Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Zusammenfassung über den Verlauf einer Zivilisation

Kurzinhalt: Geschichte wird nicht klar durch Klassifikation der empirischen Phänomene; Zivilisation als Partizipation an der Ordnung des Seins

Textausschnitt: In conclusion, it can be said that the debate about types of civilizational courses will remain inconclusive as long as it is conducted on the level of construction of empirical types. The intelligible order of history cannot be found through classification of phenomena; it must be sought through a theoretical analysis of institutions and experiences of order, as well as of the form that results from their interpenetration. The ultimate constants of history cannot be determined by forming type concepts of phenomenal regularities, for historical regularities are no more than manifestations of the constants of human nature in their range of compactness and differentiation. Moreover, ... A civilization is the form in which a society participates, in its historically unique way, in the supracivilizational, universal drama of approximation to the right order of existence through increasingly differentiated attunement with the order of being.
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The preceding theoretical reflections should, however, in no way deprecate the search for the phenomenally typical in the course of civilizations. For inevitably we must start from the phenomenal regularities in order to arrive at the constants of human nature, as well as at the structural differentiation of the constant range of experiences; that is, at the dynamics of human nature that we call history.