Philosophy’s Emergence: Breaking Myths
The Rise of Philosophy and the Break with Myth
The emergence of Greek philosophy represents a break with myth. Myth, based on the narratives of poets, is a total explanation of reality where natural forces are personified and deified. Natural events and human behavior itself depend on the whim of the gods and cannot express any regularity. In any case, the myth also includes the idea of destiny, a dark, imprecise force that weighs on men and on the gods themselves.
Philosophy is an approach that appeals to reason and sets aside the earlier mythological stories. This was an important step in humanity’s search for truth. Philosophy begins when the belief is imposed that things happen when and as they happen. This idea is related to the idea of permanence (essence), that is, if there is an order, it is because there is something constant, something that remains.
A philosophy implies the aspiration to knowledge of what is (the essence of things), the search for what is true. Philosophy, in this respect, is seeking a:
- Principle of explanation: the search for the essence of things (what things are), what remains before it changes.
- Principle of management: the search for the law by which things are ordered, claiming that nature is not subject to arbitrary changes (such as in the myth).
Religious Dimension of the Anthropological Question
The emergence of man on Earth, in turn, leads to the emergence of religion. Mircea Eliade says: “If we consider the paleanthropids as complete men, it follows that they also possessed a number of beliefs and practiced certain rites.”
If religiosity or lack of religion of prehistoric man, it is for supporters of the lack of religiosity of paleanthropids was imposed at the time of evolution when he had just discovered the similarities with primates. But this is a misunderstanding because our works demonstrate the activity of an intelligence that can not otherwise define it as human.
E.O. James says: “It is now clear that religion is probably as old as humanity itself. Many beliefs and practices of religions have their roots in prehistoric prototypes, as regards primitive man, the three most dramatic situations it faced were the birth, propagation, subsistence, and death.”
This tension that is in man, this momentum that raises questions and demands answers are already inside an inclination, which points to man as transcendent. It is a misconception that the responses, because they lack, required value. The problem is not knowing where the answers come from, but where the questions come from, and ultimately where the fact question comes from. If God is the answer, no one can argue that is motivated by a need: the quest for meaning.
Religions, in general, are an expression of this quest, but it is necessary not only that man holding that search but also willing to be found. Moreover, the pedigree analysis based on social experiences that you can use psychoanalysis or authors fail to explain Nietzsche’s question: if man seeks a sense, seeking happiness, that is the question, the position of that part. If it is asserted, for example, that the idea comes from the fear of God in the context of tribal experience, the claim lacks force because it would first say that there is a logical and necessary connection of events for which you get to that conclusion, and if even in some unlikely event this were so, would not necessarily imply that at all times the idea of God, or divinity in the context of a natural religiosity came from the same connection strength to deny answers facts.
A strength to deny answers have stifled any hope of answering our questions, so we have made man a being not open, a being locked in itself, can not achieve any objective truth.