Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Parmenides; Doxa, Vorbemerkung

Kurzinhalt: He could not gain the Truth of Being without understanding the realm of Delusion

Textausschnitt: 285c By tradition Parmenides is accorded the place of the philosopher of Being, and this position is accentuated by opposing him to Heraclitus as the philosopher of Becoming. In fact, we do not know whether either of the two philosophers knew of the work of the other; and the traditional characterization of the two opposing types, although it is backed by the authority of Plato, is of doubtful value. To be sure, Parmenides speculated on the experience of the "Is!"; in the Eon he found the realissimum, in self-contained, homogeneous existence in the eternal Now, beyond the reality of sense-experience and custom. Moreover he understood the Ananke of this Being as the Ananke of the Logos that determined its predicates. Nevertheless, he could not have the experience of the "Is!" without the experience of the Way that must be traveled toward it; and he could not have the experience of the Way without the experience of its starting point in the world kata doxan, that is, according to the Delusion of the mortals. He could not gain the Truth of Being without understanding the realm of Delusion. Hence, the second part of his didactic poem, the part on the delusions (doxai), in the plural, of men, is quite as essential to the philosophy of Parmenides as the first part on Aletheia. (Fs)

286a The meaning of Parmenidean Doxa, as well as its relation with his Truth, is the subject of a millennial debate. The main points have been cleared up at one time or another; but with regard to the problem as a whole we still have no convincing picture. The principal reason for this state of things seems to be the fallacy that distorted the great discovery already in the immediate succession of Parmenides, that is, the latent or open equivocation between the pair of concepts Truth-Delusion in the Parmenidean sense and the pair true-false in the sense in which we speak of true or false propositions with regard to objects of immanent experience. If the philosophy of Being is a body of true propositions, runs the argument, then the doxai must be false propositions about the nature of Being. Such errors of argument can be avoided only if we ascertain the meaning of Doxa in the context of the poem itself and do not indulge in speculative guesses about the meaning that such a term must have on the basis of general usage. (Fs) (notabene)

286b In the context of the poem itself the Doxa is simply a cosmology in the Ionian sense. It is dualistic in conception, assuming Light and Night as the two principles (or forms) from whose interactions and mixtures the phenomena of the world of experience, including the world of man, arise. This cosmos has a beginning, a growth into the future, and it will have an end. The complicated details are not our concern. We are, rather, interested in the question why this cosmology-which could stand quite well for itself-is placed as the second part in a didactic poem of which the first part is called "Truth," and why it is called "Delusion." The meaning of Delusion obviously cannot be found in the content of the second part itself; it can only be found by relating this second part to the meanings of Truth in the first part. Only because the exposition of the first part is "Truth" can the content of the second part be called "Delusion." We must return to the core of this Truth, that is, to the experience of the "Is!" (Fs) (notabene)