Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Plato contra Protagoras u. Gorgias; Urirrtümer der Sophisten (je 3 Sätze); Fragment von Gorgias

Kurzinhalt: Plato opposed his "God is the Measure" deliberately as the counterformula to Protagoras' "Man is the Measure". The abstract of the essay On Being is a priceless document because ...

Textausschnitt: 347b The very considerable extent to which the politics of Plato rests on the achievements of the sophists, and in particular of Protagoras, should not obscure, however, the decisive difference between their worlds of thought. Plato opposed his "God is the Measure" deliberately as the counterformula to Protagoras' "Man is the Measure." In sophistic thought, we may say succinctly, there was missing the link between the well-observed and classified phenomena of ethics and politics and the "invisible measure" that radiates order into the soul. The opposition to a world of thought without spiritual order was repeatedly expressed by Plato at critical junctures of his work. In particular he quoted twice, as a target for criticism, a set of agnostic, if not atheistic, propositions that may well have come from a sophistic source.1 (Fs)
(1) It seems that no gods exist;
(2) Even if they do exist, they do not care about men;
(3) Even if they care, they can be propitiated by gifts.
348a Plato opposed to them his counterpropositions that the gods do exist, that they care about men, and that they cannot be appeased by prayer and sacrifice. (Fs) (notabene)

348b We are inclined to assume sophistic origin (perhaps Protagoras' book On the Gods) for these propositions, because the pattern of argument is authenticated as sophistic through Gorgias' essay On Being, the only work of a sophist that is preserved as a whole at least in an abstract.2 For once we have an opportunity to study the organization of argument by a major sophist from a source that comes close to the original. The Gorgian tract was concerned with Parmenidean problems. It was organized into three parts defending successively the following propositions: (Fs)
(1) Nothing exists;
(2) If anything exists, it is incomprehensible;
(3) If it is comprehensible, it is incommunicable.
348c In the first part of his tract Gorgias proved the nonexistence of Being. He proceeded by demonstrating the contradictions to which the Parmenidean predicates of Being will lead. We select as representative the argument on the predicate "everlasting": (Fs)
Being cannot be everlasting because in that case it would have no beginning; what has no beginning is boundless; and what is boundless is nowhere. For if it were anywhere it would have to be surrounded by something that is greater than itself; but there is nothing that is greater than the boundless; hence the boundless is nowhere; and what is nowhere does not exist. (Fs)
Kommentar (03/03/06): Ein schnes Beispiel fr ein Argument, das seinen Ausgang nimmt von einer Konfusion zwischen der Ebene des Denkens und Imagination.

349a The abstract of the essay On Being is a priceless document because it has preserved one of the earliest, if not the very first, instance of the perennial type of enlightened philosophizing. The thinker operates on symbols that have been developed by mystic-philosophers for the expression of experiences of transcendence. He proceeds by ignoring the experiential basis, separates the symbols from this basis as if they had a meaning independent of the experience which they express, and with brilliant logic shows, what every philosopher knows, that they will lead to contradictions if they are misunderstood as propositions about objects in world-immanent experience. Gorgias applied his acumen to the Parmenidean Being; but the same type of argument could be applied to other symbols of transcendence, and the set of three propositions about the gods are probably the summary of such an argument. (Fs) (notabene)

349b If we assume the Gorgian tract to be representative of the sophistic attitude toward problems of transcendence, and if, furthermore, we define enlightenment by the type of philosophizing just characterized, we can arrive at some clearness with regard to the question whether the sophistic age can justly be labeled an age of enlightenment. We may say that the age indeed has a streak of enlightenment insofar as its representative thinkers show the same kind of insensitiveness toward experiences of transcendence that was characteristic of the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century a.d., and insofar as this insensitiveness has the same result of destroying philosophy?for philosophy by definition has its center in the experiences of transcendence. Moreover, the essentially unphilosophical character of sophistic writings may have been the most important cause of their almost complete disappearance in spite of the impressive collection and organization of materials which they must have contained. For the materials could be taken over by later writers and, stripped of the materials, the writings held no interest for philosophers. And, finally, we can understand more clearly why Plato concentrated the essence of his own philosophizing in the emphatic counterformula to the Protagorean homo-mensura. After the destruction of philosophy through the sophists, its reconstruction had to stress the Deus-mensura of the philosophers; and the new philosophy had to be clearly a "type of theology." (Fs) (notabene)

350a The great achievement of the sophists in the material organization of the sciences of education, ethics, and politics must be recognized quite as much as their decisive philosophical deficiency unless the sudden magnificent unfolding through Plato and Aristotle shall appear as a miracle beyond historical causality. The philosophic genius was Plato's very own, but the materials to which he applied his genius must have broadly pre-existed. There is preserved a remark by Aristoxenus, the pupil of Aristotle, to the effect that Plato's Republic had substantially been anticipated by the Antilogies of Protagoras.3 In this form the remark is a gross exaggeration because it ignores the philosophical difference. It must be considered one of the courtesies that Greek intellectuals extended to each other not infrequently. Nevertheless, there may be a solid core of truth in it as far as materials and their technical treatment are concerned. (Fs)