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    The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life
    Unavailable
    The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life
    Unavailable
    The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life
    Ebook511 pages9 hours

    The Wisdom of the Myths: How Greek Mythology Can Change Your Life

    By Luc Ferry

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    “A marvelously wise and expansive book. . . . Ferry writes with warmth, wit, and energy; one could call his prose conversational, but it’s rare to have a conversation quite this wonderful.” — Boston Globe

    A fascinating journey through Greek mythology that explains the myths' timeless lessons and meaning

    Heroes, gods, and mortals. The Greek myths are the founding narratives of Western civilization: to understand them is to know the origins of philosophy, literature, art, science, law, and more. Indeed, as Luc Ferry shows in this masterful book, they remain a great store of wisdom, as relevant to our lives today as ever before. No mere legends or clichés ("Herculean task," "Pandora's box," "Achilles heel," etc.), these classic stories offer profound and manifold lessons, providing the first sustained attempt to answer fundamental human questions concerning "the good life," the burden of mortality, and how to find one's place in the world. Vividly retelling the great tales of mythology and illuminating fresh new ways of understanding them, The Wisdom of the Myths will enlighten readers of all ages.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateJan 7, 2014
    ISBN9780062215468
    Author

    Luc Ferry

    Luc Ferry is a philosopher and the author of the national bestseller A Brief History of Thought. From 2002 to 2004 he served as France's minister of national education. He has been awarded the Prix Médicis, Prix Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, and Prix Aujourd'hui, in addition to being an officer of the French Legion of Honor and a knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. He lives in Paris.

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    Reviews for The Wisdom of the Myths

    3.5/5

    4 ratings2 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is an examination of Greek mythology as a forerunner to Greek philosophy. Ferry looks at the myths not as entertaining if slightly bizarre stories, and not from a modern viewpoint that interprets them psychologically. He's trying to suss out how the ancient Greeks themselves understood the myths, and what the myths say about how people should live. I found all that interesting, although I think I should have read his earlier book A Brief History of Thought first (these are the first two in a projected five-book series). However, there's something about Ferry's writing voice that I found annoying—a little too elaborate? definitely far too many ellipses. By the end of the book, when he was pulling all his ideas together and the book should have been at its most fascinating, I was reading as fast as I could to get it over with.
    • 4/5
      Author Luc Ferry is an award winning scholar and former French minister of national education. He knows his mythology, and goes back to the oldest sources he can find for his reading; in many cases, sources more than 2000 years old. He’s very thorough, and roots out the basic meaning of the oldest Greek myths: the creation, King Midas, the Odyssey, Oedipus and others. A lot of it all boils down to the opposing forces of chaos and order; order (as personified by Zeus et al) must continually beat chaos (as personified by the pre-Olympian gods, Gaia (earth) and Chronos who is time itself). Everyone and everything has a place in the universe, and those who try to go against this natural place have hubris, and will end up punished by the universe. No one can defeat death. Accept this, and get on with living the best life you can- in other words, be an expression of order. Even people who have never read the Greek myths know something about them; references to them abound in our vernacular (Oedipus complex, Midas touch, Pandora’s box, Achilles heel etc) so it pays to know where these references come from. The book is interesting; the author treats the myths, as philosophy, with respect rather than as childish tales. He shows how many of these myths connect with each other, and tells us why the things that happen to people happen. Sadly, making the connections means some repetition, but it’s not huge problem. Did reading this book allow me to change my life? No. I’m not even sure how understanding the myths can change my life; perhaps that means I still don’t understand them.