Publication at Faculty of Science |
2014
Abstract
The paper focuses on the question of human prehistory and on the idea of cultural progress and decline in Greek thinking. Using Hesiod's poems Theogony and Works and Days and Plato's myth in the dialogue Statesman, it shows that the ideal of the prehistorical Golden Age have found its counterpart in the stories expressing the role of "cultural gods", such as Prometheus, which emphasise opposite aspects of human prehistory: rather bestial lifestyle lacking essential signs of humanity.
The cultural anthropology of these two thinkers is thus neither progressivist, neither simply primitivist, but essentially ambiguous.