Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Parmenides: Nous, Logos - Sein; Protagoras: Mensch - immanente Dinge

Kurzinhalt: The Parmenidean correlation between Nous-Logos and Being has become the correlation between man and immanent things

Textausschnitt: 36ba The procedure of Anaxagoras in solving his problem is characteristic of what may be called sophistic thinking in a technical sense. The problem of the mystic-philosopher, as well as his symbols (Nous and Being) are accepted, while the experience of transcendence, which lies at the root of the problem and motivates the creation of the symbols for its expression, is abandoned. As a consequence, the symbols of transcendence will now be used, or rather misused, in the speculation on immanent problems. A peculiar style of thinking develops that permits men who are no philosophers in the existential sense to express their opinions on problems involving the experience of transcendence with the usurped authority of the existential philosopher. This is the style of the sophistic intellectual. Whether Anaxagoras himself was guilty of such usurpation is doubtful because (1) as we shall see presently, he developed an epistemology of immanent knowledge, not relying on the Nous, and (2) the state of the fragments makes it impossible to see how the two parts of his philosophy were linked with each other. (Fs)

369a In the case of his younger contemporary Protagoras, however, the new attitude is fully developed. Of his work On Truth the famous opening sentence is preserved:
Of all things the measure is man, of the being that they are, of the not being that they are not. (B 1)

369b The Parmenidean correlation between Nous-Logos and Being has become the correlation between man and immanent things; the autonomy of the Logos in exploring the Truth about transcendent Being has become the autonomy of man in exploring his surrounding world. The consequences of this radical immanentism, as far as problems of transcendence are concerned, become tangible in the opening sentence of Protagoras' work On the Gods: (notabene)
About the gods I am not able to know either that they are, or that they are not, or what they are like in shape, the things preventing knowledge being many, such as the obscurity of the subject and that the life of man is short. (B 4)

369c The sentence does not express dogmatic atheism but rather a suspense of judgment concerning the existence of gods. This is the form in which the problem of transcendence will present itself to an immanentist who has no experience of transcendence, provided that his intellectual discipline will prevent him from falling into dogmatic negation of divine existence. Nevertheless, the line of dogmatic derailment is indicated by the odd conclusion of the sentence, which seems to assume that certainty in this obscure matter could be reached, presumably by immanent means, if life were longer. More impetuous sophists will find sooner or later that their life is long enough to arrive at a judgment, and it will be negative. (Fs)