Revisiting Joseph Campbell's "The Power of Myth" (original) (raw)
Related papers
Religion, Myth and Ideology [2013]
The thirteen articles collected in Bruce Lincoln's Gods and Demons, Priests and Scholars are a persuasive plea for an appropriate contextualization of religious phenomena in their mundane circumstances. Starting with the well-known Theses on Method that structure the book in methodological regard, each of the following texts is divided in a thorough historical research introduced or accompanied by extensive theoretical considerations. Particularly the case studies addressing problems of the Old Norse and Old Iranian history of religions are in-depth examinations of their own. Lincoln's general interest is directed towards the analytical diffferentiation between the objects of the academic study of religion and their scholarly investigation. Only on the basis of a reflected distinction between both, the study of religion will achieve a deeper understanding of the attractiveness of religions and myths along with their capacity to adapt themselves to changing worldly conditions.
Myth, religion and philosophy: A philosophical analysis
2018
Religion is a natural aspect of human race which grows out of human’s desire for meaning and belonging. Even if we try to get rid of one religion, we create another religion. Best or worst, humans seem to be motivated by religion. It represents a cultural and national identity. Myth’s philosophical importance is underestimated in that its role has been ignored simply because it is literary or argued as so much as window dressing by analytic interpreters of philosophy. The relation between ‘myth and ‘religion’ is an old and much-discussed topic. However, there are fewer agreements around the phenomenology of the two terms and their functional relation.
Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 2014
The problem of secularism is amply raised by Burton Mack in his paper; it is clear that the term secular is problematic. However, in this response I would like to take a cultural turn. Using the social theory developed by Burton Mack in other writings, I will argue that the secular criticism of the Bible can be understood as a new mythology (as all criticism of the Bible are) that is a part of a growing secular wave within the United States found in a variety of cultural corners and particularly among the younger demographics. As such secular criticism—and secular movements like it—constitute one response to a particular set of social interests at this particular juncture in time.
The Power of Myth Joseph Campell
1991
The Power of Myth launched an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Joseph Campbell and his work. A preeminent scholar, writer, and teacher, he has had a profound influence on millions of people--including Star Wars creator George Lucas. To Campbell, mythology was the "song of the universe, the music of the spheres." With Bill Moyers, one of America's most prominent journalists, as his thoughtful and engaging interviewer, The Power of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit. This extraordinary book reveals how the themes and symbols of ancient narratives continue to bring meaning to birth, death, love, and war. From stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome to traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, a broad array of themes are considered that together identify the universality of human experience across time and culture. An impeccable match of interviewer and subject, a timeless distillation of Campbell's work, The Power of Myth continues to exert a profound influence on our culture.
Myth and Its Reification into Authoritarian Religion
The importance of myth and its possible origins in material conditions. Myth as an inevitable aspect of human consciousness and "use" in human societies. How the mythico-poetic was transformed by class society into authoritarian religions.
Joseph Campbell, Shiʿism, and the Karbala Narrative
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 2022
While Islam, like any major religion, should have its own mythos, the idea that Islam has myth has met with resistance. This paper utilizes the ideas of Joseph Campbell to argue that Islam does have mythos, through a study of the Karbala narrative, the story of the martyrdom of al-Husayn ibn ʿAli (d. 61 AH/680 CE), which is particularly central to Shiʿism. This narrative closely parallels Campbell’s archetypal framework of the monomyth. Using Campbell’s definitions of myth, it shows how the Karbala narrative functions as mythos rather than as history, although usually understood as the latter. The narrative of Karbala emerges from the human psyche, as a rich example of Campbell’s cross-cultural mythic structure known as the ‘hero’s journey’. While Shiʿis argue that the Karbala narrative persists because it is spiritually and cosmologically central, this archetypal structure offers a psychological explanation for why the Karbala narrative continues to be compelling. Second, Campbell expressed concerns over the sustainability of mythos in modernity, and mythos in Islam; this paper shows how the Karbala mythos persists despite the challenges of modernity. Lastly, this paper models an approach to exploring mythos in Islam which can be applied to other Islamic narratives.
The One, 2020
This is a short essay I wrote for the campus journal, The One (CUHK Shenzhen). It offers a critical analysis of the terms "myth" and "religion" and their use in the academic study of religions.
(2014) Secularism, Myth, and History (edited book chapter)
In contemporary political discourse the categories 'secular' and 'religion' have come to occupy an increasingly prominent role in shaping social arrangements and marking the boundaries of political legitimacy. While there might be some marginal disagreement over the use of these terms, a particular range of meanings has come to prevail. The 'secular' demarcates a neutral public sphere governed by institutions and forms of reasoning that are putatively non-controversial and (potentially) available to all. As its binary 'other', religion is all that secularism is not; concerned with a realm of 'private' belief and resting on forms of understanding ('revelation') or authority (scripture, tradition) that are beyond the scope of public reason. The secular has come to be identified with the 'real', the 'natural', or the 'rational' while religion is by definition the 'unreal', the 'supernatural' ('invented') or the 'non/irrational'. A substantial body of contemporary political theory and international relations analysis has echoed these understandings, invoking the terms without giving much thought to their history or the assumptions that they contain. There has been a tendency to assume that even if these are inventions of the modern West, they are nevertheless universally applicable categories enabling us both to describe social and political realities as well as providing us with a set of normative principles for measuring political legitimacy. A very particular understanding of the secular has come to frame all discussion of the political-religious order, yet as one revisionist international relations scholar has argued, this " rigid secular/religious divide stabilizes particular, historically contingent, and often hegemonic definitions of both politics and religion. " 1