CHAPTER TWO: PHILOSOPHY AS MYTH Once there was a tree, and her name was "Philosophy".... Throughout this entire course I would like us all to treat this little story as if it holds the key to the nature of philosophy. We can express the same idea in the more philosophical form of an analogy by saying "philosophy is like a tree". In either case, we are assuming as a given--an unquestionable starting point for all our inquiries--that the nature and constituent parts of trees give us clues as to the nature and constituent parts of philosophy. Like any genuine presupposition, there is no way of defending this starting point with incontrovertible proofs; the best we can do is to believe in its truth and value, and then explore its various implications. If the final result is less than satisfactory, we can always discard the presupposition and start again with some new hypothesis. But in the meantime, I will return to this analogy on repeated occasions during this course in hopes of gaining deeper and clearer insights into the discipline we call "philosophy". This means the assumption that there was once a tree called "Philosophy" will serve as the myth which guides and holds together the various ideas we will be discussing. The word "myth", when used in this way, does not mean "a false story or belief", as it ordinarily does in its everyday English usage. Rather, I am using it here in the special way that some anthropologists use it in their descriptions of the primitive origins of religion. Today I want to explore this new sense of the word "myth", not only so that we can understand more clearly what it means to say the "tree of philosophy" will serve as our myth, but also because, as we shall see, the origins of philosophy itself are to a large extent rooted in this special type of mythological thinking. In the first Chapter of Myth and Reality, Mircea Eliade, one of this century's most influential scholars in the scientific study of religion, provides a good explanation of the way myths function in primitive societies. Since the meaning he assigns to the word "myth" is quite similar to that which I want us to assume, I would like to highlight several of the important points he makes. First of all, he defines a myth as an old story about the origin of the world or the things in the world, which in some way explains why human existence is the way it is, or why one's own cultural norms have developed the way they have. The myth of Prometheus, for example, tells us, among other things, about the origin of fire. The society's customs relating to sexuality, family relationships, and death are among the most common subjects of myths. The actors in these myths are usually gods, other supernatural beings, or heroes with superhuman powers. Unfortunately, this tends to obscure for the modern reader the fact that these stories functioned primarily as models for human behavior. Nevertheless, in this century there have been numerous attempts to show that ancient myths tell the story, so to speak of everyman. The psychologist Sigmund Freud, for example, argued that the myth of Oedipus, the man whose fate it was to kill his father and marry his mother, tells the story of the childhood experience of every little boy, not just those who lived in ancient Greece. Likewise, whenever we read an ancient myth, it is helpful to regard all the characters as, in one sense or another, telling the story of who we are. If I read a myth as a story of myself, then what once seemed aloof and irrelevant suddenly takes on a new meaning. According to Eliade, primitive tribesmen regard their myths as the truest of all true stories. Their truth is demonstrated repeatedly by the fact that reenacting the myths in the form of rituals gives the people power over nature. At the same time, the ritual repetition of the story keeps the myth alive in the hearts and minds of the people. Indeed, the people seem to have two distinct types of stories: those relating events which took place in the ordinary lives of the people and those relating events which took place in a special "mythical time" (sometimes referred to as "dream time"). The German language distinguishes between these two types of stories by using the word historie to describe ordinary stories and the word geschichte to describe stories with special, deeper meanings. The word heilsgeschichte refers to a special "sacred history" which exists, as it were, on a different plane from ordinary history. Although Eliade's account is quite accurate as a description of the myths found in primitive cultures, I would like to suggest that, with some rather slight revisions, we can recognize a mythological element in any and every human culture, including our own. First, instead of limiting myths to old stories, I suggest that we regard as a myth any belief, story, or proposition which functions in the same way the old stories function for primitive peoples. In other words, anything we use to explain why things are the way they are, or anything we use as a model for our behavior, might be regarded as a myth. This eliminates the requirement that the characters in a myth be so far removed from us that the story is intrinsically unbelievable to modern scientific ears. Of course, not every explanation of reality is a mythical one, so it is important to recall Eliade's criterion concerning the truth value of a myth. However, I think we should reject his claim that a myth represents the truest of all true truths. Instead, I believe the defining feature of a mythical belief, as far as its truth value is concerned, is that it is beyond question. That is, for the person who is "living in a myth", the question as to whether the story or belief or idea is true or false is meaningless. The myth just is. In other words, it is accepted at such a deep level that we never even think about questioning it. Hence we can represent this revised view of the truth value of a myth with the following diagram: [Figure 2.1: The Truth Value of a Myth] This does not mean that people who live in a myth are unable to ask any questions about the meaning of their myth. On the contrary, discussion of such questions often plays an important role in societies governed by a myth. The only question which cannot be asked is the basic question of whether or not the myth itself is true. People who live in a myth typically respond with confused amazement when someone questions their belief. Eliade's claim that a myth is believed to be the "truest" of all true stories rests on a misunderstanding of this response. For as the primitive tribesman instinctively knows, the notion of "truth" is not really appropriate when referring to myths. To ask about the "truth" of a myth is to misunderstand what it means to say it is a myth. Claims such as Eliade's result more from anthropologists reading their own preconceived ideas into their data than from the actual intentions of the primitive peoples. For our purposes, therefore, a myth will be something whose reality is so certain that it is inconceivable to ask the question "Is it true or false?" I hope you now understand more clearly what I mean when I say the story of the tree named "Philosophy" will be the myth that guides this course. I mean that I want you to accept the analogy, "philosophy is like a tree", as being true without question. Moreover, I want the picture of the tree of philosophy to act as a model for all of your reflections on