Myth as Argument

Myth as Argument PDF

Author: Laurie L. Patton

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2014-05-14

Total Pages: 580

ISBN-13: 3110812754

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

RGVV (History of Religion: Essays and Preliminary Studies) brings together the mutually constitutive aspects of the study of religion(s)—contextualized data, theory, and disciplinary positioning—and engages them from a critical historical perspective. The series publishes monographs and thematically focused edited volumes on specific topics and cases as well as comparative work across historical periods from the ancient world to the modern era.

The Myth of American Religious Freedom

The Myth of American Religious Freedom PDF

Author: David Sehat

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2011-01-14

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0199793115

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In the battles over religion and politics in America, both liberals and conservatives often appeal to history. Liberals claim that the Founders separated church and state. But for much of American history, David Sehat writes, Protestant Christianity was intimately intertwined with the state. Yet the past was not the Christian utopia that conservatives imagine either. Instead, a Protestant moral establishment prevailed, using government power to punish free thinkers and religious dissidents. In The Myth of American Religious Freedom, Sehat provides an eye-opening history of religion in public life, overturning our most cherished myths. Originally, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government, which had limited authority. The Protestant moral establishment ruled on the state level. Using moral laws to uphold religious power, religious partisans enforced a moral and religious orthodoxy against Catholics, Jews, Mormons, agnostics, and others. Not until 1940 did the U.S. Supreme Court extend the First Amendment to the states. As the Supreme Court began to dismantle the connections between religion and government, Sehat argues, religious conservatives mobilized to maintain their power and began the culture wars of the last fifty years. To trace the rise and fall of this Protestant establishment, Sehat focuses on a series of dissenters--abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, socialist Eugene V. Debs, and many others. Shattering myths held by both the left and right, David Sehat forces us to rethink some of our most deeply held beliefs. By showing the bad history used on both sides, he denies partisans a safe refuge with the Founders.

Myth and Philosophy in Plato's Phaedrus

Myth and Philosophy in Plato's Phaedrus PDF

Author: Daniel S. Werner

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2012-07-09

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1107021286

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Examines the role of myth in Plato's Phaedrus, arguing that it leads readers to participate in Plato's dialogues and to engage in self-examination.

Myth and Philosophy in Platonic Dialogues

Myth and Philosophy in Platonic Dialogues PDF

Author: Omid Tofighian

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-11-15

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 1137580445

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book rethinks Plato’s creation and use of myth by drawing on theories and methods from myth studies, religious studies, literary theory and related fields. Individual myths function differently depending on cultural practice, religious context or literary tradition, and this interdisciplinary study merges new perspectives in Plato studies with recent scholarship and theories pertaining to myth. Significant overlaps exist between prominent modern theories of myth and attitudes and approaches in studies of Plato’s myths. Considering recent developments in myth studies, this book asks new questions about the evaluation of myth in Plato. Its appreciation of the historical conditions shaping and directing the study of Plato’s myths opens deeper philosophical questions about the relationship between philosophy and myth and the relevance of myth studies to philosophical debates. It also extends the discussion to address philosophical questions and perspectives on the distinction between argument and narrative.

The Myth Gap

The Myth Gap PDF

Author: Alex Evans

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2017-01-12

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 147354324X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Why, with absolutely no idea what Brexit actually meant, did the UK vote for Brexit? Why, rather than vote for the best-qualified candidate ever to stand as US President, did voters opt for a reality TV star with no political experience? In both cases, the winning side promised change and offered hope. They told a story voters longed to hear. And in the absence of greater, more unifying narratives, then true or not, voters plumped for the best story available. Once upon a time our society was rich in stories. They brought us together and helped us to understand the world and ourselves. We called them myths. Today, we have a myth gap – a vacuum that Alex Evans argues powerfully and persuasively is both dangerous and an opportunity. In this time of global crisis and transition– mass migration, inequality, resource scarcity, and climate change - It is stories, rather than facts and pie-charts,that will animate us and bring us together. It is by finding new myths, those that speak to us of renewal and restoration, that we will navigate our way to a better future. Drawing on his first-hand experience as a political adviser within British government and at the United Nations, and examining the history of climate change campaigning and recent contests such as Brexit and the US presidential election, Alex Evans explores: *how tomorrow’s activists are using narratives for change, * how modern stories have been used and abused, * where we might find the right myths that will take us forward

