Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Hesiod: vom Mythos zur Metaphysik

Kurzinhalt: Myth and philosophy, just as myth and revelation, are separated by the leap in being, that is ...

Textausschnitt: 195b The transition from myth to metaphysics is fraught with problems that science has not yet resolved by far. Still, one can formulate the central issue: that rational speculation, while it can be used within the symbolic forms of both myth and philosophy, is neither the one nor the other.1 Myth and philosophy, just as myth and revelation, are separated by the leap in being, that is, by the break with the compact experience of cosmic-divine order through the discovery of the transcendent-divine order. The leap in being, however, notwithstanding the radicalism of the event when it occurs, is historically prepared by a variety of modes in which the myth is loosened up and made transparent toward transcendent order. In the Egyptian form of order, the theogonic speculation of the Memphite Theology, the summodeistic speculations of the empire theologians, culminating in the symbolism of Akhenaton, as well as the personal piety of the Amon Hymns, made the cosmological myth so transparent for transcendent being that the resulting formulations could be misunderstood by historians as "monotheistic." The carrier of this advance is man inasmuch as his existence under God is real even though it is not yet illuminated by the leap in being. The desire to know the truth of order, which Aristotle recognized as natural to man, is present even where it has to struggle with the compactness of experience and its cosmological expression. In Hellas these preparatory steps toward the leap in being were taken by the "singers." Homer created the present of man, if not under God, at least under the monarchically organized Olympians, and with it the past of memorable deeds and the future of survival in song. Hesiod, to whom the symbolism of existence under the Olympian gods was already given, applied rational speculation to it in his pursuit of truth. The Hesiodian speculation, however, does not belong to the same type as the Egyptian, for the Olympian myth of Homer, to which it applied, was no longer cosmological. The decisive step toward the creation of the historical form had been taken by Homer when he transfigured the Achaean fall into the past of Hellenic society. Unlike the Egyptian speculation, which remained an event within the medium of the cosmological form, the Hesiodian work has its sequel in philosophy because it moves within the mnemosynic form of the singer,- the poems of Hesiod are a symbolism sui generis inasmuch as they establish a genuinely transitional form between myth and metaphysics. To be sure, since the compact symbols of the myth comprehend shades of experience that escape the differentiated concepts of metaphysics, while the language of metaphysics lends precision to meanings that remain inarticulate in the myth, the units of meaning cannot be amply paired off against each other. Nevertheless, the transition is an intelligible process, because the experiential substratum provided by Homer remains recognizable in its sameness through the change of symbolic forms; and this sameness is most clearly recognizable in the Hesiodian beginnings of the process when, in faltering and stumbling speculation, the symbols of the myth point searchingly toward meanings for which later generations of philosophers will develop a technical vocabulary. The Theogony represents such an incipient penetration of the Olympian myth with a speculative intention,- and an intelligible line of speculative evolution runs from these beginnings through the Ionian and Italian philosophers to Plato and Aristotle. (Fs) (notabene)