Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Heraklit: göttliche - menschliche Weisheit; Seele: menschliche Weisheit als Partizipation an der göttlichen

Kurzinhalt: ... from a theomorphic conception of the soul to a truly human one; the living truth, however, is a movement of the soul in the direction of the divine sophon ...

Textausschnitt: 296a The new deliberateness and radicalism of the inquiry can perhaps be sensed most clearly in the famous fragment: "Character?to man?demon" (B 119). It is not easy to gauge the full importance of the fragment because it is isolated. In a first approach one might attribute to it as little technical meaning as possible and consider it no more than a formulation in opposition to conventional opinions about character as the inner and demon as the external factor of human fate. Even if we exert such caution, there still remains the important fact that the demon is immanentized and identified with character (ethos). If, however, we put the fragment into the context of the Pythagorean conception of the soul (a procedure that seems to us well justified), then it identifies the daimon in the Pythagorean sense with that structure of the soul that Heraclitus designates by the term ethos. This identification would imply the momentous break with the archaic inseparable connection of immortality with divinity. The soul, in order to be immortal, would not have to be a daimon; we would advance from a theomorphic conception of the soul to a truly human one. The basis for a critical, philosophical anthropology would be created.1 (Fs) (notabene)

296b We believe, indeed, that this is the great achievement of Heraclitus. And we find our interpretation supported when we place the fragment into the context of Heraclitean meanings. For even if B 119 is understood to identify daimon and ethos, we have not advanced very far as long as we do not know what Heraclitus means by ethos, and the conventional translation as "character" does not help. The needed help comes from B 78: "Human ethos has no insights, but divine has." Human ethos is distinguished from divine through the absence of insight (gnome). Hence, the term ethos must have a range of meaning beyond character; it must designate the "nature" of a being in general, whether human or divine (theion). Moreover, the difference between human and divine ethos is very considerable. The proportion is expressed in B 79: "Man is called a baby by the divinity [daimon], as a child is by man." Daimon is used in this fragment specifically in order to distinguish god and man. Beyond this point, unfortunately, we run into certain difficulties because the texts are not too well preserved. It seems that Heraclitus used of his divinity the predicate "the alone wise," as in B 32: "One, the alone wise [to sophon mounon] wants and wants not to be called by the name of Zeus." Moreover, in B 108 he considers as the distinguishing feature of his philosophizing the recognition "that the Wise is apart from all things." But in B 41 he speaks of the hen to sophon, of the One that is Wise, as "the understanding of the insight [gnome] that steers all things through all things [that is, rules the universe]." The sophon seems to designate a human wisdom concerning the gnome that rules the world.2 If we accept both fragments as they stand, the term sophon would be used of god as well as of man?with the distinction, however, that the predicate the "Alone Wise" is reserved for god. Human wisdom would then consist in the understanding that it has no wisdom of its own; human nature (ethos) is wise when it has understood the gnome that governs the cosmos as god's alone. (Fs)

297a Human and divine natures, thus, are distinguished by the "types" of wisdom, and related with each other insofar as human wisdom consists in the consciousness of a limitation in comparison with the divine. We know about the divine wisdom but we do not have it; we participate in it far enough to touch it with our understanding, but we cannot hold it as a possession. The Heraclitean experience resembles the Parmenidean. But Heraclitus does not attempt to articulate "Being" through logical explication; he is rather concerned with the relation between the two natures and their types of wisdom. On the level of logic, as a consequence, we find "contradictory" formulations that by their very contradiction express a wisdom that partakes of true wisdom without possessing it fully. Thus, in the previously quoted B 108 Heraclitus praises as the specific result of his logos (discourse), as distinguished from the logoi of all other thinkers, the insight that the "sophon is apart from all things." In B 50, on the other hand, he insists that it is wise (sophon) for all who hear his logos to agree (homologeein) that "all is one." The One that is wise is apart from all things,-but for the man who is wise all things are the One. The meaning is elucidated by another pair of contradictory fragments. In B 40 (to which we referred already in the section on Xenophanes) Heraclitus speaks of the polymathie, the "much-knowing," which does not teach "understanding"; and more specifically in B 129 he speaks of Pythagoras, who pursued scientific inquiries (historie) more than any other man, and only arrived at a wisdom (sophie) of his own, at a polymathie, a "bad art." In B 35, on the other hand, he insists that the "lover of wisdom" (philosophos) must of necessity have inquired (historein] into many things. The intention of Heraclitus comes now more clearly into view. Human wisdom is not a completed possession but a process. The participation in the divine wisdom that is apart from all things cannot be achieved through a leap beyond all things; it is the result of the occupation with these very things, ascending from the manifold to the One that is to be found in them all. The attempt may fail; and the lover of wisdom, the philosopher, may end as a polyhistor. (Fs)

298a The first appearance of the term philosopher in this context suggests the passages in the Phaedrus where Plato?undoubtedly following Heraclitus?contemplates a new term for the poets, orators, and legislators who can go beyond the written word of their compositions and prove through oral defense and elaboration that their work indeed is based on knowledge of "truth." The new term for the man of such higher knowledge should not be sophos? for that is a great name "seemly to God alone"?but the more humble and befitting philosophos (278D). And those who cannot rise beyond their compilation and composition, the patching and piecing, they by right will be called poets, orators, and lawmakers (278D-E). The Platonic opposition of the living, spoken word to the merely written?which is still a subject of debate?illuminates the Heraclitean intention, and in its turn receives light from it. Literary composition in itself seems to be fraught with danger because it engenders the illusion that "truth" or "wisdom" can be fully expressed and stored away in the work. The living truth, however, is a movement of the soul in the direction of the divine sophon, and such movement can never be banned completely into form. Hence, the work has quality only insofar as it has banned this movement so that the formulations will stimulate the corresponding movement in the soul of the reader; and the acid test of such quality is the ability of the creator to elaborate on his subject matter orally from the resources of his soul. By such free oral expression in conversation the creator will prove that he is a creator indeed, and not merely a skilled polyhistor or craftsman who has done a piece of patchwork with instruments supplied by tradition. The Heraclitean attack is primarily directed against the polyhistoric collector of facts, the Platonic primarily against the poetic, legal, and oratorical craftsmen. Both Heraclitus and Plato, however, agree that no composition can lay claim to "truth" unless it is authenticated by the movement of the psyche toward the sophon. The problem of truth now is differentiated so far that the loving movement of the soul toward the "Alone Wise" is recognized as the source of such truth as the production of the thinker or poet may have. Insofar as this recognition implies a clear distinction between the divinity of "wisdom" and the humanity of "love for wisdom," the philosophical orientation of the soul becomes the essential criterion of "true" humanity. The soul of man is a source of truth only when it is oriented toward god through the love of wisdom. In Heraclitus the idea of an order of the soul begins to form, which in Plato unfolds into the perennial principle of political science that the right order of the soul through philosophy furnishes the standards for the right order of human society. (Fs) (notabene)