This project examines narratives of beginnings and foundations in myth and natural philosophy in ancient Greece, and how these modes of discourse interact with one another. Shifting its chronological focus from the Hellenistic era to the less studied aitiologies of the archaic and classical periods, the project enquires into the different motivations for and means of explaining origins in mythical and philosophical narratives. While the use of the past to provide an aitiological explanation for the present has increasingly received scholarly attention in the context of mythological narratives, pre-Socratic cosmogonies have seldom, if at all, been examined from an aitiological perspective. The concepts of Chronos and Chthoniê are emblematic for our interest in notions of time, which range from linear to cyclical and iterative, but also include anterior time and, above all, ‘deep time’, an idea especially productive for exploring the mythological figure of Gaia (also known as Chthoniê). We look at the tension between divine creators and 'biomorphic' (Walter Burkert) processes of creation as well as that between poetic and philosophical conceptions of the beginning of the world.

In Focus Area I, Susanne Gödde analyzes the literary transformation of mythological narratives in epic, lyric, and tragedy. She focuses primarily on ambiguous, conflictual, or violent foundation scenes that make it difficult to trace a linear relationship between the past and the present, e.g. in the founding myths of cities and individual cults, but also in Hesiod’s Theogony. The goddess Gaia/Earth is of central interest here, not only because of her ambivalence as both a generative and obstructive force, but also with a view to her reception and reinterpretation as a life-giving organism from the Romantic period to James Lovelock and Bruno Latour. 

In Focus Area II, Anna-Maria Gasser addresses the aitiological dimension of early Greek cosmogonies, particularly in pre-Socratic philosophers. She examines the specific ideas of time on which these cosmogonies are based, different concepts of beginning and causality, cosmogonic agency, and the narrative character of the cosmogonies. A crucial point for understanding the use of aitiology in these sources is the observation that pre-Socratic aitiologies become the subject of later aitiologies: not only do they tell of the beginning, but, from Aristotle onwards, are themselves declared to be the beginning of philosophy.

Both parts of the project pay particular attention to whether and in what context(s) beginnings are represented as inevitably leading to and legitimizing a linear sequence of events with a ‘destined’ outcome, and when beginnings are destabilized or problematized by non-linear, ‘scenic’ narratives, narrative detours, and even disruptions. In this way, the project aims to provide a systematic analysis of the types and functions of narratives of beginnings and the construction of the past in myth and natural philosophy.