But logos alone couldnt speak to the deep question human beings ask like What is the meaning of life. Mythos helps people to address the larger issues of the meaning of life and the nature of ultimate reality.
Armstrongs assertion that most cultures made a distinction between religious belief mythos and rational belief logos is false.
. Myth from greek musteion to close eyes or mouth. She emphasizes in the introduction the difference between what scholars call mythos and logos. The distinction between what Karen Armstrong following earlier scholars currently refers to as mythos and logos is more familiar in other guises such as art versus science spirituality versus worldliness and values versus facts Armstrong 1993.
Aristotle has no Eastern counterpart. The terms mythos and logos are used to describe the transition in ancient Greek thought from the stories of gods goddesses and heroes mythos to the gradual development of rational philosophy and logic logos. This is the most generic difference between the two.
When read one cannot experiment with what is taught in the bible. The former is represented by the earliest Greek thinkers such as Hesiod and Homer. According to Palmer although mythos and logos pretty much traces the originality of things in life yet mythos tend to focus more on the strong time the time existed prior to the normal time and all of the supernatural associations such as how certain phenomenons occurred mainly due to gods will or that some.
Human cultures usually include a cosmogonical or creation myth concerning the origins of the world or how the world came to exist. Karen Armstrong discusses her new book A Short History of Myth which explores. Human beings have always used myths as a framework on which to shape religion literature and early on science.
Karen Armstrongs response though was more artistic. He represents an irreversible step forward in human culture from mythos narrative thought to logos analytical thought. Logos is roughly speaking knowledge gained through the world of science reason and observation through which we can understand the material world and the things in it the laws of cause and effect in our.
She says Both were. Myth as a mode of Knowledge was rooted in silence and intuitive insight and gave meaning to life human existence but cannot be explained in rational terms. There are two forms of knowledge.
These however all lack quite the generality required referring to facets of the polarity in. In a previous post on the topic of mythos and logos I discussed the evolution of ancient Greek thought from its origins in imaginative legends about gods to the development of reason philosophy and logicToday every educated human being knows about the contributions of Socrates Plato Euclid and Pythagoras. Logos is practical and logical.
The active beings in myths are generally gods and goddesses heroes and heroines or animals and plants. On fundamentalisms it is important to mention Karen Armstrong from whom this article borrowed the word play of logos and mythos7. They were not in conflict but complementary.
Logos reason was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled people to function effectively in the world. She spoke of two complementary ways of arriving at truth which the Greeks called mythos and logos. Unlike mythos logos must relate exactly to facts and correspond to external reality.
Products of logos enable us to communicate with the people who matter most to us even when they are thousands of miles away but mythos provides the context for us to know which people matter and what we should say to them when we do communicate. Mythos is a myhtical account to explain the unknown and is more concerned with the quality of the story. The distinction between what Karen Armstrong following earlier scholars currently refers to as mythos and logos is more familiar in other guises such as art versus science spirituality.
Each had its own sphere of competence and it was considered unwise to mix the two. As nouns the difference between logos and mythos is that logos is philosophy in presocratic philosophy the principle governing the cosmos in stoicism the active material rational principle of the cosmos or logos can be logo while mythos is a story or set of stories relevant to or having a significant truth or meaning for a particular culture religion society or other group. Rhetoric Logos is a rational explanation which is concerned with accuracy.
Philosophers have been trying to explain the difference between mythos and logos for centuries. Throughout the book Armstrong effectively uses the metaphors of mythos and logos myth and reason to describe the tension between the traditional religious worldview and that provided by. The Greeks called them mythos and logos.
Logos was reason logic intellect. The only thing that is agreed upon by all philosophers is that logos can be explained and mythos cannot. An example of mythos is the bible.
In this book she studies and attempts to analyze fundamentalist movements in Christianity Judaism and Islam. From an old post of mine based on Karen Armstrongs division of knowledge. The book quotes Karen Armstrong a writer on comparative religion on the difference between what the Greeks called mythos and logos.
A myth also can be a story to explain why something exists. Both were essential and neither was considered superior to the other. Next is the polarity between the impersonal religious thought of the East and the personal categories of biblical revelation.
Armstrongs case rests on a distinction in religion and philosophy between mythos and logos two mutually exclusive approaches to knowing and unknowing. Both were recognized by scholars as legitimate. It had therefore to.
Posted on December 21 2014 by mservetus. Explain the difference between mythos and logos world-views. It is an anachronistic distinction that has emerged from the late 20thC urge to preserve god in the face of the growing encroachment of reason and evidence that the previous claims of religion have proved false.
The reading this week for my Scholars Seminar is the introduction of the book The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong. According to this author fundamentalism is not only a response of society that dichotomized mythos and logos but is the fruit of modernity itself.
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