Name: Cafe Philo: what is the good of myths?
Start: 2025-05-03T02:00:00.000Z
Location: Albany Public Library

**[IMAGE**: *La Vérité sortant du puits armée de son martinet pour châtier l'humanité*
A mythical representation of truth:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Coming_Out_of_Her_Well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_Coming_Out_of_Her_Well)**]**

**[NB -** back at the library this time!**]**

**QUESTIONS**

Do myths offer truth? What sort of truth(s)?

Do myths and legends reveal historical truths?

Do myths (and other fictions)
\- contain knowledge?
\- truths about human characteristics\, behaviours\, relations?
\- evoke true emotions & feelings?

Do myths (& fables and tales eg Aesop’s) reveal moral truths?

**THOUGHT STARTERS**

[https://aeon.co/essays/the-stories-of-oral-societies-arent-myths-theyre-records](https://aeon.co/essays/the-stories-of-oral-societies-arent-myths-theyre-records)
*“Legends are there to tell us what history has forgotten"*
– Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees, 2022

[https://www.masterclass.com/classes/neil-gaiman-teaches-the-art-of-storytelling/chapters/truth-in-fiction](https://www.masterclass.com/classes/neil-gaiman-teaches-the-art-of-storytelling/chapters/truth-in-fiction)
(only the ‘preview’ is available, the rest is behind a paywall unfortunately)

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fiction/#TrutThroFict](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fiction/#TrutThroFict) (especially paragraph 4 onwards)

[https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fiction/#ParaFict](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fiction/#ParaFict)

[https://aeon.co/essays/before-you-define-fiction-check-your-metaphysical-assumptions](https://aeon.co/essays/before-you-define-fiction-check-your-metaphysical-assumptions)

Meetup Albany

Stephen Henne

Deborah 

Bev C

Alan Williams

Geoffrey Fairclough

Cafe Philo: what is the good of myths?

Albany Public Library 

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