Autor: Strauss, Leo

Buch: Natural Right and History

Titel: Natural Right and History

Stichwort: Naturrecht: klassisch; Sokrates, ratio rerum humanarum; eidos: das erste für uns, Meinung: Fragment der Wahrheit; Dialektik

Kurzinhalt: ... "the universal doubt" of all opinions would lead us, not into the heart of the truth, but into a void. Philosophy consists, therefore, in the ascent from opinions to knowledge or to the truth ...

Textausschnitt: 121a Let us then see what is implied by Socrates' turning to the study of human things. His study of human things consisted in raising the question "What is?" in regard to those things- for instance, the question "What is courage?" or "What is the city?" But it was not limited to raising the question "What is?" in regard to specific human things, such as the various virtues. Socrates was forced to raise the question as to what the human things as such are, or what the ratio rerum humanarum is.1 But it is impossible to grasp the distinctive character of human things as such without grasping the essential difference between human things and the things which are not human, i.e., the divine or natural things. This, in turn, presupposes some understanding of the divine or natural things as such. Socrates' study of the human things was then based on the comprehensive study of "all things." Like every other philosopher, he identified wisdom, or the goal of philosophy, with the science of all the beings: he never ceased considering "what each of the beings is."2 (Fs)

122a Contrary to appearances, Socrates' turn to the study of human things was based, not upon disregard of the divine or natural things, but upon a new approach to the understanding of all things. That approach was indeed of such a character that it permitted, and favored, the study of human things as such, i.e., of the human things in so far as they are not reducible to the divine or natural things. Socrates deviated from his predecessors by identifying the science of the whole, or of everything that is, with the understanding of "what each of the beings is." For "to be" means "to be something" and hence to be different from things which are "something else"; "to be" means therefore "to be a part." Hence the whole cannot "be" in the same sense in which everything that is "something" "is"; the whole must be "beyond being." And yet the whole is the totality of the parts. To understand the whole then means to understand all the parts of the whole or the articulation of the whole. If "to be" is "to be something," the being of a thing, or the nature of a thing, is primarily its What, its "shape" or "form" or "character," as distinguished in particular from that out of which it has come into being. The thing itself, the completed thing, cannot be understood as a product of the process leading up to it, but, on the contrary, the process cannot be understood except in the light of the completed thing or of the end of the process. The What is, as such, the character of a class of things or of a "tribe" of things-of things which by nature belong together or form a natural group. The whole has a natural articulation. To understand the whole, therefore, means no longer primarily to discover the roots out of which the completed whole, the articulated whole, the whole consisting of distinct groups of things, the intelligible whole, the cosmos, has grown, or to discover the cause which has transformed the chaos into a cosmos, or to perceive the unity which is hidden behind the variety of things or appearances, but to understand the unity that is revealed in the manifest articulation of the completed whole. This view supplies the basis for the distinction between the various sciences: the distinction between the various sciences corresponds to the natural articulation of the whole. This view makes possible, and it favors in particular, the study of the human things as such. (Fs) (notabene)

123a Socrates seems to have regarded the change which he brought about as a return to "sobriety" and "moderation" from the "madness" of his predecessors. In contradistinction to his predecessors, he did not separate wisdom from moderation. In present-day parlance one can describe the change in question as a return to "common sense" or to "the world of common sense." That to which the question "What is?" points is the eidos of a thing, the shape or form or character or "idea" of a thing. It is no accident that the term eidos signifies primarily that which is visible to all without any particular effort or what one might call the "surface" of the things. Socrates started not from what is first in itself or first by nature but from what is first for us, from what comes to sight first, from the phenomena. But the being of things, their What, comes first to sight, not in what we see of them, but in what is said about them or in opinions about them. Accordingly, Socrates started in his understanding of the natures of things from the opinions about their natures. For every opinion is based on some awareness, on some perception with the mind's eye, of something. Socrates implied that disregarding the opinions about the natures of things would amount to abandoning the most important access to reality which we have, or the most important vestiges of the truth which are within our reach. He implied that "the universal doubt" of all opinions would lead us, not into the heart of the truth, but into a void. Philosophy consists, therefore, in the ascent from opinions to knowledge or to the truth, in an ascent that may be said to be guided by opinions. It is this ascent which Socrates had primarily in mind when he called philosophy "dialectics." Dialectics is the art of conversation or of friendly dispute. The friendly dispute which leads toward the truth is made possible or necessary by the fact that opinions about what things are, or what some very important groups of things are, contradict one another. Recognizing the contradiction, one is forced to go beyond opinions toward the consistent view of the nature of the thing concerned. That consistent view makes visible the relative truth of the contradictory opinions; the consistent view proves to be the comprehensive or total view. The opinions are thus seen to be fragments of the truth, soiled fragments of the pure truth. In other words, the opinions prove to be solicited by the self-subsisting truth, and the ascent to the truth proves to be guided by the self-subsistent truth which all men always divine. (Fs) (notabene)

124a On this basis it becomes possible to understand why the variety of opinions about right or justice not only is compatible with the existence of natural right or the idea of justice but is required by it. The variety of notions of justice could be said to refute the contention that there is natural right, if the existence of natural right required actual consent of all men in regard to the principles of right. But we learn from Socrates, or from Plato, that what is required is not more than potential consent. Plato, as it were, says: Take any opinion about right, however fantastic or "primitive," that you please; you can be certain prior to having investigated it that it points beyond itself, that the people who cherish the opinion in question contradict that very opinion somehow and thus are forced to go beyond it in the direction of the one true view of justice, provided that a philosopher arises among them. (Fs)