So that this thread has more philosophical depth than a simple list of names, perhaps the writer might give us a quote from their favorite philosopher, or a statement as to why they like that particular philosopher.
The textbook for my World Mythology course this past semester was overpriced, heavy and bulky, and it's chapter organization and overall structure confusing. So, from the textbook of another class, Philosophy of Religion, I decided to replace that World Mythology textbook with Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Mircea Eliade's The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History . So that my students have a better grasp of Campbell I will open the course with an introduction to Freud and Jung. Eliade has been very influential to my own understanding of religion, and the book noted above, as well as, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion: The significance of religious myth, symbolism, and ritual within life and culture I believe would benefit any Jedi-in-Training here.
"If we observe the general behavior of archaic man, we are struck by the following fact: neither the objects of the external world or human acts, properly speaking, have any autonomous intrinsic value. Objects or acts acquire a value, and in so doing become real, because they participate, after one fashion or another, in a reality that transcends them" (Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, page 3-4).
The reality that transcends the physical object or act is not separate from the world or from human action. The value is not, as Eliade states, either intrinsic or autonomous, he continues, "The object appears as the receptacle of an exterior force that differentiates it from its milieu and gives it meaning and value. The force may reside in the substance of the object or its form; (any object, for example, a standing stone) reveals itself to be sacred because its very existence is a hierophany: incompressible, invulnerable, it is that which man is not" (ibid).
