gesang reviewed Twentieth Century Mythologies by Daniel Dubuisson
An exceedingly dumb book
2 stars
The author is a disciple of Dumezil, and he just can't stop praising Dumezil. I've always been perplexed by humanity scholar's pretension to be "scientific" since in the field of anthropology and history of religions it is impossible for a clearly defined notion of "scientific" to be formulated, first and foremost. Starting from the level of anthropology, hermeneutics is indispensable for any meaningful treatise to be written, and the author, marginally starting from a stance that can be spoken of as structuralist, completely disregards the validity of other methods of humanity, and by so doing, he proved, exactly, himself to be not at all rigorous or rational in his own method.
It is precisely his epistemology that is problematic: he, while pretentiously trying to show his Aristotelian learning off by citing, without any pragmatic effect, Aristotle's Topic or so, to illustrate simple points, and he, typical of a "learned" scholar …
The author is a disciple of Dumezil, and he just can't stop praising Dumezil. I've always been perplexed by humanity scholar's pretension to be "scientific" since in the field of anthropology and history of religions it is impossible for a clearly defined notion of "scientific" to be formulated, first and foremost. Starting from the level of anthropology, hermeneutics is indispensable for any meaningful treatise to be written, and the author, marginally starting from a stance that can be spoken of as structuralist, completely disregards the validity of other methods of humanity, and by so doing, he proved, exactly, himself to be not at all rigorous or rational in his own method.
It is precisely his epistemology that is problematic: he, while pretentiously trying to show his Aristotelian learning off by citing, without any pragmatic effect, Aristotle's Topic or so, to illustrate simple points, and he, typical of a "learned" scholar in humanity, writes pages and pages of semi-rigorous word-playings that has virtually no philosophical value while pretending to be philosophical and rational and analytic (which is typical of French structuralist thought: not at all analytic but tries to be and pretends to be and finally deceives itself into thinking that it is analytic), while actual fact the whole book can be condenced into a wikipedia article.
But the part on Dumezil, who the author praises like a fanboy, is quite well-written, since here we see no such pretensions.