Abstract

This work examines the function of the concept of myth exhibited in the work of Ernst Cassirer, Roland Barthes, Mircea Eliade and James Hillman. These thinkers represent very different perspectives on the nature of myth, the relation of myth to other cultural endeavor, and myth's import and value. ;Cassirer is a critical philosopher of culture committed to expanding Kant's critique of knowledge to encompass the entire gamut of cultural forms. I use Cassirer's work as the theoretical backbone for the present project. His analysis of mythical symbolic formation is an acknowledgement of the legitimacy, as well as the peculiarity, of this mode of symbolic activity as it accomplishes its unique configuration of the subjective and objective features of existence. ;To highlight and critique Cassirer's complicated and subtle arguments, I compare his account of mythical formation with Barthes' semiological analysis of mythical signification. Eliade, as philosopher of religion, offers an analysis of the constitution of mythical spatio-temporality, and Hillman, a depth psychologist, examines the constellation of the subject as organized archetypally. Their work provides a useful foil in clarifying Cassirer's position and making apparent the problems endemic in his analysis. ;Piecing together these diverse accounts of myth shows that theories of myth themselves tend to exhibit the same sorts of traits ascribed to myth, and this work articulates the ways in which the theories function mythically. Among other important functional features, analysis uncovers the concept of myth delimiting or demarcating two ontologically distinct and differently valued 'regions', one of which belongs to human being proper and the other which must be excluded while remaining available to appropriation by the region deemed of ontological and valuational priority. ;The positing of the self-creative nature of the human process through the agency of mythical formation goes hand-in-hand with the positing of a telos of unbounded freedom for human being in each of these theories. This work examines the deficiencies of maintaining both of these positions and offers suggestions for re-thinking this type of cultural formation in light of metaphysical assumptions drawn from classical American philosophy