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Full Idea
Without myth every culture loses its natural healthy creating power: only a horizon encircled with myths can mark off a cultural movement as a discrete unit.
Gist of Idea
Every culture loses its identity and power if it lacks a major myth
Source
Friedrich Nietzsche (Works (refs to 8 vol Colli and Montinari) [1885], 1.145)
Book Ref
Safranski,Rüdiger: 'Nietzsche: a philosophical biography' [Granta 2003], p.86
A Reaction
In the early part of his career this was a big idea for Nietzsche, especially associated with Wagner's Ring, but he moved away from the idea later.
| 19780 | We seem to have made individual progress since savagery, but actually the species has decayed [Rousseau] |
| 19839 | The flourishing of arts and letters is too much admired [Rousseau] |
| 14852 | Culture cannot do without passions and vices [Nietzsche] |
| 4495 | The high points of culture and civilization do not coincide [Nietzsche] |
| 20108 | Every culture loses its identity and power if it lacks a major myth [Nietzsche] |
| 20948 | Human cultures are organisms which grow, and then fade and die [Spengler, by Bowie] |
| 23846 | Culture is an instrument for creating an ongoing succession of teachers [Weil] |
| 23414 | Liberals say state intervention in culture restricts people's autonomy [Kymlicka] |
| 9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |
| 15662 | The 'culture industry' is an advertisement for the way things are [Finlayson] |
| 20679 | We stabilise societies with dogmas, either of dubious science, or of non-scientific values [Harari] |
| 21432 | Culture is the struggle to agree what is normal [Gibson,A] |