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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Western philosophy > Ancient Western philosophy to c 500
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The Platonic Myths (Hardcover, (First) ed.)
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The Platonic Myths (Hardcover, (First) ed.)
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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 akoes), 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 akoes. 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 'believer' can depend neither
on purely rational argument nor on satisfactorily verifiable fact.
He has only - belief.
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