Myth, Meaning, and the Foundations for an Africana Philosophy of Myth

This work defends two arguments. The first is that myth is a necessary condition for meaningful living worlds. The second is that the contemporary Euromodern crisis of meaning necessitates the development of an Africana Philosophy of myth. The first argument is advanced through investigations into the philosophies of Ernst Cassirer, Edmund Husserl and Karl Jaspers. From Cassirer, I build upon his argument that myth is an irreducible mode of meaning making through which the human dimension of culture is constructed. However, Cassirer’s perspective is limited by his investment in the myth of the primitive. In response to this limitation, I argue that Cassirer’s philosophy should be understood as a precursor to structuralism. With this interpretation in mind, I argue the insights of his philosophy of myth are refined in the work of anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss. Drawing from the phenomenology of Husserl, I argue that because the world is an accomplishment of intersubjective modes of meaning making, Euromodern efforts to abandon myth arise from an erroneous assumption that the world is an objective entity which is independent from subjectivity. I claim that through myths we build worlds which center the meaning possibilities of transcendental modes of subjectivity. The philosophy of Jaspers provides an account of the truth of myth. I argue that myths express the deep existential truths which animate our lives. The second argument builds on the work of Lewis Gordon and Howard Thurman. I argue that while the philosophies of Cassirer, Husserl, Jaspers, Lévi-Strauss provide valuable resources for a philosophy of myth, they do not account for how the contemporary suppression of myth in Euromodernity arose due to projects of colonial domination. Euromoderns justified themselves as colonizers in part because of their mastery of instrumental rationality. This meant that the mythic worlds created by Africana people were used as evidence of their inherent inferiority and the necessity of colonization. Consequently, I argue that an Africana philosophy of myth provides necessary resources to combat the crisis of meaning which has arises from the Euromodern preoccupation with instrumental rationality.