Archetypes, born in ancient Pagan cultures, were understood as universal abstractions that provided a general common understanding to an otherwise diverse fabric of life and particular application of gendered reality. The association of the woman with the earth and fertility, for example, is an ancient archetype common across cultures. Or take the 3 rd century BC Asian Yin and Yang principle, for example. It was an archetype for understanding the inter-connectedness and interdependence of the sexes. Incorporated as a way of explaining the deep psychology of gender, Carl Jung later called them primordial images, shared in a collective subconscious. The philosophical “archetypical” thinking of Plato was a further and significant development in the history of philosophy. Though he may not have called them “archetypes,” his concept of “ideas” or perfect forms of things was on a philosophical level what archetypes are on a psychological level. Kant, much later, but still building on ...
A pessimist's pursuit of joy