what philosophy is. For in so doing, you will find you have a kind of power to understand philosophical ideas which is beyond that which would be experienced by most beginners. But before we begin exploring some of these philosophical ideas, I want to say something about the mythical origins of philosophy itself. The histories of most cultures look back to an original "golden age" in which human life was significantly different from the way it is now. And the longing for the return of this golden age (which is usually closely related to the "dream time" or "mythical time" mentioned earlier) is the impetus for much cultural change. For the early Hebrews, the golden age was the Garden of Eden, where man "walked with God in the cool of the evening". For the Chinese people in the age of Confucius, the golden age was the period of the "sage kings", when China was ruled with wisdom and benevolence. Since western philosophy, which will be the primary focus of this course, was born in ancient Greece, it is most significant for us to note that the Greeks also believed in a golden age. Let us therefore look briefly at the history of ancient Greece in order to gain some understanding of how philosophy was born from myth. Some scholars believe the dream of the golden age in ancient Greece referred back to the Minoan-Mycenaean culture, which had ended by the time of the Trojan War (circa 1200 B.C.). This age was the inspiration for the making of the Greek myths (see Freud's Moses and Monotheism, pp.87-89 and Jaynes' Bicameral Mind, pp.213-215, 278). The next most significant development in Greek history was "the creation of the Homeric epics [c.900 B.C.], which derived their material from this complex of myths" (Moses, p.88, Bicameral, p.464). These epics converted the unorganized mass of myths into a poetic form, rendering their meaning more apparent (Bicameral, pp.256f). But human consciousness had not yet developed into the form we know it today. According to Jaynes, our modern "subjective conscious mind" replaced a more primitive way of thinking "in the sixth century B.C." (Bicameral, pp.259-260,285-286)--that is, at about the same time as the appearance of the first philosopher in ancient Greece, named Thales (c.624-c.546 B.C.). There then followed three centuries of intense philosophical activity in Greece, culminating in the work of a philosopher named Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). Aristotle's work was significant because, as we shall see in Lecture 5, he was the first major Greek philosopher to develop something like a "scientific" point of view, in the modern sense of that term. If we place these major developments on a time line, this rough sketch of ancient Greek history looks like this: [Figure 2.2: The Cycle of History in Ancient Greece] The three hundred year gaps between each of the major changes represented in this diagram are, of course, only approximations of the dates when these changes actually occurred. Nevertheless, it is significant that history itself suggests to us such a regular pattern of development. The pattern is, in fact, reminiscent of the face of a clock, consisting as it does of twelve parts (hours/centuries) grouped into four quarters. Interestingly, this whole period of ancient Greek civilization is itself regarded by some as a "golden age"--a fact which suggests that this pattern is one which repeats itself indefinitely. If so, then another good way to picture the relationships between these four developments would be to map them onto the figure of a clock-face (i.e., a circle, divided into four quadrants). If we now recall the fact that our modern (A.D.) calendar starts at the point where Figure 2.2 leaves off (namely, at the birth of Jesus, albeit, not in Greece), then we can see that the best way to map this time line onto a circle is to proceed backwards (putting the 9:00 term in the 3:00 position and vice versa), just as our reckoning of B.C. dates goes in the reverse order of our reckoning of A.D. dates. This gives us the following map of four interrelated human thought forms: [Figure 2.3: Four Thought Forms in Ancient Greece] I want to end today's session by suggesting one further way in which these four ideas--myth, poetry, philosophy, and science--can be understood. For it would be a mistake to think their relationship is nothing but an accident of history. There is, in fact, a logical basis for their relationship. One way of explaining this is depicted in the diagram given in Figure 2.4. Living in a myth is like living inside of a circle without knowing anything about the existence of the circle itself. This is because mythological thinking is ignorant of all boundary lines. Poets withdraw themselves from the circle of myth just enough to recognize the existence of the boundary line. The poem is an attempt to verbalize the meaning of the myth in such a way as to convey its meaning to those who live completely outside the boundary. Hence the poet must live on the boundary. Philosophers, by contrast, step completely beyond the boundary line; yet they remain close enough to the "circle" of the myth so that they recognize the reality and significance of the "hidden meaning" it contains. The philosopher attempts to explain that meaning in a more literal or objective way. Hence, whereas the poet can write poetry without explicitly questioning the myth, the philosopher must question the myth. [Figure 2.4: A Map of the Four Human Thought Forms] That, indeed, is one of the main tasks of philosophy. Scientists differ from philosophers by withdrawing themselves so far from the realm of myth that they are no longer able to see the presence of any hidden meaning whatsoever. Whereas the philosopher questions the truth value of the myth (i.e., remains open to the possibility of seeing truth revealed in it), the scientist rejects the myth as nothing but a "false story". Scientists live so far away from the myth that, if they see the circle of myth at all, it appears to be only a point way off in the distance, with no meaningful content. This suggests that the use of the term "myth" in everyday English has its roots in our modern culture's fundamentally scientific world view. Yet science itself shares some of the same characteristics as myths (such as ignorance of the boundary lines). Hence, one of our main tasks in this course, if we are to become good philosophers in the present climate, will be to call into question the exclusive rights of the scientific world view over our minds. QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT 1. What are some of our modern myths? 2. Did a "golden age" ever really exist? 3. What is the difference between poetry and science? 4. What was human consciousness like before the origin of philosophy? RECOMMENDED READINGS 1. Rex Warner (ed.), The Stories of the Greeks (New York: Farrar Strauss & Giroux, 1967), "Oedipus" and "Prometheus", pp.140-145, 313-321. 2. Mircea Eliade, Myth and Reality (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964), Chapter One, "The Structure of Myths", pp.1-20. 3. Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, tr. Katherine Jones (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), Section III.1.2, "Latency Period and Tradition", pp.82-90. 4. Julian Jaynes, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990), especially Chapters I.3, "The Mind of Iliad", pp.67-83, and II.3, "The Causes of Consciousness", pp.205-222.