Myth and Technique

The least that could be said about myth is that it is something "which makes one think." This is not by any means to say nothing. Spelled out it means "that the nature of myth requires that it be included in the context of contemporary philosophy, and that its urgency, which is noted everywhere, be founded on its essential nature." There is such an urgency about myth-or more precisely, about a serious occupation with it-because quite apart from the philosophical context, myth now appears in a great many publications. These remarks are taken from a Catholic writer on the theory of myth, Gonsalv Mainberger. The following pages fit into this context by placing the determination of the nature of myth on the broadest possible foundations. The earlier investigations by André Jolles, the Germanic linguist, and by Walter F. Otto, a classical scholar, as well as by myself, in which I begin with an exact philological interpretation of the Greek word mythos, have all labored under initial self-imposed limitations which can now be removed without abandoning the earlier results

Art · Literature · Mythology · Kantian Philosophy and Modern Interpretations · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy