Greek Myth Structure: Divinization, Ambiguity, and Mythic Force

The Structure of Greek Myths

During the hegemony of the aristocratic society, the Greek world had a variety of mythical narratives that served to explain a wide variety of everyday aspects. Let's examine the myths by identifying three key features:

1. Divinization

The personification of nature and the main question these myths wanted to answer was how the cosmic order arose from primordial chaos. The explanation pointed to the action of the gods, who embodied the elements of nature, so that natural cycles were explained by divine causes. The ruling aristocracy and therefore social order existed as a mythical story.

2. Ambiguity of the Narrative

The narrative describes the visible world from concrete perspectives, unlike the invisible realities explained by divine order.

3. Force of the Mythic

Myths were considered true by the authority of tradition, on which religious actors were sustained. These actors were in charge of maintaining this tradition through mysteries and rites. The reality itself, along the 17th and part of the 18th centuries, in philosophy, would have a discussion between empiricists and rationalists. Both currents of philosophers disagreed substantially on the sources and limits of human knowledge. A fundamental point was displayed: that which our senses show us. Our perceptions show us the way in which an object appears to our senses. This small nuance is the starting point of modern epistemology.

For Descartes, the initiator of modern rationalism, the idea was enough to deny the senses a prominent role in the knowledge of our reason. Only reason may show the truth. For empiricism, all our knowledge is based on perceptions. For them, our human capacity to know the truth is much more limited than for the rationalists, because for them, there is no other way to access reality than through experience. For the rationalists, reason can be managed by the words coming from experience.

According to Immanuel Kant, everything we perceive undergoes a series of formal principles that are in human sensitivity. We call these a priori elements of sensibility. These principles are present in all perceptions, and they condition the possibility of the perceived object. The perceived object is the result of a composition from outside affecting our senses and what our senses put into the act of perceiving.