Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Zusammenfassung: Griechisches Bewusstsein von Geschichte; Begriff Geschichte

Kurzinhalt: The term history, although it derives from the Greek historia, does not have in its modern usage the classic meaning

Textausschnitt: 5. Conclusions
37/1 The issues of the Hellenic consciousness of history can now be formulated on the basis of the sources introduced in the preceding survey. (112; Fs)

38/1 With regard to the spatial and temporal extension of the classic memory the facts are fairly clear-the sources bear out the picture that we have drawn in the section "General Characteristics." The whole extent of the Aegean area that was considered Hellenic at the time became the stage on which Greek history was enacted; and in the drama itself were included the Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations, as well as the migration events back to approximately the turn from the third to the second millennium. One should especially note the manner in which Cretan society, in spite of its apparently non-Greek language, was taken for granted as part of Greek society. Not only was there no hesitation in the matter, but the Minoan order was even accorded the rank of the origin of Greek order, with equal regard to both power and substance. This should be a warning against overrating the importance of archaeological discoveries for the problems that occupy the philosopher of order and history. That Greek history begins with the Cretans is established by the literary sources of the classical period. Archaeological discoveries can add to our knowledge of that historical course-and they do it magnificently-but the course itself exists by virtue of its creation in the memory of the Hellenic historians and philosophers. (112; Fs) (notabene)

39/1 The structural details of the memory are not altogether clear. As soon as one examines the two dominant motifs of the construction, that is, the experiences of institutionalized power and of substantive order, more closely, serious questions will arise. (112; Fs)

40/1 In the first place, considering the absence of permanent institutions for the whole of Greek society through the whole of its course, it is rather surprising that reflections on power and strategy should be a dominant motif at all. The peoples of the Aegean area apparently experienced themselves as a civilizational society of the same type and rank as the imperially organized societies of Anatolia, Iran, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt. If Greek society had in fact no comparable institutions, it was at least considered a suitable candidate with a potential for having them; hence, the ephemeral or partial organizations of power in the area, as far back in time as they were discernible, became events in the history of Greek order. This motif was indeed strong enough to link such apparently unrelated phenomena as the Hellenic "common effort" of the Persian Wars, and the subsequent Athenian empire, with the Achaean expedition against Troy, and with the Cretan control of the Aegean as a series of manifestations of Greek power. And the constructive strength of the motif indicates that a Greek society above the level of the polis order was experienced with greater intensity than one would assume if the judgment were guided only by the lack of permanent institutions, or by the observation that Plato and Aristotle concentrated their efforts on a paradigm of the best polis. In search of a comparably odd structure of experience, institutionalization, and symbolization one can only fall back on that of Israel at the time of the Judges, before the pressure of surrounding powers forced the people to have a king like the other nations. The parallel, to be sure, must not be pressed, because of the lack of information on the Hellenic side-the authors of the classical period did not say all we would like to know, perhaps because their readers knew it already. Still, one should observe the curious vacuum of articulate expression in an otherwise very articulate literature, yawning between the awareness that Hellenic society, in order to exist and survive, needed a common organization of power, and the knowledge that the Hellenes were not an ethnos like the Asiatic peoples and, therefore, should not have imperial institutions like the other nations. (112f; Fs)

41/1 The objection must, then, be considered that the identification of Greek society by means of the erratic power organizations back to the Minoan is no more than the willful notion of a few isolated thinkers and has nothing to do with the real course of Greek history. This argument is hardly tenable. For the Hellenic memory was not based on written records of antiquity, accessible perhaps only to a small group of literati. In this respect we are in the Hellenic case probably on safer ground than in the Israelite, where indeed one may doubt to what extent the population at large in the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah participated in the issues ventilated by the prophets. For the art of writing, which had existed in the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, had disappeared, as far as we know, in the dark centuries after the Doric invasion and was recovered only through contact with the Phoenicians. When Herodotus and Thucydides wrote their histories, without a doubt they had to draw on such oral traditions as were alive in the Hellenic society at large, or on a literature of epics and hymns that had been committed to writing, however old the contents preserved in the literary forms may have been, not earlier than the introduction of the alphabet (presumably after 1000 B.C.). Hence, the classic memory of Greek history is not an archaistic reconstruction of events long forgotten by the people, but the organization of a living memory which, by its very existence, proves the continuum of Greek history to be real. (113f; Fs)

