myth in philosophy

This morning I was reviewing Plato’s myth of the cave. Whenever I do that, I’m surprised anew by a couple of things.

First, it’s extremely short, just a couple of pages.

Second, it’s not especially well-written, in the literary sense. Let me rephrase that, because it sounds like a critique when it’s not… What I mean is that when Plato presents the myth of the cave, he doesn’t seem to be exerting himself to be “literary”. The language isn’t especially pretty.

What both points tell us about is the remarkable power of myth for philosophy, which is too rarely exploited. If Plato had spent two pages making an “argument” about the perfect forms, it might have been perfectly valuable in a philosophical sense, but it would have been unlikely to have haunted the dreams of philosophers for nearly 2,400 years.

There are a select handful of great philosophical myth-makers, with Plato and Nietzsche surely leading the pack. Ironically, it is analytic rather than continental philosophy that has made more attempts at the utilization of myth. Just think of the Chinese Room or Sellars’s “Myth of Jones” (a stupid name, but more on that some other time). In fact, it is considered to be an intellectual skill of basic importance in analytic philosophy to be able to construct examples of this sort. Though I believe many or most are completely unsuccessful at unleashing any mythic resonance, at least the effort is there.

On the continental side, though a figure like Derrida certainly enjoys creating collages from the literary images of others, he’s not a myth-maker. And it is the myth-makers who tend to have a lot of staying power… Kafka as opposed to Henry James, or Nietzsche as opposed to Mill. (Those are my predictions for the future canon, anyway.)

It’s been on my mind a lot lately as I work on Circus Philosophicus, which is in fact a series of philosophical myths. There won’t be knowing how successful it is until I’m finished with the whole manuscript, which might take a few more months.

I’m still trying to adjust to the disorientation of my new schedule (which I’m happy with, it’s just an adjustment). Starting next semester I’ll only be teaching one class per term for awhile. It’s not going to be any easier (there are many administrative responsibilities in trying to increase overall research productivity at the University) but will certainly mean a different sort of daily rhythm. For one thing, there is all sorts of human contact now, whereas previously my human contact on campus was mostly with students. Now, there is a lot of interviewing and hearing suggestions from Person A and passing them along to Person B for comment.

My general sense is that while direct contact with university administrative matters can be somewhat tiring, it also would make most academics happier and less paranoid. Professors sometimes have conspiratorial fantasies about what happens in the rooms where university “power” is housed. But the reality is hardly that noir. Latour’s arguments to the contrary (e.g., that the conversations between the executives at IBM are very similar in kind to those between the janitors) prepared me to be less surprised by this than I might have expected. The more information you have about what’s really going on, the more your dramatic sense of catastrophism and conspiracy will tend to diminish.

I’ll have some more general reflections on this issue later in the year, perhaps.