Mythology and the Ancient World

By: Mikhail Lifshitz

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

“Education is the art of making men ethical”—Georg F. W. Hegel, Philosophy of Right

Both reason and unreason exist in this world. The sublime and the ridiculous are inseparable. The enigmatic force called “daemonism” by Goethe can erupt and overturn all our calculations.

Mikhail Lifshitz argued that the dualistic worldview of ancient and primitive mythologies splendidly reflects this realistic picture of the universe. We associate myth with wild and entirely improbable stories, but a kernel of universal truth resides within them. That truth can serve as our guide toward becoming the self-realized individuals of Hegel’s soaring ideal.

Religion in its modern guise fails. “If God is all-powerful, then he is evil and not good; it is hard to understand otherwise the calamities man must endure. If he is good, then he is powerless to put right fundamental evil. Therefore, he is not omnipotent.”

Unconsciously, modern man has turned to a conviction that all can be explained by reason. But the powers of human reason are not infinite. To act as if they are is to be guilty of “hubris, which wants putting out more than a house on fire.” Heraclitus said that c. 500 BCE. In the most brilliant expression of humanism in history, the Greeks imagined gods with human failings, gods more appropriate to the daemonic and muddled world right in front of our noses. In a universe thus imagined, the fact that some things surpass our understanding becomes less unsettling. This work can be seen as a reasoned argument in favor of humility, the greatest of human virtues. It is an argument for a sound humanism, one which “puts the world before life, life before man, and respect for others before self-interest.” As society evolves, a higher reconciliation between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom becomes possible.

Lifshitz argues that borrowing from Paideia, the rearing and education of an “ideal” member of the Greek polis or state, would be beneficial to contemporary society. He asserts that Greek mythology was the most sublime archetype of mythological forms of social consciousness. To use Hegel’s expression, that mythology was “the education of the human race.” We could do worse.