Autor: Strauss, Leo

Buch: Natural Right and History

Titel: Natural Right and History

Stichwort: Naturrecht: Ursprung; Hörensagen - eigene Vergewisserung; Entdeckung der Natur

Kurzinhalt: As regards the most weighty matters ... the only source of knowledge was hearsay ... the discovery of nature is identical with the actualization of a human possibility which ...

Textausschnitt: 86b The quest for the first things is guided by two fundamental distinctions which antedate the distinction between the good and the ancestral. Men must always have distinguished (e.g., in judicial matters) between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes and have preferred what one has seen to what he has merely heard from others. But the use of this distinction was originally limited to particular or subordinate matters. As regards the most weighty matters--the first things and the right way--the only source of knowledge was hearsay. Confronted with the contradiction between the many sacred codes, someone--a traveler, a man who had seen the cities of many men and recognized the diversity of their thoughts and customs-- suggested that one apply the distinction between seeing with one's own eyes and hearsay to all matters, and especially to the most weighty matters. Judgment on, or assent to, the divine or venerable character of any code or account is suspended until the facts upon which the claims are based have been made manifest or demonstrated. They must be made manifest--manifest to all, in broad daylight. Thus man becomes alive to the crucial difference between what his group considers unquestionable and what he himself observes; it is thus that the I is enabled to oppose itself to the We without any sense of guilt. But it is not the I as I that acquires that right. Dreams and visions had been of decisive importance for establishing the claims of the divine code or of the sacred account of the first things. By virtue of the universal application of the distinction between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes, a distinction is now made between the one true and common world perceived in waking and the many untrue and private worlds of dreams and visions. Thus it appears that neither the We of any particular group nor a unique I, but man as man, is the measure of truth and untruth, of the being or nonbeing of all things. Finally, man thus learns to distinguish between the names of things which he knows through hearsay and which differ from group to group and the things themselves which he, as well as any other human being, can see with his own eyes. He thus can start to replace the arbitrary distinctions of things which differ from group to group by their "natural" distinctions. (Fs)

87a The divine codes and the sacred accounts of the first things were said to be known not from hearsay but by way of superhuman information. When it was demanded that the distinction between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes be applied to the most weighty matters, it was demanded that the superhuman origin of all alleged superhuman information must be proved by examination in the light, not, for example, of traditional criteria used for distinguishing between true and false oracles, but of such criteria as ultimately derive in an evident manner from the rules which guide us in matters fully accessible to human knowledge. The highest kind of human knowledge that existed prior to the emergence of philosophy or science was the arts. The second prephilosophic distinction that originally guided the quest for the first things was the distinction between artificial or man-made things and things that are not man-made. Nature was discovered when man embarked on the quest for the first things in the light of the fundamental distinctions between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes, on the one hand, and between things made by man and things not made by man, on the other. The first of these two distinctions motivated the demand that the first things must be brought to light by starting from what all men can see now. But not all visible things are an equally adequate starting point for the discovery of the first things. The man-made things lead to no other first things than man, who certainly is not the first thing simply. The artificial things are seen to be inferior in every respect to, or to be later than, the things that are not made but found or discovered by man. The artificial things are seen to owe their being to human contrivance or to forethought. If one suspends one's judgment regarding the truth of the sacred accounts of the first things, one does not know whether the things that are not man-made owe their being to forethought of any kind, i.e., whether the first things originate all other things by way of forethought, or otherwise. Thus one realizes the possibility that the first things originate all other things in a manner fundamentally different from all origination by way of forethought. The assertion that all visible things have been produced by thinking beings or that there are any superhuman thinking beings requires henceforth a demonstration: a demonstration that starts from what all can see now.1 (Fs)

89a In brief, then, it can be said that the discovery of nature is identical with the actualization of a human possibility which, at least according to its own interpretation, is trans-historical, trans-social, trans-moral, and trans-religious.1 (Fs) (notabene)
89a In brief, then, it can be said that the discovery of nature is identical with the actualization of a human possibility which, at least according to its own interpretation, is trans-historical, trans-social, trans-moral, and trans-religious.1 (Fs) (notabene)