Philosophical Myths of the Fall

by Stephen Mulhall

Did post-Enlightenment philosophers reject the idea of original sin and hence the view that life is a quest for redemption from it? In Philosophical Myths of the Fall , Stephen Mulhall identifies and evaluates a surprising ethical-religious dimension in the work of three highly influential philosophers--Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. He Is the Christian idea of humanity as structurally flawed something that these three thinkers aim simply to criticize? Or do they, rather, end up by reproducing secular variants of the same mythology?


Mulhall argues that each, in different ways, develops a conception of human beings as in need of in their work, we appear to be not so much capable of or prone to error and fantasy, but instead structurally perverse, living in untruth. In this respect, their work is more closely aligned to the Christian perspective than to the mainstream of the Enlightenment. However, all three thinkers explicitly reject any religious understanding of human perversity; indeed, they regard the very understanding of human beings as originally sinful as central to that from which we must be redeemed. And yet each also reproduces central elements of that understanding in his own thinking; each recounts his own myth of our Fall, and holds out his own image of redemption. The book concludes by asking whether this indebtedness to religion brings these philosophers' thinking closer to, or instead forces it further away from, the truth of the human condition.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

136 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is a fresh reading of three philosophers and since I saw/ heard these as lectures in grad school, they didn't come as much of a surprise but Mulhall provides a real insight into the whole Nietzschean notion of 'God is dead' in respect to the creed where we claim 'he descended to hell' such that Nietzsche is no longer caustic or insensitive to the message of 'true religion'-- and he does the same thing with Heidegger and Wittgenstein -- in which language (idle talk, so forth) is something caused by the fall. No language quite measures up to what we want to believe...