Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: The World of the Polis

Titel: The World of the Polis

Stichwort: Heraklit: Vereinigung zweier Erfahrungen von Transzendenz (Arche, Seele); Erwähnung der Seele

Kurzinhalt: two experiences of transcendence leading to the respective symbols of an arche of "things" and of a universal divinity

Textausschnitt: 306a The line that is running from Anaximander to Heraclitus is unmistakable. Nevertheless, Heraclitus is not simply a continuator of the Milesian naturalists. On occasion of our analysis of Xenophanes we distinguished between the two experiences of transcendence leading to the respective symbols of an arche of "things" and of a universal divinity. In the first of these experiences nature in its infinite flow became transparent for an origin of the flow itself; in the second of these experiences the transcendence of the soul toward the realissimum was understood as the universal characteristic of all men. The two experiences were then interpreted as pointing toward the same transcendental reality, and the identity found its expression in the formula "the One is God." This identity, still at the stage of discovery and tentative expression in Anaximander, and even in Xenophanes, is presupposed as established in Heraclitus; the Ephesian thinker takes it for granted and elaborates its speculative consequences. The cosmos now is nature in the Milesian sense and, at the same time, it is the manifestation of the invisible, universal divinity; it is a universe given to the senses and, at the same time, the "sign" of the invisible God. (Fs) (notabene)

308a The tension between the experience of the flow of "things" and the experience of a direction in the soul toward the divine "All-Wise," as well as the tension between the symbols expressing these experiences, will remain from now on, in varying degrees of consciousness, a dominant type of Hellenic speculation on order into the late work of Plato and into Aristotle. The tension did not break. Neither did the erotic orientation of the soul toward the sophon grow into an eschatological desire to escape the world; nor did the passionate participation in the flux and strife of "things" degenerate into a romantic surrender to the flux of history or to eternal recurrence. The emotional balance between the two possibilities was precarious, and in the generation of sophists after Heraclitus the strain began to show; lesser figures would break under it, but the great thinkers maintained the balance. A good deal of misinterpretation of Plato and Aristotle could be avoided if this problem were understood; and we must be aware of it now when we interpret the delicately shaded meanings of the all-too-few fragments of Heraclitus that carry his philosophy of order to the more concrete level of human destiny and political conduct. (Fs)