Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Parmenides; Seele - Erfahrung der Unsterblichkeit; Plato (Timaios)

Kurzinhalt: The experience of immortality is a fundamental human experience, which historically precedes the discovery of the soul as the source of such knowledge

Textausschnitt: 277a Since an understanding of the new conception of the soul is of importance for the interpretation of Parmenides, and since the early sources are insufficient, we shall supply a later formulation, which most probably renders it accurately; it is a passage from Plato.1 In Timeaus 90A-B Plato says: (Fs)
With regard to the kind of soul which is dominant in us we should consider that God has given it to each of us as a daimon, dwelling as we said at the top of the body; and because of its affinity with Heaven it draws us away from Earth, for most truly we are a heavenly growth, not an earthly one. The Divine [to theion], indeed, has placed our head in the direction from where the soul had its first origin, as it were as its root, thus making the body upright. Now, when a man abandons himself to his desires [epithymia] and ambitions [philonikia], indulging them incontinently, all his thoughts [dogmata] of necessity become mortal, and as a consequence he must become mortal every bit, as far as that is possible, because he has nourished his mortal part. When on the contrary he has earnestly cultivated his love of knowledge and of true wisdom, when he has primarily exercised his faculty to think immortal and divine things, he will-since in that manner he is touching the truth-become immortal of necessity, as far as it is possible for human nature to participate in immortality. For incessantly he is engaged in the cult of the Divine; and since he keeps in good order [eu kekosmemenon] the daimon that lives in him he will himself become thoroughly eudaimon [blessed]. (Fs)
277b The passage articulates a conception of the soul that must be presupposed not only in the work of Parmenides, but also of Xenophanes and Heraclitus. The articulation is concise in the sense that it brings out the essentials of a doctrine of the soul but hardly goes beyond the bare essentials. Because of this conciseness, developing as it were a minimum dogma of the soul, we feel justified in introducing it at this point as an instrument for interpreting the Parmenidean poem. (Fs)
277c In the first place, the passage accentuates the connection between divinity and immortality. In archaic Greek thought, men are mortal, gods are immortal; if man becomes immortal he will attain such immortality through what is divine in him. The attribution of divinity and immortality to the soul, however, must not be understood as the futile indulgence of a "desire for immortality," perhaps as a "rationalization" in the sense of contemporary, ideologizing psychology. The experience of immortality is a fundamental human experience, which historically precedes the discovery of the soul as the source of such knowledge. Immortality is predicated of the gods long before the soul is differentiated as the subject of which also, with certain qualifications, immortality might be predicated. We might say that the experience of immortality advances from archaic opacity to the lucidity of consciousness in which it becomes clear that the divine can be experienced as immortal because the experiencing soul shares or participates (metaschesis) in the divine. This participation, however, is experienced as precarious; it is something that may increase or decrease, that may be gained or lost. Hence, the practice of the soul will either nourish the mortal or the immortal element in it. The cultivation of the immortal part through occupation of the mind with things immortal and divine is understood as a "cult" of the divine, symbolized as the daimon; and through a life of such cult practice the soul itself will become eudaimon. (Fs) (notabene)