E. Gate of Fate

The measure of things to come is no longer a mythical reference to the future, but an realistic appraisal of what needs to be done, in order to attain a certain goal. It alters man's relationship to both the 'cosmos', and to his own actions. There is much wisdom in such an appraisal of tasks lying ahead. To take measure of things to come, space and time is given to work out solutions, prior to undertaking any action. At the same time, it puts things into a realistic perspective making possible the regulation of the emotions. This avoids having false expectations. For the first time two sides of man's actions are really focused upon: the political, and the technical - the beginning of the split between natural and social phenomena. Nevertheless, at that time, things were still kept together through an emphasis upon the 'techne', or the art of doing things. It includes the acknowledgement of the need to know what to expect, even the unexpected. It allows avoiding disappointments and loss of hope by putting things into a realistic perspective. At the same time, it is said that one thing must be done after another, if something greater than man can be constructed. Here man begins to enter the realm of practical realities. For the first time anticipatory thoughts are put into practice, and knowledge applied. All this transforms man's previous dependencies upon the world of not his choosing into a destiny of his own making, but in order to get there, he must pass through the 'gate of fate'.

The 'gate of fate' has many synonyms in history, often it is identified with paradoxes, or huge dilemmas. For instance, "Pericles desired peace, but was confronted with war", writes Robert Payne in his excellent account of Ancient Greece (p.249). Huge obstacles are encountered by everyone trying to do something. In the old stories, individual heros overcome many of these obstacles, and gain as a result their fame; Odysseus is a very good example of that. But the 'gate of fate' is more than what Alexander the Great tried to pass through on his way to India and the Asian continent, for although he made it through that famous gate said till then as being impossible, his troops went into mutiny immediately thereafter, forcing him to return.

Till today, to pass through a gate equals the power which trespasses someone's threshold. As shown by Rodin in his sculpture of the citizens of Calais, it can also mean to hand over the key of the main gate. Once passing through such a gate, it means no longer are upheld those rules which reigned until that day; strangers, or rather new rules upset them and encroach upon the rights of the citizens living there. In order to gain something until now not realized, it means on the darker side casting shadows upon man's freedom to self-determination.

Power does not have any measures, hence it does not pass really through that gate. There lies the danger. Only great men can do so without falling victim to hubris, the deeper implication of fate. Although there are many examples of victimizations of great men and women through arbitrary, equally powerful rulers who all take their turn in the history of Ancient Greece, they fail in the end. For while remaining outside the gate, power has its own limits. Tragedy comes from not wanting to recognize that. This, in turn, explains many crimes and much of human tragedy.

The 'gate of fate' is such a threshold where power has to shed either its clothes, or else enters brutally to smash all things. Human souls become then a thousand mirrors and words silent witnesses. Who knows how many cities had been build, if only to be razed to the ground by subsequent conquerors. Of the hundred or more cities Alexander had constructed, a mere five to seven remained. As both cities and individual lifes do not count so much, things were meant to be driven back to the ground or to the pre-urban level of a village, that is a primitive life which cannot challenge power. To go back to former levels of existence, or to pass through the gate to gain new heights, this question posed itself as 'fate' to man: as determining factor for things to come.

Sometimes this fate could be avoided through clever diplomatic moves, while inside the gate a persuasive word could save a person from execution despite of having betrayed all those living inside the walls. But then other consequences followed: higher taxes, women sold, or in the case of the individual not executed, forced to leave the city to live in exile.

To seal then man's fate was to determine the outcome after some initial moves by heading finally in a certain direction of development. It was a finalization of something. It followed upon the realization that the reign over the cosmos as 'intelligible universe' could only be achieved through man learning to limit himself drastically. Out of grabbing the reigns of such new powers, which comes from the release of energy by men put together in the cities, so that they could communicate and co-operate with one another, there followed sometimes even blinding wealth. Hence in the early times of Ancient Greece, and later symbolized in the Greek tragedies, a new dimension to punishment was added: not death or exile, but stabbing out of the eyes, so that light vanishes and things could no longer be seen in their natural beauty.

At the beginning, this question of final determination was posed in the form of riddles which once unlocked, would reveal secrets, insights into these new powers. There was as of yet not really any differentiation between ficticious and real power, and often the greater hero overcame all odds, and that despite his enemy having much greater power at his disposal. That is why the cunning nature, the determined character, the restless youth as attribute was added to what it takes to achieve victory: nike. Yet the pre-Socratic world had realized that there is also a limit to all powers, if not related to the real secrets of nature. As they set out to prove to others and themselves, these secrets are not so easily to come by, for even man is limited by the words he uses in what they allow him to attain those secrets of nature. They realized more unconsciously, than consciously an entirely new situation had to be faced once having passed through that 'gate of fate'.

