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In Campbells opening to Chapter 6, entitled “Hellenism (331BC —324 AD”),he argues that:
“Greek Mythology declined from the status of religion to literature because of the highly critical Greek mind, which was already turned against it in the 6th and 5th centuries BC.” (Page 237)
This is an interesting and complex claim, perhaps resting on an assumption that religious texts were somehow differently structured than poetic or literary texts. There is one obvious difference relating to the events that are represented in these texts which in the case of poetry and literature might be known by the artist to be impossible in actuality, whereas in the case of certain fantastic Biblical representations we are expected to believe that these events actually occured when we know that as depicted they were impossible, given our knowledge of how the world is, and works. Religious texts are claiming actuality, reality (about real places, real people, real, events), whereas literary/poetic texts are merely claiming to be, at best, imitations of reality, laden with symbolic intention and referring to a latent content related to the aesthetic ideas of the artist.
The purposes of religious and literary texts certainly to some extent appear to be different. Adrian Stokes, the Kleinian Art Critic, compared Art and Love (Eros) in his essay on Michelangelo(The Critical Works of Adrian Stokes, Volume 3,London, Thames and Hudson, 1978), claiming that there is both an enveloping intention in Art as well as the singular idea of the essence of the object that is loved/appreciated. The art object, it is argued possesses a holistic self sufficiency which is embedded in the pulsing life of the world .The audience of literary performances often bring with them a wish to escape from the everyday life-world which Kant described as “melancholically haphazard”, containing as it does, violence, disease and many other forms of misery. The genius of the artist identifies with this spirit and uses this knowledge skillfully, in accordance with Kantian subjectively universal and necessary principles. In the middle of the constellation of such affects and effects, many have pointed out the resemblance of the appreciative state to the hypnotic state, which we know was of interest to Freud in the early days of psychoanalysis.
Now it is not out of the question that some religious texts aim at a similar hypnotic state in order to accomplish their mission of installing faith in the masses. Freud, refers to this process of envelopment as “the oceanic feeling”, claiming that it alone cannot account for our experiences of the sublimity of religious experience because of its initimate resemblance to the fantasy world of the imagination. The poet and the Philosopher have pedagogical intentions involving teaching the members of their audience something important about the world and themselves via in the former case the character and plot of the work. In the case of a Shakespearean play it is often the case that the 4 underlying questions(“What can we know?”, “What ought we to do?”, What can we hope for?”, “What is man?”, posed by Kant defines the domain of Philosophy and these are often featured as underlying themes of Shakespearean plays, conveyed via his aesthetic ideas. There is clearly, then, in both poetic texts and Shakespeare plays, both a manifest and a latent content constructed from these underlying aesthetic ideas. The Greek term Aletheia, (Unconcealment), which Heidegger claims was the Ancient Greek equivalent of Truth is also important in this aesthetic process of moving from the manifest to the latent content.
The key difference between religious and literary/aesthetic works is that the latter are not intended to be representations of actual events and people, and while they are not exactly fantasies of the kind we find in fairy-tales, they are nevertheless symbolic imitations of reality designed to refer via their manifest content to rational ideas of the good, true, beautiful, sublime, sacred, (latent content). Often poems or Shakespearean speeches have a “confessional” intention which hopes to reveal (aletheia) the state of the speakers soul/life.. One of the most important discoveries of Freud relates to the central agency of the Ego which he claimed was formed of the precipitate of lost objects. The losing of the the loved object demands at the very least a long mourning process with perhaps brief excursions into the psychoanalytic domain of the melancholic. The artis/genius knows this about himself and all other human beings and puts this truth to work in the organisation of his aesthetic ideas. In Shakespeares case we can also bear witness to the manifestation of other psychotic processes and defence mechanisms at work in furtherance of the plot of the work, for example, in Macbeths hallucination of a dagger and the ghost of Banquo, the man he killed earlier.
The world the artist is intent upon revealing the essence of, is not the melancholically haphazard world of everyday life but rather that world which contains a Kantian “hidden plan” for a hopeful future. This plan is not a utopian fantasy but rather the more down to earth hope that men in the future will treat each other with respect, in other words, treat each other as ends-in-themselves.
