From the Nature of Myth to the Myth of Nature
From the Nature of Myth to the Myth of Nature

Summary/Abstract: I intend to talk about the coming together of myth and nature in modern time by way of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Reveries of a Solitary Walker. To do that, I will go over briefly Ernst Cassirer’s distinction between myth and nature in The Myth of the State and his discussion of Rousseau in The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Cassirer’s reflection on the modern political myth is a continuation of his generation’s interest in myth as a particular mode of rationality and in the emergence of modern form of totalitarianism.1 His contribution is first to retain the tension between logical thinking and the mythic mode and then to broach the connection between myth and language which transcends the dichotomy between scientific rationality and the mythic mode. In the process of laying out the history of thoughts on myth and the birth or re-birth of myth in the realm of modern politics, especially from Enlightenment on, Rousseau emerges as one of the pivotal figures who enacts the drama of sense and sensibility. Rousseau is important not just because he elaborates the celebrated theory of the social contract.

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