As if life had become a paradox, or even worse, the new challenges along the road of man's voyage pose even greater dangers than ever before, man had to learn to cope with the new knowledge, including the power of numbers. His freedom depended suddenly not only reason, but also on the need for man to decide. He could go either way, but whatever he choses to do, there will be outcomes and consequences, and not everything will fit together thereafter. Things will no longer be same as before, that is prior to going through that gate. Usually such alternatives are more than mere paradoxes, but they speak often of a sheer oversight by such powers which conceives themselves to be in absolute control, or try to attain it, and little do they realize what Elytis would say in 'To Axion Esti', namely the moment that gate is passed, then the future begins of those slain, while the life stops for those who do the killing.

In an effort to apply this new wisdom allowing man to perceive the world as an 'intelligible reality', and eager to take up what strangers could convey about other worlds, there emerged above all the wish not to rely solely on hear-say, but to construct and to govern the city on validated knowledge. As if already in vague outlines the 'divine state', that Pericles shall persue at a later date, this meant coming to terms with the many hidden 'selfs', the potentialities of man, and to transform the rule of the one into that of the many. These were to become the first principles of democracy, but they had yet to resolve what measure of things to apply to man's actions, and how to understand knowledge in terms of living free under the rule of the law? Both seemed to be key pivot points of any human community in the making, and indeed together they create for many early poets and thinkers 'the gate of fate' through which everyone must go in order to enter the community of man.

For too fateful is this entering a strange world ruled by new laws partly made by men, partly by those who know what is to follow if a certain course of events is to be taken. There was a difference between those knowledgable ones and those in need to know. Strange relationships between Socrates and the Polis reflects that composition of belonging only sofar to a community of man, if sharing the same knowledge. That was not easy to accept. Many revolts turned themselves against those who had the prime wisdom, and hence the ability to criticize the folly of mankind. But all this happened, because deep down all realized that once having gone through that gate, there was no return, no turning back. Already the mythology of Orpheus talks about the risk of turning around and looking back, since it can mean loosing the very beauty for which he had set out to find by even climbing down to Hades, the world of darkness.

Later in philosophy Hegel would make the turning around the prime source of experiences, but he oversaw that wisdom does not speak out nor does beauty stay in a world if ruled by ugliness. That too must be taken into consideration. A wise stateman has, therefore, to take care that the people do not grow lazy and afraid of themselves lest they loose easily what they have to gain by staying together. Like wild horses which must be tamed in order to draw the chariots, man's energy must be put to use in a practical way. It can help to seek along the way counsel, and to make sacrifices to the Gods for they can avenge themselves through revenge if they feel man has forgotten them, but that is merely a safety measure. Until then, balances were found by a simple form of mediation amongst the Gods themselves; Odysseus was helped by the goddess Athena to escape the rage of Poseidon after she, the bright-eyed goddess had sought counsel by Zeus. Now, in their new world, cities with uncertain relations to the Gods, there the men must find themselves their way alone. Unaided by the Gods, and only helped by their intelligence, they had started to define the universe in the light of reason, and tried to act by reason alone, but they had to find out by themselves, that they were on the right path within their boundless universe. Above all they came to recognize that their soul knows no borders.

Significantly maturity begins by taking fate into one's own hands, something the pre-Socratic thinkers like Anaximander have started to talk about already when using for the need to regulate man's affairs the word 'to steer', in Greek kyberman, from which came the Roman gubernare and our own govern" (Robert Payne, Ancient Greece, p. 156-7)

The wagon steerer

Not everyone was in agreement with such development, nor did it seem that man took good care of both his newly acquired knowledge nor of himself. It was a new kind of fateful life with one event leading to another, the chains of events themselves leading to the downfall of a great civilization. The first man to bemoan that fate was Prometheus:

"It was not pride that drove me to this fate,

Nor wilfulness that makes me silent here.

Agonized thoughts devour my vitals.

The rebel gods derived their powers from me:

I shall not speak of this now. Other thoughts

Burn within me. Besides, these things are known to you.

I shall speak of the miseries that beset mankind;

Once they were witless and I gave them sense,

I gave them reason and the power of thought.

I say this now for no unruly purpose.

Simply: I gave them gifts."

And then he lists the dilemmas:

"First, they had eyes, but saw with little purpose.

They had ears, but could not hear with them.

They thought in shapes of dream, and their long lives

Were lived in vast confusion....."

