Related Papers
On Plot Construction and the Portrayal of Character:Poetics Chapter 15 and Associated Texts
Bart Mazzetti
The relation of the portrayal of character to the construction of the plot, beginning from Aristotle's Poetics, Chapter 15 on the four requirements of character.
Allegory in Greece and Egypt
Zeina Salem
Plutarch reading Plato: Interpretation and Mythmaking in the Early Empire
2020 •
Collin Hilton
The Platonic Defense of Homeric Allegoresis in Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs
2019 •
Jake Kwon
Antike Mythen: Medien, Transformationen und Konstruktionen
The Invention of Mythic Truth in Antiquity_Struck
2009 •
Peter T Struck
Logos and Mythos: Philosophical Essays on Greek Literature (ed. W. Wians), Albany: SUNY Press, 99-131
Allegory and the Origins of Philosophy
2009 •
Gerard Naddaf
The birth of philosophy is generally identified with the rejection of mythopoiesis and the adoption of rational explanations in terms of causality (e.g., Cornford, Guthrie, Vernant, Burkert, West, Curd, Laks, Long), whence the popular expression from muthos to logos or from myth to reason. Much has been written on this famous transition, which many once considered as a “miracle.” However, there is little on how the proponents of myth responded. They fought back with mutho-logia, that is, with a logos about myth. This “rational” approach invoked the same logos that is generally associated with philosophia. In fact, philosophia and muthologia are at times so intimately connected that, until the Enlightenment period, it is often difficult to distinguish between them. This is due to the “spell” of myth, particularly Greek/Homeric myth, or to be more precise, because of the allegorical interpretation of Homeric myth. In this essay, I examine the origins and development of this unremarked —albeit remarkable—“story.” I want to show to what degree the pre-Platoic project of philosophy was at time overshadowed by the allegorical approach to myth. Given the importance of allegoresis, that is, allegorizing as a conscious interpretative mode, it is most surprising that histories of ancient philosophy rarely mention the notion in the development of early Greek philosophy. The seeds of my later work on reflective self-consciousness and the origins of philosophy are already found here.
Sacred Texts: From Inspiration to Philosophy and Allegory.pdf
Gerard Naddaf
Sacred Texts: From Inspiration to Philosophy and Allegory Public Lecture: The University of Sydney, November 11, 2011 Gerard Naddaf, York University Abstract One of the main contentions I want make in this presentation is that self-conscious reflections on what it means for a poet, prophet, or seer to be “divinely” inspired were contingent on making a distinction between literal and figurative meanings (about the gods) and that this distinction only appears in ancient Greece with the advent of the alphabet and philosophy. I begin with an overview of the origin of writing systems to test the hypothesis that they necessarily change the way societies think about themselves. I show that while writing began in Mesopotamia around 3200 BCE and had a profound impact over the centuries on the civilizations there (and elsewhere too!), there is no evidence that it led to the kind of self-conscious critical analysis we associate with philosophy in ancient Greece. Indeed, these cultures make no clear distinction between the literal and the figurative as it concerns the relation between gods and men. But another point that interests me with the Mesopotamian tradition is that there is no reference to “divine” inspiration as we find it in ancient Greece or in the sacred texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. On the other hand, all of these cultures were profoundly influenced by the Mesopotamian creation myths and, of course, the written word. Thus after situating Mesopotamia in the context of the origin of divine inspiration, I give an overview of the three religious traditions which consider their respective canonical “scriptures” as divinely inspired. I’m referring to the “sacred” books of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. They are indeed religions of the Book! I use these as a primer to the ancient Greek notion of divine inspiration as it is evidenced in the poems of Homer and Hesiod and the subsequent Greek reaction. Essentially, I examine the complex interface between belief in inspiration, the origins of philosophy, and the practice of allegory. I begin with Homer and Hesiod, turn to the origin of philosophy, move on to the first quarrel between philosophy and poetry, and then review the birth of the practice of allegorical interpretation. I give an overview of the role allegory played in the philosophic, religious, and even scientific traditions from this period to at least the Enlightenment. I also endeavour to show how believers practiced allegorical interpretation in relation to the Torah, the Christian Bible, and later the Qur’an. In doing so, I show, that although there has always been a struggle between the literal and allegorical interpretations of sacred texts, the practitioners of allegory commonly viewed both religious and philosophical texts as emanating from the same divine source — that is, as inspired by God. I end with some reflections on the interpretative clashes between competitive “inspired” texts.
Fauna in archaic Greek and Kalanga oral wisdom literatures
2016 •
Madhlozi Moyo
William of Conches and Owen Barfield on the Truth of Myth
William Pemberton
Online Digest Orphic Full 2008 04 18
Gelson Silva
Each issue of the Rosicrucian Digest provides members and all interested readers with a compendium of materials regarding the ongoing flow of the Rosicrucian Timeline. The articles, historical excerpts, art, and literature included in this Digest span the ages, and are not only interesting in themselves, but also seek to provide a lasting reference shelf to stimulate continuing study of all of those factors which make up Rosicrucian history and thought. Therefore, we present classical background, historical development, and modern reflections on each of our subjects, using the many forms of primary sources, reflective commentaries, the arts, creative fiction, and poetry.
