Losev dialectic of myth read short online. Alexey Losev "Dialectic of Myth" (brief summary). IV. myth is not a metaphysical construction

In the work of the great Russian philosopher A.F. Losev, the problems of myth and the personal form of its existence occupy a large place. In 1927 he wrote the book Dialectic of Myth, which gives a detailed and comprehensive analysis of myth.

First of all, A.F. Losev draws a line of demarcation between the traditional idea of ​​myth and its dialectical-phenomenological understanding (in the development of the philosopher himself). If in the traditional "mythological" paradigm the myth is interpreted as a legend, fiction, fiction, then in Losev it turns into a phenomenological field, the "environment" of the existence of human society, the human personality. Myth becomes a synonym for phenomenologically understood being, that is, being itself.

The initial acquaintance with the structure of the "Dialectics of Myth" indicates that A.F. Losev treats myth not only as a philosophical, but also as a theological concept. He builds a system of proofs of the “existence of a myth” through the concepts of “kataphatic” (positive) and “apophatic” (that is, a description of the divine phenomenon through its “negative” definitions - which, in fact, the phenomenon is not) of the “prism” of perception. Apophatic myth, according to Losev, “is not a fiction, or a fiction, is not a fantastic fiction, a myth is not an ideal being ... it is not a scientific and, in particular, a primitive scientific construction ... a myth is not a metaphysical construction ... it is not neither a scheme nor an allegory... is a poetic work, is not a specifically religious creation... is not a dogma... is not a historical event as such...” .

Under the concept of "cataphatic" A.F. Losev understands personal existence, "the sphere of the whole personality" and "energetic manifestation of the personality".

A. F. Losev argues that myth is a pre-conscious, pre-theoretical phenomenon. “In myth there is no division into subject and object, therefore myth is reality itself, life itself. And this, in fact, is not the “objectification of meaning”, but its “objectivity” ... prefigurative ... reality. At the same time, myth is a symbolic reality. The symbol is a kind of body of myth. “A myth, from the point of view of A. F. Losev, is such a reality that forms a special understanding on the basis of its ontological, material content, living direct beingness. And at the same time, this beingness is symbolic. Losev A.F. says that any thing, passing through consciousness, is symbolic, that is, mythical, in the final analysis. If the object is an element of the dialectical, then the symbol is the basic component of the phenomenological consciousness, the mythical consciousness. Getting into the phenomenological reality, any phenomenon or thing is mythologized, that is, it is interpreted within the framework of the general humanitarian paradigm that dominates in a given historical period, and is woven into the fabric of personally understood being.

The dialectic of myth is its phenomenology, presented, in turn, through the phenomenology of personality. If religion is, according to Losev, the substantiality of the personality, then the myth is precisely the shell, coloring, energy painting.

Myth, according to A.F. Losev, is not fiction, fiction (even if in its scientific “incarnation”), but is a “personality”. The author connects here the concept of myth with the concept of personality in a rather original way. The concept of personality is presented by A. F. Losev through the analysis of myth as a fundamental religious and philosophical concept of phenomenologically (and dialectically) understood being. It becomes for Losev one of the main metaphysical problems. He dealt with this problem throughout his creative life. P. L. Karabushenko and L. Ya. Podvoisky in their book “Philosophy and Elitology of A. F. Losev’s Culture” write that the philosopher’s interest “in the problem of Personality originated in his student years ... At that time, A. F. Losev seriously thought about a career as a psychologist... He begins studying personality with experiments on himself, noting either the “Dionysian feeling” that bursts into the soul, or the “unconscious”, leading to insanity; then death and sweet dusk, and always Christ - bright, cleansing, exalted. The authors of the monograph conclude that "it is the Personality that constitutes the true unity of our spiritual life, its substantial and quite definite form" .

Losev very scrupulously approached “the etymological and semantic meaning of “personality” ... It is impossible to convey the depth of the meaning of “personality” with the Latin term “subjectum”. “God forbid,” he warns, “to translate the Latin word “individual” as “person”! Point out at least one Latin dictionary that says that the word “individual” can mean “person”. “Individual” is simply “indivisible”, “inseparable”... Both the table and any cat are such an “individual”. So what about personality? “Individual” is a real object, only taken from a certain side, and nothing more.

