Download or read book Myth as Source of Knowledge in Early Western Thought written by Harald Haarmann and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Myth as Source of Knowledge in Early Western Thought written by Harald Haarmann and published by Harrassowitz. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perception of intellectual life in Greek antiquity by the representatives of the European Enlightenment of the 18th century favoured the establishment of the cult of reason. Myth as a potential source of knowledge was disregarded: instead, the monopoly of truth-finding through pure rationalisation was asserted. This tendency, positing, as it did, reason in opposition to myth, did a signal disservice to the realities of intellectual life among the ancient Greeks. Nevertheless, these distortions of the Enlightenment have conditioned our approach to education and have led to our privileging of reason as a mode of enquiry right up to the present day. The ancient Greek intellectuals (i.e. the pre-Socratic philosophers, the early historiographers, philosophers of the classical age) did not set myth (mythos) and reason (logos) in opposition to each other. In fact, they benefited from both as differing modes of enquiry, each in its own right and possessing its own value. Plato, in his reasoning, was much concerned with the proper use of mythical narrative. In one of his dialogues, he even coined a new term for explaining how mythical topics and motifs should be exploited as a source of knowledge. This term is mythologia, and it first occurs in Plato's Republic (394b). The present study aims to offer a corrective to traditional cliches and received wisdom about intellectual life in ancient Greece. The work proposes, and aims to reconstruct, a mental landscape in which myth and reason connect and vividly interact, and in which the concepts of mythos and logos are intertwined in the terminological network of the ancient Greek language.

Download or read book Myth written by Robert Alan Segal and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Very Short Introduction explores different approaches to myth from several disciplines, including science, religion, philosophy, literature, and psychology. In this new edition, Robert Segal considers both the future study of myth as well as the impact of areas such as cognitive science and the latest approaches to narrative theory.

Download or read book Myth and History Close Encounters written by Menelaos Christopoulos and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-05-23 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fluidity of myth and history in antiquity and the ensuing rapidity with which these notions infiltrated and cross-fertilized one another has repeatedly attracted the scholarly interest. The understanding of myth as a phenomenon imbued with social and historical nuances allows for more than one methodological approaches. Within the wider context of interdisciplinary exchange of ideas, the present volume returns to origins, as it traces and registers the association and interaction between myth and history in various literary genres in Greek and Roman antiquity (i.e. an era when the scientific definitions of and distinctions between myth and history had not yet been perceived as such, let alone fully shaped and implemented), providing original ideas, new interpretations and (re)evaluations of key texts and less well-known passages, close readings, and catholic overviews. The twenty-four chapters of this volume expand from Greek epos to lyric poetry, historiography, dramatic poetry and even beyond, to genres of Roman era and late antiquity. It is the editors’ hope that this volume will appeal to students and academic researchers in the areas of classics, social and political history, archaeology, and even social anthropology.

Download or read book Logoi and Muthoi written by William Wians and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2019-06-01 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on Greek philosophy and literature from Homer and Hesiod to Aristotle. In Logoi and Muthoi, William Wians builds on his earlier volume Logos and Muthos, highlighting the richness and complexity of these terms that were once set firmly in opposition to one another as reason versus myth or rationality versus irrationality. It was once common to think of intellectual history representing a straightforward progression from mythology to rationality. These volumes, however, demonstrate the value of taking the two together, opening up and analyzing a range of interactions, reactions, tensions, and ambiguities arising between literary and philosophical forms of discourse, including philosophical themes in works not ordinarily considered in the canon of Greek philosophical texts. This new volume considers such topics as the pre-philosophical origins of Anaximander’s calendar, the philosophical significance of public performance and claims of poetic inspiration, and the complex role of mythic figures (including perhaps Socrates) in Plato. Taken together, the essays offer new approaches to familiar texts and open up new possibilities for understanding the roles and relationships between muthos and logos in ancient Greek thought. “This is a stellar effort. The essays are all of extremely high quality and interest. The scholarship is rigorous and the content is innovative. The conception of the book is highly original, well-grounded, and well-thought-out. William Wians’s work as a scholar and as an editor has been consistently first-rate, and with this volume he has surpassed himself.” — Rose M. Cherubin, George Mason University

