Much has been written on the famous transition from muthos to logos or from myth to reason. However, there is little on how the proponents of myth responded. They fought back with mutho-logia , that is, with a logos about myth. This rational approach invoked the same logos that is generally associated with philosophia . In fact, philosophia and muthologia are at times so intimately connected that until the Enlightenment period, it is often diffi­cult to distinguish between them. This is (...) due to the spell of myth or more precisely because of the allegorical interpretation of myth. In this essay, I at­tempt to shed some light on the origin and development of this rather unremarked and yet remarkable event in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

The modern tendency to treat all Greek Golden Age textuality as apolitical and escapist has contributed to the ongoing neglect of the first Western educational text, Hesiod's Works and days. Most commentators have missed the interplay of utopian and dystopian images in Hesiodic poetry for lack of the appropriate conceptual framework. Once the escapist prejudice is overcome, the Hesiodic text appears as the first extant Occidental coupling of political utopianism with emancipatory ethico-political education. Once freed of its dated metaphysical-theological resonances, (...) Hesiodic utopianism is compatible with a renewed political and ethical education for cosmopolitanism and justice because the embarrassingly detailed and teleological element of temporal modern utopias and the equally embarrassing rigid architecture of spatial utopias are absent. There is no strict utopian prediction and the message for change is articulated for the whole of humanity. (shrink)