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Author: Luc Brisson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226075354
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Luc Brisson explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance and how philosophers must be awarded the credit for saving these colourful tales from historical annialation.
Author: Luc Brisson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226075354
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Luc Brisson explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance and how philosophers must be awarded the credit for saving these colourful tales from historical annialation.
Author: Luc Brisson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226075389
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. Luc Brisson argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. Brisson shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical. How Philosophers Saved Myths also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, Brisson explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance; after the triumph of Chistianity, Brisson argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well.
Author: Luc Brisson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226075198
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
We think of myth as a fictional story, and Plato was the first to use the term muthos in that sense. But Plato also used muthos to describe the practice of making and telling stories, the oral transmission of all that a community keeps in its collective memory. In the first part of Plato the Myth Maker, Luc Brisson reconstructs Plato's multifaceted and not uncritical description of muthos in light of the latter's famous Atlantis story. The second part of the book contrasts this sense of myth, as Plato does, with another form of speech that he believed was far superior: the logos of philosophy. Appearing for the first time in English, Plato the Myth Maker is a solid and important contribution to the history of myth, based on the privileged testimony of one of its most influential critics and supporters.
Author: Robert Alan Segal
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198724705
Category : Myth
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
Where do myths come from? What is their function and what do they mean? In this Very Short Introduction Robert Segal introduces the array of approaches used to understand the study of myth. These approaches hail from disciplines as varied as anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, philosophy, science, and religious studies. Including ideas from theorists as varied as Sigmund Freud, Claude Levi-Strauss, Albert Camus, and Roland Barthes, Segal uses the famous ancient myth of Adonis to analyse their individual approaches and theories. In this new edition, he not only considers the future study of myth, but also considers the interactions of myth theory with cognitive science, the implications of the myth of Gaia, and the differences between story-telling and myth. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Author: Kathryn A. Morgan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139427520
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 325
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Book Description
This book explores the dynamic relationship between myth and philosophy in the Presocratics, the Sophists, and in Plato - a relationship which is found to be more extensive and programmatic than has been recognized. The story of philosophy's relationship with myth is that of its relationship with literary and social convention. The intellectuals studied here wanted to reformulate popular ideas about cultural authority and they achieved this goal by manipulating myth. Their self-conscious use of myth creates a self-reflective philosophic sensibility and draws attention to problems inherent in different modes of linguistic representation. Much of the reception of Greek philosophy stigmatizes myth as 'irrational'. Such an approach ignores the important role played by myth in Greek philosophy, not just as a foil but as a mode of philosophical thought. The case studies in this book reveal myth deployed as a result of methodological reflection, and as a manifestation of philosophical concerns.
Author: Catherine Collobert
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004218661
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 489
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Book Description
Through the contributions of specialists in the field, this volume addresses the still open question of the role and status of myth in Plato’s dialogues and thereby speaks to the broader problem of the relation between philosophy and poetic discourse.
Author: Chiara Bottici
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139466798
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
In this book, originally published in 2007, Chiara Bottici argues for a philosophical understanding of political myth. Bottici demonstrates that myth is a process, one of continuous work on a basic narrative pattern that responds to a need for significance. Human beings need meaning in order to master the world they live in, but they also need significance in order to live in a world that is less indifferent to them. This is particularly true in the realm of politics. Political myths are narratives through which we orient ourselves, and act and feel about our political world. Bottici shows that in order to come to terms with contemporary phenomena, such as the clash between civilizations, we need a Copernican revolution in political philosophy. If we want to save reason, we need to look at it from the standpoint of myth.
Author: Plato,
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019955255X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 205
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Book Description
This volume brings together ten of the most celebrated Platonic myths, from eight of Plato's dialogues ranging from the early Protagoras and Gorgias to the late Timaeus and Critias. They include the famous myth of the cave from Republic as well as 'The Judgement of Souls' and 'The Birth of Love'. Each myth is a self-contained story, prefaced by a short explanatory note, while the introduction considers Plato's use of myth and imagery.
Author: Stephen L. Gardner
Publisher: Praeger
ISBN: 0313307245
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
The status of the modern age has long been debated, but since post-modernism, it has assumed centrality as if it were the issue of philosophy. Gardner brings a new approach to the problem of modernity, based on theories of René Girard and others. While modernity is commonly seen as an ideological project or interpretation of Being, Gardner sees it in terms of the structure of human relations and their impact on philosophy. The decisive feature of the modern world is what Tocqueville called equality of conditions, which has wrought a revolution in the self-image of the individual and in one's dealings with others. But, in the process, it has replaced old myths—debunked by the Enlightenment—with new ones of its own invention. Hence emerged the myths of freedom—of the autonomy of the self or the spontaneity of passion, or later, of emancipation or authenticity—from Descartes to Heidegger. Gardner probes the central issue: To what extent have philosophers clarified these myths, or, perhaps, succumbed to their illusions. This inquiry attacks the major dogmas of contemporary criticism—such as the primacy of the question of technology, or of the quarrel of ancients and moderns. It restores the philosophical legitimacy of anthropology, both in opposition to Heidegger's ontology and to the deconstructive retreat into an idealism, and in contrast to classical political philosophy. This provocative analysis will be of interest to philosophers, political theorists, and others dealing with the problem of modernity.
Author: Robin Waterfield
Publisher: Emblem Editions
ISBN: 0771088639
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
A revisionist account of the most famous trial and execution in Western civilization — one with great resonance for modern society In the spring of 399 BCE, the elderly philosopher Socrates stood trial in his native Athens. The court was packed, and after being found guilty by his peers, Socrates died by drinking a cup of poison hemlock, his execution a defining moment in ancient civilization. Yet time has transmuted the facts into a fable. Aware of these myths, Robin Waterfield has examined the actual Greek sources, presenting a new Socrates, not an atheist or guru of a weird sect, but a deeply moral thinker, whose convictions stood in stark relief to those of his former disciple, Alcibiades, the hawkish and self-serving military leader. Refusing to surrender his beliefs even in the face of death, Socrates, as Waterfield reveals, was determined to save a morally decayed country that was tearing itself apart. Why Socrates Died is then not only a powerful revisionist book, but a work whose insights translate clearly from ancient Athens to the present day.
