Philosophy Of Mythology Research Articles

God, Religion and History: The Significance of Schelling’s Philosophy of Religion for Determining the Concept of Religion

This article discusses Schelling’s contribution to the definition of the concept of religion in post-Kantian philosophy. In three lines of argument, it is shown that Schelling’s late lectures on the philosophy of mythology and revelation place religion in a history of development in which religion is successively understood as religion. Schelling assumes that religion is independent of reason and is based on a real relationship with God that is connected to the nature of man. This makes the philosophy of religion an independent academic discipline. Schelling links the historical development of religion and the history of God in his concept of monotheism. This is the content of Schelling’s formula that God is the Lord of being.

Hellenic Theology of the Epoch of High Classics

The conceptual basis of Hellenic theology was theoretical reflection on the essence of myth, the philosophy of mythology. Several stages can be distinguished in the history of Hellenic theology. The subject of this article is the Hellenic theology of the epoch of the high classics (Vt. half of the V century BC). The cultural roots of the High Classics go back to the ancient Enlightenment, which formed the rational attitude of the ancient consciousness to the world. The main event of the era of High Classics is the Peloponnesian War, which accelerated the crisis of the polis system, its way of life, and cultural ideals. The war led to the rupture of social ties, accelerated the individualization of the consciousness of the individual, forced to seek new social and spiritual supports. Serious shifts have taken place in the existential foundations of Hellenic religion, the understanding of man's dependence on the will of the Olympian gods and the measure of human influence on them has changed. If at the beginning of the epoch of the High Classics there was a semantic harmony of the relations between the human and the divine, then by the end of the epoch it was replaced by the confrontation and alienation of the sacred and profane. Ideas about the dependence of man on the world of the gods and the possible influence on the sacred have "blurred", have become extremely uncertain. This tendency manifested itself in various forms - in the strengthening of the influence of sophistry with its skepticism, the opposition of Chthonic and Olympic mythologies, the actualization of the motive of the birth of new gods (while the old ones do not die at all), stories about the deification of bright personalities, etc. Including in the theology of the Hellenic religion, concentrated expressed by the plots and images of the ancient drama (Sophocles, Euripides). The juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane made Hellenic religion meaningless, led it to self-denial. Under these conditions, Hellenic theology was faced with the need to transform the image of the sacred world. Firstly, by giving the otherworldly reality an abstract-conceptual transcendence. Secondly, through the ultimate generalization of mythological images of the gods, up to monotheism. These tasks were solved by the next epoch - the late classics.

On the connection between social and epistemological aspects of the civilizational approach

The article is a review of the monograph of the professors of the Department of Ontology and Theory of Cognition of the RUDN University V.M. Naidysh and O.V. Naidysh Civilization and Rationality. Essays on the Philosophy of Mythology (Moscow: Rusains, 2020. 286 p.) which explores social-philosophical and epistemological aspects of the civilizational approach. The issues of rationality and civilization are connected by the theory of consciousness presented as a form of reflection of reality by the active subject included in the networks of (direct and indirect) communication systems, as an integrator of cognitive activity, sensory-emotional experience of the world and volitional intentionality of the subject. The review focuses on two civilizational paradigms - civilization as an ethnosociocultural community and civilization as an institutionalized society that developed during the ‘Neolithic revolution’. The monograph analyzes a wide range of issues: theoretical-methodological prerequisites of models of the historical process, origins of the civilizational model of history, concepts of civilization in the 19th - early 21st century, the structure of the foundations of civilization, the role of rationalism and myth-making in the life of civilization, processes of rationalization and derationalization of culture, the genesis of thinking, the nature of the archetypes of culture, the formation of rationalism in the cultures of the Ancient East, concepts of barbarism and neo-barbarism, etc. The monograph also examines the debatable issue of possible prospects of civilization: among the models of post-civilization, transhumanism seems to be the most popular (the program of the artificial transformation of the natural-biological foundations of man). The authors call for a balanced and critical perception of transhumanism, because its most radical, extreme versions are a contemporary form of ‘social alchemy’.

