Mythopoetics

Most traditional mythologies have equated life to breath. Breath was considered to be something more than respiration, linked -in a tradition that goes back to myths of Anima Mundi- to some sort of universal life. In this context, death was the departure of such transcendental airy entity towards fabulous scenarios of different kinds. The link of breathing and the capacity for speech contributed for a further metaphysical development of the physiological act of oxygenation. The Parmenidean tradition in Greece, but especially the Aristotelian philosophy, linked life more to intelligence than to any other physiological action. In fact, in the Metaphysics, Aristotle declares life to be some sort of intelligence. This double link, to breathe and to intelligence, in their transcendental or materialistic interpretations, gave for centuries a cornerstone for the definitions of life. Even, in the practice of modern medicine up to the 1960’s, it was the loss of the capacity to breathe (toget...

  What is the meaning of the Kantian question in the sphere of the Lyrical Citizen ? Devoid of transcendental meaning, we are talking about ethical action under the narrative of domination of Human Rights. What do I do with my life, today, under the restraints of a wild system of production which leaves no time for personal development beyond the social persona which tradition, luck and effort offers me? In terms of the guilt/debt narrative that we inherited from parents and state, the answer to Kant is: simply pay your dues, be a slave and die (in that order, for suicide is an order disruptor). When you live chained to the inertia of old myths of domination there is no room for the ethical question, in fact, ethics has to be postponed to a future nowhere land of the blessed, whether supernatural or super-historico-materialist. For most, the ethical question is answered in immediate physiological terms of survival, a poor reply, a forgetful automatism. Grounded on our basic emotio...