The article explores the ways to solve the problem of the lack of a common interdisciplinary definition of myth at the beginning of the 21st century. The problem was actualized in the 20th century after the development of new theories that reject the enlightening stereotypes of archaic nature of myth, and instead develop the ideas about the existence of modern mythology, the inability to escape from myth and its active participation in the formation of the current worldview. A number of (...) contemporary researchers have been attempting to evade a common ultimate definition of myth in favour of forming a productive, inclusive discourse. So, there are attempts to refrain from defining myth at all, to elaborate a compromise definition, to define not a myth but a “work on myth”, to evolve a detailed but flexible definition that is open to adjustments. These investigations ground an interdisciplinary theoretical foundation that can be used for further studies of the mythic phenomena in each individual perspective, without neglecting the achievements of various discourses. It is also noticed that a common feature of contemporary efforts to define a myth is an observation that we always deal with a myth not as an isolated story but simultaneously with the diversity of its plots and manifestations. The studies focus on its multiplicity, variability, modifiability through time. The other important side of myth is significance that it produces for both universal and specific aspects of the life of social groups. If the narrative stops producing significance, it loses its mythic status and transforms into the products of the mythology of other epochs. Article received 27.08.2019. (shrink)

Ernst Cassirer viewed mythical thinking as a first step in our mental representation of the real world, but only a first step. What myth leaves out are the differentiations that lead eventually to science. To the primitive, mythically inclined mind, the world is an undifferentiated whole, the elements of which—including the mind itself—are thought to be concrete and interconnected. This means that there is no distinction between observer and observed, and that the observer sees the representations with which she constructs (...) her picture of reality as direct apprehensions of reality, untnediated by any sensory or cognitive categories. Far as that way of thinking may seem from the modern mindset, we have only to examine commonplace political ideas to find evidence of the implicit assumption of an unmediated connection between the wishes of poltical agents and the results they intend to achieve. (shrink)