Cosmological Function Of Myth Essay

What is good? Philosophers such as Plato would describe something virtuous as something that has a function and fulfills it adequately, though ideally exceptionally. It is for this reason, we will explore The Four Functions of Myth: Mystical, Cosmological, Sociological, and Pedagogical, in order to see if the gods are successful at fulfilling these functions. The Mystical function of myth is to endow listeners with a feeling of awe, a sense of wonder, and the desire to know more. The gods do this with the fantastical feats they accomplish. However, today with science we no longer believe that Poseidon causes earthquakes; instead, we trust that the source of Earthquakes is the movement of fault lines in the Earth’s crust. Of course, the sea still fascinates many, mostly because not everything is known about what is down there. So, one could argue that by simply acknowledging that we are unaware of everything there is to know the world still has an air of mystique without the gods. Logically after curiosity next to follow is a search for answers; the cosmological function of myth is to give these answers and provide us a better understanding of the world around us. In

When the gods are looked at as larger versions of specific facets of ourselves and our personalities the gods are fulfilling their most useful purpose- allowing us to better understand ourselves. In the same way a specialty doctor may have a model of human lungs or a gynecologist may have a model of the female reproductive system in their office it helps to have a model of what we are looking at (preferably larger, so that it can be examined closer) that we can take apart and put back together, so too have we created larger archetypal versions of the various hats we put on. The larger than life, archetypal gods and their children help us look into the different components of ourselves, so that we may better understand