Claudiu Baciu

The Meaning of Political Myth in Ernst Cassirer Claudiu Baciu

Myth founds human culture, and Cassirer considers that our entire culture is penetrated by myth, except in balanced epochs of history when mythical thought is tamed and lays in unity with other human faculties. During an era of crisis, mythical thought tends to occupy the foreground of the consciousness and imposes itself on these faculties, or even overthrows all the value hierarchies that man has acquired in the course of his history. Although Cassirer admits the real worth of myth as an expression of the first form of objectification of the human spirit, for him, the myth still remains a primitive, undeveloped form of this objectification. Because myth is closely related to human sensibility, myth, mythical thought, and the type of imagination that is related to them represent true elemental forces of the human being, forces which we cannot directly oppose. Rather a pedagogical effort is needed to develop human capacity to avoid irrational fascination pertaining to those forces, by means of a true knowledge of the structures and mechanisms of mythical thought.