Problem Of Myth Research Articles

Миф в современном обществе: когнитивная концепция регрессии как перспектива интегративного подхода

The problem of myth in modern society is of persistent interest to specialists from a wide range of sciences (philosophers, sociologists, cultural scientists, linguists, political scientists, etc.), since it allows us to reveal la-tent mechanisms for regulating human consciousness and behavior. At the same time, various interpretations of the phenomenon of myth itself are used as explanatory models. The author identifies two main traditions of understanding myth, designated as universalist-ontological and rational-constructionist, and also characterizes their differences. As an integrative perspective, it is proposed to use the heuristic potential of modern cognitive science, namely, the concept of regression developed by it. It is shown that two versions of the myth are includ-ed, but are emphasized differently when describing different stages of adaptation processes occurring at dif-ferent levels of social existence and in different cultural and historical contexts.

Literary Form and Philosophical Discourse: The Problem of Myth in the Platonic Dialogues

Literary Form and Philosophical Discourse: The Problem of Myth in the Platonic Dialogues

A “German Paperchase”: The “Scrap of Paper” Controversy and the Problem of Myth and Memory in International History

“… eyewitnesses often err… . If an event suggests some tempting interpretation, then this interpretation, more often than not, is allowed to distort what has actually been seen.” Karl Popper The dismissal, in 1914, of the Belgian neutrality treaty as a “scrap of paper” by the German chancellor has become one of the enduring images of the First World War. Widely used by Allied propaganda during the war, the remark contains certain elements of “myth.” Utilising hitherto untapped archival material, this article examines the final interview between the German chancellor and the British ambassador on 4 August 1914 through the prism of contemporary sources and the later ‘“scrap of paper’ controversy” in the mid-1920s. Beyond the reconstruction of actual events, the article contends that the controversy has epistemological significance for diplomatic historians.

Heidegger and the Gods: On the Appropriation of a Religious Tradition

[183] Twentieth century philosophical discourse has been much concerned with the problem of myth. Ernst Cassirer, Karl Jaspers, and Paul Ricoeur are only the most notable philosophers who have attempted to discuss philosophically the myths— including the properly religious myths—of different peoples. Interestingly, though, Heidegger, perhaps the twentieth century's most seminal thinker, had little to say about myth, and, perhaps even more surprisingly, virtually no scholarly attention has been paid to the few places in his work where he does, directly or indirectly, address this issue. The task of this paper is to shed some light on Heidegger's understanding of myth and, further, to suggest a distinctively Heideggerian perspective on the appropriation of the mythology which is at the foundation of a religious tradition. In the essay, “Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B 50),” Heidegger approaches the problem of mythical language indirectly, yet his position appears to emerge quite clearly. 1 In the general discussion, he meditates on the Being-process as the Logos, “the Laying that gathers.” His position is that the original meaning of the Greek word legein is “to lay and gather”or “to gatheringly let-lie-forth.” By the name Logos, then, the Greeks named Being as the primordial legein which gatheringly lets-lie-forth all beings (including human beings). At one point in the essay, he pauses to consider and comment on another and, in his view, related Heraclitean fragment: “The One, which alone is wise, does not want and yet does want to be called by the name Zeus.” (Diels-Kranz, B 32) 2

Sons of suns: myth and totemism in early China

The ‘problem of myth’ for Western philosophers is a problem of interpreting the meaning of myths and explaining the phenomenon of myth making. The ‘problem of myth’ for the sinologist is one of finding any myths to interpret and explaining why there are so few—for myth-making is generally assumed to be a universal faculty of mankind. One explanation for the paucity of myth in the traditional sense of stories of the supernatural in ancient Chinese texts is the nature of Chinese religion. In China, gods, as well as ancestors and ghosts, were believed to be dead men, spirits who had lived in this world at a certain place and time and continued to need sustenance from the living and to exert influence over them. They related primarily to those who gave them ritual offerings and little thought was given to any possible interaction between them

The Mythopoeic Vision in Native American Literature: The Problem of Myth

The Mythopoeic Vision in Native American Literature: The Problem of Myth

The Mythology of Death in the Old Testament

It is now some seventy-five years since the problem of myth in the Old Testament tradition was first formulated in any detail by Gunkel. He drew attention to mythological elements in the tradition of Israel which could not be explained merely in terms of fortuitous parallelism with other myths of the ancient orient. He saw that much of this mythology could be traced to Babylonian and Assyrian sources; but he set out to examine how the myth had come into the Old Testament and how it had been made to conform to the thought and understanding of Israel. He dealt with such various themes as the Creation, the Flood, Rahab and Leviathan and tehōm He noted how mythological figures, such as the Dragon in the Sea were linked to historical persons and events, e.g. the hubris of the sea-dragon is the hubris of Pharaoh and Egypt in Ezekiel 29 and 32.

From History to Myth: A Comparative Study

HEN in the context of an organization calling itself an association of biblical instructors the topic of mythology is brought up, the name of the Marburg giant, Rudolf Bultmann, dominates our thinking, as indeed it should. But New Testament scholars have impoverished their studies by a kind of myopia resulting from a neglect of the problem of myth in the wider demands of Religionswissenschaft. Bultmann's well-known three story universe accompanied by divine intervention is not, strictly speaking, a mythology; it is a Weltanschauung. Of course, sophisticated modem man, for whom E = mc2, cannot accept biblical cosmology, but neither could Copernicus. The real question of mythology runs much deeper. About a quarter of a century ago, the subject of myth began to be restudied seriously after a long period of neglect. Malinowski, following Frazer and Lang, considered the anthropological aspects of folklore. Cassirer, Langer, Tillich and Urban directly explored the meaning of myth, and the researches of C. G. Jung gave added dimensions to our studies.'