Religious texts are often about actions that occur “because of each other” and the correct understanding of their meaning necessitates an understanding of a complex non-linear idea of causation resembling the Aristotleian schema of fourfold causation. Ancient Greek Philosophy and Poetry both embraced the dualistic oracular proclamations:
“Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”
and
“Know thyself!”
Both of these proclamations are causally related. It is necessary to know thyself if one is to minimise the human ruin and destruction that attend mans creations. This transcendental truth formed the background of Socratic, Platonic, Aristotelian, Kantian, and Wittgensteinian thought. Macbeths lack of self-knowledge, to take one example, led him to misinterpret the prophecy of the three sisters at the beginning of the play, thus leading to the desruction of both hmself and Lady Macebeth. These three sisters remind the classics student of the Ancient Greek Erinyes which were, together with Eros, replaced by the more temperate pantheon of divinities led by Zeus.
We ought to recall that oracular proclamations were received by their audience in a spirit of awe and wonder: their incantations, therefore, might have seemed hypnotic. More often than not these “messages from Apollo” (latent content) were delivered by females who claimed that the “sacred water spoke” (manifest content). It is reported that the Delphic Oracle , for example, often went into a trance-like state before delivering the incantatory proclamation. Whether or not this was a pretended state, or merely the posture needed for delivering incantatory proclamations, is not entirely clear. If the former was the case a Freudian explanation may explain why pretence was needed. The Oracle may be encouraging the natural learning mode of imitation in the audience , thus using the defence mechanism of identification. Perhaps poetry with its incantatory tone might have originated from this phenomenon, and thereafter inventively created other mechanisms to achieve its semi-hypnotic effects. The Poem, of course, is also a self sufficient object containing symbolic language and metaphors that are organised by aesthetic ideas and while not exactly sacred (a status claimed for religious texts), are certainly candidates for the status of the good, the beautiful and the sublime(a state intimately related to the human power of moral agency and the Good in General)
Cambell then claims that the critical mind of the Ancient Greeks pushed them to reject polytheism for monotheism which, of course, if true, would leave us with no option but to accept the thesis that we humans too, are self causing entities with a free will which, if used wrongly, results in evil. There is no reason to doubt that the Greek Philosophers believed that human willing was the issue behind the Oracles warning that “Everything created by man leads to ruin and destruction. Aristotle, we ought to recall in his essence specifying definition claimed that we are only “potentially” rational, and in practical contexts this means–under the condition of possessing a good will (which is the central issue of Kantian Ethics). Such a move to a conception of a will causing itself to choose or not to choose the Good necessitates a shift from the religious demand that we obey God, to the Philosophical demand that we understand what the divine Logos expects from us. Individual Responsibility thus supplamts faith in the Divine Being.
The fact that we possess such long childhoods (when compared to the animals) means that responsibility can only be expected fully from those that have left their childhoods and adolescence and are thereby free to exercise their rationality. This monotheistic conception with space for a self-causing free will was then overridden by the so-called Christian Truth, which Campbell expresses thus:
“The One God in three persons, with his pantheon of angels, counter pantheon of devils, communities of saints, forgiveness of sins, and resurrection of the Body, as well as the multiple presence of the dead and resurrected Son of God–true God and true Man—who was born miraculously of the Virgin Mother Mary.” Page 237
There are at least two supernatural events contained in this Campbellian version of the essence of Christianity—a life after death and a virgin birth, both of which would not have seemed realistic to Aristotle and other Greek Philosophers. By the time we get to Aristotle the Philosophical focus was on the universal and necessary characteristics of Being qua Being, a focus Campbell describes in terms of the Great Mother of the Pantheon and the different forms these pantheons took at different points in time. These different forms manifested the underlying power of her Being.
