Making Sense of Myth: Conversations with Luc Brisson - Hardcover

Naddaf, Gerard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0228020700 ISBN 13: 9780228020707

Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024

Synopsis

To most, myths are merely fantastic stories. But for Luc Brisson, one of the great living Plato scholars, myth is a key factor in what it means to be human – a condition of life for all. Essential and inescapable, myth offers a guide for living, forming the core of belonging and group identity. In 1999 Quebec classicist Louis-André Dorion published a series of French conversations with Brisson on the idea of myth. In Making Sense of Myth Gerard Naddaf offers an extended and updated English translation of these conversations, as well as a new set of discussions between himself and Brisson. Beginning with Brisson's childhood in the village of Saint-Esprit, Quebec, through his education as a gifted child in minor seminaries starting at age eleven, and continuing with his years in Paris, first as a graduate student and later at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), Brisson tells the story of his escape from an all-encompassing myth – the one promulgated by the Roman Catholic Church. The philosopher situates Quebec society as inseparable from the history of the Catholic Church in Quebec, and argues that this correlation offers a perfect paradigm of myth and mythmaking. Naddaf’s introduction and afterword contextualize the conversations by discussing Brisson’s and Plato’s understanding of the origin and meaning of myth, elaborating on the role of myth in anthropogeny, in the creation of selfhood, and in multiculturalism. Making Sense of Myth promises both a philosophy of myth and a philosophy of life, one inspired by Brisson’s lifelong engagement with the great Western philosopher Plato.

About this title

About the Author

Gerard Naddaf is professor emeritus of philosophy and senior scholar at York University.

Edition details

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0228020700
• ISBN 13: 9780228020707
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 330