Page 29 - The Drucker Lectures

10 [ The Drucker Lectures

thing that is real, rational, and true: the symbolical expression of
an experience common to all men.
The radical change in the connotation of the term means a
radical change in basic philosophical concepts and beliefs and,
above all, in the concept of human nature. It’s a shift from a
philosophy that sees man as reason, with the rest of his being—
body, emotion, experience—either as an illusion or a weakness,
to a philosophical position which again attempts to see all of
man, that is, to see a being.
The myth, as even the extreme eighteenth-century rational-
ists saw, deals with experience. It deals with what we know, not
with what we can deduce or prove. Experience is not reason; it is
experience. To the Cartesian rationalist and to his successor, the
German idealist philosopher, reality, truth, and validity existed
only in reason, and reason could only be applied to what was
in reason to begin with. There was no bridge from the truth of
reason to the illusions and phantasma of experience. Experience
was not just nonrational; it was irrational. And the myth was
worse: It was a lie.
Every myth attempts to present the nonrational experience in a
form in which reason can go to work on it. And that, to the ratio-
nalist or idealist, is, from his point of view, the worst crime; it is a
dishonesty, which can only have the purpose of enslaving reason.
The moment, however, we see man again as a being—as a
creature that has existence rather than as an isolated particle of
reason—the myth becomes central. The myth symbolizing it
opens experience to reason. It makes it possible for reason to
understand and to analyze our experience, to criticize, direct,
and change our reaction to experience. Instead of being irratio-
nal, the myth is seen as a great rationalizer—the bridge between
experience and reason.
The myth makes it possible for our reason to order experience
in a rational, meaningful way—that is, it makes possible the rit-