The Myth and the Logos

Abstract

This chaper explores the question of monstrosity through the conflictual nature of the archaic and ancient mythology. Already in the early cosmogonies, monstrosity fights for alternative orders of being. Against them, normality is established through a long, painful, and challenging process in which, curiously, monstrosity is not only the principal enemy, but also one of the tools that paradoxically helps the mainstream forces to establish themselves. The material analysed in this chapter constitutes the ground to present the passage from myth to logos and to better understand the genealogy of two alternative visions of nature, i.e. materialism and idealism which, long before the great Attic systematisations, divide the field of pre-Platonic philosophy.