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7 LECTURE ONE Gentleman, you rightly expect that I explain, above all, the title under which these lectures are announced. Indeed, not on account that it is new and that, in particular, prior to a certain time, it has scarcely been included in the lecture register of a German university. For whatever concerns this state of affairs , if one wanted to draw an objection from it, the admirable freedom of our universities would already put us in good stead, a freedom that does not restrict the instructors to the realm of certain once-recognized courses of study handed down under old titles, a freedom that also permits them to extend their knowledge over new domains, to draw near to themselves objects that have remained distant and foreign to them until now and deal with them in particular, freely chosen lectures. In so doing, it will seldom occur that these objects are not elevated to a higher significance and science1 [Wissenschaft ] itself not expanded in some sense. At any rate, this freedom permits the scientific spirit to be stimulated not simply more generally and manifoldly but rather more deeply than is possible in schools where only the prescribed is taught and only lawful necessity heard. For if in the sciences that have for a long time enjoyed general recognition and approbation the result is for the most part delivered only as material, without the spectator being shown at the same time the way that it was achieved, then in the presentation of a new science the spectators themselves are called upon to be witness to its emergence, to see how the scientific spirit initially takes possession of the object [XI 4], and then—not so much forces, but induces it to open the sources of knowledge that are hidden and still concealed in itself. For our endeavor to discern and be alive to an object2 must (one still has to repeat it) never have the intention of imputing something to it but rather only of inducing it to giving itself to be known. And the observation of the way the resistant object is brought to self-disclosure through scientific art might enable the spectator, more than any knowledge of mere results, to himself in the future take active part in the continued formation of science. It is equally unlikely that it could lead us to a preliminary explanation if one were to perhaps say that no two things are as foreign and disparate to each other as philosophy and mythology. Precisely that could entail the demand to bring them nearer to each other. For we live in a time where even in science what is most isolated comes into contact, and at perhaps no earlier time was a living feeling of the inner unity and affinity of all sciences more uniformly and generally widespread. Indeed, however, a preliminary explanation might be necessary because the title Philosophy of Mythology—to the extent that it recalls similar titles, like the Philosophy of Language, the Philosophy of Nature, among others—lays claim to a status for mythology that does not yet seem justified. And the higher that status is, the deeper the substantiation [Begründung] it requires. We will not consider it sufficient to say it is founded on a higher viewpoint, for with this predicate nothing is proven—indeed nothing is even said. The views have to establish themselves according to the nature of the objects, not the other way around. It is not written that everything must be explained philosophically, and where more modest means suffice it would be superfluous to summon philosophy : for which, in particular, Horace’s law is supposed to be in force3 : Ne Deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit. [XI 5] Accordingly we will also attempt just this with respect to mythology; that is to say, if it does not admit of an even more modest viewpoint than the one that the title “Philosophy of Mythology” seems to express. Of course, all other and more obvious views must first be explained as impossible, and it itself must have become the only possible one, before we can consider it as grounded. Now, however, this end will not be attained by means of a merely random enumeration. It will be in need of a development that does not only simply include all those views actually advanced but rather includes all those that can be advanced at all, a development whose method prevents that no view that generally can be...

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