11 - Modern Mythic Meaning: Blumenberg Contra Nietzsche

Summary

Nothing surprised the promoters of the Enlightenment more, and left them standing more incredulously before the failure of what they thought were their ultimate exertions, than the survival of the contemptible old stories – the continuation of work on myth.

Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth, p. 274

Burkhardt relates an “incomparably remarkable story” in Apollodorus. The story helps represent the peculiar powers and limitations of Zeus, and so might be said to be typical of “mythic thought” in general. It represents Zeus as “just powerful enough to help fate, which has gotten totally muddled, on account of two animals, to escape from its dilemmas” (143). The Theban fox was fated never to be caught, whereas the Athenian hound was fated to catch everything that he pursued. Were such a world to be possible, were two such creatures possibly to meet, a great threat to any worldly “significance” would have to be entertained; no logos for or reliable judge of the world would be conceivable (let us say). One can at least imagine the importance attached to excluding or somehow confronting such a possibility. One can also imagine the energies that might be expended in the Talmudic or Scholastic traditions on such a problem; the energies that were expended on problems like omnipotence and omniscience. Zeus “solves” the problem differently. He turns both to stone.