Plato and Myth

Plato and Myth PDF

Author: Catherine Collobert

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2012-02-17

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 900422436X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This volume seeks to show how the philosophy of Plato relates to the literary form of his discourse. Myth is one aspect of this relation whose importance for the study of Plato is only now beginning to be recognized. Reflection on this topic is essential not only for understanding Plato’s conception of philosophy and its methods, but also for understanding more broadly the relation between philosophy and literature. The twenty chapters of this volume, contributed by scholars of diverse backgrounds and approaches, elucidate the various uses and statuses of Platonic myths in the first place by reflecting on myth per se and in the second place by focusing on a specific myth in the Platonic corpus.

Myth and Metaphysics in Plato's Phaedo

Myth and Metaphysics in Plato's Phaedo PDF

Author: David A. White

Publisher: Susquehanna University Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780945636014

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This study intends principally to isolate and describe the function of myth in the Phaedo in order to show its effect on the complex metaphysics developed throughout the dialogue. It further illustrates how these metaphysical concepts structure the dialogue's concluding eschatological myth.

Myth and the Limits of Reason

Myth and the Limits of Reason PDF

Author: Phillip Stambovsky

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 146

ISBN-13: 9004495894

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Traditionally understood as pre-critical, even pre-rational, mythical thought has in fact played a critical role in post-Enlightenment intellectual history. Modernists in philosophy and literature have used the depictive rationality of myth to disclose, in self-reflective ways, the limits of discursive sense-making in various domains of human experience. In so doing, they have effectively furthered, without resort to analytical abstractions, the epistemological critique of reason begun during the Enlightenment. Stambovsky illustrates four widely diverse examples of this critical form of mythical thinking in works by Kierkegaard, Miguel de Unamuno, Henry James, and Margaret Atwood. The selected texts focus respectively on religious, national-cultural, psychosocial, and psychobiological realms of experience. These illustrations follow an inquiry into why the very possibility of critical, mythically inventive (mythopoetic) reflection is unsatisfactorily explained by leading rationalist accounts of myth. It is with this problem in mind that Stambovsky begins his monograph with observations on the origins of rationalist and counter-rationalist conceptualizations of myth in the fragments of Xenophanes (the father of rationalist mythology) and in Plato's Phaedrus. Of pivotal import is the early rationalist discrimination of mythos from logos and its epistemological implications (the rationalist legacy) in the history of the idea of myth. Following his look at paradigmatic classical precedents, Stambovsky traces the influence of the rationalist legacy in the myth theory of Malinowski, Lévi-Strauss, Cassirer, Ricoeur, and Blumenberg. The aim is to reveal how this influence in different ways limits these theories as instruments for detecting and explaining the seminal critical and historical significance of modern mythopoeia. This study will be of particular interest to teachers and students of myth theory in departments of philosophy, religion, literature, and cultural anthropology.

Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Myth

Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Myth PDF

Author: Robert A. Segal

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-07-16

Total Pages: 426

ISBN-13: 1135610541

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Much of the theorizing about myth in philosophy and religious studies grows out of efforts to understand the classics and the Bible. In the case of the classics, the presence of myth has been taken for granted, and conclusions reached about Greek and Roman mythology have spurred generalizations about myth. In the case of the Bible, however, the existence of myth has been contested. In fact, Judaism and Christianity are regularly praised for their nonmythic outlook. Conclusions reached about the presence or absence of myth in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament have led to generalizations about myth per se. Many of the essays in this volume apply theories of myth to classical, biblical, and ancient Near Eastern cases, but in so doing they draw conclusions about the nature of myth itself. Those essays that criticize past applications make generalizations as weIl. By no means has aIl theorizing about myth from philosophy and religious studies centered on the ancient world, and this volume contains selections from theories in both disciplines that stern from reflections on the nature of science, language, knowledge, and reality.