Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-qxsvm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-05T21:18:19.926Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - Modern Mythic Meaning: Blumenberg Contra Nietzsche

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Robert B. Pippin
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access

Summary

Nothing surprised the promoters of the Enlightenment more, and left them standing more incredulously before the failure of what they thought were their ultimate exertions, than the survival of the contemptible old stories – the continuation of work on myth.

Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth, p. 274

Burkhardt relates an “incomparably remarkable story” in Apollodorus. The story helps represent the peculiar powers and limitations of Zeus, and so might be said to be typical of “mythic thought” in general. It represents Zeus as “just powerful enough to help fate, which has gotten totally muddled, on account of two animals, to escape from its dilemmas” (143). The Theban fox was fated never to be caught, whereas the Athenian hound was fated to catch everything that he pursued. Were such a world to be possible, were two such creatures possibly to meet, a great threat to any worldly “significance” would have to be entertained; no logos for or reliable judge of the world would be conceivable (let us say). One can at least imagine the importance attached to excluding or somehow confronting such a possibility. One can also imagine the energies that might be expended in the Talmudic or Scholastic traditions on such a problem; the energies that were expended on problems like omnipotence and omniscience. Zeus “solves” the problem differently. He turns both to stone.

Type
Chapter
Information
Idealism as Modernism
Hegelian Variations
, pp. 286 - 308
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×