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Campbell discusses the Yahwist chronicles relating to Abraham, and he notes the emphasis upon how ruin and disaster appears to follow those leaders who violate the divine commandments that have been named “the Law of Moses”. He concludes thus:
“Does it not, then, appear that we are dealing with the laws rather of myths, fairy tale and legend than any order of fact yet substantiated for either natural or human history? The Past, as in every other folk tradition of the world is here portrayed not with concern for what is known today as truth but to give a semblance of supernatural support to a certain social order and its system of belief…… All that is exceptional about the present remarkable examples is that, whereas no modern thinker in his right mind would argue for the historicity of myth brought together in the Odyssey, we have a modern literature of learning reaching from here to the moon and back doing that precisely for those sewn together in these ancient tales of about the same date.” (Page 125)
Campbell then elaborates upon this conclusion by referring to Freud’s 1939 Paper on “Moses and Monotheism”, in which, Freud, in accordance with the research of his time suggested not only that Moses was an Egyptian nobleman and not a Jew but also that he was slain during the Exodus. The conversion of the Israelites to Mosaic law, Campbell claims would actually take centuries before it was only temporarily instituted by the superstitious Josiah. The Freudian characterisation of this state of affairs was a diagnosis of neurosis, based upon a psychological explanation in accordance with his later theorising. Having murdered their leader, the guilt for this deed was passed down through several generations until another leader called Moses appeared on the scene. The mythology associated with Moses was, according to Freud, an imaginative screen memory constructed by using the defence mechanisms of repression, denial, displacement and idealisation to deal with the real anxiety that followed from the trauma associated with the cause and processes of the Exodus as well as certain post-Exodus events. For Freud, the origin of Jewish/Christian Religion must contain the element of the traumatic death of a beloved leader which in turn give rise to defensive dreamlike screen memories, to be distinguished, of course, from those accounts of events with purely historical intent. The events following the slaughter of the beloved leader resemble, for Freud, the influence of pathological guilt upon an ego weakened by various defence mechanisms, an ego fearing ruin and destruction and desiring supernatural protection from that ruin and destruction via various forms of wish-fulfillment. As a consequence, various acts of catharsis permeate the worship of such a being, but it nevertheless appears as if the historical truth of these events has eventually emerged.
Campbell introduces the logos of the Hero into this arena of discussion, claiming that “logic” demanded the transformation of Moses the Egyptian, into Moses the Jew. Apart from the difficulties with the mythological accounts of these events there are many other historical problems associated with the accounts of events we find in the Pentateuch, including that of the dating of the Exodus which was part of the “form” of the great cycle of the wandering of the patriarchs and their transformation into the “chosen people”(Campbell, Page 137). Perhaps it is, as Campbell suggests, that the real hero of this cycle was not Moses, but rather the emergence of Gods chosen people. The Jewish people thus become “symbols” for what is holy in what Paul Ricoeur called “the realm of the sacred”.
For Freud and Jung , the symbolism relating to the murdering of the father, undoubtedly had both a sexual and spiritual dimension ( a kind of resurrecting of the mother as goddess): the subsequent guilt being also associated with an attempt to convert the patriarchal social order to a matriarchal order. Kant, the Philosopher, spoke about a perfect moral/social order which was part of the “hidden plan” of civilisation: a process that he claimed could take one hundred thousand years.
The Philosophy of Ancient Greece and the Enlightenment Philosophy of Kant distance themselves from the dialectical problems associated with the resolution or synthesis of opposites under one representation. Logical principles such as noncontradiction and sufficient reason and practical principles such as “The Golden Mean”, begin from the perspective of the whole, and work their way down via the categories to parts which retain characteristics of the whole in the domains of “The Good”, “The True”, and “The Beautiful”. “The Holy” is, of course part of the “The Form of the Good”, along with “Justice”. All of these domains and realms are situated in a matrix of logos, phusis, aletheia, areté, arché, epistemé, psuché and eudaimonia: a matrix which finds the rational golden mean between dialectical extremes.
The concept of “The Whole” has also been the focus of Melanie Kleins Psychoanalytical theory. She relates the concept to that of the Whole Mother who has both Good and Bad aspects. She disagrees with Freud on the question of the dating of the superego in the process of psycho-sexual development, claiming that this aspect of the mind was formed much earlier than Freud suspected. Obviously the decentering power elucidated by Jean Piaget in which the individual child becomes able to see an object from a point of view other than their own, is a key factor in the process of the moral development of the child.
