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Campbell in this first chapter provides us with the mythological equivalent to the Kantian Philosophical distinction between the orders of the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals:
“There are two totally different orders of mythology, there is the mythology that relates you to your nature and the natural world of which you are a part. And there is the mythology that is strictly sociological, linking you to a particular society. You are not simply natural man, you are a member of a particular group. In the History of European Mythology, you can see the interaction of these two systems. Usually the socially oriented system is of a nomadic people who are moving around, so you learn that is where your centre is, in that group. The nature-oriented mythology would be of an earth cultivating people. Now the Biblical tradition is socially oriented mythology. Nature is condemned.. In the nineteenth century scholars thought of mythology and ritual as an attempt to control nature. But that is magic not Mythology or religion. Nature religions are not attempts to control nature but to help put yourself in accord with it. But when nature is thought of as evil, you dont put yourself in accord with it, you control it, or try to, and hence the tension, the anxiety, the cutting down of forests, the annihilation of native people.” (Pages 28-29)
This is a complex moment in Campbells book, requiring much analysis most of which must be left for other works. One can question the crude distinction between the natural and the sociological. In the hylomorphic account of Psyché we encounter the position that whilst inorganic forms differs significantly from organic forms, the plant form life is a lower form of life to that of animals who possess nutrition and reproduction functions alongside with perceptual functions which plant life does not.The human form of life of course possesses all the powers and functions of plant life and animal life together with a number of other powers which make this life capable of philosophical and mythological discourse and all the disciplines of science and metaphysics, It is this repertoire of powers which enabled man to create villages, towns, cities and nations, sufficient to meet the complex system of needs which emerge from possessing such a repertoire of powers. The family is the hylomorphic building block of this system of interlocking social- structures and this fact might explain the emergence of a type of mythology which was neither natural nor sociological, perhaps deserving the name metaphysical. Nature is not evil in Greek mythology which connects such value judgements with the praise and blame for voluntary actions pursued by human psuché. For the ancient Greek mentality, nature was what it was, and its form needed to be understood if it was going to be useful for man and provide the landscpe for all his achievements. Witness the bravery of Anaxagoras in procliaming that the moon is constituted of stone. For his fellow citizens who were aghast at such heresy, the infuence of the moon on mans actvitiy was obvious for all to see. Anaxagoras, the thinker, however, may well have accepted the thesis of the importance of the moon for man, but merely in true Greek fashion brought it down to earth by proclaiming its true nature. Anaxagoras was not a materialist. His writings were responsible for the reputed “Socratic turn” in which Socrates all but abandoned his investigations of physical events, objects and processes and turned toward studying the human forms of psuché in operation in the polis of Athens. Using the method of elenchus he “turned” the question “ask of everything what is its nature”, from the search for the essence of physical things, and toward a central part of his investigation of the being of man, namely the good in general and justice in particular. Aristotle continued the quest for defining the essence of man with tools he created such as the principles of logic, two of which were :
The Principle of noncontradiction and
The Principle of sufficient reason
Aristotle fixated upon voluntary action as an essential part of the being or essence of man, an essential aspect of Aristotelian Ethics and Politics. The essence-specifying-definition of “rational animal capable of discourse” defines two powers over and above the animal powers and these play an important role in lifting human psuché out of the deterministic network of instincts that “cause” animals to fight with each other, eat each other, attack humans etc. These animals have little or no self regulatory control over these activities. Humans, then, are able to consciously inhibit such instinctive impulses via amongst other things, through representations of different courses of action.
Given the above philosophical reflections, the attribution by Campbell of different forms of mythology (the sociological and the natural) to different styles of life, for example the nomadic and the earth-cultivating, may not be the whole truth of the matter. Communities that settle in one place for long periods of time, cultivating the surrounding landscape and perhaps complementing this with hunting and gathering may well have even stronger ties to their community than nomadic peoples. The complexity of their society would require forms of rationality not needed by the nomads: forms of instrumental rationality that constantly seems to meet the diversifying needs of the community as desires become more variagated. Indeed Campbell suggests in other works that earth cultivating communities have a more peaceful and ordered relation to animal life which might amount to respecting it. Such communities, he argues, are more likely to appreciate narrative mythologies relating to the continuity of life and the common appreciation of the sensory-motor life of animals, which resembles the psychological powers we possess. Animal lives, however, from a philosophical perspective, cannot engage in the act of imagining the existence of transcendental gods in the form of aesthetic ideas. Needless to say animals cannot reason via a series of linguistic premises to a conclusion about the existence or nature of God.
