Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Parmenides, Sein, Nous: die Wahrheit des Seins; Seinserfahrung; Ist - Nicht-Ist

Kurzinhalt: The symbol "Being" appears for the first time; that does not make "Being" a datum in the immanent sense

Textausschnitt: 279a What is the truth of being? With this question we turn from the experience of mystical transport to the philosophical articulation of the vision.1 (Fs)

279b First to be considered is the intimate connection between the content of truth and the mystical transport. Parmenides' philosophy is a speculation on the Eon, on Being. The symbol "Being" appears for the first time; and without exaggeration it can be said that with Parmenides the history of philosophy proper, as the exploration of the constitution of Being, begins. The Being of Parmenides is not an origin of sensually perceived entities (ta onta), as in Ionian speculation. It is the something that is given in the experience of the transport. Hence, its existence cannot be derived speculatively as the arche, as the beginning of the stream of experienced entities (which, as a stream, is at the same time a becoming), but is given to speculation as an immediate datum of experience. The experiential origin of Being in the mystical transport must be well understood, for otherwise the historical appearance of the new object of speculation will remain enigmatic. Parmenides has no predecessors, and his concept of Being has no prehistory.2 The historical process that results in the concept of Being does not itself move on the level of philosophical speculation; it rather is the process of the soul in which Being as absolute transcendence comes ultimately into experiential grasp. If we search for the antecedents of Parmenides, we must look, not for an earlier, more primitive philosophy of Being, but for a less differentiated experience of transcendence, as we find it for instance in the universalism of Xenophanes. (Fs) (notabene)

279c The visionary philosopher, since he has gone beyond the realm of sense perception, does not speculate on the plurality of things as given to the senses. His vision has a specific content, and in order to apperceive it he needs a specific faculty of the Soul. Parmenides called this faculty the nous: "Look with the Nous as it makes present with certainty the absent" (B 4). The Nous is discovered as the organ of cognition that will bring nonsensual, intelligible reality into the grasp of man. At this point, however, some caution is necessary; for the Nous is a rather compact symbol, and even in Aristotle it still has an amplitude of meaning from intellection to faith. In order not to read later, more differentiated meanings into the term, we should understand it strictly as the organ of the soul that brings "Being" into grasp, so that its further determination will depend on the meaning of "Being." Moreover, the Nous, while it brings Being into grasp, does not articulate its content. The content of Being is articulated by a further faculty that appears on this occasion for the first time, by the logos in the narrower sense of logical argumentation. The Nous, together with the Logos, is the Parmenidean cognitive organ for determining the nature of Being. (Fs) (notabene)

280a The revelation of the truth about Being assumes the form of a classification of the various ways of inquiry. Spinning out the metaphor of the "Way," the goddess informs Parmenides about the "ways of inquiry" that alone are thinkable. The meaning of way, of the hodos, shifts in this opening from the mystical to the logical way, foreshadowing the meaning of methodos, of the method of scientific inquiry. There are two such ways: "The one way, that Is and that Not is cannot be,3 is the path of Persuasion [peitho] which is attendant upon Truth [aletheia]. But the other path is utterly undiscernible; for, Notbeing you can neither know nor pronounce; for, what is, is the same [auto] to thinking and being" (B 2 and 3). The goddess warns Parmenides away from this second path. And then she informs him about the third path, equally to be shunned, that is, the assumption that both Being and Notbeing exist. This is the way on which "mortals wander who know nothing, the doubleheads. Perplexity guides the wandering mind in their breasts. They are borne along, deaf and blind, a bemused, undiscerning crowd, by whom Being and Notbeing is reckoned [nenomistai] the same and not the same, for whom in all things there is a way that turns upon itself" (B 6). (Fs)

280b These terse lines contain the first piece of methodical philosophizing in Western history. The truth about Being is the object of inquiry. The inquiry is conducted through (1) a logically exhaustive enumeration of theses concerning the nature of Being, and (2) the elimination of the wrong theses. In the present context we cannot go through the technical details of the process of elimination; we should merely like to draw attention to one point. The philosopher is warned against the second way (that Notbeing exists): "Restrain your thought [noema] from this way of inquiry; let not much-experienced habit force you on this way, giving reign to the unseeing eye and the droning ear and the tongue, but make your decision in the much-disputed inquiry by means of argument [logos]" (B 7). The Logos is the instrument for ascertaining the truth; and parallel with the Logos appears the source of error, that is, the habit, or custom (ethos) of "much-experience," as transmitted uncritically by ear, eye, and tongue. The commonly accepted "experience" (polypeiria) moves, on the epistemological level, into the position of the commonly accepted valuations against which the new insight asserted itself from Sappho to Xenophanes. A further shade of meaning is added to this common experience through the characterization of the third way on which Being and Notbeing are "reckoned" or "considered" (nenomistai) the same, with the implication (in the Greek term) that the nomos, the custom, is the source of confusion. This Parmenidean meaning of nomos enters as an important component into the later Sophistic concepts of physis and nomos. (Fs)

281a In the description of the one true way of inquiry into Being, there appears a peculiarity of expression that is much debated among philosophers. The reader will have noticed that in the description of the way "that Is and that Not is cannot be" the "Is" has no subject in the grammatical sense. Translators frequently supply a subject, such as "It is," or "Being is." As far as the sense of the passage is concerned the supplementing of "Being" as the grammatical subject is perfectly legitimate; and the Eon indeed appears in other passages in this function. Nevertheless, it does not appear in these preliminary formulations, and we are not satisfied with the explanation (so ready at hand in dealing with early Greek thinkers) that the good man was "clumsy" and did not quite know yet how to handle the philosophical vocabulary that he was just about to create. Rather, we suspect that there was a good reason for the hesitation to use the subject Eon and that in this hesitation the true philosophical genius of Parmenides reveals itself. For the "Being" that becomes the object of inquiry can be grasped in the mystical transport, and the area of the soul in which the object is experienced can be named Nous; but that does not make "Being" a datum in the immanent sense, a thing with a form that can be discerned by noesis. To speak of such an object, which is not an object, in propositions with subject and predicate ought to give pause. As far as the predicates of a transcendental subject are concerned, the matter has been cleared up on principle by the Thomistic analogia entis; but even the Thomistic exposition of the problem leaves the question of the subject wide open. To name the subject "God," as is done in Christian theology, is a convenience, but quite unsatisfactory in critical philosophy. With great circumspection Parmenides has resisted the temptation of calling his Being God?a temptation that must have been great in the face of the preceding Ionian and Italian speculation; and it seems that he even hesitated to call it by the name of "Being."4 That which comes into grasp through the Nous does not come into grasp in the manner of an object for discourse. The progress on the way toward the Light culminates in an experience of a supreme reality that can only be expressed in the exclamatory "Is!" When the philosopher is confronted with this overpowering reality the "Not is" becomes devoid of meaning for him. With the exclamation "Is!" we come closest to the core of the Parmenidean experience. The prepositional expressions "Being is," and "Notbeing cannot be," are already "clumsy" circumscriptions. (Fs) (notabene)