becomes ἄπολις. Man's emerging into order and his standing within order, δίκη, is orderliness, δικαιοσύνη. Orderliness is understood here as the unveiledness of order, its holding nothing back in secret. The dialogue on the πόλις has to deal with this essential abode with regard to what takes place in it, how man dwells in it. The theme of the Politeia is δικαιοσύνη. In concord with the orderliness of order or in discordance with it man can be δίκαιος, orderly, or ἄδικος, disorderly. In the meditation on the πόλις there arises finally the question of what, for dwelling in the essential abode, is ordered to the orderly and the disorderly respectively, what, so to say, remains around each person as ordering.
Now, dwelling in the πόλις is a sojourn here on earth, ἐνθάδε; this sojourn in the polis, however, is in each case a περίοδος θανατηφόρος (Cf. X, 617d7), a sight-filled path and a course traversing to the end, and then stepping beyond the assigned temporal span of the earthly sojourn. This traversing course is θανατηφόρος; it harbors death and thereby leads to death. Yet the mortal course of man through the essential place of history does not exhaust the course and the journey or, more generally, the Being, of man. According to Plato, this passage of man through a βίος, this "course of life," is not the only one, but instead, after a certain time, man returns in a new form in order to begin a new course. The historiography of religion calls this the theory of "reincarnation." But we would do well, here again, to remain awhile within the compass of Greek thinking. And in that case we would say that with the completion of the current mortal course the Being of a man is not at an end. That is, in accordance with the essence of man, even after one's own death beings remain present in some fashion. Therefore the consideration of the πόλις arrives ultimately at the question (X, 614a6):
ἃ τελευτήσαντα ἑκάτερον περιμένει
What remains round about each one respectively (the orderly as well as the unorderly) after he has finished (the mortal passage)? What surroundings does a man have when he is away from the here of the πόλις and sojourns "there," ἐκεί? What surroundings does he have, where is he, before he again begins a new course?
According to our usual, that is, in the broadest sense, "Christian," modes of representation, what is being raised here is the question of the "beyond." Christianity, from early on, following the path of Judeao-Hellenic teachings, has in its own way seized upon the philosophy of Plato and has seen to it that from then until now the Platonic philosophy, held out as the high point of Greek philosophy, should appear in the light of Christian faith. Even the thinking before Plato and Socrates is understood on the basis of Plato, as is evident in the ordinary