The question that requires investigation in this context is whether the nomadic form of life can sustain a complex idea of a God connected to both the realms of the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals. This question can also be posed in relation to the idea of Justice which actually may require the idea of a settled polis with a long history of recorded events of magnitude, events that are both relevant to the survival and well-being of the polis. The continuity of the crops of the community over time resembles to some extent, but not relevantly, the continuity of the complex form of life the Ancient Greeks enjoyed in their bustling city-states with discourse in the agora ranging over laws, morality, the efficacy of dialectic and elenchus, the gods of the Ancient Greek Pantheon, ancient tragedies and modern Platonic dialogues. It is not for nothing that we proclaim that Athens was the birthplace of our democracies. In the light of this proclamation it is somewhat surprising to find Campbell claiming that it is the USA and not the settled nations of Europe with their ancient legal and religious systems dispensing justice and salvation, that is the beacon of Reason. Reason was certainly born in Ancient Greece and Philosophical argumentation became the academic arbiter of conflicts and disagreements in courts of law, courts of Princes, universities, and the court of public opinion. Correct Jugment became the lodestar of civilisation and correct judgment demanded not the instrumental reasoning of the economists and military men, but the categorical reasoning that was initiated by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The USA was and perhaps still is the master of instrumental reasoning but insofar as categorical reasoning was and is concerned their Philosophers never played any decisive role at any important period of history in either its furtherance or application, except perhaps in courts of law and the justice system . But even this is no longer true now in the 21st century with the advent of the MAGA movement. If continuity alone is the measure of excellence (areté), insofar as the systems of justice are concerned, Europe has always led the way and still does. The American treatment of the American Indians and slaves, and the black people today, has been continuously unjust and inspired regimes such as the apartheid regime in South Africa who also believed they lived in the Greatest Country in the World blessed by God. Modern European countries have been united in the project of the separation of the state and religion, although admitttedly in the twentieth century nonreligious tyrants in German and Russia managed to bring Europe to the verge of political destruction. The USA’s finest hour may well have been in its determination to prevent this event happening, and in that finest hour they certainly were for a brief moment in History the “Beacon of Democracy”, “the shining polis on the hill”. The tragedy of Europe was itself brought about by the decline in categorical reasoning that was occurring at the end of the Enlightenment with the Philosophy of Hegel seeking to overturn Kantian categorical reasoning in both the realms of the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals. From the point of view of Socrates and Plato as expressed in the dialogue “The Republic”, this could be expressed in terms of Glaucons challenge to Socrates to provide a theory of justice that was both good-in-its-consequences and “good-in-itself”. This was done by establishing the categorical “Form of the Good” as the most important of all the forms that held categorically and absolutely. Plato may well have not understood the political implications of this form given that in the Republic, people who were not in the Philosophical ruling class were not treated categorically as “ends-in-themselves” and were lied to and subject to arbitrary prohibitions relating to the institution of marriage which was arbitrarily dissolved because of some obscure doctrine of eugenics. Socrates himself may have been sceptical of the so-called “noble lies”, and other matters because, for him, telling the truth was a matter established by the ideal of categorical practical reasoning.
Aristotle certainly laid the foundations for practical categorical reasoning in both his “Ethics” and “Politics”: foundations that built upon the Ethical principle that all activities of man aim at “The Good”, meaning of course the good that is both “good-in-its-consequences” and “good-in-itself”. Aristotle also insisted that the speeches of Politicians should be logical and use enthymemes to persuade their audiences of the truth of their words. Alongside all of this we also had to take account of the mythology of Ancient Greece which itself had shifted over the ages from the dominance of the Demiurge and Erinyes to the pantheon of Gods led by Zeus who attacked his father Chronos who believed he had eaten his son. Zeus overthrew the Titans in battle and divided up the kingdoms of the underworld, the sea, and the sky and a new pantheon of gods was born in the spirit of Gaia and Rhea, his mother. The predominance of female oracles also reflected this dominance which is of course at its best when perpetual peace prevails which it has not done since Ancient Greek Times. Perhaps Alexander the Great attempted to establish such a permanent peaceful regime using of course violent instrumental reasoning to establish this end-in-itself.
