Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Griechenland: keine kosmologische Form; Widerspruch: Konstiturion durch Philosophie - konkrete Verfassung (Polis usw.); Deuterojesaia

Kurzinhalt: has its place in the history of mankind neither through ... but through its articulation in the symbolic form of Philosophy; For the order of the concrete societies ... was not formed by philosophy

Textausschnitt: 2/1 But we cannot avoid beginning - and the first theoretical issue imposes itself with the very attempt to identify and delimit the subject matter we intend to unfold. The nature of the problem will become apparent as soon as we ask the critical question: To which concrete society, organized for political action in permanent form, does the language of "Greek order," of "Greek experiences of order and their symbolization" refer? Negatively one can answer that in the Greece of the classical period we find neither empires in cosmological form, as in Egypt, Babylonia, or Assyria, nor a society in historical form, as in Israel with its close relationship between political institutions and a revealed truth about order. It is less easy to say positively what we do find. In a first approach, to be sure, there can be no doubt that in Greece, as it emerges into the fuller light of history after 800 B.C., we encounter a manifold of poleis, torn by rivalries and engaged in frequent wars, sometimes in such atrocious form that it is considered a proof of humanity if only half the population of a city is massacred. But this stratum of Greek order, although it is concrete enough, certainly is not the complete structure of Greek society. The history of Greece does not dissolve into the histories of the single poleis and their wars,- and a type study of the polis order and its symbolization could not be considered an adequate treatment of Greek order. For above the order of the poleis there rises recognizably the sense of belonging to a larger, common society. This sense is operative in the creation of the name of Hellenes for the peoples of the mainland, the isles, and Ionia, as well as in such pan-Hellenic institutions as the Olympian games, beginning in 776 B.C.; it furthermore motivates the federations of poleis in leagues and it can even inspire, in an emergency, the common effort of organization that was achieved for the defense against the Persian attack. Nobody has theoretically penetrated this stratum of Greek order more deeply than Thucydides, when he recognized in the common name and the common action the proofs of existence of a Greek society. Moreover, he surmised that the sequence of migrations in ancient times, the want of permanent, undisturbed settlement, and the thinness of population had for so long delayed the genesis of a consciousness of belonging together among the ethnically and linguistically closely related local societies. Even when he has reached this level of the sense of belonging together, with its scanty institutional and symbolic expressions, however, the student of Greek order will not yet be satisfied. For the Greek experience of order (barring for the moment the fact that we don't know yet of whose order we are speaking) has its place in the history of mankind neither through its institutionalization in the poleis, nor through the "common action" that, in pragmatic history, averted the Persian conquest of the incipient Europe, but through its articulation in the symbolic form of Philosophy. A symbolism for the expression of true order was found that claimed to be scientifically valid for all men. And only when this last segment is added to the structure of Greek order will the nature of the problem appear in its due proportion: For the order of the concrete societies, of the polis institutions and their polytheistic cult symbolisms, was not formed by philosophy; and the paradigms of true order developed in the works of Plato and Aristotle never formed the institutional order of any concrete polis. (93ff; Fs)

3/1 At this juncture the problem can be only formulated. It will require the whole subsequent study to explore the relationship that actually exists between the concrete poleis in nonphilosophical form and the philosophical form without a concrete society. Nevertheless, we can relieve the suspense somewhat by a few reflections on an obvious fact: Philosophy, as an experience and symbolization of universally valid order, arises from the orbit of the polis. This phenomenon, now, is reminiscent of the Deutero-Isaianic "exodus of Israel from itself"; that is, of the process in which the universalist component in the experience of the Kingdom of God separates from the attempt to realize the Kingdom in the institutions of a concrete society. The similarity, to be sure, must not induce rash speculations that would obscure the profound differences between Israelite and Hellenic phenomena, but it suggests as relevant the further observation that the two experiences of order that arose from concrete societies without forming them became ordering forces on a world-historic scale, in both instances with explosive vehemence. Both Hellenism and Christianity must be understood, it seems, as the continued operation, on the imperial scale, of ordering forces for which Israel and Hellas, the concrete societies of their origin, had proved too narrow. And if the parallelism of imperial expansion should indeed be essentially connected with the similarity first observed, the suspicion may prove justified that the Hellenic tension and explosion has roots as deeply burrowed in time as the corresponding Israelite phenomenon. As in the case of Israel the problems of the prophets have their origin in the age of Moses, and even of Abraham, so in the case of Hellas it may prove necessary to ascend beyond the eighth century B.C., toward the pre-Hellenic phases of Greek history, in order to arrive at some clarity about the origin of the problems that mark the classical period. (95; Fs)