Between Prophet and Philosopher

Extract

Heu vatum ignare mentes . . .

—Vergil, Aenid, 11.63

The God of the Psalmists and the prophets was not in nature, He transcended nature—and transcended, likewise, the realm of mythopoetic thought. It would seem that the Hebrews, no less than the Greeks, broke with the mode of speculation which had prevailed up to their time.

—H.and H. A. Frankfort “The Emancipation of Thought from Myth”

At least until the advent of counter-cultural occultism, we of the post-medieval West, whether we regard ourselves as heirs of the secular Greeks or of the pious Hebrews, have liked to think that our own speculation has broken completely with mythopoetic thought. As successors to the rationalists and empiricists, many of today’s philosophers have attempted to find ultimate knowledge through “scientific” investigation, and, failing, have settled for an understanding, not of the Ultimate but of mere phenomena. Nor have we lacked our “prophets” who, in the footsteps of Luther, have eschewed human reason, seeking ultimate knowledge directly from God’s mouth. Yet both our prophets and our philosophers have tended, at least until very recently, to shun the whole ambiguous realm of mythopoetic thought and expression. To the philosopher, mythopoetry is imprecise, an unscientific and indirect way of dealing with reality. To the prophet, it is unworthy of the transcendent God who has taken the trouble of bypassing myth by revealing himself directly. So the philosopher looks below, to man’s own wits, to find, if not clear and distinct Cartesian ideas then clear and distinct descriptions of phenomena, and the prophet looks above, to God, for his clear and distinct word.