西方神话

Myth

Myth is the accumulation of a nation’s culture in a long period. It reflects the imagination and explanation and to those natural and social phenomena that can’t be proved in that time. Owing to the different environment, different national mentalities and characters are formed, which cause the different myths. The two typical examples are Chinese myth and Greek myth, and what the most difference between them is their opinions to ethics. Now I will analyze their different ethics from three aspects:

1、 The Source of Power

Greek advocates strength, but Chinese advocates morality. The god in Greek myth, they get and keep their power by strength. The king of gods---Zeus, depending on his mother to get the control of universe, and a strong admiration to strength is called among people. Meanwhile, the Greek gods’ system is formed around Zeus. What’s more, other gods, for example, the god of ocean---Poseidon and the god of war---Ares all possess their position in the Olympic mountain by their own divinity.

However, in China, the gods obtain their power and status by their morality, not the strength. For instance, the sovereigns in Chinese myth are mainly the personification of sage. In addition, the Taoist can fly to the heaven to be a god if they are noble enough. They are all lofty and have a

sense of sacrifice. It matches with the spirits of Chinese.

2、 The Motivation of Spirit

Greek myth advocates the personal honor and confirms the personal value, but Chinese myth stresses the public spirit and personal sacrifice for collective interest.

The heroes in Greek myth all admire honor extremely, even beyond everything. When the Greek marshal deprived the honor of Achilles, Achilles refused to fight against enemies in order to defend personal dignity. Trojan War also reflects the persistent pursuit to personal value of ancient Greek. Compared with Greek, Chinese pay more attention to the harmony of social. Pan Gu, Hou Yi and so on, their behavior’s motivation are not for meeting their own needs and interest, but for national interest.

Of course, the spirit of freedom, admiring wisdom and strength, expressing ourselves in Greek myth make people have the strong passion on the way to pursue personal value.

3、Emotion

The emotion is always the vital theme in Greek myth. We all enjoy the romance of the story of Jupiter .However, in Greek myth, the story of incest is in majority. For example, the combine between Gaia and her son named Uranus, the marriage between Cronus and his sister---Rhea. In that period, love is determined by appearance and people ignored the inner world. Meanwhile, they stayed in the level of possessing each other and

usurping to great extent. But these myths are not totally unreasonable, because it is the reflection of the consciousness pattern in that time. And the incest in Greek myth is the objective reflection to love. With the development of time and the progress of knowledge, this unreasonable phenomenon has been negated by people and will be disappeared. However, we must admit that the gods in Greek myth are highly personalized. Hera’s envy, Zeus’ despotism, Apollo’s heroism completely impressed us. They all have the same emotion with human beings. In Chinese myth, the gods seems like a statue without desire or passion. What’s more, if they own or express their personal emotion, they will be punished. The weaver who falls in love with an ordinary person is an example.

In summary, in the contrast between Chinese and Greek ethics, existing the different attitude to the source of power, the motivation of spirit and the emotion. Summed up the three aspects, Greek ethics emphasis on the individual to be independent, Chinese ethics emphasis on ethical values in the individual groups.