Autor: Purcell, Brendan M.

Buch: The Drama of Humanity

Titel: The Drama of Humanity

Stichwort: Humanität, Natur, Lonergan, Aristoteles' Grundstreben, Philosophie, Mythos, Äquivalenz, Beyond

Kurzinhalt: Natur d. Menschlichkeit, heuristische Struktur, thaumazein, Frage n. Grund, Äquivalenz, Voegelin: hermeneutisches Prinzip, Erfahrung-selbstinterpretativ, Gilgamesch, Bhagavad Gita, Yoga, metaxy

Textausschnitt: § 3 A HEURISTIC/HERMENEUTIC FOR THE 'NATURE OF' HUMANITY

() ... our question now is whether in fact humanity has a nature that is definable in some way.
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Lonergan makes a comment regarding the basic context in the physical sciences: 'The science of mathematics provides the physicist with a sharply defined field of sequences and relations and thereby enables him to anticipate the general nature of any physical theory.'(1961,p.579) Similarly, a philosophical anthropology which articulates the basic pattern of human conscious operations will provide a heuristic structure, a basic context able to anticipate all possible human contexts and sequences of contexts ...
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Consequently, Voegelin suggests paraphrasing the first line of the Metaphysics as: 'All men are by nature in quest of the ground.'
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What is relevant for us is that Aristotle had come to a grasp of what was in common to the two cultural forms he was acquainted with, myth and philosophy, which was that both were symbolizations of the quest for the ground, which remains an impenetrable mystery. Voegelin would thus see that Aristotle had grasped the key principle of equivalence, that is to say, 'the recognizable identity of the reality experienced and symbolized on the various levels of differentiation.'
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Equivalence refers to this awareness, that in historical reality, each person and each society's quest for the ground is their exegesis of their experience of participation in that ground. However compactly and incompletely they may articulate that experience, and however much in need of further revision their experience and symbolization of reality may be, it has its dignity as a real person's or society's image of the mystery of reality surrounding and embracing them. And it is because of this dignity, that the fundamental hermeneutic principle for Voegelin could be stated like this:
the reality of experience is self-interpretive. The men who have the experiences express themselves through symbols; and the symbols are the key to understanding the experience expressed.