Download or read book The Truth of Myth written by Tok Thompson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "To the student of myth: This book attempts to provide a concise overview of the theoretical approaches to studying mythology, both in theory and in everyday life. Whether one is interested in a particular myth or mythic tradition, or understanding comparative mythology more broadly, or even the subject and overview of mythology as a whole, this text attempts to present a clear and understandable introduction to some of the best tried and true approaches, as well as to address some of the perennial problems and points of confusion. To embark on the study of myth is to join a noisy chorus of scholars, both present and past, in attempting to divine the meaning of some of the most important, intriguing, and at times puzzling narratives that humankind has ever crafted. We hope this text will help provide you with the theoretical background and tools to allow for a rich, full study of mythology in all its myriad forms. To the teacher of myth: Myth has been the source of a great deal of theoretical disagreement and confusion as well. We have tried to address some of the controversies by appealing to a close and careful consideration of the data, which at times helps keep lofty theorizing firmly anchored in the real world. Additionally, we have tried to present a historical background to the study of myth, which should also help illuminate the close relationships between a society, and that society's views of myth. Mythology does not occur without people: it is only with a strong grounding in the study of humankind that we can hope to make progress in our understanding. Where doubt within the scholarly community has arisen, we have tried to pay attention to both sides of the debates. The resulting text is intended to be a detailed, yet engaging, introduction to the study of world mythology, and a scholarly counterweight to popular, unscientific views. Our experience in teaching myth is that the most vexing issues stem from the several strained if not contradictory connotations that the term myth carries. Is myth archaic, or is it part of all societies and thus modern as well? Is it part of religion and/or science, or does it contrast with these? Most vexingly, does myth designate falsehood, or the highest forms of truth-those that form the core, guiding principles of particular societies' engagements of the cosmos and life within it? There is also the double signification of the term mythology, which points to both an academic tradition and the object studied by that tradition. Our view is that while such antinomies are unlikely to be resolved in the foreseeable future, much can be gained by locating and identifying them and by attempting to understand how and why they have emerged. We hope that this approach not only lends clarity to the topic of myth, but also serves to energize the study to which we now turn"--

Download or read book Illiterate Geography in Classical Athens and Rome written by Daniela Dueck and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-26 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is devoted to the channels through which geographic knowledge circulated in classical societies outside of textual transmission. It explores understanding of geography among the non-elites, as opposed to scholarly and scientific geography solely in written form which was the province of a very small number of learned people. It deals with non-literary knowledge of geography, geography not derived from texts, as it was available to people, educated or not, who did not read geographic works. This main issue is composed of two central questions: how, if at all, was geographic data available outside of textual transmission and in contexts in which there was no need to write or read? And what could the public know of geography? In general, three groups of sources are relevant to this quest: oral communications preserved in writing; public non-textual performances; and visual artefacts and monuments. All of these are examined as potential sources for the aural and visual geographic knowledge of Greco-Roman publics. This volume will be of interest to anyone working on geography in the ancient world and to those studying non-elite culture.

Download or read book Kairos written by Harald Haarmann and published by Georg Olms Verlag. This book was released on 2023 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kairos ist fest in unserer Psyche verankert. Forschungen zum Kernbegriff kairos haben eine verlässliche Einschätzung für eine wirkungsstarke Triebkraft im Bereich der Kulturgeschichte ermöglicht. Die wesentlichsten Eigenschaften von kairos sind das Erleben im Fluss der Zeit als soziales Konstrukt und der Umgang mit dem individuellen Energiefluss, worüber kairos zum Navigator für die individuelle Selbst-Identifikation wird.Diese Selbst-Identifikation ist Ausdruck der synergetischen Wechselbeziehung zwischen Körper, den Sinnen und unserem Bewusstsein, und im Streben des Selbst nach sozialer Interkonnektivität wird kairos zum Maß für Beziehungen in der Dimension des Miteinander. Die individuelle Erfahrung mit der Wirkung kultureller Traditionen und mit der Bindung an die natürliche Umwelt im Fluss der Zeit dient als Basis dafür, dem persönlichen Lebensbereich Sinn zu geben, ein Prozess, der von kairos gesteuert wird.Die Erschließung von kairos als Organisationsprinzip des Selbst im kommunalen Netzwerk einer Zivilisation aus früher Zeit - mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von Alteuropa (respektive der Donauzivilisation) - könnte verglichen werden mit der Entdeckung einer Pflanze, deren positive Wirkung für die allgemeine Ernährung sowie deren Heilkräfte unbekannt geblieben waren, bevor diese durch die moderne Forschung bestätigt worden sind.

Download or read book The Heavens and the Earth Graeco Roman Ancient Chinese and Mediaeval Islamic Images of the World written by Vittorio Cotesta and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-08-16 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vittorio Cotesta’s The Heavens and the Earth traces the origin of the images of the world typical of the Graeco-Roman, Ancient Chinese and Medieval Islamic civilisations. Each of them had its own peculiar way of understanding the universe, life, death, society, power, humanity and its destiny. The comparative analysis carried out here suggests that they all shared a common human aspiration despite their differences: human being is unique; differences are details which enrich its image. Today, the traditions derived from these civilisations are often in competition and conflict. Reference to a common vision of humanity as a shared universal entity should lead, instead, to a quest for understanding and dialogue.