A Polytheistic Phenomenology from Brazil

Two formative forces for Greek philosophers remain undertheorized: polytheism as a metaphysical position and myth as a source of intelligibility. Heidegger’s work is perhaps exemplary in this regard: he both runs together Greek Metaphysics and Monotheism as well as fell prey to the power of myths. In this paper I introduce and translate the 1953 essay “Mythology and the Tropic Experience of Being” by the Brazilian philosopher Vicente Ferreira da Silva, where he proposed an openly polytheistic Heideggerian metaphysics and philosophy of mythology. Vicente Ferreira da Silva thereby developed a phenomenological approach to myth that can dialogue fruitfully with ancient philosophy in its fullness and also reflect critically about contemporary myths.

«Русская идея» Вяч. Иванова в контексте его философии культуры: опыт прочтения «Повести о Светомире царевиче»

The author refers to the most “mysterious” work of Vyacheslav Ivanov which was essentially his testament. It is shown that “The Tale of Tsarevich Svetomir” is the quintessence of Ivanov’s philosophical worldview. The author maintains that some key concepts of Ivanov’s cultural philosophy find their artistic embod­iment in the “Tale”: symbol, myth, Russian idea, element. The author examines the genre classification of the “Tale” and concludes that the Ivanov’s choice of the genre of the work was determined by the use of folklore material in the framework of modernist literary experiments, which is characteristic of the poet­ics of Silver Age. The distinctive features of Ivanov's symbolism in relation to the artistic trends of the Silver Age are also indicated. The mythological form of the “Tale” reflects Ivanov's philosophy of mythology which can be therefore un­derstood as a structure-forming principle of the artwork. This makes it possible to use the basic concepts of Ivanovs’s symbolism as hermeneutic keys to “The Tale of Tsarevich Svetomir”. The final part of the article justifies the hy­pothesis that the Russian idea qua myth constitutes the main content of “The Tale of Tsarevich Svetomir”

The Consciousness of the Real and the Reality of Consciousnes

With reference to Schelling’s Philosophy of Mythology (PoM) in my paper I will address three points, namely: To what extent Schelling’s PoM provides us with arguments in favour of 1. Realism, 2. Emergentism and 3. Documentality (Ferraris 2009). Accordingly, in the first section, Reality, I will present Schelling’s PoM as realism, arguing that in mythology Schelling finds the traces of the developing of consciousness, regarded as a real fact. But, as this latter can only be real if having a history, i.e. if emerging from a previous natural status, which is devoid of any consciousness, PoM should be regarded as strongly related with a sort of emergentism. This will thus be the object of the second section, where I will investigate the genetic interpretation of Schelling’s Weltalter proposed by Wolfram Hogrebe (Hogrebe 1989) and suggest that precisely this analysis of the Weltalter explains also why Schelling’s project couldn’t but fail. In fact, against its intention, the Weltalter, as it was trying to explain the rise of semantics together with it the true genesis of the our acknowledgment of the world, still remains affected by an idealistic stance and hence couldn’t succeed in becoming positive philosophy. Eventually, in the third section of this paper, Documentality, I argue, that a solution of the problems left open by Schelling’s Weltalter and positively addressed in the PoM is offered by the interpretation of this latter as a contribution to Documentality. Even if created before and apparently independently from the act writing, in fact mythology relies on the possibility of recording tales, hence it is made of and eventually ends up in a written corpus. This means that the consciousness mythology gives us an account of, is the one that for the first time is able to present itself in narrated tales. It is not the mere possibility of acknowledging something, but in fact the possibility of binding our will to a freely formulated law trough our memory, i.e. the birth of conscience upon consciousness, which is the real sense of religion. In this sense Ferraris’ concept of documentality provides us an important theoretical framework to understand the hidden presuppositions of Schelling’s PoM and to relate this latter to its realistic and emergentistic character.

