Myth, epos, logos: archetypes of imaginative, narrative and cognitive understanding

This article is issued to a question of finding appropriate methodological principles of myth analysis in philosophy. 'Mythic' is an ambivalent dynamic phenomenon of culture and a structural unit of consciousness and self-consciousness experience. The strategy of distinctionism placed as methodological basis of thematic fronting of myth; it combines post-metaphysical modifications of phenomenology, hermeneutics and semiotics. How to define 'Mith' in a variety of theoretical models? What is a specificity of significant potentialities that differs 'Mith', 'analytical Logos' and 'narrative Epos'? Was a 'mith to logos' conversion definitive in a western culture? The Mith in the article is designed as an ontological structure of consciousness experience and as a transcendental imagination, that is used to open a 'prototype of existence' and generate formers of every practice of interpretation of objective reality. Logos is considered as a principle of analytic and objectified thinking in the article, whereas epos is considered as a narrative structure of understanding. Myth and logos are interact and cooperate, dynamic and complementary principles of understanding, not static categories. It caused (some) difficulties of identification and explanation of nature and functions of myth. A mythological consciousness is neither a rudiment of primitive phase of phylogenetic development of consciousness, nor a chaotic or irrational production of images. The mythological consciousness is specified first of all by syncretism, involvement of propositional, normative and expressive meanings of experience. At the second place it is also specified by undifferentiated phenomena of contemplation, experience and thinking, that are united in speech and actions. And at the third place it's specified by absence of critical-reflexive position towards these elements of experience. As an experience of understanding and a fact, 'Myth' couldn't be reduced to 'Mythology' as a systematization of narratively arranged myths. Different levels of mythological discourse and thinking, processes of demythologization and remy-thologization are closely connected with epos and logos. Considering the 'myth to logos' conversion shows that acts of these images of nous are ways of verbalization, thinking, understanding and arranging the experience of consciousness.

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