Political Myth

Harvard FAS

Political myth, or ideologically-marked narratives that are essential to the identity of a social group, has often been thought of as antithetical to political theory. By obscuring the truth in false narratives, or by communicating truths through narrative and arational means, myth has been interpreted as hostile to freedom, liberalism, rationalism, and deliberative democracy. And yet, despite Max Weber’s claim that the modern world had become ‘disenchanted,’ the last century saw an explosion…