The three academics were sitting in the common room when Miss Stray broke the silence.
“We began with a rather simple question.”
Blottisham looked up.
“Can mythology be philosophy?”
“Indeed,” said Quillibrace.
“And I believe,” said Miss Stray, “the question has changed.”
Blottisham looked wary.
“Has it?”
“We began by assuming that philosophy must tell us explicitly that something is the case.”
“A reasonable assumption,” said Blottisham.
“Is it?”
He considered this.
“I was hoping you wouldn't ask.”
Quillibrace leaned back.
“A philosophical proposition states a relation. A myth can do something different.”
“Such as?”
“It can construct a world in which a possibility of thought becomes visible.”
Blottisham frowned.
“Give me an example.”
“Genesis does not say, ‘Existence is differentiated through relation.’ It gives us a world in which differentiation occurs.”
“And it doesn't define possibility and actuality.”
“No.”
“It gives us a world in which what is said becomes what is.”
Blottisham paused.
“That one I remember.”
“And it doesn't formulate a theory of meaning. It gives us a world organised through naming, ordering, evaluation and significance.”
Miss Stray added, “And humanity itself appears within that world.”
“The meaning-making being becomes one of the meanings,” said Quillibrace.
Blottisham looked at him.
“You really do insist on that one.”
“It is rather important.”
“I admit that.”
There was a brief silence.
“So the philosophy isn't in a sentence,” said Blottisham.
“No.”
“It's in the way the world has been put together.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“The thought is distributed through its symbolic organisation.”
Blottisham looked increasingly uncomfortable.
“Distributed thought.”
“Yes.”
“I'm beginning to see why you like myths.”
Miss Stray smiled.
“The individual symbols matter. But so do the relations among them.”
“God speaks,” said Quillibrace. “The world appears. Differences emerge. Things acquire names. Order and value appear. Humanity enters the order. And the being capable of meaning is itself given a meaning within the world.”
Blottisham nodded slowly.
“So the story isn't merely communicating ideas.”
“It is performing a construal.”
“That's an important distinction,” said Miss Stray.
Blottisham looked at Quillibrace.
“But surely we must still ask what the authors intended.”
“Why?”
“Because otherwise you risk finding meanings they never meant to put there.”
“Of course.”
“And?”
“And we need not decide what they intended in order to ask what the surviving text makes possible.”
Blottisham was silent.
Miss Stray said, “The question is not necessarily what the authors knew. It is what the organisation of the text allows us to think.”
Blottisham nodded.
“I can accept that.”
Quillibrace looked almost surprised.
“I wasn't aware you had become so accommodating.”
“I haven't. I'm choosing my battles.”
“A promising development.”
Blottisham ignored him.
“So we return to language.”
“Yes.”
“Language transforms experience into meaning, and meaning into wording.”
“Yes.”
“And metaphor allows meaning itself to become material for further meaning-making.”
“Yes.”
“And mythology can organise those meanings into symbolic worlds.”
“Exactly.”
Blottisham looked around the room.
“So the world can become something we think about before it becomes an abstract concept.”
Miss Stray nodded.
“We can imagine the world.”
“And through imagining it,” said Blottisham, “we can begin to think with it.”
Quillibrace smiled.
“Precisely.”
Blottisham sat back.
“That might also explain why myths survive even when people stop believing every detail literally.”
“It may,” said Miss Stray.
“The relations remain available.”
“Yes.”
“The world remains inhabitable.”
“Yes.”
“And questions can still emerge from it.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“What is existence? What makes a world a world? How does difference become relation? What is humanity's place within the whole?”
“And,” said Miss Stray, “what happens when the being that construes the world becomes capable of construing itself?”
Blottisham was quiet for a moment.
“You've made Genesis sound less like a collection of answers than a machine for producing questions.”
Quillibrace considered this.
“An unusually good formulation.”
Blottisham smiled.
“I'm having a productive afternoon.”
Miss Stray laughed.
“But then,” said Blottisham, “what is the difference between myth and philosophy?”
“Philosophy abstracts and argues.”
“And myth?”
“Symbolises and configures.”
“One states the relation.”
“The other gives us a world in which the relation can be imagined.”
Blottisham nodded.
“So philosophy tells us about the relation. Myth lets us live inside it.”
“Imaginatively,” said Quillibrace.
“I know. I was being careful.”
“I noticed.”
There was another silence.
Then Miss Stray said, “Perhaps philosophy does not begin when myth ends.”
Blottisham looked towards her.
“And myth need not be failed philosophy waiting to be replaced.”
“No.”
“They are different ways of making thought possible.”
“Different semiotic modes,” said Quillibrace.
Blottisham sighed.
“I knew there had to be a technical term.”
Quillibrace continued.
“Once language makes meaning itself available as material for further meaning-making, there is no reason to expect thought to have only one form.”
Blottisham looked thoughtful.
“Then Genesis is doing something rather strange.”
“Go on.”
“It represents a world being made through speech.”
“Yes.”
“Then puts humanity inside that world.”
“Yes.”
“And humanity eventually becomes capable of turning the whole construction back upon itself.”
Quillibrace nodded.
“And what is Genesis itself?”
Blottisham stopped.
Miss Stray looked at him.
He looked at Quillibrace.
“A construction of meaning,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Made by the very kind of being it is representing.”
“Yes.”
Blottisham sat back.
“So the mythology is doing what it represents.”
Quillibrace smiled.
“Now you have it.”
“It is making a world through meaning.”
“Yes.”
“And then, inside that world, it makes meaning of the beings who make meanings.”
Miss Stray looked quietly pleased.
Blottisham stared into his tea.
“I don't think I like where this is going.”
Quillibrace waited.
Blottisham looked up.
“Because if the myth is itself an instance of the meaning-making capacity it represents…”
He stopped.
Miss Stray finished the thought.
“Then it doesn't merely tell us about meaning-making.”
“No,” said Quillibrace.
“It performs it.”
“Yes.”
Blottisham looked at the two of them.
“And the myth is thinking.”
Quillibrace nodded.
For once, nobody said anything more.
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