For Klein, the role of persecutory anxiety was related to the Freudian Death Instinct which seeks a return to inorganic (dead) forms, and was to be found in a wider range of phenomena than Freud specifically referred to. It could, Klein argued , be found in the relation of the infant to the mothers breast (a part object until the infant realises that the mothers whole permeates both her good and bad/frustrating aspects). On this account the power of the imagination of the infant is sufficiently well developed to engage in fantasising destroying the part object that is bad. In this process the breast is split into the good and the bad, the good being the breast that is the source of nourishment and safety and the bad breast being frustrating to such an exent that persecutory anxiety emerges as a consequence. Attacking the breast in fantasy is, Klein argues, a defence mechanism process, designed to protect the good breast from annihilation. This fantasy is the source of paranoid schizoid states that prevent an individual from seeing another human psuché as a whole, as something independently, good-in-itself.
The Human Psuché, Klein argues, moves from the paranoid-schizoid phase to a depressive phase because the individual begins a process of integrating their personality by uniting the good and bad aspects of the whole object under one representation, thus realising, for example, that it is one and the same mother, who loves, and frustrates, alternatively. It is at this inflection point that Eros makes its influence felt, becoming an important integrating force in the next stage of development: the depressive position/phase. It is in this latter phase that guilt begins to play a formative role as does the cathartic act of reparation. The depressive position has its own form of anxiety associated with it, namely,that connected with the loss of a loved or highly-valued object. In cases where regression occurs ( a weakened ego) there my supervene a state of melancholia in which the taking of ones own life may become an issue.
Mythology and Religion originate in this jungle of defence mechanisms and mental powers. To the extent that the defence mechanism of idealisation is involved, is the extent to which we encounter a primitive form of identification (another defence mechanism) which may lie behind the conception of many of our divinities. Greek Mythology it can be argued, avoided extreme forms of idealisation and may be more associated with the defence mechanism of sublimation than those primitive forms of identification involved in worship of many primitive objects.
In his Chapter entitled “Gods and Heros of the European West”, Campbell calls upon a Freudian analysis of the phenomenon of the displacement of matriarchal goddesses by Patriarchal warrior gods. There certainly was a manifestation of such displacement in Ancient Greece when Zeus is supposed to have given birth to Athene from his brain, thus also severing the previous integration of sexuality and spirituality which we find in goddess cultures. Had it not been for the presence of female oracles and the respect for their wise prophesies one may view such a phenomenon in isolation as the devaluation of the goddess culture:
“It is in fact amazing to what extent the female figure of epic, drama, and romance have been reduced to the status of mere objects;, or when functioning as subjects, initiating action of their own, have been depicted either as incarnate demons or mere allies of the masculine will……their accent is so displaced that they appear at first glance—though not, indeed, at second—to support the patriarchal notion of virtue, areté, which they actually, in some measure, refute.” Page 158
Even in Philosophical contexts during the time of Socrates we witnessed a diminshment of importance of female Philosophers like Diotima, one of the early tutors of Socrates. Many other female figures of wisdom throughout the ages with the possible exception of the oracles, have also experienced less attention for their wisdom. We know, however, that the oracle tradition in Ancient Greece lasted for approximately 600 years. For these oracles, epstemé was a major virtue. In speech, epistemé manifests itself in saying the right thing in the right way at the right time, whereas in action it manifests itself in doing the right thing in the right way at the right time. Arché, diké and aletheia also played important roles, especially in the Philosophies of the three Greats of the period, namely, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all of whom paid homage to the wisdom of the oracles, thereby elevating wisdom to one of the major themes of future Philosophy.
The Philosophers, we would argue, have therefore sublimated the goddess cultures that survived through the institution of the oracles, perhaps in a similar way to poets like Shakespeare. Insofar as the spirit of Philosophy and oracular wisdom inhabits certain quarters of our modern universities and modern cultures(poetry, religion, mythology, etc) these devalued female presences remain the latent content of our cultural dreams. Perhaps these Philosphers are also in some sense related to Tiresias, that figure who can be seen as a synthesis of the opposites of male and female.
