Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Herodot, Thukydides; Berechtigung bei den Griechen (Israel) von Geschichte zu reden; historia

Kurzinhalt: it proved to be legitimate to speak of history inasmuch as the Israelite symbolism contained compactly the meanings that later ... were differentiated and expressed

Textausschnitt: 45/1 Before the conception of the historical course itself can be analyzed, however, a preliminary question must be solved. () In a critical study of experiences of order and their symbolization, however, no symbols can be taken for granted, even though they are used in accordance with contemporary conventions. Hence, before proceeding further it must be ascertained whether we can speak of history in the present context at all. (115; Fs)

46/1 The term history, although it derives from the Greek historia, does not have in its modern usage the classic meaning. When Herodotus speaks of historiai he means his inquiries into a subject matter, somewhat arbitrarily accepted today as historical. And Toynbee stresses on occasion that in his title A Study of History, the study rather than the history renders the classic historia. Thucydides, furthermore, did not give the History of the Peloponnesian War the title under which the work is known today. Rather, he was interested, as just indicated, in a type study of the kinesis, of the great movement or convulsion of Hellenic society, and whether this study is history in the modern sense is precisely the issue that must be explored. These observations will be sufficient to show that the Hellenic symbolism raises the same problems as the Israelite "historical narrative." In the Israelite case we had to distinguish between the historiographic symbols appearing in the text, on the one hand, and the terminology that had to be employed in the interpretation of the symbolic form, on the other hand. And among the historiographic symbols developed by the creators of the narrative, there was no term that could be considered the Hebrew equivalent of history. Our usage had to be justified, therefore, through appeal to the categories of compactness and differentiation,-and it proved to be legitimate to speak of history inasmuch as the Israelite symbolism contained compactly the meanings that later, in the orbit of Christian experiences, were differentiated and expressed by the new symbol. The same argument will apply to the Hellenic case. While the meaning of history that has been created through Christianity is not to be found in the classic memory, the later problems are nevertheless contained in the less differentiated historical consciousness of a Herodotus or Thucydides, or in Plato's conspectus of the historical cycle of order. That the argument is indeed valid in the Hellenic case, to be sure, can be proven only through the analysis of the literary sources itself. For the moment we must anticipate the proof. (115f; Fs)