From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought

by Buxton, Richard

• ISBN13: 9780199247523
• ISBN10: 0199247528
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-02-07
• Publisher: Clarendon Press

Summary

It is often said that Greek civilization underwent a transition from myth to reason. But what does this assertion mean? Is it true? Were the Greeks special in having evolved our sort of reason, or is that a mirage? In this book, some of the world's leading experts on ancient Greek myth, religion, philosophy, and history reconsider these fundamental issues.

Table of Contents

Notes on the Contributors	ix
Abbreviations	xiii
Introduction	1	(24)
Richard Buxton
I HISTORY OF A POLARITY
From Logos to Mythos	25	(26)
Glenn W. Most
II MYTH AND REASON IN PRACTICE
Re-evaluating Gernet: Value and Greek Myth	51	(20)
Sitta von Reden
Rationalization and Disenchantment in Ancient Greece: Max Weber among the Pythagoreans and Orphics?	71	(16)
Jan Bremmer
III MYTHICAL LOGIC
The Logic of Cosmogony	87	(20)
Walter Burkert
Myth, Memory, and the Chorus: `Tragic Rationality'	107	(12)
John Gould
IV POLARITIES DISSOLVED
The Rhetoric of Muthos and Logos: Forms of Figurative Discourse	119	(26)
Claude Calame
Mythology: Reflections from a Chinese Perspective	145	(24)
Geoffrey Lloyd
V MYTH AND/OR/INTO HISTORY AND ETHNOGRAPHY
Euenius the Negligent Nightwatchman (Herodotus 9. 92-6)	169	(14)
Alan Griffiths
`Myth into Logos': The Case of Croesus, or the Historian at Work	183	(14)
Francois Hartog
Monsters in Greek Ethnography and Society in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BCE	197	(18)
Dominique Lenfant
Rationalizing Myth: Methods and Motives in Palaephatus	215	(8)
Jacob Stern
Demythologizing the Past, Mythicizing the Present: Myth, History, and the Supernatural at the Dawn of the Hellenistic Period	223	(28)
Albert Henrichs
VI PHILOSOPHERS' MYTHS
What is a Muthos for Plato?	251	(12)
Penelope Murray
Myth, History, and Dialectic in Plato's Republic and Timaeus-Critias	263	(16)
Christopher Rowe
Myth and Logos in Aristotle	279	(16)
Thomas K. Johansen
VII MYTH, REASON, AND TECHNIQUES
The Use of Purple in Cooking, Medicine, and Magic: An Example of Interference by the Imaginary in Rational Discourse	295	(22)
Mireille Belis
Mythical Production: Aspects of Myth and Technology in Antiquity	317	(12)
Fritz Graf
Bibliography	329	(28)
Index	357