Plato The Myth Maker
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Plato The Myth Maker
''Plato the Myth Maker'' (french: Platon, les mots et les mythes, lit, Plato, the words and the myths) is a book by the Canadian historian and anthropologist Luc Brisson, published in 1982. An English translation was published in 1998. Background What would become ''Plato the Myth Maker'' began as a collaboration between Luc Brisson and Marcel Detienne. Eventually it became clear that their respective views of myth differed too much, and they wrote separate books. Summary The story of Atlantis is the starting point for a lexicographical study of Plato's conception of ''muthos'', or myth. Plato was the first to use this word to refer to a fictional story. The second half of the book concerns ''logos'', which Plato used in contrast with ''muthos'' and regarded as the superior of the two. Reception Pierre Ellinger wrote in '' L'Homme'' that ''Plato the Myth Maker'' benefits greatly from its methodology which draws from communication theory. Ellinger wrote that the book is valuable bo ...
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Luc Brisson
Luc Brisson (born 10 March 1946 in Saint-Esprit, Quebec) is a Canadian (and from 1986 also French) historian of philosophy and anthropologist of antiquity. He is emeritus director of research at the CNRS in France, and is considered by some of his colleagues and students to be the greatest contemporary scholar on Platonism. Life Brisson was born in a small agricultural village in Québec in 1946. All his education was received in the ecclesiastically administered and staffed schools, seminaries, and universities of Québec. At the end of the sixties he joined the general movement of Québec students to Paris, where he undertook a thesis on the ''Timaeus'' of Plato, under the direction of Clémence Ramnoux at Paris X Nanterre. During 1971-1972 he was a visiting scholar at Balliol College, Oxford. His studies include several years of Sanskrit. Upon the completion of his Ph.D. thesis, and through the support of Jean Pépin, who shared his interest in the ancient treatment of myt ...
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Marcel Detienne
Marcel Detienne (October 11, 1935 in Liège, Belgium – March 21, 2019 in Nemours, France) was a Belgian historian and specialist in the study of ancient Greece. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he held the Basil L. Gildersleeve chair in Classics. Along with Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Detienne has sought to apply an anthropological approach, informed by the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss, to classical and archaic Greece. Biography Detienne received his ''Doctorat en sciences religieuses'' at the ''École des Hautes Études'' in 1960, and his ''Doctorat en philosophie et lettres'' from the University of Liège in 1965. Detienne was at one time a ''directeur d'études'' at the ''École pratique des hautes études'', where he taught until 1998. He was also a founder of the ''Centre de recherches comparées sur les sociétés anciennes'' in Paris. Detienne began teaching in the Department of Classics at Johns Hopkins University in 1 ...
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Myth
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of Narrative, narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or Origin myth, origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not Objectivity (philosophy), objectively true, the identification of a narrative as a myth can be highly controversial. Many adherents of religions view their own religions' stories as truth and so object to their characterization as myth, the way they see the stories of other religions. As such, some scholars label all religious narratives "myths" for practical reasons, such as to avoid depreciating any one tradition because cultures interpret each other differently relative to one another. Other scholars avoid using the term "myth" altogether and instead use different terms like "sacred history", "holy story", or simply "history" to avoid placing pejorative overtones on any sacred narrative. Myths are often endorsed by secular and religious authorities and are close ...
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Atlantis
Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas (mythology), Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works ''Timaeus (dialogue), Timaeus'' and ''Critias (dialogue), Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges "Ancient Athens", the Counterfactual history, pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato's ideal state in ''The Republic (Plato), The Republic''. In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the Ecumene, known world, supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato's concept of a state. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean. Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon's ''New Atlantis'' and Th ...
