Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Heraklit; verschiedene Bedeutungen des Nomos (Ideengeschichte -> Physis bei den Sophisten)

Kurzinhalt: In this series of ideas are contained the following meanings of the term Nomos:
(1) Nomos as the transcendent divine order; ...

Textausschnitt: 380a The fragment distinguishes between a divine Nomos and a plurality of human Nomoi; moreover, the divine law must be assumed to be identical with the common, the xynon, which in turn is identical with the Nous. Hence, the fragment in its terseness is fraught with a whole series of ideas that can perhaps be explicated in the following manner: First, there is a common transcendent Nous which must nourish both the individual man who thinks with his nous as well as the law of the community. Second, the human law is a right law insofar as it truly nourishes itself from the divine law; but obviously it may fail to do so. Third, therefore, it may become Nomos to obey the will of one man, provided that he is a man who nourishes himself from the divine Nomos (B 33). Fourth, there is more than one polis with one human Nomos; the "human laws" exist in the plurality of the historical manifold. (Fs)

380b In this series of ideas are contained the following meanings of the term Nomos:
(1) Nomos as the transcendent divine order;
(2) Nomos as the constitutional and legal order of a polis in conformity with transcendent order-the Nomos for which a people should fight as if it were their wall (B 44);
(3) Nomoi in the plural, meaning the multitude of orders of the historically existing poleis;
(4) Nomos as the historical order of a polis, regardless of its conformity with the divine Nomos;
(5) Nomos as the order that may live in one man, a nomos empsychos-as it may appear in a nomothetes, or the Platonic philosopher-king; and
(6) Nomoi in the plural, which quite possibly carries the association of nomoi in the sense of statutes, as it had come into use since the reform of Cleisthenes, replacing the earlier thesmoi. (Fs) (notabene)

381a With the differentiation of meanings the stage is set for the inevitable problems (1) of reconciling the manifold of historically different Nomoi with the oneness of the divine Nomos, (1) of interpreting the historical Nomoi in the light of their conformance with, or deviation from, the divine Nomos, and (3) of the tension between the Nomos that lives in the philosopher and the Nomos of the surrounding society. (Fs) (notabene)

381b In the complex of meanings determined by Heraclitean speculation there is no room for an idea of Physis in opposition to Nomos. The source of order is the divine Nomos; and the human Nomos is essentially right order in the measure in which it participates in divine Nomos. Hence, when the term physis occurs in Heraclitean fragments it has no bearing on the later sophistic distinction; it rather has the meaning of the nature of a thing or a problem. The idea of Physis, of Nature as an autonomous source of order in competition with Nomos can be formed only when the idea of a transcendent divine Nomos as the source of order has atrophied; and that can happen in a theoretical context only when philosophizing in the existential sense is abandoned. (Fs) (notabene) (notabene)

381c This further stage of theorizing was reached by the middle of the fifth century, in the person of Protagoras, although Protagoras himself did not yet introduce the idea of Physis. The great sophist, as presented by Plato, professed to be a teacher of the art of politics. In order to discharge the duties of his profession effectively he had to accept the Nomos of the polis as it existed historically and to teach his pupils how to move with success in the concrete environment. His substantive ethics, as previously noted, probably did not differ much from that of Democritus, or from prevailing traditions in general. With such conservative conventionalism, however, he combined his immanentist relativism with regard to theory of knowledge. As a skeptic and agnostic, therefore, he rejected all speculation on the basis of experiences of transcendence; and, in particular, he could not allow speculation on the source of order and its validity in a transcendent divine law. The keystone of Heraclitean speculation on the Nomos, the theios nomos, was eliminated by Protagoras. The obvious theoretical gap left by this elimination, however, was not filled by him; he did not replace the transcendent source of order by an immanent source, the Physis of his sophistic successors, but left the problem wide open by simply accepting as valid order whatever (in any political civilization) men believed to be valid. (Fs)