42/1 The reality of the continuum obtrudes itself especially in the Platonic construction of the divine origin of Greek order and the necessity of a return to the first omphalos. Here the second motif, the experience of substantive order and disorder, dominates the identification of Greek society. For Plato is, in the Laws, not satisfied with tracing the line of pragmatic power to its beginning, but introduces, as the ultimately decisive criterion, the substance of order and its vicissitudes in the historical course. Greek society is now identified through the epiphany of order in the rule of the Minos, and its course is understood as the exhaustion of the original substance, down to the Hellenic crisis of Plato's own present. This symbolism could never have been developed unless traditions about the Cretan as the oldest Greek order, about the close relation between Doric and Cretan order, and about the transfer of the omphalos from Crete to Delphi, had been in existence so that Plato could draw on them; and unless they had been so widely diffused and accepted that he could build them into his symbolism without appearing absurd or becoming unintelligible. (114; Fs) (notabene)

43/1 The materials used in the constructions, thus, belong to a body of traditions living among the people at large; and quite probably even the dominant motifs were already dominant on the general level of Greek conversations on power and order. Still, there remain the formal constructions themselves, the works of the concrete historians and philosophers. What motivated their creators to organize the Hellenic memory in these specific forms? (114; Fs)

44/1 With regard to the motive itself, the organizers of the classic memory were quite outspoken: it was the experience of the Hellenic crisis. Herodotus wanted to explore the antecedents of the situation in which the Hellenes found themselves involved in a death struggle with the Persians; Thucydides wanted to explore the causes of the great kinesis in which the Athenians and Lacedaemonians fought Hellas to death together with themselves; and Plato wanted to understand the disintegration of substantive order that made Athens unfit to discharge its functions as the hegemonic power of a united Hellas. Beyond this point, however, the issues become more complicated. And since they are the subject matter of the following study, I shall at present reflect only on the central issue, i.e., the conception of the historical course of a society as a cycle with a beginning and an end, as well as on its principal implications. (114f; Fs)

45/1 Before the conception of the historical course itself can be analyzed, however, a preliminary question must be solved. Up to this point we have spoken of Greek history, of the Hellenic consciousness of history, of the historical memory of the classical period, of the historical course of Greek society, of a cycle of order extending from the rule of the Minos to the exhaustion of substance in Plato's time, and so forth, taking it for granted that such language can be legitimately used in a study of Greek phenomena. 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.1 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)

47/1 Under the assumption that one can speak of history at all in the present context, the main issue, the experience and symbol of the historical cycle, must now be explored. (116; Fs)
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.2 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.3 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,4 from cosmology to eschatology,5 and from the cultic restoration to the historical metastasis of order.6 (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. (117f; Fs) (notabene)

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)

51/1 The reality of the continuum of Greek history, an issue that apparently has been settled, is raised anew by these formulations. If the past of Greek society was indeed constituted through the classic memory and its symbolisms, in what sense was their history ever real to preclassic Greeks? Does the situation not resemble the Egyptian, in which the historical course as understood by us in retrospect of Judaeo-Christian history was never experienced as a course by the members of Egyptian society? The answer to such questions will have to be that the classic memory did not constitute a new society, as did the Mosaic response to revelation, but climaxed with its articulate consciousness the history of the old society from which it emerged. The classic memory refers us back to the order and history in which this phenomenon could occur. Once more we must stress that it occurred nowhere else. And it will be our task, therefore, to trace the growth of the final experiences and symbols through the course of the Greek society that is retrospectively identified as the field of that growth by the historians and philosophers of the Hellenic period. The following inquiry concerning the principal stages through which the final form was reached will move from the cosmological myth of the Cretan society, through the Homeric myth and the Hesiodian speculation, to the philosophers' break with the myth. (118f; Fs)