Geschick (The Message of Being) as a Constitutive Feature of the Mythical

This article is devoted to the task of identifying the constitutive attribute of the mythical. The study does not concern the phenomenon of the genesis of myth, considering only those features which allow the myth to survive significant changes, deconstruction and evasion, without losing the basis of its essence, where evasion (der Entzug) is one of the most important terms of Heidegger’s philosophy, denoting the ability of a being to manifest itself in an indirect, unnatural way, to impose itself on a representation. Without leaving the field of attention, the self-evading (das Sichentziehende) is hiding in itself. The author of this text analyzed a number of sources and suggests that a possible solution to the problem posed is to turn to the late philosophy of Martin Heidegger, namely, the concept of the history of Being. This conception reveals a number of philosophical considerations regarding a human’s memory of being, where one of the key phenomenon is the call or message of being (Geschick). The call of being has a direct connection with Heidegger’s understanding of truth as uncoveredness (ἀλήθεια), derived from his ancient historical and philosophical studies. A hermeneutic analysis of fragments of various myths and mythologies is carried out with the aim of testing the author’s theory. The research is followed by a discussion of why it is difficult to imagine the mythical without Geschick. Despite the reliance on the Hidegger’s project of the history of being, this view on the myth theory is rather nonstandard. Heidegger recognized the message of being in the ancient legend, denying the similar feature in any other mythical systems. The author does not make attempt to identify Geschick only in the legends of other ethnic groups by using the Heigegger’s hermeneutic method but comes to the conclusion that the phenomenon of myth can not merely exist without this feature.