Формирование и развитие античной философии мифологии

Формирование и развитие античной философии мифологии

FREEDOM, LOW AND IMAGINATION THE LECTURES OF F.W.J. SCHELLING IN 1800-1810s

The gives the detailed analysis of the ratio of freedom and imagination in an unpublished manuscript written by F.V.Y. Schelling, which contains the materials for the lecture course read at Erlangen University in 1820-1821. The author focuses on the question of imagination as a condition for the possibility to unfold the modal differences that provide the hierarchy of predicative definitions. The article shows that both the draft philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of revelation are a direct continuation of the transcendentalist program given by Kant.Those projects bases on the thesis that the consciousness of freedom and consciousness of the law, justified in the “Critique of Practical Reason”, are related one another. Schelling following Kant’s theory, points to the law and to the unconditional imperative of freedom as the main principle which is not only theoretical or practical, but determines the separation of ontological and deontological modalities. At the same time, the formal structure of an imperative as a command has the specific character of “hiden opening”: what is themed in an imperative is not opened as a meaningful opportunity, it is only opened as theopportunity in its difference from necessity. I show in this article that interpreting the Schelling possibility relies on the teachings of I. Kant in his transcendental idealconception, connected with Kant's interpretation of the imagination’s productive ability. In the middle of Schelling’s theological interpretation of Kant's consciousness of lawdoctrine as the “fact of mind” lies the analogy between peacemaking and the ancestral sin of the first people. This concept is the main source of the theory of potency as ontological modalities, developed by Schelling in the 1830s - 1840s in lectures on the philosophy of mythology and the philosophy of revelation.

Mythology, essence, and form: Schelling’s Jewish reception in the nineteenth century

ABSTRACTHabermas explained the attraction of German Idealism to twentieth century Jewish philosophers by appealing to the impact of kabbalah on the German Idealists. Schelling was his principal example. In this article, I trace two lines of Jewish reception of Schelling in the nineteenth century. Among German-Jewish thinkers, Schelling was attractive because of his philosophy of mythology, not because of his relation to kabbalah. Among Galician-Jewish thinkers, Schelling was attractive because of what they took to be his non-mythological version of kabbalah. In both cases, Schelling offered a middle road between, on the one hand, traditionalist rejection of modernity and non-Jewish philosophy and, on the other, varieties of antinomianism.

LA RIVALUTAZIONE SCHELLINGHIANA DI HUME NELLE LEZIONI SULLA FILOSOFIA DELLA MITOLOGIA

Hume’s reception in German philosophy is rather important throughout the 18 th and 19 th century, where the Scottish philosopher plays different roles. Schelling too refers to Hume and most interestingly in his late lessons on the Philosophy of Mythology . Here Schelling revaluates the importance of Hume’s position on mythology – presented in the Dialogues concerning Natural Religion – stating that he correctly acknowledges the religious origin of mythology. Nonetheless, Schelling judges Hume’s position eventually equivocal, as he would be unable to free himself from his conception that correct religiosity is uniquely expressed by “philosophical theism”. Thanks to the critique to the limits of Hume’s position Schelling can ultimately formulate his own philosophical proposal for interpreting the origin of both polytheism and monotheism from a previous form of “monotheolatrism”.

Friedrich Shelling and Alexei Losev

This article outlines the main threads in the reception of Friedrich Schelling’s ideas by Alexei F. Losev as reflected in his philosophical works. The author singles out three main sets of issues where Schelling’s influence on Losev manifests itself especially vividly: the dialectical interpretation of primordial essence, the conditions for the possibility of language, and the theory of the symbol and philosophy of mythology. The author shows that within Losev’s reception of Schelling’s philosophy, there could be observed a tightly woven solidarity with Schelling’s position, an instrumental appropriation of individual Schellingian concepts, productive misunderstanding, and precise hermeneutic penetration into the semantic interrelations of various semantic clusters within Schelling’s extensive corpus of texts.

Schelling’s Understanding of Laozi

This article examines Schelling’s understanding of Laozi 老子. It begins with Schelling’s reception of Laozi’s text and its translation. The main part of this article focuses on Schelling’s discussion of Laozi in his Philosophy of Mythology. It then compares some of the key concepts mentioned in Schelling’s comments and their respective counterparts in Laozi: nothingness and wu 無, portal and abyss, reason and dao 道, name and concept, nature and ziran 自然, and so on, and analyzes the possible reasons for his sympathetic understanding of Laozi as against his own philosophical system. The main argument is that Schelling’s romantic tendency means that he can have an alternative understanding of Laozi. Finally it concludes with a few remarks on the differences between Schelling and Laozi in terms of their philosophical systems and methods.

