Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Seinssprung (Leap in Being): Israel - historische Existenz eines Volkes unter Gott; Griechenland - Individuum unter Gott

Kurzinhalt: The leap in being had different results in Israel and Hellas. In Israel it assumed the form of historical existence of a people under God; in Hellas ...

Textausschnitt: 238ba The leap in being had different results in Israel and Hellas. In Israel it assumed the form of historical existence of a people under God; in Hellas it assumed the form of personal existence of individual human beings under God. If the issue be formulated in this manner, it will be apparent that the "perpetual mortgage of the world-immanent, concrete event on the transcendent truth that on its occasion was revealed," of which we had to speak in the case of Israel,1 would be less of a burden on Hellenic philosophy than on Israelite revelation. The universal validity of transcendent truth, the universality of the one God over the one mankind, could be more easily disengaged from an individual's discovery of the existence of his psyche under the gods than from the Sinaitic revelation of a people's existence under God. Nevertheless, as Israel had to carry the burden of Canaan, so philosophy had to carry the burden of the polis. For the discoveries, although made by individuals, were made by citizens of a polis; and the new order of the soul, when communicated by its discoverers and creators, inevitably was in opposition to the public order, with the implied or explicit appeal to the fellow citizens to reform their personal conduct, the mores of society, and ultimately the institutions in conformity with the new order. Hellenic philosophy became, therefore, to a considerable extent the articulation of true order of existence within the institutional framework of an Hellenic polis. That is not necessarily the great defect that moderns frequently believe it to be. For, after all, philosophy grew within the polis; and true philosophical existence is perhaps possible only in an environment resembling the culture and institutions of the polis. That, however, is a complicated question; it will occupy us at length in later volumes of this study, when we have to deal with the problems of a specifically "Christian" and "modern" philosophy; for the moment it will be sufficient to say that the question is far from settled. At any rate, the institutions of the polis were distinctly a limiting factor in the Hellenic exploration of order, down to the great constructions of paradigmatic poleis by Plato and Aristotle. (Fs)

239a The preceding reflections, in spite of their brevity and simplifications, will be sufficient as a preliminary orientation. For philosophy as a symbolic form is distinguished from myth and history by its reflective self-consciousness. What philosophy is, need not be ascertained by talking about philosophy discursively; it can, and must, be determined by entering into the speculative process in which the thinker explicates his experience of order. The philosophers' conscious break with the form of the myth occurred about 500 B.C. The individual steps taken toward a differentiated experience of the psyche, during the two centuries after Hesiod, had the cumulative result of letting the self-conscious soul emerge as the tentative source of order in competition with the myth, as well as with the aristocratic culture of the archaic polis. Ionian lyric and Milesian speculation, the revision of political aretai through Tyrtaeus and Solon, tyranny and democratization, the Orphic movement, the Pythagoreans, and the public recognition of Dionysian cults-they all had contributed to the experience of the soul and its order that now became the motivating force in the work of Xenophanes (C. 565-470), Parmenides (fl. C. 475), and Heraclitus (C. 535-475). (Fs)

239b With the exception of a few longer passages from the didactic poems of Parmenides, the work of the three mystic-philosophers is preserved only in small fragments. A reconstruction so that the single sentences could be understood in their context is impossible. We shall proceed, therefore, by selecting groups of fragments that bear upon the basic issues in the revolt against the myth and consequently illuminate the meaning of the new order. The first such group will consist of a number of fragments from Xenophanes. He was the first thinker to challenge the authority of Homer and Hesiod on principle on the ground that they accepted the myth, as well as the anthropomorphic conception of the gods, in their work.