Philosophical origin myths

I’ve begun to notice origin myths embedded in philosophical and political theories, thanks to re-reading Dreyfus & Spinosa’s “Further Reflections on Heidegger, Technology, and the Everyday” (2003) alongside Segal’s “The Modern Study of Myth and Its Relation to Science” (2015). Adopting a mythical perspective has tempered my skepticism about the historical accuracy of such accounts. I now view them more as moral exhortations than accurate narratives.

Origin Myths

Robert Segal classifies twentieth-century theories of myth into three categories based on their responses to the nineteenth-century theories of Tylor and Frazer:

1. About the world, but not an explanation of the world (Malinowski, Eliade).
2. Not about the physical world, not to be read literally (Bultmann, Jonas, Camus).
3. About the human mind, not the world (Freud, Jung).

For the first group—which is most relevant to my focus here—myth explains the origin of phenomena. Quoting Segal:

“For both Malinowski and Eliade, myth is as much about social phenomena—customs, laws, and institutions—as about physical ones. For Malinowski, myths about social phenomena serve to reconcile members to impositions that they might otherwise reject. . . . . To say that myth traces back the origin of phenomena is equivalent to saying that myth explains those phenomena.”

“Eliade’s criterion for myth is that a story attribute to its subject a feat so exceptional as to turn its subject into a superhuman figure. Myth describes how, in primeval, “sacred” time, a god or near-god created a phenomenon that continues to exist. That phenomenon can be social or natural— for example, marriage or rain. . . . Plays, books, and films are mythic-like because they reveal the existence of another, often earlier world alongside the everyday one—a world of extraordinary figures and events akin to those found in traditional myths. Furthermore, the actions of those figures account for the present state of the everyday world. Most of all, moderns get so absorbed in plays, books, and films that they imagine themselves back in the time of the myth.”

Periodization in Modern Philosophy and Political Thought

The stage-by-stage narratives of thinkers like Rousseau, Marx, and Heidegger explain the present situation by tracing its origin. For example:

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau: state of nature → agriculture → private property, social classes →  inequality.

• Karl Marx: primitive communism → slave society → feudalism → capitalism → socialism and communism.

• Martin Heidegger: a series of “total understandings of being in the West” notably physis → poiesis → res → creatures → technicity.

• Leo Strauss: three waves of modernity (liberalism → socialism → fascism), all leading to nihilism, the root of modernity's crisis.

• Klaus Schwab: four Industrial Revolutions, (1) mechanization of production → factories and mass production; (2) electricity and assembly lines → increased productivity and efficiency; (3) electronics and IT → globalization and the service sector; (4) merging physical, digital and biological worlds → human-centered future.

These myths do not necessarily “serve to reconcile members to impositions that they might otherwise reject” (Malinowski per Segal) though Schwab probably does. They may, instead, spur people to attempt a return to or synthesis with an earlier Golden Age (Heidegger) or a rejection of the status quo and an advance to utopia (Rousseau, Marx).

More Moral Tale than History

Until now, my instinctive response in such cases has been to question the validity of their histories, given that (a) their histories serve an argumentative purpose, (b) they’re not historians, and (c) even professional historians can't agree. Adopting a mythical view is helping me become more accepting, under the premise that these narratives are more about helping me understand the present moment than offering a causal and historical explanation (even though they purport to do so).

Threads

All these narratives imply an underlying theory. There’s a common thread—indeed, an argument—that binds the stages together. The progression also implies a moral judgment, of either progress and improvement or declension and decline. They’re normative judgments dressed up as positive descriptions. They purport to explain how we arrived at our present situation (descriptive) but do so in order to justify recommendations about where we should go next (normative).

Common threads in the examples above:

• The common thread in Rousseau is increasing inequality. Civilization was a fall from grace and not unambiguously positive. Rousseau had many prescriptions, including embracing a simpler life, promoting equality, and revising the social contract.

• In Marx, each stage is defined by a dominant mode of production and resulting class relations. He advocated working towards the transition to socialism and communism.

• For Heidegger’s stages, the common thread is a series of “understandings of Being”; it seems to me that he sees the series as declension from the natural growth and emergence of things in the Greek conception of physis. He wanted us to balance the benefits of a technological worldview with openness to making of the Greeks’ poiesis.

• A common thread in Strauss' three waves of modernity is the deconstruction and rejection of previous standards of morality and truth. Declension again, since the progression leads to the crisis in modernity. Strauss suggested a return to classical political philosophy, especially that of the Greeks.

• The common thread for Schwab is technological advancement which transforms economic structures and social norms. His exhortation is to engage with and adapt to these changes.

Why stages?

Humans like to understand history and societal development in terms of stages or epochs. For example, stage-by-stage narratives are found in many world religions and mythologies. For example:

• Hinduism's four yugas, each representing a phase in the moral and spiritual development of human societies. It’s a tale of decline.
• Hesiod’s Five Ages of Man depict a decline from the Golden Age to the current Iron Age.
• A more progress-oriented stages model can be seen in the Christian tradition with a series of covenants between God and humanity: Adam & Eve; Noah; Moses; Jesus Christ.
• The Mahayana tradition proposes a cycle of degeneration and restoration of the Buddha's teachings.

It’s easy to speculate about the reasons:

• Stages simplify complex processes.

• We like stories with a beginning, middle, and end. A narrative provides a sense of direction and underscores the meaning the author wishes to highlight in our present situation.

• Stages can identify or justify claims of cause and effect, where a common mechanism is seen playing out in a series of settings.

• Either cause-and-effect or mere pattern recognition can serve to (claim to) predict future events, providing some certainty and reducing anxiety in an uncertain world.

• All these attributes—narrative momentum, meaning, prediction—can motivate or justify the author’s prescription of what we should do, such as advancing in the case of progression, or returning to earlier values in a tale of decline.

Coda

Just after reading Dreyfus & Spinosa and Segal, I saw a blurb for James Pethokoukis’ new book, The Conservative Futurist: How to Create the Sci-Fi World We Were Promised. It’s a clear origin & redemption narrative, and moves straight to a Call to Action:

• “America was once . . . . But as we moved into the late 20th century, . . . . We are now at risk of another half century of . . . .”
• “. . . the fascinating story of what went wrong in the past and what we need to do today to finally get it right.”