Campbell notes that it was Alexander the Great that put an end to the world order of divided kingdoms and Regions in the name of a universal idea/telos. Tutored by Aristotle, Alexander undoubtedly heard philosophers (perhaps even Aristotle) claiming that Greek ideas could rule the world. Alexander, in certain circumstances used Aristotles principle of the Golden Mean in his conquest of Persia, refusing to destroy the temples and shrines of conquered territories (thus refusing to follow the example of the Persians). The Persians may have been charitable to the Jews, but they did not extend this charity to the Greek territories they conquered. Campbell claims that Alexander created a new world order but in reality the principles he largely followed were both oracular and Philosophical. He announced to the Orient the substantial presence of a European spirit in the world. This new Spirit Camobell claims had 4 aspects: firstly:
“..we note not merely respect for the gods of all religions, but an almost scientific effort to recognise analogies: so the specific deities of the various lands began to be identified and worshipped as equivalent to each other” Page 240
Secondly, concerning the role of both Philosophy and Science in the interpretation of myth:-
“In the 6th and 5th century Greece, the philosophers had recognised a relationship of the Dionysian-Orphic complex to philosophical thought, and in the cults of the Orient they now discovered analogous possibilities.” (Page 241)
Thirdly,
“the breakthrough of the Greek inquiring intellect with Alexander into India, where a totally unforeseen species of philosophic inquiry had been developed in the various yogic schools of the Jain, Buddhist, and Brahmanic centers. A far deeper understanding of the practical psychological—as opposed to the cosmological—relevancy of mythology was represented in those disciplines, than anything the West was to achieve until the century of Nietzsche, Freud and Jung.” (Page 241)
Campbell also notes in this context that this practical psychological understanding included a good deal of what he called “psychosomatic mystic love”. Fourthly,
“after about two centuries of European influence upon Asia, the tide began to turn, until presently a powerful surge of reaction developed, which culiminated with the victories of Christianity over the gods and philosophies of Classical antiquity.” (Page 241)
Campbell eleborates upon this last point by claiming that the civilisation of the European West collapsed for seven centuries. There is much to unpack and clarify in the above 4 aspects but let us begin with the claim that we encountered a deeper understanding of the relation of practical Philosophy to Mythology in the Orient. It is not clear what Campbell means here. Freudian Psychology was Kantian to the core, and Kant certainly preceded Nietzsche, Freud and Jung. We have argued in earlier reviews of Campbells work that Kantian Philosophy and Philosophical Psychology does not contradict the often vague comments upon Being qua Being (Brahman?) we encounter in Hindu texts. We also noted that Kantian Philosophy is sympathetic to much that can be found in the Bible, but probably not to the postulation of events such as a virgin birth and resurrections. We pointed out that the insights Kant brought to the field of religion were very much influenced by Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy. European History manifests a very clear line of development stretching from the Golden Age of Greece to the Art of the Renaissance, to the Enlightenment and Kant’s important contributions (and elaborations upon many different European ideas). There is also an imprtant Cosmopolitan thread linking Alexander the Great and Kants vision of a Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends. In other words the links between Kant and Freud to Ancient Greece were far stronger than the links to any Oriental conception of the relation of practical psychology to Mythology.
Insofar as Campbells fourth aspect is concerned, we also question the claim that Christianity triumphed over the Philosophies of Classical Antiquity. We are aware that all Philosophical schools were closed by Justine, a Roman Emperor, but this did not prevent Aristotle from being revered as “The Philosopher” throughout this period of so-called “collapse”. His influence upon both the European and Arabic World was considerable until the establishment of the First Universities when his influence was further sedimented in World-Philosophy and World-History. Indeed it is also important to point out that even Aquinas felt forced to confront and comment upon the works of Aristotle, translating the Greek into Latin in acknowledgment of “The master of those that know”. Aquinas claimed in Aristotelian spirit that all human life(psuché) is sacred because there is a spark of the divine within, and this certainly resembles the hylomorphic account of Noos. Yet there are tensions between these two thinkers on a number of issues including the notion of a free will undetermined by Gods natural and eternal law. It certainly appears to be problematic to project upon Aristotles Philosophy the Christian of Original Sin. Indeed, in this context, Campbell concludes with a remark on the Origin of Christian Mythology, claiming that it could be interpreted:
“as a development out of Old Testament Thought under Persian Influence, with nothing, as yet particularly Greek—unless the emphasis on love” (Page 290=
This confirms that European Culture was formed principally by journeys along two different roads: the roads leading from Athens and Jerusalem. Aquinas, then, can be admired for his attempt to reconcile these two very different accounts of man and his world, but in doing so he may well have diminished the importance of our Greek heritage which may well have pleased him. Fixating upon Love given the ambivalent nature of man does appear somewhat arbitrary, preparing the way for Romanticism and a “Modernist World.”