St. Augustine's Press
Josef Pieper’s The Platonic Myths is the work of a scholar and philosopher whose search for the level of truth contained in the myths is carried out with a series of careful distinctions between the kinds of myths told by Plato. In the Platonic stories Plato crystallizes mythical fragments from the mere stories which contain them, and in the genuine Platonic myths he purifies the proper mythical elements, freeing them of the non-mythical elements which tend to obscure them.
In examining the ‘accepted’ scholarly interpretations of the myths, Pieper succeeds in establishing the case for a truth, found particularly in the eschatological myths, that is not reducible to the rational truth normally sought by philosophers. While it is not purely rational truth, it is not inferior. It is different. It stems from tradition, which reaches back to the ultimate beginnings of man’s existence – back into our pre-history and to events of which, naturally, we have no experience. The only access we have to this truth is through ‘hearing’ (ex akoés), which is not dependent on mere ‘hearsay,’ but which, in Pieper’s interpretation, reflects the handing on, in stories, of what the gods first communicated to man about the creation of the world and about the afterlife. These truths are to be found – long before the New Testament (or even the Old Testament) – in the myths of a variety of civilizations and give evidence of an extraordinary consensus: that there was a creating hand, that primeval man incurred guilt in the eyes of the gods; that he could be saved; that there is an afterlife in which man is rewarded or punished; that he can undergo a kind of purgatory for lesser offenses; and that in the afterlife he can dwell with the gods.
What is the basis for accepting such truth as is contained in the myths? No purely rational argument will suffice. What man cannot experience himself he either tends to reject or, if he accepts it, he does so on the authority of another – ex akoés. Even before– or even without – Christian revelation, men have based their lives on a conviction, for instance, that there is an afterlife. They have this conviction not from experience or from some rational philosophical argument. They have it on the basis of ‘belief.’ With the coming of Christian revelation, the logos, or word, of the myth is seen – to the believer– to be the Logos of the New Testament. But even here the ‘belie ver’ can depend neither on purely rational argument nor on satisfactorily verifiable fact. He has only – belief.
Contents
I
The Platonic dialogues, full of stories –are these didactic, poetic, a particular form of containing truth and expressing it? – Ambiguity of the term ‘myth’ – Elements of the strict definition of ‘myth’: report of an event occurring between the divine and human spheres; symbolic speech; the narrator is not the author – Who else is the author?
II
Examples of Platonic stories of a non-mythical character – The true myths: in Timaeus, the Symposion, Gorgias, the Republic, Phaedo – Mixture of mythical elements in nearly all Platonic dialogues – Non-mythical elements in the narration of the myths – “Fragments of a large myth’ – The question of truth.
III
The eschatological myths – The linkup – Three versions of the after life – Contrast with Homer’s vision of the realm of the dead – Many images, one meaning – Genuine event and its surrounds.
IV
The myth of the primeval fate of man: Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposion – Digression about the difference between the material and the forma of the mythical parable – The Timaeus myth about the genesis of the cosmos – Despite the variety of the material: astonishing simplicity in the view of the world – The absolute beginning of the world and the ultimate end of man.
V
For Plato the meaning contained in the myths is inviolable truth – Is there no such thing as the ‘Faith of the Greeks’? – An example of the chaotic diversity of interpretation – Does Socrates ‘revoke’ the myths? – The meaning of Plato’s myth critique –Distinction of levels of obligation – The true myth is the measure of the myths actually handed down – Critique of the poets – Philosophical concepts and mythical truth – Myth ‘redeems’ the ‘believer’.
VI
The authority that authenticates myth –Neither ‘the soul’ nor ‘the ancients’ – Concept of original revelation – Two crucial points in which the Christian of today is no ‘further on’ than Plato: dependence on hearing; not the ‘absolute truth of reason’, but the narration of events and actions.
In examining the ‘accepted’ scholarly interpretations of the myths, Pieper succeeds in establishing the case for a truth, found particularly in the eschatological myths, that is not reducible to the rational truth normally sought by philosophers. While it is not purely rational truth, it is not inferior. It is different. It stems from tradition, which reaches back to the ultimate beginnings of man’s existence – back into our pre-history and to events of which, naturally, we have no experience. The only access we have to this truth is through ‘hearing’ (ex akoés), which is not dependent on mere ‘hearsay,’ but which, in Pieper’s interpretation, reflects the handing on, in stories, of what the gods first communicated to man about the creation of the world and about the afterlife. These truths are to be found – long before the New Testament (or even the Old Testament) – in the myths of a variety of civilizations and give evidence of an extraordinary consensus: that there was a creating hand, that primeval man incurred guilt in the eyes of the gods; that he could be saved; that there is an afterlife in which man is rewarded or punished; that he can undergo a kind of purgatory for lesser offenses; and that in the afterlife he can dwell with the gods.
What is the basis for accepting such truth as is contained in the myths? No purely rational argument will suffice. What man cannot experience himself he either tends to reject or, if he accepts it, he does so on the authority of another – ex akoés. Even before– or even without – Christian revelation, men have based their lives on a conviction, for instance, that there is an afterlife. They have this conviction not from experience or from some rational philosophical argument. They have it on the basis of ‘belief.’ With the coming of Christian revelation, the logos, or word, of the myth is seen – to the believer– to be the Logos of the New Testament. But even here the ‘belie ver’ can depend neither on purely rational argument nor on satisfactorily verifiable fact. He has only – belief.
Contents
I
The Platonic dialogues, full of stories –are these didactic, poetic, a particular form of containing truth and expressing it? – Ambiguity of the term ‘myth’ – Elements of the strict definition of ‘myth’: report of an event occurring between the divine and human spheres; symbolic speech; the narrator is not the author – Who else is the author?
II
Examples of Platonic stories of a non-mythical character – The true myths: in Timaeus, the Symposion, Gorgias, the Republic, Phaedo – Mixture of mythical elements in nearly all Platonic dialogues – Non-mythical elements in the narration of the myths – “Fragments of a large myth’ – The question of truth.
III
The eschatological myths – The linkup – Three versions of the after life – Contrast with Homer’s vision of the realm of the dead – Many images, one meaning – Genuine event and its surrounds.
IV
The myth of the primeval fate of man: Aristophanes’ speech in the Symposion – Digression about the difference between the material and the forma of the mythical parable – The Timaeus myth about the genesis of the cosmos – Despite the variety of the material: astonishing simplicity in the view of the world – The absolute beginning of the world and the ultimate end of man.
V
For Plato the meaning contained in the myths is inviolable truth – Is there no such thing as the ‘Faith of the Greeks’? – An example of the chaotic diversity of interpretation – Does Socrates ‘revoke’ the myths? – The meaning of Plato’s myth critique –Distinction of levels of obligation – The true myth is the measure of the myths actually handed down – Critique of the poets – Philosophical concepts and mythical truth – Myth ‘redeems’ the ‘believer’.
VI
The authority that authenticates myth –Neither ‘the soul’ nor ‘the ancients’ – Concept of original revelation – Two crucial points in which the Christian of today is no ‘further on’ than Plato: dependence on hearing; not the ‘absolute truth of reason’, but the narration of events and actions.
112 pages, 5½” x 8½”
ISBN-13: 978-1-58731-636-4;
ISBN-10: 1-58731-636-6,
clothbound $19.00 tx
ISBN-13: 978-1-58731-637-1;
ISBN-10:1-58731-637-4,
paperbound $11.00 sp
notes, index
world rights in English
publication date: April 2010