A.F. Losev interprets myth-making as a deeply personal process-state, and not from the standpoint of pure subjectivity in relation to the object (myth) under study. Myth in Losev is studied declaratively, uncritically, unscientifically, that is, by the method identical, isomorphic to the object under study itself (“immanently”). Probably, having in mind precisely this conceptual “outsideness” of the personality within the framework of Losev’s conceptual constructions, the famous historian of Russian philosophy S. S. Khoruzhy writes: “The actual concept of personality ... still remains with him (Losev. - Yu. K.) underdeveloped and rather obscure; however, already in the very presence of this concept, as well as the development of the concept of the intelligentsia, and in the mature assimilation of the doctrine of divine energies ... the philosophy of the Dialectic of Myth departs from orthodox symbolism and reveals an evolution in the direction of Christian (Orthodox) personalism.

A.F. Losev repeatedly emphasizes that the myth is not an ideal being, but is a real being. The philosopher takes into consideration not the theory of myth, but myth as a phenomenon, as a certain (namely, phenomenologically and dialectically) understood social being. Losev says that, "reasoning immanently, mythical consciousness is least of all an intellectual and mental-ideal consciousness" . He argues that a myth is always synthetically vital and consists of living beings (note that A.F. Losev deliberately does not put the word “consists” in quotation marks. For him, a myth really consists of people, that is, a myth as being is woven from “beings” It is interesting that Losev's personality of myth is extra-axiological (which contrasts sharply, for example, with the violent social intensity of Bakhtin's theory of personality as a concept of responsible being). is not the philosophy of the Absolute, the philosophy of the substantive principle, which is typical, for example, for Heidegger.The axiology of the substantive principle of Losev's philosophy is exclusively religious, completely immersed in the field of Christianity.

Non-axiological (in the strict methodological sense - pre-axiological) is a characteristic feature of Losev's theory of personality, built on the ancient principle of evidence.

The work of A. F. Losev on myth was a characteristic work of ancient philosophical style: “Thoughts about the unity of philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and music, so characteristic of ancient culture, did not leave the scientist ... “And mathematics itself sounds like this sky like this music...”, “mathematics and the musical element are one for him”. "... All seven ancient arts appear in Losev's works in mutual interweaving and addition, creating a holistic and truly encyclopedic universal scientific cosmos" .

Losev uses unusual concepts in the Dialectic of Myth that do not fit into the classical philosophical traditions of “immanent reasoning”, “intelligentsia”, “semantic activity”, “initial intuitions”, etc. Therefore, for its adequate reading, it is necessary to try to expand as much as possible (inside oneself ) perceptual range, to create a different heuristic "gestalt" in order to ensure maximum isomorphism of one's own cognitive activity to the cognizable phenomenon. Moreover, it is a phenomenon, not an object. There are no studied objects for Losev. All of them are fluid, subject-dependent, emotionally colored, personally “placed” phenomena in being.

Concrete, living being (according to A. F. Losev, social) is an active being, and not passively assumed to be known. "Myth is life itself ... vitally felt and created, material reality and corporality" . Being "objective" - ​​abstract-metaphysical, scientific-like, eternal, mechanistically understood - does not exist for Losev. The philosopher strives for "comfort" in being, being itself must be humanized, "personalized" in order for a person to be in it, to live, and not theoretically be present, objectively abide.

So, a myth is a fluid, personalized object-subject being, which only exists in the human (more precisely, in the personal) dimension. This is a poetically, philosophically understood paradigm of human existence. For a true understanding of the phenomenal - personal - being, what is important is what is "revealed and sensually perceptible." “Myth is an intelligently given symbol of life, the necessity of which is dialectically obvious, or a symbolically given intelligentsia of life... Here, “life” is simply the category of the realization of this or that intelligentsia. And then the definition of myth will be as follows: it is a symbolically realized intelligentsia. But I affirm that a person is a symbolically realized intelligentsia ... a myth is a personal being, or more precisely, an image of a personal being, a personal form, the face of a personality.

