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    The Presence of Myth
    The Presence of Myth
    The Presence of Myth
    Ebook191 pages3 hours

    The Presence of Myth

    By Leszek Kolakowski

    3.5/5

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    "[An] important essay by a philosopher who more convincingly than any other I can think of demonstrates the continuing significance of his vocation in the life of our culture."—Karsten Harries, The New York Times Book Review

    With The Presence of Myth, Kolakowski demonstrates that no matter how hard man strives for purely rational thought, there has always been-and always will be-a reservoir of mythical images that lend "being" and "consciousness" a specifically human meaning.

    "Kolakowski undertakes a philosophy of culture which extends to all realms of human intercourse—intellectual, artistic, scientific, and emotional. . . . [His] book has real significance for today, and may well become a classic in the philosophy of culture."—Anglican Theological Review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
    Release dateNov 16, 2010
    ISBN9780226222257
    The Presence of Myth

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      Book preview

      The Presence of Myth - Leszek Kolakowski

      1966

      1

      PRELIMINARY DISTINCTIONS

      1

      The labor of the analytical mind which produces science is the organ in human culture which tames the physical environment. Science is the extension of civilization’s technological core. In the scientific sense, true means that which has the chance of being employed in effective technological procedures. This is not to say that the criteria we employ in settling scientific questions always depend on the likely possibilities of a practical application of the acquired solution. In their general shape, however, these criteria are so constructed that they enable us to reject from the area of valid knowledge whatever has no chance of technological application. Popular thought and scientific thought, as well as language, are correlated, in the overriding evolutionary strategy, with the physical survival of the species.

      2

      Metaphysical questions and beliefs are technologically barren and are therefore neither part of the analytical effort nor an element of science. As an organ of culture they are an extension of the mythical core. They are concerned with the absolutely primal conditions of the realm of experience; they concern the quality of Being as a whole (as distinct from the object); they concern the necessity of events. They aim at revealing the relativity of the world of experience and attempt to reveal an unconditioned reality, thanks to which the conditioned reality becomes intelligible.

      3

      Metaphysical questions and beliefs reveal an aspect of human existence not revealed by scientific questions and beliefs, namely, that aspect that refers intentionally to nonempirical unconditioned reality. The presence of this intention does not guarantee the existence of the referents. It is only evidence of a need, alive in culture, that that to which the intention refers should be present. But this presence cannot in principle be the object of proof, because the proof-making ability is itself a power of the analytical mind, technologically oriented, which does not extend beyond its tasks. The idea of proof, introduced into metaphysics, arises from a confusion of two different sources of energy active in man’s conscious relation to the world: the technological and the mythical.

      4

      Let us attempt a description of the need which generates answers to questions that are ultimate and metaphysical—that is, incapable of conversion into scientific questions. Before considering the sources of this need in inadequately conceived and unclear conditions connected with the permanent situation of human consciousness as such in the world, let us consider the circumstances of which people are generally aware and which are visible on the surface of culture. At this level, this need can be described in at least three ways. First, as a need to make the empirical realities understandable; that is, to grasp the world of experience as intelligible by relating it to the unconditioned reality which binds phenomena teleologically. The purposeful order of the world cannot be deduced from what may validly be regarded as the experimental material of scientific thought; it cannot therefore form a valid hypothesis to explain the data of experience. An affirmation of this order represents an understanding interpretation of these data. The point of view that denies the right to such an interpretation may signify either a refusal to accept ultimate questions—that is, it may be a paralysis or a dulling of that aspect of human existence which is intentionally directed to transcendence—or it may be a conscious acceptance of the world’s absurdity. A language which attempts to reach transcendence directly violates, to no purpose, its own technological instrumentality. It reaches transcendence in myths which give a meaning to empirical realities and practical activities via relativization. A mythical organization of the world (that is, the rules of understanding empirical realities as meaningful) is permanently present in culture. The objection that such an organization does not become true as a result of its permanence, or of the reality of the needs which give rise to it, has no argumentative power for a consciousness whose mythopoeic stratum has been aroused, since here the predicates true and false are inapplicable. Here it is not the case of matching a judgment with a situation it describes but of matching a need with an area which satisfies it. Myth degenerated when it changed into a doctrine, that is, a product demanding and seeking proof. Attempts at imitating knowledge are the form which brings about the degeneration of faith. The experience of correlating a need with that area of Being which satisfies it cannot be questioned as invalid from the point of view of scientific knowledge, so long as this experience is differentiated from the justificatory procedures.

      5

      Another version of this need for answers to ultimate questions is the need for faith in the permanence of human values. Human values become personalized the moment natural evolution reaches the point of personal existence. Where the disappearance of personality is total, the values tied to personal existence are strictly confined to that existence, while if they are inherited in a material, objective manner by continuous human groups, they enjoy a second parallel existence while these groups last. The totality of values produced by individuals, that is, the totality of values called into existence by human beings, does therefore tend towards their ultimate disappearance. In other words, our efforts, even when extended in their material results beyond the existence of individuals, are totally dissolved in the disintegration of physical existence, since neither humanity nor the earth is eternal. Thus, the belief in personal survival is not a postulate, since it can have no conceivable justification; it is a way of affirming personal values. Such an affirmation has the same kind of validity in culture as do other mythopoeic acts, so long as they are the product of a real

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