Hans Blumenberg, Work on Myth: Part I, Chapter 4, "Procedural Regulations"

In preceding chapters, Blumenberg had considered the function of myth in a hypothetical original situation (the "absolutism of reality"): as a way of representing and differentiating the forces and dangers that beset human beings to make them more bearable and seemingly manageable. The present chapter considers the elaboration within myth itself that makes the representative entities themselves less fearsome.

On the generations of the Greek gods: "Myth represents a world of stories that localizes the hearer's standpoint in time in such a way that the fund of the monstrous and the unbearable recedes in relation to him." (117)

Even though I distinguish, in discussing connections that are evident in literature, between myth and its reception, I do not want to leave room for the assumption that 'myth' is the primary, archaic formulation, in relation to which everything subsequent can be called reception. Even the earliest items of myth that are accessible to us are already products of work on myth. In part, this preliterary phase of work has passed into the compound of myths, so that the process of reception has itself become a presentation of its manner of functioning. (118)

Myth represents a "constitutionalization" of divine power, circumscribing and dividing it.

Here an elementary dichotomy appears among the ways in which man can arrange matters with superior powers, so as to live without anxiety or only be subject to definable conditions of 'fear of the Lord.' There must be a weakening of the superior power which is not / carried out only by man, and there must be proofs of its reliability, at least preliminary forms of lawfulness and fidelity to agreements. The technique of weakening operatoes through the division of power, the exclusion of omnipotence; rivalry and entanglement in affairs; the mutual jealousy and envy of the powers; their precinct and department mentality; the complication of their genealogies and successions; and the god's defined weaknesses and capacities for distraction. The procedure by which reliability is demonstrated is more historical in nature. What is to be demonstrated is the god's continual adherence to his vows, for example, to God's vow in the bible, which is confirmed by the rainbow, not to carry out a second extermination of mankind by water, and not to let any faithlessness on man's part drive him to break his oath. (124-125)

Chronology as an essential element of dogma: it centers the story of human beings and their relationship to God in the playing out of history.

Myths do not answer questions; they make things unquestionable. (126)

Myth cannot be seen to have been constructed, which would undermine its place as an account that just is.

Although myth refuses, and must refuse, to provide explanations, it does 'produce' another life-stabilizing quality: the inadmissability of the arbitrary, the elimination of caprice. That is why it cannot be / allowed to fall under the suspicion of being an artifact. It must be accepted as a "psychological product of nature." (127-128)

Blumenberg notes the ambiguity and lack of definitiveness of myth, in contrast to, for example, the biblican and dogmatic account of creation, but does not see this as a sign that it was incomplete. It is, he claims, "an expression of the way it thinks." (129) To put it in my own terms, it is a feature, not a bug.

What distinguishes dogma from myth is just this, that it claims to contain, and institutionalizes, what amount to 'eternal facts.' Although, it return for that, it also contains eternal entanglements that no atonement can blot out entirely... (132)

Blumenberg contends that even our earliest sources of Greek myth already bear traces of 'work on myth.' That is, they already contain devices, like reversal and parody, that attenuate the fearsomeness of the mythic gods. Aesop's fables as reversing the anthropizing of the gods by illustrating human qualities and foibles through animal characters. Proteus as a parodic figure in epic.

An extended discussion of the impulse of the Old Testament Hebrews to regress to animalistic depictions of gods.

Concludes the chapter with a discussion of 'circumstantiality' as the common element of myth's modes of procedure.