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Is There a Myth of the Myth?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Tshiamalenga Ntumba
Tshiamalenga Ntumba*
Affiliation:
Faculté de théologie catholique de Kinshasa, Zaire
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Extract

To pose the question of myth and truth is to pose three complementary questions: that of myth, that of truth and that of their relationship. It is also to pose a still more fundamental question: that of knowing if the question of myth and truth is not badly put. a pseudo-problem. In other words, is there not a “myth” of the “myth” and, perhaps, of truth? More precisely, is there a philosophical problem of the myth that is not at the same time a problem of language, of its usage and its claim to truth? The myth-philosophy-science hierarchization is not perhaps itself a “supermyth”? Is not myth always a certain philosophy? And science, is it not always an undertaking of testing concepts suffused in a non-scientific context, i.e., philosophical, religious or mythical?

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 33 , Issue 132 , July 1985 , pp. 116 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © 1985 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

1 Plato, Laws, II, 659d Iss.; VI, 712b2; VII 793c1-2; Aristotle Retoric, 1395a; Politics, III, 1, 5; 1275a 14-19.

2 J. Mansfeld (ed.) ö Die Vorsokratiker I, Xenophon, Fr. 24-37, Stuttgart, Reclam, 1983, pp. 221-225.

3 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mythos und Bedeutung, Fünf Radiovorträge. Gespräche mit Claude Levi-Strauss, ed. by A. Reif, Frankfurt/M, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1980, p. 17 et seq.

4 Tylor, "La mythologie scandaleuse", in Traverses 12, 1978, pp. 3-19.

5 G. Van Riet, "Mythe et vérité", in Revue Philosophique de Louvain, 58, 1960, pp. 15-87; M. Detienne, "Mythologie ohne Illusion" in Mythos ohne Illusion, Frankfurt/M, Suhrkamp Verlag, 1984, pp. 18 and 20 et seq., trans. from the French Le temps de la réflexion, I, 1980.

6 J.P. Vernant, "Der reflektierte Mythos", in Mythos ohne Illusion, pp. 10.

7 W. Beltz, Die Mythen der Ägypter, Düsseldorf, Claassen Verlag, 1982.

8 T. Fourche and H. Morlighem (ed). Une Bible Noire, Brussels, Max Arnold, 1973.

9 Ibid.

10 G. Skirbekk (ed.), Wahrheitstheorien. Eine Auswahl aus den Diskussionen über Wahrheit im 20 Jahrhundert, Frankfurt/M, STW 210, 1980.

11 The adjective "bisoist" is formed from the Lingala-Bantu personal pronoun "Biso" (We in English, Nous in French and Tetu in Ciluba). A bisoist view of the world or a philosophy considers that Biso or Tetu (We) has primacy over the Ngai or Meme (I, me) and thus also over I-You or intersubjectivity. I thus oppose Bantu-African bisoité to Western intersubjectivity.

12 M. Mauss, Manuel d'ethnologie, 9th edition, Paris, 1949, p. 203; M. Detienne, l. c., p. 12 et seq.

13 J. Mbiti, Religion Africaine; Tshiamalenga Ntumba, "Mythos und Religion in Afrika heute", in Die religiöse Dimension der Gesellschaft, Munich, Civitas, 1985.

14 Herodotus, Histories II, 23, 45; Pindar, Die Nemaeischen Hymnen 8, 32 et seq.; 7, 23 et seq.; Die Olympischen Hymnen I, pp. 27-59.

15 Gentili (ed.), Anakreon, Fr. 21, 1958.

16 For the entire paragraph, see the eminent Greek scholar Marcel Detienne, loc. cit., pp. 28-43.

17 Diels/Krantz (ed.) Parmenides, Fr. 8, 1-2, 50-51.

18 Diels/Krantz (ed.), Empedocles, Fr. 17, 14; 23, 9-11.

19 M. Detienne, l.c, p. 18.

20 ibid., pp. 40-43; Tshiamalenga Ntumba, "La vision Ntu de l'homme. Essai de philosophie linguistique et anthropologique", in Cahiers des religions africaines, 14, 1973, pp. 175-197; "Qu'est-ce que la philosophie africaine?" in La Philosophie Africaine, RPA 1, Kinshasa, 1977.

21 According to Lévi-Strauss, Malinowski errs when he does not see anything but a utilitarian thought for survival in the primitive peoples. And Lévi-Bruhl later had to retract his thesis according to which primitive thought would be prelogical and merely emotional. Lévi-Strauss, Mythos und Bedeutung, p. 28; Le totémisme au jourd'hui, Paris, 1962; La pensée sauvage, Paris, 1962.

22 Cl. Lévi-Strauss, Mythos und Bedeutung, pp. 18-20.

23 ibid., 114; 134.

24 ibid., p. 15 et seq.

25 Id., La pensée sauvage, p. 25. Lévi-Strauss sees the difference between uncivilized thought and scientific thought in the fact that the former, less developed, chooses a shortcut to arrive illusorily at a general and totalitarian understanding of the universe whereas scientific thought, which is superior and succeeds in its undertaking, proceeds step by step, limiting itself to explaining well-defined phenom ena, according to the Cartesian method of division (Mythos und Bedeutung, p. 29 et seq.).

26 Id., Le cru et le cuit, p. 64.

27 Id., Anthropologie structurale. La structure des mythes, p. 231.

28 ibid.

