Die symbolische und transzendentale Struktur der Geschichte: Order and History

Each society identifies an order through which it gives a meaning to existence. This is done using appropriate symbolic forms, which eventually decline in time and flow into the overall historical becoming. Thus we witness the birth of a series of devices that often claim for themselves the title of true order. In its ideality though, such order can never be identified with any concrete structure. This ideality, called which may be labelled in different ways, unknown in its origin and in its purpose, manages to present itself as a reality capable of exceeding the concreteness of every human society. The order of history therefore has a twofold characteristic: while it is accomplished in a specific society, at the same time it shows the peculiar trait of transcending each individualization. With Israel, the sense of order is imposed as an expression of the experience of transcendence. In fact, the divine is no longer part of the cosmos: it is symbolized as the transcendent as such. The encounter between God and man is the condition of possibility for the events and of their narration. From this moment on, history becomes the excellent symbol for expressing an existence that replaces the cosmological symbolic order with the revelation, the event that transforms the cyclical rhythm of ancient civilizations into historical time. The political-existential order is therefore only a first meaning that most profoundly hints at the deeper nature of the order of being in which man participates. In this specific sense, the order of history is not revealed in the history of order. In any case, history is configured as a narration of the symbolic representations of the order and, at the same time, of the representations through which human conscience intended to pass itself on.