Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Hitler and the Germans

Titel: Hitler and the Germans

Stichwort: Hesiod, Aristoteles: 3 Klassen von Menschen; "Sklave von Natur aus"; "rabble"

Kurzinhalt: So here you already have three types of men: the man who is in full possession of the nous and ... that it is extremely difficult to understand that the elite of a society can consist of a rabble. But it really does consist of a rabble.

Textausschnitt: 88a Let us first take the classical attitude toward the question, that not all men are fully man in Aristotle's terms.1 In the Nicomachean Ethics (1095b10-13) Aristotle falls back on Hesiod, that means, to the eighth century. For Hesiod, these insights still derive from what can be called commonsense experience. I will quote this passage from Hesiod, which Aristotle later develops. In the Works and Days, from verses 293 f., Hesiod classifies men into three groups: First, that man is the best, pan aristos, who himself considers or thinks through all things, who can advise himself, noese: The nous plays a part here. The second type is also good, an esthlos, who listens to the best, to the pan aristos. The one, however, who neither thinks, noe, nor listens is a useless man. (Fs)

88b So here you already have three types of men: the man who is in full possession of the nous and can advise himself, where, by nous, is meant openness toward the divine ground of being; the one who, in case of doubt, has at least enough reason to listen to him who is in full possession of it; and the one who has neither the one nor the other and therefore is a useless fellow, who can also become a dangerous fellow. (Fs)

88c The Aristotelian divisions follow this Hesiodian classification. The man in full possession of freedom is the man who has authority and lets himself be led by his own nous, by reason. Then there are the others, some who are still being educated, others who never get beyond certain educational levels, but at least are still approachable, far as they listen when a wiser man tells them what is right and t is wrong. And then there is the third class, which he called the slaves by nature. Now what are we doing with this classification? An expression such as the Aristotelian "slaves by nature" can hardly be used for our purposes, for we no longer have slavery as a formal legal institution. The Hesiodian expression of the useless man, the achreios, is not all that useful either. Aristotle's slave by nature and Hesiod's useless man belong-the latter at least partly- to a kind of social substratum, while our problem is that the useless man exists at all levels of society up to its highest ranks, including pastors, prelates, generals, industrialists, and so on. (Fs)

89a So I would suggest the neutral expression "rabble" for this. There are men who are rabble in the sense that they neither have the authority of spirit or of reason, nor are they able to respond to reason or spirit, if it emerges advising or reminding them. Here we again approach the Buttermelcher Syndrome: that it is extremely difficult to understand that the elite of a society can consist of a rabble. But it really does consist of a rabble. (Fs)