The intelligentsia is the intention of meaning, the activity of the “super-intelligentsia” immanently presented to the world (according to Losev - “One”). This is what distinguishes a person from a thing. Therefore, its identification - partial, at least - with the myth turns out to be absolutely undoubted. Further, in personality we have not merely self-consciousness. It has to be constantly brought to light. It must have perspective depth. Personality as a kind of self-consciousness would be a purely intelligent being, outside of time and history. A real personality must have an abiding core and changeable accidents associated with this core as its energetic self-manifestations. Therefore, the antithesis of internal and external is also absolutely necessary for the concept of personality. Since personality is self-consciousness, it is always the opposition of itself to everything external that is not itself. Delving deeper into the knowledge of itself, it also finds in itself the same antithesis of subject and object, the knower and the known. The intelligentsia, on the other hand, is Losev's self-consciousness of the One (original principle), self-comprehension - the discovery of personal existence as its own meaning. “This antithesis of subject and object is, furthermore, necessarily overcome in personality. This opposition of oneself to the environment, as well as the opposition of oneself to oneself in the act of self-observation, is only possible when there is a synthesis of both opposites. I oppose myself to the outside. But this means that I have some kind of image of the external, which is created both by the external itself and by myself. And in it, I and the environment merge to complete indistinguishability. But this means that what I observe is myself, i.e., the identity of me with myself, as subject with object, is absolutely indisputable. Thus, personality, as self-knowledge and, consequently, as always subject-object knowledge, is a necessary expressive category. There are necessarily two different planes in a personality, and these two planes are necessarily identified in one indivisible image... A personality is always an expression, and therefore fundamentally a symbol. But the most important thing is that a person is necessarily a realized symbol and a realized intelligentsia... Personality is a fact. It exists in history. It lives, fights, is born, flourishes and dies. It is always necessarily life, and not a pure concept ... Personality is always a bodily given intelligentsia, a bodily realized symbol ... The body is the living face of the soul ... The body is an integral element of the personality. So, every living person is a myth, understood by Losev as a personal, extra-scientific paradigm, a concrete personal being, as an implementation, realization, reification of meaning. “Every personality is a myth, not because it is a personality, but because it is comprehended and framed from the point of view of this or that mythical consciousness ... All other elements of being (concretely understood, historically concrete being) are mythical only because that are understood and constructed from the point of view of personal-mythical consciousness. That is, consciousness, represented, in fact, by one or another historical paradigm of thinking. "... Man is a myth not because he is, but because he is a man in himself, so to speak, a human thing as a man and as a human person."

A.F. Losev also fills the ratio of religion and mythology in their personal relationship with the appropriate meaning: “Religion and mythology - both live by the self-affirmation of the individual. In religion, a person seeks consolation, justification, purification, and even salvation... In a myth, a person also tries to manifest himself, to express himself, to have some kind of personal history. This common personality basis makes the divergence of both spheres also noticeable. Indeed, in religion we find some special, specific self-affirmation of the personality. This is some kind of fundamental self-affirmation, the affirmation of oneself in its final basis, in its primordial existential roots. We will not be mistaken if we say that religion is always this or that self-affirmation of the personality in eternity ... that it is this or that attempt to affirm the personality in eternal being, to connect it forever with absolute being. The mythic nature of being is its paradigmality. Personality gives being a directed activity. Thus, the main driving force of Losev's personality in being is an act as an all-encompassing attraction of the human will (conscious, responsible) to being. Acting within the framework of the paradigmatic property of the metaphysics of unity, A.F. Losev presents the relationship of personality and being as, of course, something more than a subject-object dichotomous pair (although quite often used by Losev the dialectician to build his own system of proofs). The person is thus much larger than the subject. It belongs (as a phenomenon, as a phenomenon) to a different cognitive “plan”, a different perceptual area, an extra-scientific area of ​​intuitive comprehension (grasping) of the wholeness, the essence of being. Losev the dialectician easily translates his research into a different conceptual layer, where other cognitive (in this case, religious) laws work, built in by the author into the general system of substantiation of his gnostic philosophical system of the ontological justification of myth. Most likely, here we have a complex in terms of heterogeneity of epistemological approaches and volumes of concepts included in the system, but still an internally consistent phenomenon of the “mythical”. A phenomenon presented as a meta-phenomenon belonging to different worlds (objective and subjective), or rather, the phenomenological and mystical-intuitive worlds (in the terminology of A.F. Losev himself).

