3. PHILOSOPHY AS DEMYTHOLOGIZATION Now that we have seen how philosophy is born out of myth, it is important to emphasize that myth as such is not philosophy. On the contrary, the path that leads from myth to science, through poetry and philosophy, could be called the path of "demythologization". Thus, for example, when I suggested in the previous lecture that we all regard "the tree of philosophy" as the myth for this course, I was not really doing philosophy. Rather, I was preparing the ground in which the tree itself will be planted. After you finish this course, I hope you will each take the time to question seriously not only the myth, but also the (poetic) analogy that "philosophy is like a tree". But if you question this presupposition here at the beginning, you will find that the ground of your mind is too hard to receive the insights with which this myth can inspire us. One such insight is that, just as a tree is an organic whole consisting of four main parts (the roots, the trunk, the branches and the leaves), so also many, if not most, sets of philosophical ideas are organized according to such a pattern. We have already seen several such patterns in the first two sessions. But before we look at the way demythologization works, I would like to point out several other interesting fourfold patterns. If the "myth, poetry, philosophy, science" pattern is regarded as a description of the way human thinking develops on a macrocosmic scale (i.e., in human cultures), then we should not be surprised to find a similar pattern operating on a microcosmic scale (i.e., in human individuals). One of the most common ways of describing the stages of an individual's development is to refer to a person's "birth, youth, maturity, and old age". By correlating each of these with a progressively higher level of consciousness, the following pattern emerges (with the circle suggesting it may have a cyclical character): [Figure 3.1: The Development of the Individual] Just as the progression from birth to youth coincides with the awakening of the child's unconscious mind, so also the progression from youth to maturity requires the gradual sharpening of consciousness, until a distinct awareness of one's own self arises. And the self-conscious person whose natural development is not interrupted eventually enters into a new stage which, for want of a better term, we can call super-consciousness. The elderly are regarded as wise in all traditional societies not primarily because of their many years of experience, but because a new way of thinking is open to them, by which they can, if they take advantage of it, look out beyond themselves to the wider implications of things. (Incidentally, the "golden age" to which many cultures look back would correspond to the pre-natal experiences of the baby in its mother's womb.) Each of these four stages can also be correlated with a particular "faculty", or power, of the human mind, as in Figure 3.2. Imagination is the power governing the earliest years of our life, just as myth governs the thinking of those who live in primitive cultures. As everyone knows, the difference between fantasy and reality is not distinct in the mind of a true child. In youth, however, this power is overcome by passion: as the physical body changes in puberty, so also the mind changes the way it adapts to the world. The poet is driven by this passion to express in words what for the child is only a dream. Philosophers, by contrast, are not usually known for their passion. This is because the power corresponding to mature self- consciousness is the power of understanding. This power, when developed to its fullest extent, is transformed into the power of judgment. The task of scientists is to transcend their own point of view in order to judge how the world really is. Likewise, the people who truly deserve to be called "old" are those whose minds are governed primarily by this power of judgment. [Figure 3.2: The Four Powers of the Mind] Determining what each of these powers aims to express will give us a more complete understanding of the interrelationships between these ideas. Myth uses imagination to express beliefs. Poetry uses passion to express beauty. Philosophy uses understanding to express truth. And science uses judgment to express knowledge. We can represent these ultimate goals by mapping them onto a square, which encompasses the circle in Figure 3.2, as shown in Figure 3.3. I have taken the time to show you these patterns not only because I think they are intrinsically interesting, but also because they should help us to place philosophy in its proper context. And the better your understanding of the context, the stronger will be the roots of your own personal philosophical "tree". These diagrams represent logical patterns, so many of their implications will not become clear until we study logic in the second part of this course. Nevertheless, it might be helpful at this point to take a brief look at the origins of logic itself, since the proper employment of logic is necessary in order for demythologization to take place. The English word "logic" comes from the Greek word logos, which means "word"--including the spoken word ("speech"), the written word ("book"), and the thought word ("reason"). But in Ancient Greece logos was also sometimes used to refer to what we can call the hidden meaning in a myth. In this sense, the logos of a thing is its final purpose or ultimate nature. This is how the Bible uses the word when, for example, St. John's Gospel