Philosophy and myths,
Friends or foes?

This essay will first give a definition of myths. Then it will deal with the question if philosophy and myths are friends or foes. To answer that question there will be said what philosophers like Plato, Nietzsche, Barthes and Anaximander thought about that. Then the writers’ opinion will be given.
There are different types of myths. There are sagas, which explain historical events. Then there are folktales, which are simple stories meant to entertain. They are mostly about adventure. Then there is the biggest group: legends. These are stories about honored figures of a group or nation.
Myths are usually about religion. They explain the things human beings couldn’t explain by science (when the story was written), or they weren’t sure about it. Just take a look at the Greek Gods. The Greeks though there were different Gods for everything. There was for example a God, which pulled the sun around the Earth. At night he slept. This was because they didn’t know the earth was round and they didn’t know how ‘the sun moved’.
Every culture is different, so every culture has its own myths.

In a few cases philosophy and myths are friends. Like with the philosopher Plato, who lived from 427 BC until 347 BC. He was one of the first philosophers to come with the myth of Atlantis. It was a myth, so in this case philosophy and myths are friends. But later on there were also other philosophers who came up with the story of Atlantis.
Another example is Roland Barthes, who lived from 1905 until 1980. To explain what he thought, you’ll first have to know what Claude Livi-Strans thought. Livi-Strans wanted to find out what was characteristic for society. He went to three or four different groups, which lived in the Amazon. He found out that those groups had two things in common:
1) They all had a few taboo’s (things about which you don’t talk, and it’s bad if it occurs). They had different taboo’s there then we have here nowadays. But they had some taboos, and so do we (like homosexuals).
2) They all had a totem. It was mostly somewhere in the centre. It was a skull of a human being or an animal. If they came together or told each other stories about the past it was there, near the totem. People recognized themselves in it.
Barthes wanted to find out it we had a totem in our society. He wanted to know what was the object in which the western society saw itself. He thought it was the car. Because everyone could afford themselves to buy one, and there were differences in them. If you are rich you can afford yourself to buy a larger, more beautiful car. It was about prestige. And, it could be thrown away. We wouldn’t like something, which would last forever. He wrote a book about this called ‘Myths’. But here myths had a different meaning; it meant that ‘in which man can recognize himself’.
But, in most of the cases, philosophy and myths are foes like with the philosopher Nietzsche, who lived in the 19th century. His biggest example was Plato, who lived about 400 BC. Nietzsche thought Christianity was the biggest disaster for human beings. Because it says you have to have compassion for your victim. Nietzsche thought it was nonsense; animals don’t have compassion for their prey, so why would we? Nietzsche believed in the reality of the world we live in, not on the one beyond. Because he believed in the world he lived in; not in the past or the world after life, he was against myths. Myths tell stories that aren’t relevant to the world nowadays. They are mostly about the world beyond or about the past.
Another example is the philosopher Socrates. He lived about 400 BC. He wanted to know if Gods existed. He asked people what they thought. If people gave him an answer he always argued why that couldn’t be true, which was quite annoying for people. When people asked him what was the right answer he said he didn’t know it. He just wanted to find out the truth. Therefore he was killed.
Anaximander lived about 600 BC. He was the first philosopher who created a new idea of the world, without being a myth. In his story no Gods occurred. He said there first was a lot of soup. Then the soup started to clot. One of these clods became the Earth. Because the soup was hot, the sun came to existence etc.

I think that myths and philosophy mostly are foes. Because I think philosophy has to be objective, and myths are not objective at all. And if you just look at the examples above; there are much more philosophers who thought philosophy and myths were foes than there were philosophers who thought they were friends. But on the other hand, Plato was one of the most important philosophers, and he was the first person from who is known for sure that he wrote about Atlantis, which was a myth.
I think the totem, of which Barthes is talking, nowadays is the computer. But, who knows, in a few years it will probably be something, which maybe isn’t even invented.
I definitely don’t agree with Nietzsche, who said Christianity is a disaster because of compassion. I think you have to have compassion to be human. Without compassion you would turn into some kind of machine, without any feelings. We would all get very hard and self-centered. We wouldn’t care about other people anymore. I think that what Socrates did was good, and it’s a shame he was killed. He just wanted to know the truth, so he asked people about it. But I also realize people thought he was annoying.