The fine art sketch presented by Losev as an illustration to revealing the essence of personality is extremely interesting. “Speaking of “personal being,” he emphasizes, “we do not at all mean and did not mean that everything in the world is only a person, as “universal animation” in myth cannot be understood at all in the sense that everything in the world is definitely animated. that there are no inanimate things, no death, etc.” The philosopher here makes a fundamental remark for our understanding of the essence of the issue: “Personality,” he writes, “is introduced by us only as a point of view from which being is considered and regarded.” Being "exists" only by a person, phenomenologically reveals itself only through it and by means of it, remaining, in essence, transcendent. The substantiality of being and personality, therefore, is already connected by a religious, and not a mythological component of personality. Every thing must become a social thing, otherwise it will be indifferent to every individual. A layer of personal being lies decisively on every thing, for every thing is nothing but a personality turned inside out ... Each thing, remaining itself, can have endless forms of manifestation of its personal nature.

Thus, according to Losev, the myth is the concrete being of the stay of the personality, but still it is not uniquely the whole personality (“the problem of the relationship between essence and energy”

For an adequate understanding of the specific features of the scientific worldview and its essential differences from the mythological consciousness, the main provisions of A.F. Loseva "The Dialectic of Myth".

First of all, mythology should not be identified with primitive science. Myth is always practical, urgent, emotional, while scientific consciousness (even if we are talking about "primitive" science) implies a certain degree of detachment from the subject, scientific knowledge is never direct, it requires long learning and abstract skills. Science always turns life into an abstract formula, therefore, already at the archaic stage of its development, science distances itself from mythology, although, due to the historical situation, there is both mythologically colored science and scientifically conscious or “scientifically” interpreted mythology.

In this regard, A.F. Losev, one should reject the assumption that science arises from myth, and then scientific knowledge displaces mythology as the intellectual abilities of a person develop. If we dispassionately consider "real" science, i.e. science actually created by living people in a certain historical epoch, then such a science is always not only accompanied by mythology, but also draws its initial intuitions from it. Science is always mythological. For example, Newton's mechanics is built on the hypothesis of a homogeneous and infinite space, but this assumption in itself is not a scientific conclusion, but a mythological image that modern European science accepts as an axiom that does not require confirmation.

The statement that all science is mythological does not mean at all that science and mythology are identical. A science devoid of a mythical basis would represent a completely abstract system of logical and numerical regularities, but this kind of “pure science” (“science-in-itself”) has never existed and does not exist. Of course, Euclid's geometry in its "pure" content is devoid of a mythological component. But the assertion that there are no other spaces, except for the space of Euclidean geometry, is already mythology, because the provisions of this geometry do not say anything about real space and about the configuration of other possible spaces (Lobachevsky or Riemann spaces). Thus, when science destroys a "myth", this means that one system of axioms (propositions borrowed from the myth) is replaced by another system.

According to A.F. Losev, science as such is not interested in the reality of its object. The discovery of a certain “law of nature” says nothing about the reality of itself, much less about the reality of things and phenomena that obey this law. It is obvious that in this respect the myth is directly opposed to the scientific method of research. The myth is aimed at comprehending the entirety of reality and at the highest degree of objectivity, since the question of whether the corresponding mythical phenomena are real or not can never be raised in it. Mythical consciousness operates only with real objects, with the most concrete phenomena (nevertheless, in mythical objectivity one can state the presence of different degrees of reality). In this sense, myth is being itself, concrete reality.

Scientific knowledge abstracts not only from the object, but also from the subject of research, since in the “law of nature” discovered by the scientist there is no indication of either the personality of the scientist himself or any other subjects. Myth, in this respect, turns out to be completely opposite to scientific activity. Every myth, if it does not point to an author, is itself always a subject. A myth is always a living and acting personality. He is objective, and this object is a living personality. A pure scientific position is both non-objective and non-subjective. It is simply this or that logical design, a certain semantic form of judgments.

Science and religion

Science and religion are often seen as opposite forms of worldview, suggesting that science is incompatible with religion. Meanwhile, they do not oppose, but complement each other. Faith, religious feeling do not set themselves the task of interpreting the phenomena explained by the natural sciences, their task is to affirm ethical norms and values. Therefore, the sincere religiosity of many outstanding scientists (for example, M. Planck) did not in the least prevent them from making landmark scientific discoveries.

