How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology

by Luc Brisson, Catherine Tihanyi (Translator)

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 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.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Folklore

206 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Catarina PBatista · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books if you, like me, are on the path of learning about human thought and how people have transmitted their beliefs and their knowledge in a different way.
Wether about science, religion, and other mysteries people transmitted knowledge in a secretive, creative, and seductive way. Most of this knowledge is now available to us today but is still special to understand that most of the human population have passed somewhat by similar processes, no matter how far in the world they are~and it's funny to recognize how obvious or clear things today were considered precious knowledge before.
A must-read for curious minds that like history and antropology~