Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Gegenüberstellung: Geschichte -> kosmologische Form - Israel - Griechenland; Mosaic - philosophic leap in being

Kurzinhalt: the Hellenic conception of the cycle of history is a new symbolic form; Mosaic leap in being; Egyptian empires never developed the conception of a society with a beginning and end in historical time

Textausschnitt: 48/1 The symbolism of a cyclical decline and restoration of order is peculiar to societies in cosmological form. In the earlier volume Israel and Revelation we studied the symbolism of the New Year Festivals, of the cult acts that annually heal the defections from, and revitalize the order of, society, with the implication of repeating the original cosmogonic act that has brought forth order from chaos. These periodic acts of restoration also betray a consciousness of history,- but far from articulating it, they are rather calculated to prevent the experience of the decline of a society from reaching the level of consciousness. The time of history in which a society experiences the vicissitudes of its order down to exhaustion and ultimate dissolution is annulled through the magic of cultic repristination. What we call today the historical course of Egyptian society was not a course for the Egyptians, but a rhythmical repetition of cosmogony in the imperially organized humanity that existed at the center of the cosmos. The prolonged disturbances and revolts, for instance between the Old and the Middle Kingdoms, were not epochs of history from which order in new form could arise, but simply disruptions of the cosmological form to be borne with nothing but the hope that the same type of order would ultimately be somehow restored. It required the Mosaic leap in being to break this compact experience of order and to differentiate the new truth of existence in historical form, in the present under God. The new understanding of order, it is true, could not abolish the rise and fall of societies in pragmatic history; and the experience of the decline of order, which in the cosmological form could be expressed and, at the same time, contained and annulled through cultic restorations, now had to search for new modes of adequate articulation. Such new expression was found in Isaiah's metastatic faith in the imminent transfiguration of the world that would abolish the cycle of defection and return,- and when the impasse of this faith became clear, the problem of transhistorical, eschatological events began to differentiate from the historical phases of order and disorder that correspondingly became the world-immanent structure of events. With regard to the evolution of symbols we could draw, therefore, the lines from the cosmological rhythms of order to the phases of history, from cosmology to eschatology, and from the cultic restoration to the historical metastasis of order. (116f; Fs) (notabene)

49/1 The question then arises how the structure of the Hellenic symbolism is related to the problems of order just recalled. And with regard to that issue it must be recognized above all that the Hellenic conception of the cycle of history is a new symbolic form. Nothing comparable is to be found either in the Near Eastern societies in cosmological form, or in Israel in historical form. For the Mesopotamian and Egyptian empires never developed the conception of a society with a beginning and end in historical time, but remained compactly bound in the experience of cosmic divine order and of the participation of the respective societies in its rhythm. And the Israel that existed as the Chosen People under God, while it had a beginning in historical time, could have no end because the divine will, which had created Israel as the omphalos of salvation for all mankind, was irreversible and remained unchanged beyond both the rhythms of the cosmos and the phases of history. While the Hellenic symbolism, thus, belongs neither to the cosmological nor the Israelite historical type, it seems to partake of both of these forms,- and this apparently intermediate structure has indeed motivated the divergent opinions that, on the one hand, the Greeks had no genuine idea of history at all but fundamentally expressed themselves in the symbolism of eternal return, and that, on the other hand, the Greeks were the creators of historiography, that in particular Herodotus was the Father of History and the work of Thucydides one of the greatest histories ever written. Such indulgences of opinion can be avoided only if the analysis goes beyond the surface of disparate characteristics and penetrates to the motivating center of the symbolism. (116f; Fs)

50/1 This motivating center can be circumscribed through comparisons with the Israelite motivating experiences and their articulation. The Hellenic consciousness of history is motivated by the experience of a crisis; the society itself, as well as the course of its order, is constituted in retrospect from its end. The Israelite consciousness of history is motivated by the experience of a divine revelation,- the society is constituted through the response to revelation, and from this beginning it projects its existence into the open horizon of time. The Hellenic consciousness arrives, through the understanding of disorder, at the understanding of true order - that is the process for which Aeschylus has found the formula of wisdom through suffering; the Israelite consciousness begins, through the Message and Decalogue from Sinai, with the knowledge of true order. The Mosaic and prophetic leap in being creates the society in which it occurs in historical form for the future; the philosophic leap in being discovers the historical form, and with it the past, of the society in which it occurs. Such contrapuntal formulations will bring into focus the essential difference between the historical forms that are developed respectively by Revelation and Philosophy. The word, the dabai, immediately and fully reveals the spiritual order of existence, as well as its origin in transcendent-divine being, but leaves it to the prophet to discover the immutability and recalcitrance of the world-immanent structure of being; the philosopher's love of wisdom slowly dissolves the compactness of cosmic order until it has become the order of world-immanent being beyond which is sensed, though never revealed, the unseen transcendent measure. (118; Fs) (notabene)