El mito como apertura al mundo. Sobre un equívoco en el pensamiento de Patočka

Abstract

The task of my inquiry is to lay out the main tenets of Patocka’s analyses of the myth and to highlight the cardinal function these analyses possess in relation to the question of world. I show that Patocka’s interpretation of the myth is marked by a profound ambiguity: when the myth is contrasted with the free and “questioning” attitude of “historical humanity”, it is conceived as the vector of a passive and heteronomous meaning and the world thus revealed is fundamentally determined by the temporal dimension of the past. On the other hand, when it is opposed to the domineering knowledge stemming from the modern scientific project, the myth appears to gather and to extend the Urdoxa, our primal commitment to the world. On this view, the myth testifies for the autonomy of the world: the world cannot be captured in all its amplitude when it is seen as a mere reflection or correlate of a human project of meaning. The tension that emerges from these descriptions has its source in an equivocal, possessing a structuring function for Patoka’s thinking, as to the primal and paradigmatic meaning of the world and as to the type of human comportment most likely to capture it.