The radical opposition of science and religion often led to tragic collisions; it is enough to recall the excesses associated with the transition in the 16th-17th centuries. from the geocentric to the heliocentric system of the universe (condemnation of the book of N. Copernicus, burning of J. Bruno, persecution of G. Galileo). The Holy Scripture does not say anything about the scheme of the universe, it is not stated anywhere that the Earth is spherical, the Sun and the planets move around it in concentric spheres. The question of the structure of the universe is beyond the competence of the church authorities, so the appearance of the teachings of Copernicus at first did not cause their negative reaction. Subsequently, in order to condemn the books of Copernicus and Galileo, it was necessary to show that they contradict the Holy Scriptures, and for this it was necessary to resort to indirect arguments, that is, to refer not to direct evidence of canonical texts, but to their interpretation. For example, the mention of the miraculous stop of the movement of the sun by Joshua could be interpreted as follows: since Joshua stopped the Sun, it means that it was moving, which means that the geocentric scheme of the universe is correct, assuming the motion of the Sun and the immobility of the Earth. Galileo, by very witty reasoning, showed that, on the contrary, the miracle of Joshua is possible only in a heliocentric system and is absolutely unthinkable in a geocentric system.

Obviously, the statement about the correspondence of the geocentric system to the “religious picture of the world” and the contradiction of the last heliocentric system, as well as the confrontation between religion and science caused by this legend in its time, are actually devoid of any meaning. The previously declared clash of "scientific" and "religious" worldviews seems to be something far-fetched and unrelated either to scientific activity proper or to the sphere of religious experience.

The spheres of competence of religion and science are in themselves clearly demarcated, but there is an interconnection and interdependence between them. While religion may serve to set values ​​and goals, it has nonetheless learned from science, in a broad sense, what means will lead to the achievement of its intended goals. Science can develop only by those who have fully absorbed the desire for truth and understanding. This aspiration, however, stems from the realm of religion. It also includes the belief in the possibility that the comprehension of the laws that describe the world of existence is accessible to the human mind. Albert Einstein said that he could not imagine a true scientist without this deep religious faith: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

"The Dialectic of Myth" is the last work from Losev's famous octateuch, published between 1927 and 1930, which provoked his arrest and a ban on publishing his own works. In the Eight Books, Losev formulates his philosophical creed, which found its final form in the Dialectic of Myth. The main problem of Losev's entire philosophical concept was the problem of mystical revelations. His philosophy merged interest in myth as a form of consciousness and in mythology as a form of communication with God. According to Losev, the myth is the oldest form of mastering the world, summarizing in one word the multiple specificities of life, which the philosopher studies consistently dialectically: first through delimitation from close, but still different categories, then from the point of view of its own meaning and inner form. Thus, Losev defines myth as a synthesis of four concepts - personality, history, miracle and word. As a result, the final dialectical form is given: "Myth is a given wonderful personal history in words", "Myth is an expanded magic name".

This little study has as its subject one of the darkest areas of human consciousness, which was formerly occupied mainly by theologians or ethnographers. Both of them have become disgraced enough that now we can talk about revealing the essence of the myth by theological or ethnographic methods. And the trouble is not that mystic theologians and empiricist ethnographers (for the most part, theologians are very bad mystics, trying to flirt with science and dreaming of becoming complete positivists, while ethnographers - alas! - are often very bad empiricists, being in the chains of one or another arbitrary and unconscious metaphysical theory). The trouble is that mythological science has not yet become not only dialectical, but even simply descriptive phenomenological. All the same, one cannot get rid of mysticism, since myth claims to speak of mystical reality, and, on the other hand, no dialectic is possible without facts. But if they think that the facts of mystical and mythical consciousness, which I cite as an example, are the facts I myself profess, or that the doctrine of myth consists only of the observation of facts alone, then it is better for them not to delve into my analysis of myth. It is necessary to wrest the doctrine of myth both from the domain of theologians and from the domain of ethnographers; and one must first be forced to take the point of view of dialectics and the phenomenological dialectical purification of concepts, and then let them do whatever they want with the myth. In my positive analysis of myth, I did not follow many who now see the positivism of the study of religion and myth in the forcible expulsion of everything mysterious and miraculous from both. They want to reveal the essence of the myth, but to do this, they first dissect it so that it contains nothing either fabulous or even miraculous. This is either dishonest or stupid. As for me, I do not at all think that my research will be better if I say that a myth is not a myth and religion is not a religion. I take the myth as it is, i.e. I want to reveal and positively fix what a myth is in itself and how it thinks of its own wonderful and fabulous nature. But I ask you not to impose on me points of view that are unusual for me, and I ask you to take from me only what I give, i.e. only one dialectic of myth.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. Myth is not fiction or fiction, not fantastic fiction
II. Myth is not an ideal being
III. Myth is not a scientific and, in particular, a primitive scientific construction.
IV. Myth is not a metaphysical construction
V. Myth is neither a scheme nor an allegory
VI. Myth is not a work of poetry
VII. Myth is a personal form
VIII. Myth is not a specially religious creation
IX. Myth is not dogma
X. Myth is not a historical event as such
XI. Myth is a miracle
XII. Review of all the dialectical moments of the myth from the point of view of the concept of a miracle
XIII. Final dialectic formula
XIV. Transition to real mythology and the idea of ​​absolute mythology