Download or read book Re Thinking Togetherness written by LaBGC & Harald Haarmann and published by LIT Verlag Münster. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our togetherness has become porous. It needs renewal. On the basis of Old Europe, one of the first advanced cultures of humankind, the authors demonstrate how the communities of Old Europe prospered in peace for 3000 years and how everyone benefited from an orientation towards the common good. Mirrored into the present, this can enrich the necessary political, economic and social discourse and provide orientation. “This book indicates very concisely and succinctly a real ‘reversal of the way of thinking’, it not only shows it, it carries it out! This should assure highest attention!” Harald Seubert, philosopher and historian of ideas “It is possible! The future belongs to a democratic coexistence. We can – and we must find ways to a functioning community." Bascha Mika, editor in chief of the Frankfurter Rundschau (2014 – 2020)

Download or read book Plato s Philosophy Reaching Beyond the Limits of Reason written by Harald Haarmann and published by Georg Olms Verlag. This book was released on 2017-02-01 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Platon zählt zu den einflussreichsten Philosophen aller Zeiten. Er beeinflusste maßgeblich Profil und Kanon der westlichen Philosophie. Die Kritik am sogenannten Platonismus wurde kontinuierlich von den Schwierigkeiten gespeist, die die Interpretation der philosophischen Schriften Platons bereitet. Gemeinhin wird er als rein rationaler Philosoph gesehen. Ein Philosoph war er in der Tat, ebenso jedoch ein Experte in der Annäherung an das Nicht-Rationale, unter anderem in Form von Mythen. So wurde er auch als "Mythenerfinder" und "Mythologe" bezeichnet. Platon war ein Visionär, der es wagte, das Reich des Nicht-Rationalen auf systematische und disziplinierte Art zu erforschen. Insgesamt lässt sich Platons philosophisches Vorhaben als Streben nach einer umfassenden Sicht des organischen Ganzen klassifizieren. Der Ausdruck „Gestalt“ scheint die Ganzheit am ehesten zu beschreiben. Platon kann als prominentester und auch als letzter Repräsentant der antiken Philosophie angesehen werden, der die Entwicklung einer Gestalt-Philosophie anstrebte. Plato is one of the most influential philosophers of all time. He decisively shaped the profile and canon of western philosophy. Criticism of what has become known as Platonism has been continuously nourished by the difficulties of interpreting this philosopher's writings. Plato is commonly viewed as a purely rational philosopher. A philosopher he was indeed, but Plato was also an expert in approaching the non-rational, in the form of mythology among others. Plato has been called a "mythmaker" and a "mythologist". Plato was a visionary who dared to explore the realm of the non-rational in a systematic and disciplined way. In an overall comparison, Plato's philosophical enterprise strives for a comprehensive perspective on the organic whole. The expression "Gestalt" seems to come closest to describing the wholeness. Plato may be considered to be the most prominent representative of classical philosophy to develop a Gestalt philosophy and also the last to do so in antiquity.

Download or read book On the Trail of the Indo Europeans From Neolithic Steppe Nomads to Early Civilisations written by Harald Haarmann and published by marixverlag. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than 3000 years, Indo-European languages have been spoken from India through Persia and into Europe. Where are the origins of this language family? How and when did its different linguistic branches emerge? The renowned historical linguist Harald Haarmann provides a graphic account of what we know today about the origins of Indo-European languages and cultures and how they came to be so widely disseminated. In this impressive study, he succeeds in drawing connections between linguistic findings, archaeological discoveries and the latest research into human genetics and climate history. In addition to linguistic affinities, he shows the economic, social and religious concepts that the early speakers of Indo-European languages had in common all the way from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Indus. Particular attention is devoted to the processes of assimilation with pre-Indo-European languages and civilisations. The result is a fascinating panorama of early "Indo-European globalisation" from the end of the last ice age to the early civilisations in Greece, Italy, Asia Minor, Persia and India.

Download or read book Anthology of Classical Myth written by Stephen M. Trzaskoma and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new edition of Anthology of Classical Myth offers selections from key Near Eastern texts—the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Epic of Creation (Enuma Elish), and Atrahasis; the Hittite Song of Emergence; and the flood story from the book of Genesis—thereby enabling students to explore the many similarities between ancient Greek and Mesopotamian mythology and enhancing its reputation as the best and most complete collection of its kind.

Download or read book Transformations of Myth Through Time written by Joseph Campbell and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 1990-02-28 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The renowned master of mythology is at his warm, accessible, and brilliant best in this illustrated collection of thirteen lectures covering mythological development around the world.

Download or read book Music Myth and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture written by Katherine Butler and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2019 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The complex relationship between myths and music is here investigated.

Download or read book Theoretical Anthropology written by David Bidney and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on with total page 596 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theoretical Anthropology is a major contribution to the historical and critical study of the assumptions underlying the development of modern cultural anthropology. In the new introduction, Martin Bidney discusses the present state of anthropology and contrasts it with the scene surveyed in Theoretical Anthropology. He discusses the relevance of David Bidney's work to our present concerns. Also included in this work is the second edition's introductory essay by David Bidney, written fifteen years after the first edition of Theoretical Anthropology. Here the author examines his original aims in writing this book. Theoretical Anthropology has helped to create among anthropologists the present climate of theoretical self-awareness and broad humanistic concerns. It has become a standard reference work for anthropologists as well as sociologists.

Download or read book Arctos written by and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: