Marsha said: I went through all ten VHS tapes, and he really spoke as if he were stating the facts. Maybe Campbell considered himself a scientist speaking the the facts that have been discovered. This means this.(period) This means that. (period) Only a few times did he say something like "It is thought that" or "Current interpretation is that". See what I'm getting at. Man has a thought and thinks it's a fact.
dmb says: I really don't think so. He says over and over again that myths are not facts and that the symbols they employ have many meanings, depending on the individual's development and context. There is a rich quote that gets this across in terms that nearly constitute an epistemology, one that I find amazingly consistent with radical empiricism... "The apprehension of the SOURCE of this undifferentiated yet everywhere particularized substratum of being is rendered frustrate by the very organs through which the apprehension must be accomplished. The forms of sensibility and the categories of human thought, which are themselves manifestations of this power, so confine the mind that it is normally impossible not only to see but even to conceive, beyond the colorful, fluid, infinitely various and bewildering phenomenal spectacle. The functions of ritual and myth is to make possible, and then to facilitate the jump - by analogy. Forms and conceptions that the mind and its senses can comprehend are presented and arranged in such a way as to suggest a truth or openness beyond. And then, the conditions for meditation having been provided, the individual is left alone. Myth is but the penultimate; the ultimate is openness - that void, or being beyond the categories - into which the mind must plunge alone and be dissolved. therefore, God and the gods are only convenient means - themselves of the nature of the world of names and forms, though eloquent of, and ultimately conducive to, the ineffable. They are mere symbols to move and awaken the mind, and to call it past themselves." 258 "Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demonstrate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to reinterpret its mythology in this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved." 249 "Symbols are only the VEHICLES of communications; they must not be mistaken for the final term, the TENOR, of their reference. No matter ow attractive or impressive they may seem, they remain but convenient means, accommodated to the understanding. Hence the personality or personalities of God ...no one should attempt to read or interpret as the final thing. The problem of the theologian is to keep his symbol translucent, so that it may not block out the very light it is supposed to convey. ...Mistaking a vehicle for its tenor may lead to the spilling not only of valueless ink, but of valuable blood." 236 Also, for Jung and Campbell both, one of the most important features of the hero's journey is to realize a kind of androgyny. For men, this means getting in touch with your inner woman and for women it means getting in touch with your inner man. Each is both. In "The Hero with a Thousand Faces", which is where these quotes are coming from, Campbell points out that we find similar creation myths in Genesis and in Plato's "Symposium". In both cases, the first person was an androgynous being. The world as we know it begins only when this unified creature is split in two. In the story of Adam and Eve, it's just a matter of taking a piece of Adam (his rib) to create woman. In the myth found in the Symposium, the first people are round creatures with both male and female aspects who are, for reasons I don't recall, cut in half. This was supposed to explain the power of love as the desire to be whole again. This is also a symbolic reference to the fall, to the moment when we were cast out of paradise, where the world of opposites is dissolved into unity. In other words, the distinction between male and female is part and parcel of the differentiations of consciousness, just like good and evil, up and down, time and eternity, etc.. On a more practical level, Jung makes a distinction between the hero's journey and hera's journey. I should be even more careful here and say that these are not, strictly speaking, for men and women respectively. We're talking about psychology here, not anatomy. It's more like the hero's journey is what masculine people do and the hera's journey is for feminine people, regardless of what kind of equipment you happen to have in your pants. In fact, I was surprized to discovery that my own journey more closely resembled the hera's journey. (I have four sisters, was raised in a fatherless home and I've always suffered from a fairly serious self-esteem problem. I know. That's probably hard to believe but I swear its true. Most of the time, I hate myself.) As the professor points out, who happens to be a woman, the hero usually starts out from a place of arrogance and one-sided masculinity while the hera starts out from a place of humility and one-sided femininity. In both cases, the trick is to overcome that starting point and that one-sidedness. I'm not saying that Campbell or Jung were feminist activists but I think they both saw that our culture was out of balance in this respect and sought to help people restore that balance for themselves personally and to help balance the wider culture too. I mean, this problem exists on both the personal and collective levels. They both saw a lot of danger in it. On the other hand, you're not alone in your complaint. There are definitely feminists scholars who'd think you're quite right. Dr. Sharon Coggan, the only Jungian scholar I know, disagrees with them. She thinks that their objections would evaporate if they understood these things more thoroughly. It's worth pointing out that Jung was born in the 19th century and Campbell was already an old man when the waves of feminism starting rolling in. I mean, you can't blame them too much. They're attitudes reflected the time in which they lived. It's not exactly easy to overcome 4000 years of patriarchy in a single lifetime. Am I trying too hard here? I guess I want you to be a Campbell fan. I think he makes a nice side dish when Pirsig is on the menu. Thanks.dmb P.S. I'm so, so naughty for doing this instead of my homework. _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® goes with you. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Mobile?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Mobile1_052009 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
