Extending the domain of the concept of Myth

The obvious linguistic dimension of myth is not exempt from philosophical problems. The first approximation to the relation between language and myth would make us think that the latter is a species of the former, for there are communicative forms, like a political constitution, or a mathematical reasoning, that, in principle, do not create scenarios with categories of traditional myths. However, if we examine a political constitution in more detail, we can see scenarios that in a direct or derived manner make reference to mythological settings. Thus, for instance, in the Constitution of Athens,[1] underlying the comments of Aristotle concerning the administrative proceedings of democracy itself and the laws, we find concepts such as those of Diké, justice, or Eunomía, order, that appear in Hesiod’s poem as the consorts of Zeus,[2] addressing to a specific mythological world. In fact, the poems of Solon that appear in the Aristotelian text are loaded with mythic concepts in order to make intelligible, after the idea of purpose, the democratic actions which are described in them, using Athens’ Lebenswelt as a final referent. The Athenian case can be extended to other constitutions, for the concepts used in them belong to the world of the community’s life, inevitably linked to some mythology. And with mathematics, as a communicative linguistic form founded on Ancient traditions, something similar occurs. Pythagoreans identified numbers with gods, like Platonists, who did not only share with them the sacred character of numbers, but also used the myths of Greek tradition as symbols to deal, intuitively, with philosophical matters. Nonetheless, the religious treatment of mathematics is far from being a characteristic of the Ancient world. With the emergence of modern science, Galileo, and a long list of mathematicians, considered that mathematics was the language of God,[3] and in the midst of the 20^th Century, Platonist authors such as Kurt Gödel believed that a mathematical logic procedure provided a proof for God’s existence,[4] what is equivalent to believe in the congruence of the concept of God (of the Leibnizian Judeo-Christian tradition) with the concept of the logical system. The very same idea of the need for a logico-ontological proof implies that the concept of a supreme being is not something that can be intuitively attained, for it needs the help of a transcendental category, like the ones appearing in myths. As we saw above, the categorical transcendental structure of mythological scenarios is not enough to define myths, but it is interesting to observe that it neither would be the provisional definition of myth that we have adopted after its communicative functionality, since there are processes of identity formation which do not conform to the traditional ideas of what myths might be: a political constitution is no less a founder of the group’s identity than an archaic myth could be. And something similar could be said about mathematics, for its degree of development in different cultures has determined the economic life of the human group, something which at the same time determines the identity of the group itself, that is, it is also a communicative process from which foundational identity actions are derived. Then, it seems that it is not so simple to separate communicative linguistic forms that we do not consider mythical from the ones which we openly recognize as such.

This is a fragment of Chapter 2.1, of Volume I of Mythopoetics.

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[1] By Aristotle or one of his students. See the translation of F.G. Kenyon in The Complete Works of Aristotle. Vol. II. Ed. Cit. p.p.2341-2383.

[2] See Hesiod. Theogony. V.902. Translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-Whyte. Harvard University Press and William Heinemann. Cambridge (Mass.) and London. 1982. p.144.

[3] See Galileo. Opere. 4.171. Fragment in Morris Kline Mathematical Thought: from ancient to modern times. Oxford University Press. Vol. 1 New York and Oxford. 1990. p.p 328-329.

[4] See the proof in Kurt Gödel, Ontological Proof.  Collected Works. Vol.3. Edited by Solomon Feferman; John W. Dawson, Jr. ; Warren Goldfarb; Charles Parsons; Robert N. Solovay. Oxford University Press. New York. 1995 .p.403. The proof of God’s existence uses the concepts of modal logic applied to Leibniz’s argument. Leibniz bases his proof on the concept of an Ens perfectissimum, whose qualities are all perfections, or simple positive qualities that cannot be limited. Since they are not limited by any quality, if they are possible, must be actual.