Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Mesopotamian, China, Makene: verschiedene Eignung für the "leap in being"

Kurzinhalt: Verschränkung in Mesopotamian; mehr Freiraum in China (Konfuzius),

Textausschnitt: In comparing the three cases-the Mesopotamian, the Chinese, and the Mycenaean-we can perhaps touch (though certainly not solve) one of the obscurest problems in the intellectual history of mankind; that is, the aptitude of various civilizations for development in the direction of the "leap in being."
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The simpler cosmological symbolism in China left sufficient freedom in the human sphere to allow, in the breakdown of the Chou dynasty, for a conception of social order as dependent, not on the son of heaven alone, but on councillors and an administration formed by the spirit of Confucius. This was a step in the anthropological direction, but not a complete breakthrough. The intermediate position of Confucianism is reflected in the debate on the question whether Confucianism was a "religion."
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In the Homeric case the cosmological symbolism did break down, probably because the Doric invasion and the geographical dislocation of populations caused a much deeper disturbance than the ordinary Times of Trouble in other civilizations. The gods were no longer bound to the structure of the cosmos, and when the discovery of the soul occurred in Hellenic civilization, man found himself in his immediacy under a transcendent God.