Segal's Theory Of Myth And Religion

Myth is defined as follows by Oxford Advanced Learner 's Dictionary: “a story from ancient times, especially one that was told to explain natural events or to describe the early history of a people” (1012). According to this definition, the truest sense of the word “myth” is “story” and Robert A. Segal defines it likewise in his book Myth, A Very Short Introduction. To begin with, we are going to try to define what is a myth and to do so we are going to base ourselves on Segal 's book. Actually, Segal proposes an introduction to theories of myth. His book is composed of seven chapters such as “Myth and science” or “Myth and religion”. And in each chapters he develops the theories of various anthropologists and historians. As we cannot choose all of them, we will be interested particularly in E. B. Tylor1, J. G. Frazer2, Micea Eliade3 and Claude Lévi-Strauss4.

B. Tylor is known to defend the idea that myth and science are at odds. Firstly, he divides philosophy into primitive and modern. Primitive philosophy is similar to primitive religion but there is no primitive science. Modern philosophy is subsided into religion and science. Modern religion comprises metaphysics and ethics which are absent in primitive religion. In order to have a better understanding of his theory, we propose a plan which explains Tylor 's classification: