Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Vergleich: China - Ägyten; Rolle d. Konfuzius.Tao, Ming, teh

Kurzinhalt: Nevertheless, the authority of the sage was of the same cosmological type as the authority of the Son of Heaven

Textausschnitt: In both the Chinese and Egyptian cases, therefore, a "static" cosmological form prevails in a history of approximately three thousand years, with the Chinese Son of Heaven corresponding to the Pharaoh as the mediator between cosmic-divine order and society. The parallel goes even so far that in the Chinese Time of Troubles, in certain variants of Taoism, experiences and attitudes appear which resemble those of the "Song of the Harper."
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However, in Chinese civilization there also occurred, in Confucianism, an experiential break with the cosmological order. The order of society, which hitherto had depended on the Son of Heaven alone, now depended, in rivalry with him, on the sage who participated in the order of the cosmos.
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In the realm of symbols the new experience of the autonomous person and his will to order became manifest in the transfer of imperial qualifications to the sage. The tao and the teh, ... Thus the sage was no longer the member of a society which only as a whole received its order through mediation of the ruler. He himself had access to the tao that ordered world and society, and thereby he became a potential ruler and a rival to the Son of Heaven in mediating the tao-an idea which, as far as we know, never occurred to an Egyptian.
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This transfer of royal symbols to the sage, however, illuminates the limitations of Confucianism as a new ordering force in society. To be sure, the autonomy of the personality, independent of the authority of society, had been gained through the immediate relation between man and cosmic tao. Nevertheless, the authority of the sage was of the same cosmological type as the authority of the Son of Heaven. The differentiation of experience did not advance, as with Plato, to the development of a new theology in opposition to the beliefs prevalent in the community; it did not become radically transcendental.