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Alexey Fedorovich LOSEV.

DIALECTICS OF MYTH

Foreword

This little study has as its subject one of the darkest areas of human consciousness, which was formerly occupied mainly by theologians or ethnographers. Both of them have become disgraced enough that now we can talk about revealing the essence of the myth by theological or ethnographic methods. And the trouble is not that mystical theologians and empiricist ethnographers (mostly theologians are very bad mystics, trying to flirt with science and dreaming of becoming complete positivists, and ethnographers - alas! - often very bad empiricists, being in the chains of one or another arbitrary and unconscious metaphysical theory). The trouble is that mythological science has not yet become not only dialectical, but even simply descriptive-phenomenological. All the same, one cannot get rid of mysticism, since myth claims to speak of mystical reality, and, on the other hand, no dialectic is possible without facts. But if it is supposed that the facts of the mystical and mythical consciousness which I cite as an example are confessed by myself facts, or that the doctrine of myth consists only of the observation of facts alone, it is better for them not to delve into my analysis of myth. It is necessary to wrest the doctrine of myth both from the domain of theologians and from the domain of ethnographers; and one must first force one to take the point of view of dialectics and the phenomenological-dialectical purification of concepts, and then let them do whatever they want with the myth. In my positive analysis of myth, I did not follow many who now see the positivism of the study of religion and myth in the forcible expulsion of everything mysterious and miraculous from both. They want to reveal the essence of the myth, but to do this, they first dissect it so that it contains nothing either fabulous or even miraculous. This is either dishonest or stupid. As for me, I do not at all think that my research will be better if I say that a myth is not a myth and religion is not a religion. I take myth as it is, i.e., I want to reveal and positively fix what a myth is in itself and how it thinks of its own wonderful and fabulous nature. But I ask you not to impose on me points of view unusual for me and I ask you to take from me only what I give, that is, only one dialectics myth.

The dialectic of myth is impossible without sociology myth. Although this work does not specifically give a sociology of myth, it is introduction into sociology, which I have always thought philosophically-historically and dialectically. Having analyzed the logical and phenomenological structure of the myth, I turn at the end of the book to the establishment of the main social types mythology. I deal specifically with this sociology of myth in another work, but even here the all-encompassing role of mythical consciousness in different layers of the cultural process is clear. A theory of myth that does not capture cultures down to her social roots, there is a very bad myth theory. You have to be a very bad idealist to tear the myth away from the very thick of the historical process and preach liberal dualism: real life is in itself, and myth is in itself. I have never been a liberal or a dualist, and no one can reproach me for these heresies.

A.Losev

INTRODUCTION

The task of the proposed essay is a significant disclosure of the concept of myth, based only on the material provided by mythical consciousness itself. Any explanatory, for example, metaphysical, psychological and other points of view should be discarded. The myth must be taken as myth, without leading him to what he himself is not. Only having this pure definition and description of the myth, one can begin to explain it from one or another heterogeneous point of view. Not knowing what a myth is in itself, we cannot speak about its life in one or another alien environment. We must first take a stand most mythology, to become the most mythical subject. We must imagine that the world in which we live and all things exist is a world mythical that in general there are only myths in the world. Such a position will reveal the essence of myth as myth. And only then can one engage in heterogeneous tasks, for example, "refute" a myth, hate or love it, fight it or plant it. Without knowing what a myth is, how can one fight or refute it, how can one love it or hate it? One can, of course, not reveal the very concept of myth and still love or hate it. However, all the same, someone who puts himself in one or another external conscious relation to myth must have some kind of intuition of myth, so that logically the presence of myth itself in the mind of the one who operates with it (operating scientifically, religiously, artistically, socially, etc.) nevertheless precedes the actual operations with mythology. Therefore, it is necessary to give an essentially semantic, i.e., first of all, phenomenological, dissection of the myth, taken as such, independently taken in itself.

