Myth as source of knowledge in early western thought : The quest for historiography, science and philosophy in Greek antiquity

by: Haarmann, H.

Price: 54,00 EURO

1 copy in stock

 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

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

viii, 282 pages : 26 illustrations ; 24 cm

Myth as source of knowledge in early western thought : The quest for historiography, science and philosophy in Greek antiquity

by: Haarmann, H.

• ISBN-13: 9783447103626 / 978-3-447-10362-6
• ISBN-03: 3447103620 / 3-447-10362-0
• Harrassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 2015

Price: 54,00 EURO

1 copy in stock