Jacob Burckhardt himself contributed to the fact that Nietzsche still thought the essence of the Greek world and of its πόλις in a Roman way. For Burckhardt considered the Greeks with a view toward the "history of Greek culture," by which he means the "history of the Greek spirit" (Introduction, p. 3). The concepts of "spirit" and "culture," no matter how they are defined, are representations belonging to modern thought. Burckhardt gave these representations a special stamp on the basis of his discovery of the "Italian Renaissance." In this way, essentially Roman, Romanic, and modern concepts flow into Burckhardt's historical thinking. Burckhardt thinks the totality of history according to three "forces": "state," "religion," "culture." The state is, in the modern view, a power. Burckhardt agrees with the thesis of F. Chr. Schlosser, that "power is in itself evil." This thesis has often been repeated in several variations. Power is called "demonic," but no reflection is given to the essence of power, nor is it said what "demonic" is supposed to mean here. The characterization of power as "evil" and "demonic" is a metaphysical judgment on something undetermined in its metaphysical essence. But a discussion in these terms does not even reach the perimeter of the essence of the πόλις. The essence of power is foreign to the πόλις, with the consequence that the characterization of power as "evil" finds no ground there. The essence of power, as meant in modern thinking about the state, is founded in the metaphysical presupposition that the essence of truth has been transformed into certitude, i.e., into the self-certitude of the human being in his self-positing, and that this latter is based on the subjectivity of consciousness. No modern concept of "the political" will ever permit anyone to grasp the essence of the πόλις.
b) Preparation for a detour over the path of a commentary on
Plato's dialogue on λήθη and the πόλις. Order: Δίκη. The mortal
course of the sojourn in the polis and the presence of beings after
death. Christian Platonism.
Reference to Hegel.
Perhaps, however, ἀλήθεια itself casts an appropriately clarifying light on the essence of the πόλις, enabling us to see why disorder and even disaster abound in the πόλις as the essential abode of historical man. These belong to the πόλις because every unconcealment of beings stands in conflict with concealment and accordingly also with dissemblance and distortion. Now, if the essence of unconcealedness and of concealment pervades the abode of the essence of historical man, then a Greek dialogue about the πόλις, assuming it is a thoughtful dialogue, must treat of the essence of ἀλήθεια. Plato does speak about ἀλήθεια, indeed in the manner of a μῦθος, at the beginning of Book VII of his