The Civil war in the USA was, we know, over the issue of slavery but it might also have been over the issues of very different life-styles and beliefs found in the North and the South: and as we know this occurred during the era of the emergence of populism( Arendt) and imperialism (Arendt) in Europe that brought with it a transformation or revolution in the political party system as new social forces emerged. Unfortunately the Gaia principle from Ancient Greece did not result in feminine representation at the highest political levels, and we appear to be still lacking such representation at the level of the highest political office of the US. Campbells proclamation therefore that the mythology of America ought to provide the model for the new mythology of the whole planet is mystifying. He ,of course, did not live to experience the populist emergence of the MAGA movement, but surely that was always in the cards, and had its roots in an event as old as the Civil War. It can also be argued that it was Germany that shot Europe in the foot with its populist revolution and that we have only ourselves to blame for not emerging as one of the major powers of the world. The German decision (Helmut Kohl) to establish economic relations with Russia which financed the Ukranian war, once again destabilised Europe in the 21st century. This together with the populist driven campaign in the UK to leave Europe and France’s intransigence over a possible compromise weakened Europe militarily speaking, and sent clear messages to a now economically strengthened Russia who had already claimed Crimea without any meaningful response from either Europe or the US (who were aginst the gas and oil links from the start of these projects). Talk of Mythology and its influence in such a militarised situation does seem otiose. The Military do not value life (psuche, for them a form of utilitarianism has always and will always prevail: the end is victory with the least loss of life possible: happiness for the greatest number (those still alive) is the goal. For them the categorical reasoning that it is a practical contradiction to use a life to take a life is otiose, an irrelevant form of reasoning. The Categorical Imperative which demands that one treat all human psuchë as ends-in-themselves, is of course metaphysical rather than mythological ,but this is our Greek heritage. Yet Kant’s Critical Philosophy which is a form of Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy has inherited both the Philosophy of Ancient Greece and the fundamental Greek attitude toward its Gods, an attitude formed by the Aristotelian principle of the Golden Mean which had its souce in a number of oracular proclamations, for example:
Everyting created by man is subject ot ruin and destruction
Know thyself!
Knowing oneself involves obviously knowing to avoid impulsive extremes by relying on our knowledge(epistemé) of ourselves and our world. The Greeks did not over-idealise their Gods but demanded as Socrates did that their activities symbolise only the Good. Thus for the Greeks the form of the Good was a common denominator in both their Philosophy and their Mythology.
Campbell supports his proclamation with the following words:
“Reason puts you in touch with God, because the mind cleared of all its capabilities is sufficiently capable of the kowledge of God…. all people in the world are capable of reason…That is the fundamental principle of democracy.” (Page 31)
On the face of it these remarks appear Kantian, and in the spirit of the Enlightenment. Campbell argues insightfully, however, that the quote above rejects the account of the Bible which relates to the fallibility and fall of man and his exit from the garden of Eden. For the founding fathers apparently the belief in God had its origin in Reason, which, for Kant, is concerned with establishing the totality of conditions for everything that occurs in the realms of the Metaphysics of Nature and the Metaphysics of Morals, For Campbell, on the other hand, the use of Reason appears more circumscribed, connected more to the removing of obstacles to our understanding of our human “Being-in-the-world which he sometimes acutely characterises by reference to the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas in which it is stated that the Kingdom of God is both within and all around us. Sometimes he characterises this position through the following words translated from the Sanskrit:
“Thou art that”
which have their origin in Hindu Mysticism that Campbell takes to be an important element of myth:
“Myth opens the world to the dimension of mystery, to the realisation of mystery that underlies all forms.” (Page 38)
Campbell argues in this context that myth serves 4 fundamental functions:
- The mystical function
- a cosmological function
- a sociological function
- a pedagogical function
It is not exactly clear what he means with the sociological function of myth, whether, for example, it includes what the Ancient Greek and Kantian Critical Philosophers termed “ethics” and “politics”. These Philosophers placed much emphasis upon the importance of knowledge of, for example, the principles of “The Good”, and the principles of “Justice”. These principles ensured that we were dealing with matters that are both good-in-their-consequences and good-in-itself.
Campbell has been critical of many aspects of the narratives of the Bible which he claims are about events that occurred during the first millenium BC:
“It does not accord with our concept either of the universa or of the dignity of man” (page 40)
This Biblical view, Campbell argues, will not allow us to build a wise relation to animals, the water and the sea which precludes cutting down trees, uprooting lad and turning rivers into real estate, all of which amounts to:
“Killing God” (Page 40)
The Gaia principle is evoked, which views the whole planet as an organism. Campbell is here focussing on arguments that are more relevant to the Metaphysics of Nature, than to the Metaphysics of Morals which Kant associated with the dignity of man, categorical reasoning, the good will and the Kingdom of Ends. Campbell in this context fixates upon the psychological development of man:
“The maturation of the individual from dependency through adulthood through maturity, and then to exit, and then how to relate to this society and how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos.” (Page 41)
The moral and political development of the individual may be implied in the above reflection but the details of this development are not clear. Political aspects of mythological narratives and parables are brought to the fore in the closing sequences of the chapter when Campbell quotes a letter by the Indian Chief Seattle in response to the American Presidents suggestion that America buy the land from the indians:
“How can you buy or sell the sky….If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?….If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred—the waters murmer is the voice of my fathers father….the wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life…..This we know: the earth does not belong to man….Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it….Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will hapen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the hills is blotted by talking wires….The end of living and the beginning of survival—will these shores and forests still be free? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?” (pages 42-43)