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Lexicography
Lexicography is the study of lexicons, and is divided into two separate academic disciplines. It is the art of compiling dictionaries. * Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries. * Theoretical lexicography is the scholarly study of semantic, orthographic, syntagmatic and paradigmatic features of lexemes of the lexicon (vocabulary) of a language, developing theories of dictionary components and structures linking the data in dictionaries, the needs for information by users in specific types of situations, and how users may best access the data incorporated in printed and electronic dictionaries. This is sometimes referred to as 'metalexicography'. There is some disagreement on the definition of lexicology, as distinct from lexicography. Some use "lexicology" as a synonym for theoretical lexicography; others use it to mean a branch of linguistics pertaining to the inventory of words in a particular language. A person devoted ...
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Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tra ...
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Logos
''Logos'' (, ; grc, wikt:λόγος, λόγος, lógos, lit=word, discourse, or reason) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric and refers to the appeal to reason that relies on logic or reason, inductive and deductive reasoning. Aristotle first systemised the usage of the word, making it one of the three principles of rhetoric. This specific use identifies the word closely to the structure and content of text itself. This specific usage has then been developed through the history of western philosophy and rhetoric. The word has also been used in different senses along with ''rhema''. Both Plato and Aristotle used the term ''logos'' along with ''rhema'' to refer to sentences and propositions. It is primarily in this sense the term is also found in religion. Background grc, wikt:λόγος, λόγος, lógos, lit=word, discourse, or reason is related to grc, wikt:λέγω, λέγω, légō, lit=I say, label=Ancient Greek which is cognate with la, ...
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Communication Theory
Communication theory is a proposed description of communication phenomena, the relationships among them, a storyline describing these relationships, and an argument for these three elements. Communication theory provides a way of talking about and analyzing key events, processes, and commitments that together form communication. Theory can be seen as a way to map the world and make it navigable; communication theory gives us tools to answer empirical, conceptual, or practical communication questions. Communication is defined in both commonsense and specialized ways. Communication theory emphasizes its symbolic and social process aspects as seen from two perspectives—as exchange of information (the transmission perspective), and as work done to connect and thus enable that exchange (the ritual perspective). Sociolinguistic research in the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated that the level to which people change their formality of their language depending on the social context that the ...
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The Review Of Politics
''The Review of Politics'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal in the fields of politics, philosophy, and history. It was founded in 1939 and is published by Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press is the university press of the University of Cambridge. Granted letters patent by King Henry VIII in 1534, it is the oldest university press in the world. It is also the King's Printer. Cambridge University Pre .... References External links * {{DEFAULTSORT:Review of Politics, The Cambridge University Press academic journals English-language journals Political science journals Publications established in 1939 Quarterly journals ...
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Phoenix (classics Journal)
''Phoenix'', originally ''The Phoenix'', is one of two peer-reviewed journals of the Classical Association of Canada (the other is ''Mouseion''), and the oldest classics journal published in Canada. ''Phoenix'' publishes two double issues a year containing scholarly papers embodying original research in all areas of Classical Studies: the literature, language, history, philosophy, religion, mythology, science, archaeology, art, architecture, and culture of the Greek and Roman worlds from earliest times to about AD 600. History ''The Phoenix'' was founded in 1946 as the first journal of classics in Canada, by the country's first organisation for the study of classics, the Ontario Classical Association The Ontario Classical Association (OCA) was founded in 1944 with Eric A. Havelock as its first president. The association promotes the study of classics through lobbying, scholarships, and colloquia for members. Its membership consists primarily .... When the nationwide Classical ...
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University Of Chicago Press
The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', numerous academic journals, and advanced monographs in the academic fields. One of its quasi-independent projects is the BiblioVault, a digital repository for scholarly books. The Press building is located just south of the Midway Plaisance on the University of Chicago campus. History The University of Chicago Press was founded in 1890, making it one of the oldest continuously operating university presses in the United States. Its first published book was Robert F. Harper's ''Assyrian and Babylonian Letters Belonging to the Kouyunjik Collections of the British Museum''. The book sold five copies during its first two years, but by 1900 the University of Chicago Press had published 127 books and pamphlets and 11 scholarly journals, includ ...
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