Campbell paradoxically equates areté with patriarchal excellence in the above quote, perhaps because one of the principal virtues of Homeric Greece was that of Courage, given the fact that one of the major causes of the ruin and destruction of cities during this period was War. In such circumstances the physical prowess of men became a valued asset. There were however during various periods of the Ancient Greek era, female warriors who also manifested the virtue of courage. There is no doubt however, that insofar as the West was concerned the matriarchal culture slipped into the unconscious of our cultures, appearing periodically as “returns of the repressed”. Once this symbolic dream of displacement had achieved some cultural momentum these moments became fewer and fewer. Campbell manifests this problem in his account of “female excellence”:
“In this masculine dream world, the excellence of the female is supposed to reside in:
a)her beauty of form (Aphrodite)
b)her constancy and respect for the marriage bed (Hera)
c)her ability to inspire excellent males to excellent patriarchal deeds (Athene)”(Page 159)
Campbell also points out, in the context of this discussion, that Aphprodite was not above bribing Paris with the beautiful Helen, if he would only give her the golden apple she coveted. Recent evidence suggests that some of this myth of the fall of Troy may have credence. Campbell also evokes the Psychology of Jung who insists that however “conscious” we become of ourselves and our world, there will always remain substantial unconscious powers and ideas that will refuse to remain inert and buried and will in various ways seek expression through our encounters with others and the external world. Jung claims further that this transfer of unconscious energy will eventually transform x into its opposite, such is the lack of control we have over such forces and ideas.(Page 160)
Jung invokes Heraclitus who sees in the same road, both the road leading up and the road leading down. For Aristotle, however, the Logos of the road unifies these opposites and ensures that if we know that both of these aspects relate to the same road, we will not get lost in our journey through life. It is tempting here to invoke Freud and his Aristotelian and Kantian opposition to dialectical logic.
Homers Iliad and Odyssey are about events that are separated in time and many scholars have pondered what these two works say about the human mind. Julian Jaynes, the Princeton Psychologist, claims that the heros of the Ilaid, namely Achilles and Agamemnon are clearly not conscious individuals as we are but were subject to hallucinated voices that occurred when important anxiety related decisions were to be made. These individuals believed their voices to be of divine origin. Jaynes, however, questions the attribution to the divine, pointing out that all the sensory motor functions of the brain are bilaterally situated in both hemispheres, with the exception of Language, which, in the normal case, is situated in the left hemisphere. Jaynes also points out, however, that the right hemisphere is quite capable of recognising and even obeying elementary language forms and commands. Jaynes hypothesises that at a particular period in History, around 1200 BC, the transition to consciousness became a widespread phenomenon. Before this, In moments of high anxiety, he claimed, a voice which may have been the trace memory of the words of a wise man or supposed God would guide the individual to make the right decisions in life at critical moments. Kant, indeed, claimed that the idea of God was an idea in mans mind which has a very complicated relation to our mind and its knowledge of the external world. Kant believes that God is, in some sense a presence in our world, but one whose nature we cannot possibly fathom. This presence, however, will reward those individuals whose deeds are in accordance with areté, arche, diké, logos, epistemé etc. This may suggest that we cannot have any significant contact with God via our senses, but only through our wills which control our motor systems—on the condition of course that this will is both knowedgeable and wise.
Knowledge of the nature of death is also an important theme in Mythology and Philosophy and given that in mythology we are in the realm of the sensory–the image and its expression by the power of the imagination—such knowledge must remain limited and fail to reveal the extent of the presence of Thanatos either in the human psuché or in the world. The oracular proclamation during Ancient Greek Times to “know thyself!” must have challenged us to know something about the essence of death. Socrates in his death cell addressed this issue and the oracles must have been pleased by his account, thus confirming his status of being the wisest man in Athens.
Philosophically, the good whole object of the Mother was displaced not in favour of warrior patriarchs but rather “The Forms” (Principles) embedded in a matrix of physis, diké, areté, epistemé, logos, aletheia, techné, and eudaimonia. Plato summarised this state of affairs well in his dialogue, “The Republic” when he claimed that the form of the good was the highest of all forms, higher even than the Truth (aletheia). The sensori-motor world which was riddled with negations that naturally gave rise to a dialectical form of thought, was transcended in both the works of Plato and Aristotle. Kant, too, produced a Critical Philosophy that synthesised (resolved) a number of important dialectcal dilemmas in both his Theoretical and Practical Philosophy. Overall, one can claim that Philosophy in the above forms transcended mythical forms without volating the priciples of reason, categories of thought and concepts of psuché, areté, logos, aletheia, epistemé etc.