Autor: Purcell, Brendan M.

Buch: The Drama of Humanity

Titel: The Drama of Humanity

Stichwort: Aischylos, Orestie, Ordnung, Plato, Anaximander

Kurzinhalt: individuelle, soziale Unordnung (disorder); unWe, Umkehr, Orestes, Plato, Apeiron (Strafe), Athen (Achse), Pathei mathos: Weisheit, Leiden

Textausschnitt: () With regard to individual disorder, most of the actors within the tragic network seem to be severely disordered. Clytemnestra and the Furies seem to be motivated largely by passion, Agamemnon by aggressivity, and Apollo by closed intellectuality ... The result of this disorder has been the unWe-s underlying the various vicious circles during the trilogy, for disordered individuals constitute disordered relationships and communities. The We-commun-ity which emerges both in Argos and in Athens after the trial and reconciliation of the Furies occurs because the individuals who were disordered have reordered themselves through wisdom.
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Thus disordered passion, aggressivity and intellectuality, can be transformed into the ordered virtues of temperance, fortitude and prudence, whose integration in the soul of the just man Plato later in the Republic (436a-b;443d-444e) saw as the essential prerequisite for an ordered society.
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... court of Athens. That court is the centre of the universe, the axis of intersection of heaven, earth and hell: situated on earth among men, it participates in the wisdom of Zeus through the presence of Athena, and its community-constituting work for the small We of the family and the big We of the polls is guaranteed by the protection of the underworld Furies-Eumenides.
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Pathei mathos, wisdom through suffering, or in Fagles' translation 'suffering into truth,' is the key to the Oresteia-both the gods and men can achieve 'one common will for love'(665) only when they are prepared to suffer the exodus from their own passionate selfishness.