Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - very good condition - When Historical Truth Was Tradition and Vulgate -- The Plurality and Analogy of True Worlds -- The Social Distribution of Knowledge and the Modalities of Belief -- Social Diversity of Beliefs and Mental Balkanization -- Behind This Sociology an Implicit Program of Truth -- Restoring Etiological Truth to Myth -- Myth and Rhetorical Truth -- Pausanias Entrapped -- Forger�s Truth, Philologist�s Truth -- The Need to Choose between Culture and Belief in a Truth -- How is it possible to half-believe, or believe in contradictory things? Children believe that Santa Claus comes down the chimney, bringing them toys, and at the same time believe that these toys are put there by their parents. Do they then really believe in Santa Claus? Yes, and the faith of the Dorze is no less whole. In the eyes of these Ethiopians, says Dan Sperber, �the leopard is a Christian animal who respects the fasts of the Coptic church, the observance of which, in Ethiopia, is the principal test of religion. Nonetheless, a Dorze is no less careful to protect his livestock on Wednesdays and Fridays, the fast days, than on other days of the week. He holds it true that leopards fast and that they eat every day. Leopards are dangerous every day; this he knows by experience. They are Christian; tradition proves it.� -- Taking the example of the Greek belief in their myths, I have set out to study the plurality of the modalities of belief�belief based on word, on experience, and so on. This examination has led me somewhat further on two occasions. -- It was necessary to recognize that, instead of speaking of beliefs, one must actually speak of truths, and that these truths were themselves products of the imagination. We are not creating a false idea of things. It is the truth of things that through the centuries has been so oddly constituted. Far from being the most simple realistic experience, truth is the most historical. There was a time when poets and historians invented royal dynasties all of a piece, complete with the name of each potentate and his genealogy. They were not forgers, nor were they acting in bad faith. They were simply following what was, at the time, the normal way of arriving at the truth. If we take this idea to its conclusion, we see that we hold true, in this same way, what we would call fiction after we have put down the book. The Iliad and .Mice in Wonderland are no less true than Fustel de Coulanges. ISBN 9780226854342