Title

The Effect of Myth on Primitive and Ancient Justice

Abstract

THE EFFECT OF MYTH ON PRIMITIVE AND ANCIENT JUSTICE M. Stuart Madden

Abstract In primitive and civilized cultures alike, myth has served as a foundational component of social structure and societal cultural self-image. For peoples with limitation on their skills of scientific inquiry and/or detached social observation, myth has served purposes ranging from explanation of the natural world to early visions of civil justice and a moral ethos. Such application of myth has necessarily and simultaneously provided adherents with the means of rationalizing the caprice and harshness of the natural world, as well as giving a means of accepting, even a fatalism, concerning injustice. Accordingly, as evidence of primitive and ancient informs us of the cultural antecedents of much of modern civil justice, so to myth not only provides great storytelling, but also insights into the moral and ethical aspirations of prior cultures, as well as the socio-psychological means of man’s adaptation to frustration thereof.

Disciplines

Civil Law | Jurisprudence | Law | Law and Society | Legal History

Date of this Version

July 2005