I. MYTH IS NOT MYTH OR FICTION, IT IS NOT FANTASTIC FICTION

This fallacy of almost all "scientific" methods of investigation of mythology must be rejected in the first place. Of course, mythology is fiction, if we apply to it the point of view of science, and even then not any, but only one that is characteristic of a narrow circle of scientists of modern European history of the last two or three centuries. From some arbitrarily taken, completely conditional point of view, a myth is indeed fiction. However, we agreed to consider the myth not from the point of view of some scientific, religious, artistic, social, etc. worldview, but exclusively from the point of view of the same myth, through the eyes of myth itself, through mythical eyes. It is this mythical view of myth that interests us here. And from the point of view of the mythical consciousness itself, in no case can it be said that myth is a fiction and a play of fantasy.. When the Greek, not in the era of skepticism and the decline of religion, but in the era of the heyday of religion and myth, spoke of his numerous Zeus or Apollo; when some tribes have a custom to put on a necklace of crocodile teeth to avoid the danger of drowning when crossing large rivers; when religious fanaticism reaches the point of self-torture and even self-immolation; – then it would be quite ignorant to assert that the mythical stimuli operating here are nothing more than an invention, pure fiction for these mythical subjects. One has to be short-sighted to the last degree in science, even simply blind, in order not to notice that myth is (for the mythical consciousness, of course) the highest in its concreteness, the most intense and most intense reality. It's not a fantasy, but... the brightest and most authentic reality. This - absolutely necessary category of thought and life, far from any chance and arbitrariness. Let us note that for the science of the 17th-19th centuries its own categories are by no means as real as its own categories are real for the mythical consciousness. For example, Kant connected the objectivity of science with the subjectivity of space, time and all categories. And even more than that. It is precisely on this subjectivism that he tries to substantiate the "realism" of science. Of course, this attempt is absurd. But the example of Kant perfectly shows how little European science valued the reality and objectivity of its categories. Some representatives of science even loved and love to flaunt such reasoning: I give you the doctrine of liquids, but whether these latter exist or not is none of my business; or: I proved this theorem, but whether something real corresponds to it, or whether it is a product of my subject or brain - this does not concern me. The point of view of the mythical consciousness is completely opposite to this. Myth - the most necessary - it must be said directly, transcendentally necessary - a category of thought and life; and there is absolutely nothing accidental, unnecessary, arbitrary, invented or fantastic in it. This is the true and most concrete reality.

Mythological scholars are almost always in the grip of this general prejudice; and if they do not speak directly about the subjectivism of mythology, then they give certain more subtle constructions that reduce mythology to the same subjectivism. So, the doctrine illusory apperception in the spirit of Herbart's psychology in Lazarus and Steinthal is also a complete distortion of the mythical consciousness and in no way can be connected with the essence of mythical constructions. At this point, we must pose a dilemma. Or we are not talking about the mythical consciousness itself, but about this or that attitude towards it, our own or someone else’s, and then we can say that the myth is an idle fiction, that the myth is a childish fantasy, that it is not real, but subjective, philosophically helpless, or, on the contrary, that it is an object of worship, that it is beautiful, divine, holy, etc. Or, secondly, we want to reveal nothing else but the myth itself, the very essence of the mythical consciousness, and - then the myth is always and necessarily a reality, concreteness, vitality and for thought - a complete and absolute necessity, non-fantastic, non-fictitious. Too often, mythologists have liked to talk about themselves, that is, about their own worldview, so that we also go the same way. We are interested in the myth, and not this or that era in the development of scientific consciousness. But from this side, it is not at all specific and even simply not typical for a myth that it is a fiction. It is not an invention, but contains the strictest and most definite structure and is logically, i.e., first of all, a dialectically necessary category of consciousness and being in general.