Xabier Renteria: basque worldview
Author: Euskeraren Jatorria• Monday, June 03rd, 2013
We currently live in an absolute separation between mythology and language, but ancient cultures bornt in the times of symbiosis “mythology + language.” Therefore, it could be invaluable to research the origin of the Basque and Basque from the point of view of these two aspects in common. And the key to this is the concept of “world view” or Weltanschauung. For example, Basque mythology is traditionally understood from the figure of Amalur or Mari as the personification of nature. But from a scheme of “worldview” first numen or deity indicates the image of the world, the essence of reality. And if we go into Basque, we see that the essence of things is defined by its emptiness (“kafe hutsa nahi dut”, “lelo hutsa zara”), and the related mythological and semantic fields are consistent with this idea.
It seems contradictory and illogical to apply as first ontological principle that “Reality = Emptiness = Mother Earth”, but it’s actually something typical of large non-Western cultural traditions of the planet. Our philosophy, language and origin are not a product of the stupidity of some cro-magnon eating acorns! This result is reinforced if we continue restructuring the Basque worldview form an according conceptual escheme. Where will go our traditionals historical victimism and cultural inferiority complex? To investigate our society and language from these keys will bring out new surprises, no doubt.
Formally: we propose that it is conceptually possible to reconstruct ancient worldview of the Basques, and we advance the first axis to show it (“What is reality and how we know?”). To begin this reconstruction we will propose that in the Basque worldview an “attention-focuser prototype in the Emptiness ” connects us and it puts us at the level of philosophical traditions which are not currently Western. This means that before the arrival of the Indo-European the Basques had a certain way of feeling, conceptualizing and reflecting on words the existence, so that certain traces in mythology, in the language and other cultural as art or popular collective structures have survived to this day.
In the arguments we will show: the importance of the “world view” or “Weltanschauung”; “attention- focusers” of certain “cognitive-linguistic prototypes” held the worldvies; Basque worldview stands on a ” attention-focuser prototype in the Emptiness”; Basque epistemic protoypes are genuinely pre-Indo-European, and their overall system does not make sense in the current western culture but it is well understood as” perennial philosophy “.
Communication: Euskal mundu ikuskera: mitologia eta euskera aurreindoeuroparrak