{"id":14793,"date":"2012-01-06T08:14:21","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T16:14:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14793"},"modified":"2012-01-06T08:14:21","modified_gmt":"2012-01-06T16:14:21","slug":"from-the-hero-with-a-thousand-faces-by-joseph-campbell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=14793","title":{"rendered":"From “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” by Joseph Campbell"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I have been reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces<\/em>\u00a0to prep for my myth and folklore class, and I really like this quote, not so much because I agree with everything it says or implies–that is something I would need to think more about–but because the complexity of what it says appeals to me:<\/p>\n

And likewise, mythology does not hold as its greatest hero the merely virtuous man. Virtue is but the pedagogical prelude to the culminating insight, which goes beyond all pairs of opposites. Virtue quells the self-centered ego and makes the transpersonal centeredness possible; but when that has been achieved, what then of the pain or pleasure, vice or virtue, either of our own ego or of any other?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I also found myself thinking when I read this passage, and I continue to think this as I make my way through the book, that Robert Bly and most of those who relied on Campbell in fashioning the ideology of the mythopoetic men’s movement back in the 1980s and 90s really narrowed and impoverished Campbell’s vision when they hung it on the political agenda of recovering and repairing (or whatever) traditional masculinity and manhood. They clearly did not take to heart what Campbell says is the “prime function of mythology and rite:”<\/p>\n

to supply the symbols that carry the human spirit forward, in counteraction to those other constant human fantasies that tend to tie it back.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I mean this not as a defense of Campbell, or even, really, an endorsement of what he has to say; but as someone who spent an awful lot of time reading and critiquing Bly and others, I am struck by how wrongly they seem to have read him–at least as far as I can tell from my limited exposure to what Campbell is saying in this book.<\/p>\n

Cross posted on It’s All Connected<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I have been reading The Hero with a Thousand Faces\u00a0to prep for my myth and folklore class, and I really like this quote, not so much because I agree with everything it says or implies–that is something I would … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14793"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14795,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14793\/revisions\/14795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}