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approach. The analysis is based on the notions of violence, mimesis
and sacrifice. The next step leads to the analysis of two «centralized»
models of totality as the foundations of the European culture.
The first model is identified with the Greek metaphysics. The
Greeks became the creators of metaphysics because their culture had
no solid territory. Indeed, their «territory» consisted of city-states and
islands that were separated from each other by wilderness and the salt
sea-water. Both are useless for agriculture and that is why for life. So,
the ancient Greek culture is the culture of spots of soil, the culture of
archipelago. As a result, the Greeks stood in need of such a symbolic
framework that could ensure their identity as one and the indivisible
culture. Metaphysics became that symbolic framework. It shaped the
structure of human relations in accordance with an ideal matrix.
This matrix, in its turn, is the symbolic reproduction of the
relations between the whole and the part. For instance, Plato’s world
of ideas has the hierarchical structure, since it is «centered» around the
«idea of ideas, that is, around god. In this structure the relations between
elements are replaced by the only relation of every element to a certain
«center» After Plato the fundamental organization of metaphysics
remains invariable and precisely it determines the systematization of
singular beings in space.
The morphological paradigm of the ancient Greek culture which
operates with the static forms reproduces the mutual relations of the
whole and the parts in the city-state as the synchronous system of pure
forms. It turns the whole universe into space, that is, cosmos, and
eliminates almost all its temporal characteristics. The time is considered
to be cyclic, it is only the rotation of the Fortune’s wheel. From this
cause the totality is regarded as the hierarchical structure that exists
only in space. Metaphysics is the ideal symbolic model of this totality.
The second model is identified with the genealogical paradigm of
the ancient Jewish culture. It turns the world into the multiplicity of
rhythms and places the totality of culture in the indefinite future. It
presupposes such a model of the mutual relations of the whole and the
parts which allows the limited liberty of the elements of the system.
The totality is regarded as yet not finished, as the being to be created.
Thus, the creation of some parts is not yet finished, and the future is
not similar to the Fortune’s wheel: it is undetermined, it is not the
repetition of the past, but the genuine novelty that doesn’t depend on
the previous condition.
Nevertheless, it would be a blunder to oppose the Jewish
foundations of the European civilization to the Greek ones. The Greek
elements without the Jewish ones do not join the Christian concept of
the universal history. The Jewish elements without the Greek ones do
not conform to the Christian universalism. The synthesis of those