The presence of myth

By Leszek Kołakowski

Subjects: Cultura, Utopia, Human beings, Science, Epistemology, Mythos, Marxism, Rationalism, Metaphysics, Culture, Philosophy, Myth

Description: Written in Poland in 1966 the same year he was expelled from the Communist Party two years later being forced into exile. It is therefore easy to understand why the Polish censors should have wanted to prevent the publication of a book by a philosopher who often plays the part of the jester and whose lack of authority allows him to challenge established dogma. With The Presence of Myth, Kolakowski demonstrates that no matter how hard man strives for purely rational thought, there has always been-and always will be-a reservoir of mythical images that lend "being" and "consciousness" a specifically human meaning. ''Myth'' is likely to make us think of religion, though Kolakowski has something much broader in mind: religious mythologies are only one expression of a function of consciousness that manifests itself in all cultural phenomena, in art as much as in politics, in morality as much as in our sexual life. Chapters include; 1. Preliminary Distinctions 2. Myth within the Epistemological Inquiry 3. Myth in the Realm of Values 4. Myth in Logic 5. THe Mythical Sense of Love 6. Myth, Existence, Freedom 7. Myth and the Contingency of Nature 8. The Phenomenon of the World's Indifference 9. Myth in the Culture of Analgesics 10. The Permanence and Fragility of Myth If myth is to be more than an evasion of reality, scientific experience may not claim to be identified with experience, the facts that concern science may not be equated with reality, ''truth'' in the scientific sense must be situated within a more encompassing truth. By showing that the reduction of experience and truth that underlies the modern objectification of reality is itself the work of the mythopoeic imagination, philosophy can open up a space for other myths. Mr. Kolakowski's essay prepares for such an opening, even as it insists on the need to guard against myth whenever it becomes dogma, whenever the price for promised salvation is the surrender of personal responsibility.