Philosophical Myths of the Fall

[Dave Monroe]

Philosophical Myths of the Fall
Stephen Mulhall

Paper | 2007 | $19.95 / £11.95
Cloth | 2005 | $29.95 / £18.95
136 pp. | 5-1/2 x 8-1/2

Did post-Enlightenment philosophers reject the idea of original sin
and hence the view that life is a quest for redemption from it? In
Philosophical Myths of the Fall, Stephen Mulhall identifies and
evaluates a surprising ethical-religious dimension in the work of
three highly influential philosophers--Nietzsche, Heidegger, and
Wittgenstein. He asks: Is the Christian idea of humanity as
structurally flawed something that these three thinkers aim simply to
criticize? Or do they, rather, end up by reproducing secular variants
of the same mythology?

Mulhall argues that each, in different ways, develops a conception of
human beings as in need of redemption: in their work, we appear to be
not so much capable of or prone to error and fantasy, but instead
structurally perverse, living in untruth. In this respect, their work
is more closely aligned to the Christian perspective than to the
mainstream of the Enlightenment. However, all three thinkers
explicitly reject any religious understanding of human perversity;
indeed, they regard the very understanding of human beings as
originally sinful as central to that from which we must be redeemed.
And yet each also reproduces central elements of that understanding in
his own thinking; each recounts his own myth of our Fall, and holds
out his own image of redemption. The book concludes by asking whether
this indebtedness to religion brings these philosophers' thinking
closer to, or instead forces it further away from, the truth of the
human condition.

http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7969.html

Introduction

http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7969.pdf


http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/i7969.html