29 He writes, "I believe that the greatness and superiority of scientific explication is shown not only by practical and spiritual achievements but also by the fact that it becomes possible for science… to also explain what was already valid, in a certain way, in mythic thought". Lévi-Strauss, Mythos und Bedeutung, p. 36.

30 R. Barthes, Mythen des Alltags, Frankfurt/M., Suhrkamp Verlag, 1964, p. 85. Trans. from the French "Mythologies," 1957.

31 ibid., pp. 85-87.

32 p. 88.

33 ibid.

34 p. 91 et seq.

35 p. 93 et seq.

36 Ch. S. Peirce, Collected Papers, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, Vols. VII-VIII, ed. by W. Burks, 1958.

36b P. Ricoeur, Philosophie de la volonté; de l'interprétation.

37 E. Cassirer, Die Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, Oxford, 1923, Vol. II: Das mythische Denken.

38 Cassirer, op. cit., pp. 16 and 18.

39 M. Detienne, loc. cit., pp. 13-19.

40 Cassirer, Sprache und Mythos, Leipzig, 1925, p. 72.

41 Durkheim, in L'Année Sociologique II, 1899, avant-propos, pp. IV-V; Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris, 1910, pp. 612-623.

42 Durkheim, Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, p. 613.

43 ibid., pp. 622-624; Cassirer, Die Philosophie der symbolischen Formen, p. 4 et seq., IX, XI-XII, 3,9.

44 L. Kolakowski, Die Gegenwärtigkeit des Mythos, Munich/Zurich, Piper, 1972, 3rd ed., 1984.

45 Kolakowski, op. cit., p. 7, 164, 165 et seq.

46 p. 163.

47 p. 90.

48 p. 13.

49 p. 28.

50 p. 2, 7ss et passim.

51 p. 58s

52 p. 9s, 58s

53 Kolakowski, op. cit., pp. 14-16. For the author, this thesis is valid for all myths, including those proper to the sciences, and, especially, to logic (p. 50ss). According to him, Husserl does not succeed in overcoming psychologism except at the price of the myth of transcendental conscience. This, free from contingent historical facts may float around in the eidetic heaven. Thus, the Husserlian myth is only the reedition of the Platonic myth of transcendental, eternal and unchange able ideas. No longer against the Sophists but against psychologism.

54 G. Skirbekk, op. cit.; J. Habermas, "Wahrheitstheorien", in H. Fahrenbach (ed.), Festschrift für Walther Schulz, Wirklichkeit und Reflexion, Pfullingen, 1973, pp. 211-265.

55 A. J. Ayer, "Truth", in The Concept of a Person and Other Essays, London, 1963, pp. 162-187.

56 A. Keller, Allgemeine Erkenntnistheorie, UTB, Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne /Mainz, Kohlhammer, 1982, p. 104.

57 This concerns, of course, Wittgenstein I, author of Tractatus logico-philosophicus.

58 Ed. Husserl, Das Ideal der Adäquation. Evidenz und Wahrheit, in Logische Untersuchungen, 1900/1901; G. Skirbekk, op. cit., pp. 402-412; E. Tugendhat, "Heideggers Idee von Wahrheit", in Der Wahrheitsbegriff bei Husserl und Heideg ger, 2nd ed., 1970; taken up in G. Skirbekk, pp. 431-448.

59 M. Heidegger, "Dasein, Erschlossenheit und Wahrheit", in Sein und Zeit, 1927, taken up in G. Skirbekk, pp. 413-430.

60 E. Tugendhat, loc. cit.

61 W. Kamlah & P. Lorenzen, Logische Propädeutik. Vorschule des vernünfiigen Redens, Mannheim, 1973, ch. IV, §1: Wahrheit und Wirklichkeit, p. 117, taken up in G. Skirbekk, pp. 483-495.

62 Skirbekk, p. 27s.

63 ibid., pp. 28-30.

65 Tshiamalenga Ntumba, K.-O Apel. "Transzendentale Sprachpragmatik", idem, Denken und Sprechen. Ein Beitrag zum ‘linguistischen Relativitätsprinzip' am Beispiel einer Bantusprache (Ciluba), Dissertation, Hundt Druck, Cologne, 1980, pp. 168-179, p. 169.

66 Tshiamalenga Ntumba, op. cit., pp. 170, 175.

67 ibid., p. 173.

68 ibid., pp. 172-174.

69 Tshiamalenga Ntumba, Jürgen Habermas. Universalpragmatik, idem, Denken und Sprechen…, pp. 159-168.

70 Skirbekk, op. cit., pp. 29-30.

71 Habermas, "Was heisst Universalpragmatik?" in K.-O. Apel (ed.) Sprachprag matik und Philosophie, Frankfurt/M, Suhrkamp, 1976; idem, "Vorbereitende Be merkungen zu einer Theorie der kommunikativen Kompetenz", in Habermas/Luh mann, Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie, Frankfurt/M, Suhrkamp, 1971, pp. 114-141; K.-O. Apel, Transformation der Philosophie, 2 vol., Frank furt/M, Suhrkamp, 1973.

72 In the meaning of Jürgen Habermas.

73 Tshiamalenga Ntumba, "Philosopher en et à partir des langues et problémati sations africaines", in Actes du Premier Congrès International du ‘Centre Interna tional des Civilisations Bantu' (CICIBA), Libreville, 1985; idem, Culture et Développement. Le primat de la "bisoité" sur l'intersubjectivité, Colloque International sur la fonction de la culture dans la IIIe Convention de Lomé, Chantilly, 1985; idem, Langage et Socialité. Primat de la "bisoité" sur l'intersubjectivité (to appear).