Aarhus Lectures – Fourth Lecture: The Very Idea of a Philosophy of Mythology in Contemporary Philosophy

AbstractIn this fourth, concluding part of the Aarhus Lectures, I want to make sense of some features of Schelling’s positive philosophy in light of the fundamental idea of a philosophy of mythology. I believe that it is at least worth inquiring to what extent something like the so-called scientific world-picture – as well as the associated prominent insistence on normativity as a potential mark of autonomous mindedness as opposed to blind law-governed natural events – is embedded in a mythology. Genealogical points of this form are typically invoked in order to make room for an alternative. In Schelling’s case, the ultimate alternative (revelation) consists in overcoming the mythological condition of human consciousness as we know it altogether. However, like later modern eschatologists of a similar stripe (such as Heidegger and Derrida), he does not flesh out the alternative without creating another mythology, which is why in the second part of his positive philosophy, the Philosophy of Revelation, he resorts to revelation as a counter-myth to mythology, to an event that is not under the control of any kind of theory-building. Be that as it may, in the preparation of his triumphalist story about revelation, Schelling offers resources for a critical account of modernity’s constitutive mythology that he brings to bear in his critique of Hegel in ways not yet sufficiently explored in contemporary philosophy.

Dimitrije Matic: Hegelianism and Naturalism

Dimitrije Matic (1821-1884) was a philosopher, jurist, professor of public law at the Belgrade Lyceum and politician. He served as Serbia?s Minister of Education and Church Affairs, acting Foreign Minister, Speaker of the Parliament, and member of the State Council. He was president of the Serbian Society of Letters and member of the Serbian Learned Society. Matic belonged to Serbian liberal-minded intellectual circles. He believed that the rule of force was unacceptable and that governments should promote and support popular education. Matic studied philosophy and law in Serbia (Kragujevac, Belgrade), Germany (Berlin, Heidelberg) and France (Paris), and received his doctorial degree in philosophy in Leipzig. In Berlin Matic embraced Hegel?s speculative philosophy and theory of state (philosophy of law). Among his professors were Georg Andreas Gabler (Hegel`s immediate successor), Otto Friedrich Gruppe, Wilhelm Vatke etc. In Halle he listened to another Hegelian, Johann Eduard Erdmann. He had the opportunity to attend Friedrich Schelling?s lectures on the philosophy of mythology. If the Right Hegelians developed Hegel?s philosophy along the lines they considered to be in accordance with Christian theology, and the Left Hegelians laid the emphasis on the anti-Christian tendencies of Hegel?s system and pushed it in the direction of materialism and socialism, Matic would be closer to the first. Actually, he was mostly influenced by his professor Karl Ludwig Michelet, with whom he established a lifelong friendship. Matic?s doctorial thesis (Dissertatio de via qua Fichtii, Schellingii, Hegeliique philosophia e speculativa investigatione Kantiana exculta sit) addressed the question of how the philosophy of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel developed from Kantian speculative thought. The paper deals with the question whether Matic took a shift from Hegelianism to Positivism (Naturalism) in the 1860s, which is a claim that was taken for granted in the Yugoslav (Serbian) Marxist histories of Serbian philosophy after the Second World War and Communist revolution. In fact, it is rooted in Milan Kujundzic-Aberdar?s (1842-1893) periodization of the Serbian philosophical literature. Kujundzic, professor of Philosophy at the Belgrade Great School, classified Matic?s Science of Education into the latest period of natural philosophy. In order to answer the question, the paper looks into the evolution of Matic?s philosophical, legal and political views. Matic followed Hegelian philosophy in his: Short Review (according to Hegel?s ? Psychology in Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences); Principles of Rational [Vernunftrecht] State Law [Staatslehre] according to Heinrich Zepfel?s book on the philosophy of law (Grunds?tze des allgemeinen und des konstitutionell-monarchischen Staatsrechts and Hegel?s Philosophy of Law) and History of Philosophy (according to Albert Schwegler?s History of Philosophy). There is nothing in Matic?s Science of Education that would corroborate the claim that he shifted from Hegelianism to Positivism. Though he had to attune his views to the changed, anti- Hegelian, intellectual climate and influences on academic life, he remained a Hegelian. The paper deals with the reasons why the Marxist histories of Serbian philosophy insisted on his alleged conversion.

Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism and the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1820

Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism and the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1820

A Spätphilosophie de F. W. Schelling e o desdobrar da consciência humana

Em 1821, Friedrich W. Schelling (1775-1854) inaugura um novo caminho para o seu pensamento. Esse novo caminho, como afirma o próprio filósofo, divide sua filosofia em duas partes, a saber, a filosofia negativa, que diz respeito a toda sua produção anterior, e a filosofia positiva que se inaugura a partir das aulas de Erlangen. Contudo, como veremos neste artigo, suas duas filosofias estão unidas na busca pelo pensamento da Unidade. Essa busca traduz-se na Spätphilosophie como busca do Absoluto. O presente artigo tem como objetivo refletir sobre os escritos da chamada Filosofia da Mitologia que visam pensar o caminho do Absoluto. Tal caminho relaciona-se com o caminho percorrido pela própria consciência humana e, ao mesmo tempo, coincide com ela. Portanto, a análise culminará no que chamou de processo mitológico e sua relação com o politeísmo sucessivo, já que a mitologia teria se constituído graças à sucessão dos deuses efetuada na consciência humana.

The State as “a Consequence of the Curse of Humanity”: The Late Schelling’s Philosophy of Religion and of the State

AbstractThis paper analyzes the hitherto neglected political philosophy (Staatsphilosophie) contained in Schelling’s Berlin lectures on the philosophy of mythology and of revelation in the context of the complex and politically charged debates of the German Vormärz period. It will be shown that, in his political philosophy, the Berlin Schelling rejects social contract models of the state and follows conservative theorists who conceive of the state as a collective order that supersedes the individual, while at the same time preserving the freedom of the individual and rejecting religious legitimizations of the state. Schelling’s theory of the state is characterized by its distinctive internal tensions and by its multidimensionality. This complexity of his theory of the state helps to account for the diverse range of receptions and assessments of his political philosophy, both among his contemporaries and by subsequent commentators

Nature and Freedom: Repetition as Supplement in the Late Schelling

F.W.J. von Schelling’s positive philosophy of mythology and revelation questions how one can move from the natural (the negative or mythology) to freedom (the positive or revelation), i.e. from the natural to the supernatural. The move from nature to freedom surpasses the traditional metaphysics of presence. Being is not simply the presencing of nature but the result of a decisive deed surpassing and supplementing nature. Nature can do nothing other than presence. Freedom, however, could also not be. It could remain in concealment and must not necessarily presence as nature does. The origin is a supplement because an unnecessary excess extraneous to nature. In other words, origins always supplement the natural, i.e. they are supernatural and revelatory. Origins bring something novel, i.e. something original, into being but origins themselves remain in non-being and consequently remain un-revealed. The origin cannot exist, i.e. cannot become present, because it is always qualitatively Past. The origin never was but always already has been. Primal repetition was freedom’s subjection of nature to the Past and a deferral of this deed’s consequences to the indefinite Future.

Historical-critical introduction to the philosophy of mythology

Historical-critical introduction to the philosophy of mythology

Memoria, libertad y profecía. Un acercamiento a Las Edades del Mundo de F. W. J. Schelling

In the present article we try to approach a one of the most important texts of Schelling’s production, Ages of World (Die Weltalter), written between 1813 and 1815, in which is concentrated the whole enigma of his middle philosophy which includes from Essay on liberty (1809) until his return in Munich and then in Berlin, where he replaced Hegel after his death and formulated his proposal of a positive philosophy, conformed by his Philosophy of Mythology and Philosophy of Revelation, as alternative to Hegel’s philosophy. We’ll try to approach to this new notion of ‘positive science’ analyzing the concept of ‘crisis’, explored by Schelling in his Ages of World, in relation with a possible philosophy of memory.