begins by exclaiming: "In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God." The person who lives in a myth experiences this logos firsthand, and so has no need to explain it. The poet is the first to recognize the need to use words to express the passion with which an experience of the logos fills a person. The philosopher tries to understand the logos in such a way as to separate truth from fiction. And the scientist forgets the logos altogether in search of concrete facts that can be manipulated. [Figure 3.3: Four Aims of Human Thinking] This process of moving from an intimate experience of the logos to a state in which its presence is forgotten is the process of demythologization. Forgetting the logos is in a sense a catastrophe for mankind, and yet in another sense, as we shall see towards the end of the first part of this course, such forgetting (or at least, ignoring) is a necessary requirement in order for knowledge to arise. Science requires us to forget the hidden logos because factual knowledge admits only what is openly revealed. Indeed, the difficulties we all have in thinking in terms of this logos arise as a direct result of the fact that we live in an age dominated by the scientific world view, which finds no proper place for the logos. Yet it is always possible for a person to return once again to the stage of myth, even after forgetting it in the process of attaining knowledge. Nurturing the tree of philosophy within ourselves is one of the best ways to revive the memory of that forgotten reality. The earliest demythologizers in ancient Greece were the philosophers who lived during the period of time from Thales to Aristotle (see Figure 2.2). With two important exceptions (to be discussed in the following session), these philosophers are referred to as "Presocratic" philosophers, because they lived before a very influential philosopher named Socrates. One of the main concerns of the Presocratics was to describe the nature of "ultimate reality". And this, as I mentioned in the first session, is the main task of the branch of philosophy we now call "metaphysics". Of these early demythologizers there were four whose ideas deserve special mention. Each of them regarded one of the four traditional "elements" (or something like it) as actually constituting the ultimate reality. Thales himself argued that everything can ultimately be reduced to water. Anaximenes (c.585-c.528) disagreed, claiming the most basic element is actually air. Not long afterwards, Heraclitus (fl.500-480), who had some interesting ideas about the logic of opposites (see below, p.65), suggested that fire is the element which best describes the basic metaphysical building-block. Finally, Democritus (c.460-c.371), whose name bears a striking resemblance to a popular modern political ideology, defended the earliest form of "atomism", viewing the fundamental element as "being", or simply what is. By this he meant something similar to what we mean by "matter", which suggests at least a rough correspondence to the earth element, since the latter clearly refers not merely to soil, but to all solid matter. With the latter qualification, the views of these four early metaphysicians can therefore be mapped onto a simple cross, as follows: [Figure 3.4: The Four Elements in Ancient Greece] To this list we should add Anaximander (c.610-c.546), who argued that none of the four elements is properly regarded as basic, since they necessarily stand in opposition to each other (as wet and dry, hot and cold). If one element were "boundless", then it would destroy all the others. Whichever answer to the question of the nature of ultimate reality we might think is the best, we must beware of regarding them as if they were giving an explanation of the nature of the physical world. For the word "metaphysics" means "after" or "beyond" physics (i.e., "nature"). So we must be careful not to think these philosophers were arguing that everything on the earth is quite literally made out of (for example) fire. That is obviously not true, otherwise we would have all burned up long ago! Moreover, such explanations are the task of science, not philosophy. Instead, we should regard these philosophers' theories as the earliest attempts to reveal a single, irreducible truth which lies behind the diverse appearances of our everyday experience. In other words, they were trying to grasp the hidden meaning of their own mythical heritage from a position outside the myth itself. The result was what we might today call "symbolic" explanations for how we can solve the problem of metaphysics. However, as we shall see in our next session, the solutions were bound to fail. QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT 1. Can a myth ever be completely demythologized? 2. Why are there only four basic elements? 3. Which of the four elements do you think is most basic, and why? 4. What is truth? RECOMMENDED READINGS 1. Frank N. Magill (ed.), Masterpieces of World Philosophy (New York: Harper Collins, 1990), "Anaximander" and "Heraclitus", pp.1-5, 12-16. 2. Reginald E. Allen (ed.), Greek Philosophy: Thales to Aristotle (New York: The Free Press, 1966), "Presocratic Philosophy", pp.25-54. 3. G.S. Kirk, et. al., The Presocratic Philosophers: A critical history with a selection of texts2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 [1957]). 4. Hans Peter Duerr, Dreamtime: Concerning the boundary between wilderness and civilization, tr. Felicitas Goodman (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985).