Both Cassirer and Vico have approached myth from the point of view of scientific rationality as the terminus ad quem, and they have thus, at least partially, failed in their attempts to theorise myth in its autonomy. As Blumenberg pointed out in his Work on Myth, a more promising strategy is that of looking at myth from the point of view of what it follows, that is, of what it serves to overcome (Blumenberg 1985: 19ff. 1).

The basic performance of myth is to provide names. A myth is always “the myth of …”. It is only by giving a thing a name that it can become “graspable” and therefore the object of a story. Providing names does not just render stories possible; naming the unknown is already a way of dominating the unknown. Denominating a thing is the first – if not the most interesting – answer to the question “what is this or that?” Moreover, by giving a name to the unknown, whole webs of other meanings are recalled.

In replying to Phaedrus' question “what is the soul?”, Socrates says that he cannot say what a soul is in itself. This is the task, he admits, of a divine exposition in every sense. However, to say “what it resembles” is a perfectly human task (Phaedr. 246A). The soul, Socrates states, is a chariot. The image of the chariot is extremely powerful and generates a whole myth.