How Philosophers Saved Myths

by Brisson, Luc; Tihanyi, Catherine

• ISBN13: 9780226075358
• ISBN10: 0226075354
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-12-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

This study explains how the myths of Greece and Rome were transmitted from antiquity to the Renaissance. Luc Brisson argues that philosophy was ironically responsible for saving myth from historical annihilation. Although philosophy was initially critical of myth because it could not be declared true or false and because it was inferior to argumentation, mythology was progressively reincorporated into philosophy through allegorical exegesis. Brisson shows to what degree allegory was employed among philosophers and how it enabled myth to take on a number of different interpretive systems throughout the centuries: moral, physical, psychological, political, and even metaphysical. How Philosophers Saved Myths also describes how, during the first years of the modern era, allegory followed a more religious path, which was to assume a larger role in Neoplatonism. Ultimately, Brisson explains how this embrace of myth was carried forward by Byzantine thinkers and artists throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance; after the triumph of Chistianity, Brisson argues, myths no longer had to agree with just history and philosophy but the dogmas of the Church as well.

Author Biography

Luc Brisson is director of research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France. He is the author of several books including Plato the Mythmaker, published in English by the University of Chicago Press. Catherine Tihanyi, a research associate at Western Washington University, has translated a number of books for the University of Chicago Press, including Adam Biro’s Two Jews on a Train.

Table of Contents

Translator's Note	ix
Preface to the French Edition	xi
List of Abbreviations	xiii
Introduction	1	(4)
ONE Muthos and Philosophia	5	(10)
TWO Plato's Attitude toward Myth	15	(14)
THREE Aristotle and the Beginnings of Allegorical Exegesis	29	(12)
FOUR Stoics, Epicureans, and the New Academy	41	(15)
FIVE Pythagoreanism and Platonism	56	(31)
SIX The Neoplatonic School of Athens	87	(20)
SEVEN Byzantium and the Pagan Myths	107	(19)
EIGHT The Western Middle Ages	126	(11)
NINE The Renaissance	137	(25)
Conclusion	162	(5)
Notes	167	(34)
Index	201