Jaspers follows myth from the mother goddess, Sinai and Athena to modern psychology and ideology. He challenges attempts to reduce its meaning to the unconscious, then examines the tension between philosophy and biblical revelation, religious truth and tolerance. The final talk turns to hope: the courage of the Greeks, the faith of the prophets, and the possibility of finding meaning without guarantees of worldly success. Across four talks, he asks how we can remain open to transcendence without turning its ciphers into dogma.
Karl Jaspers — 1 recording in the archive.
Related reading: Philosophical Faith and Revelation by Karl Jaspers.
In the religions of all peoples there is a cult of life: this stream of birth and death, destruction and resurrection. There is the mother goddess, the Magna Mater: Cybele in Asia Minor, Isis in Egypt, Durga in India. They have sons who die and rise again: Adonis, Osiris. The consorts of such mother goddesses—Baal in the Near East, Shiva in India—have the same natural character. Believers feel sheltered in the mother goddess's warm blood and goodness, yet also abandoned to her mercilessness and severity. Opposites belong together. Infinite fertility is matched by wild destruction; salvation by calamity, good by evil. Shiva dances the divine dance at a furious pace. To be swept into it is the believer's truth. Here splendour and terror unite: overwhelming pleasure and dreadful torment, love and cruelty, life and death. These religions have cults of sexual ecstasy, as well as ascetic and castrated priests. Another mythical image: Moses on Sinai. The people trembled before the thunder, lightning and smoking mountain. They kept their distance and said to Moses: 'Let God not speak to us, lest we die. Go yourself and speak to us; then we will listen.' Moses entered the dark cloud where God was, and God spoke to him. He gave him the Ten Commandments, and Moses brought them to the people. 'I am your God, who brought you out of the house of slavery in Egypt. You shall have no other gods beside me. You shall make no image or likeness of God. Honour your father and mother. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not bear false witness.' A third example of myth: Athena, the goddess born not of woman but from Zeus's head, equal to her father in reason and wisdom. Mighty in appearance, sprung from the highest god's head, she suddenly stood there in armour. The gods were startled at her sight. In her, reason without weakness unites with courage without arrogance. When Achilles, in boundless rage, draws his sword against Agamemnon, Athena suddenly appears to his inward eye. He thrusts his sword back into its sheath. Athena awakens her hero's reason. Courageous and never despairing, she stands beside the warrior in battle. But she hates Ares, the god of war: the delight in mindless fighting, indifferent to right and wrong. With an effortless hand she throws that foolish war god to the ground in battle.…