to or at least dialectically discrete from bona fide rationality . Frequently enough , this is how rationalists construe myth as such , even where it supplants abstractive thought or affords a valid standpoint from ...
... appears inferior to or at least dialectically discrete from bona fide rationality . Frequently enough , this is how rationalists construe myth as such , even where it supplants abstractive thought or affords a valid standpoint from ...
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... appear groundless , wrong- headed , even impertinent in some quarters if he voiced it as anything more than an aside . Positive science operates with different categories of meaning than does the mythic Quest narrative Mythopoeia and ...
... appear groundless , wrong- headed , even impertinent in some quarters if he voiced it as anything more than an aside . Positive science operates with different categories of meaning than does the mythic Quest narrative Mythopoeia and ...
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... appears , one that is at odds with accounts that sharply oppose imaginative conception and discursive reason , mythos and logos . This perspective is perhaps most familiar in the theoretical tradition that we associate with modern ...
... appears , one that is at odds with accounts that sharply oppose imaginative conception and discursive reason , mythos and logos . This perspective is perhaps most familiar in the theoretical tradition that we associate with modern ...
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Contents
2 | |
Emergence of the Rationalist | 23 |
THREE | 42 |
Limits of Linguistic Logos | 50 |
Myth as an Ahistorical Starting | 60 |
Myth as an Accomplishment of Logos | 66 |
Mythopoeia | 73 |
Transformative Mythopoeia in Unamunos | 83 |
An Instance in Henry Jamess | 90 |
Critical Mythopoeia in Margaret Atwoods | 96 |
Conclusion | 103 |
References | 109 |
Key Terms Concepts and Sources | 117 |
60 | 123 |
About the Author | 125 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abraham abstract Akeidah analysis analytical approaches to myth articulate Atwood biblical Blumenberg Cassirer's Cervantes's Chapter classical cognitive conceptual consciousness context counter-rationalist critical mythopoeia critique cultural demythologization depictive rationality dialectic discursive reason Don Quixote doppelgänger dramatic Edenic garden Enlightenment epistemological Ernst Cassirer ethical reasoner euhemerist existential experience explain faith Fear and Trembling Giving Birth Golden Bowl Greek Hans Blumenberg Hatab hermeneutic human idea intellectual interpretation James James's Jeanie Jeanie's Johannes de Silentio Kierkegaard Lévi-Strauss limits of discursive linguistic literary logic logothetic Maggie Maggie's Malinowski meaning Miguel de Unamuno mode modern mythopoeia modernist mythic figuration mythical thinking mythologists Mythology mythopoesis mythopoetic figuration mythopoetic reflection mythopoetic thinking mythopoetic thought mythos and logos mythos/logos narrative Paul Ricoeur perception Phaedrus philosophical Plato Prelude of Fear presentationally rationalist rationalist myth theory reality religious Ricoeur sense Socrates story structuralist structure theory of myth Trans transformative Unamuno understanding University Press windmills woman Xenophanes
Popular passages
Page 86 - Look over there, friend Sancho Panza, where more than thirty monstrous giants appear. I intend to do battle with them and take all their lives. With their spoils we will begin to get rich, for this is a fair war, and it is a great service to God to wipe such a wicked brood from the face of the earth.
Page 48 - Myth fulfils in primitive culture an indispensable function: it expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it safeguards and enforces morality; it vouches for the efficiency of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man.
Page 2 - I had only to succeed in guessing what they were like for them to be deprived of their strangeness: in which case, I might just as well have stayed in my [own] village.
Page 118 - Melanesians agree, however, with this opinion? Certainly not. They do not want to "explain," to make "intelligible" anything which happens in their myths - above all not an abstract idea. Of that there can be found to my knowledge no instance either in Melanesia or in any other savage community. The few abstract ideas which the natives possess carry their concrete commentary in the very word which expresses them. When being is described by verbs to lie, to sit, to stand, when cause and effect are...
Page 92 - This situation had been occupying, for months and months, the very centre of the garden of her life, but it had reared itself there like some strange, tall tower of ivory, or perhaps rather some wonderful, beautiful, but outlandish pagoda...
Page 48 - Myth, as a statement of primeval reality which still lives in present-day life and as a justification by precedent, supplies a retrospective pattern of moral values, sociological order, and magical belief.
Page 53 - But if we had to name anything which is the life of the sign, we should have to say that it was its use.
References to this book
The Metaphysics of Religion: Lucian Blaga and Contemporary Philosophy Michael S. Jones Limited preview - 2006 |