The genealogy of myth must not be understood as an invitation to return to the “origins of myth”. It would be wrong to conclude from a genealogy of myth that “myth” is simply “word” because mythos was “word” to Homer. This reasoning rests on a sort of fallacy of origins, that is, on the idea that what happened at the beginning was good simply because it was at the beginning. Indeed, such reasoning, if not further justified, can easily turn into an empty tautology.

Even if this tautology is avoided, doubts may still arise over the feasibility of a hermeneutical jump backwards. The world in which we live is much more complex than that of Homer, and even if we go back to the Homeric uses of mythos, it would be impossible to return to such simplicity. This is the reason why Nietzsche's appeal for a return to myth could not be other than a call for an impossible restoration.

In contrast, the proposed genealogy of myth is not a call for a restoration of myth, but an attempt to recall the conceptual movement that gave birth to the view of myth as “untruth” and “unreal”. Once the forces at work in this process are identified, there is hope that we can go beyond the view that they have shaped.