Hence it comes as no surprise that there was also opposition to this determination to create something else which had never existed before in life. That was expressed best by Parmenides who offered the alternative, namely that more knowledge was to be gained by leaving such a community behind. As Parmenides would describe it in his poetic fragments, if man was to gain knowledge again, he must leave again through that gate. Such a departure from a world constructed by man meant, literally speaking, wheels were turning of the goddess' chariot taking man out of the city while to leave he must turn first the key of fate. For the key to the gate - 'dike' - can only be turned once man forgets everything what he had learned previously in the city. Only then he can step out, into nature, and perceive things not only differently, but once again with a 'unity of perception'.

Parmenides fragmentary poem indicates that the voyage of man had become not only a question of movement symbolized by the wheel, but also a matter in which direction to develop in. He felt that many decisions posed dilemmas, and rather than wishing to opt for the one or the other, he wanted to move towards a 'unity of perception', and realized if the men of the city did not understand in which direction they were going, they would loose such a unity rather than gain something. He was most concerned about retaining the linkage to the 'being', that is becoming one through doing. Parmenides was convinced only by opening up to that what can unify perception, namely nature, will man retain the understanding he needs for what is doing - a problem echoed much later by Kant in making the 'unity of apperception' into a priori of everything.

Parmenides, in his fragment called 'Being', mentions that the direction to go depends upon the understanding of what makes the 'unity of perception' possible or impossible, for it is one of difference between being in nature as opposed to living in the city. The difference between these two different kinds of 'topoi' appears as something unreconciable: only once again in nature, does the world of the physis unify the nomos of man in such a way, that he can understand what he is doing and seeing. It was a first, but strong hint about forgotten worlds left already behind by the many eager to continue on the path they had chosen by entering through the 'gate of fate' the community of man. Of course, 'dike' means also here justice which the ancient poets and thinkers always cautioned not to loose sight of by becoming, for example, victims of false pride and hence of 'hubris'. Thus they preferred to give warnings in that direction as did Parmenides about the only ways of understanding:

Listen and hear my words and let them be known,

There are only two ways of understanding -

The first is Being: impossible for Being not to be.

This is the way of faith, for truth attends it.

The other way is Not-Being: impossible for it to be,

And wholly beyond understanding, beyond conceiving.

What is not cannot be known, cannot be spoken,

And Being and knowing are the same thing.

Parmenides of Elea

He implied that without faith in understanding within the limits of being, there are no words to be spoken, let alone to be known to other man. The dilemma is only resolved when man avoids such paradoxes which prove to have fateful consequences.

The question of fate - the dilemma, but also being in the making - was already realized by Prometheus as portrayed by Aeschylus pointing out that fate is provoked through 'hubris' - pride. The poet Pablo Neruda would recommend 2000 years later to abolish pride, in particular self-pride since it would lead to loneliness: a lack of understanding other men. The German painter Paul Klee interpreted in his way, through a painting of a boy dashing down a hill on a roller, but with only one hand steering, while everything else was up in the air to show see, what daring feat I can do. Needless to say, this over-confidence (Uebermut, in German) leads to a crash. The Ancient Greeks understood hubris emerging out of acts performed in defiance to the Gods who subsequently shall punish, foremostly Zeus himself.

Promotheus, however, contradicts this legend of pride leading on to failure, for he realizes that he is being punished for having brought civilization to mankind, in particular by stealing the fire from the Gods. Aeschylus did mention that Promotheus claims also of having taught 'man' how to put together letters, for it helps memory, but despite being able to give all these gifts, Promotheus could not free himself from this agony symbolized by being "shackled to a rock in the northern wastes of Scythia, with an iron stake driven through his chest, the blood pouring out of him" (quote taken from Robert Payne, Ancient Greece, p.219).

Nevertheless, a transformation was to take place thanks to the Pre-Socratic thinkers since it meant changing 'fate' into being destined to doing something. The same kind of assurance seems to have Prometheus, for he knows it is his destiny to be freed by future generations. From then on, stepping through the gate had to do with people wishing to give themselves sovereignty. It meant entering and wishing to leave the city as a free citizen, but the difference between city and nature had still to be reconciled, even within man himself.

The city stands here for a constructed world by man, but its urban structures are still undefined. The deeper problem in need of being resolved appears to be: how man can reconcile himself with the fact that he shall remain incomplete while in the knowledge of the complete? That became later evident with the free standing sculpture, and how the temples were build. In-between are the elements of tragedy and comedy as first signs of self-reflections. These again require deeper probing into elements of fate as outcome of despair, love and war. That meant man could not cope so simply with life despite of his intelligence and newly acquired knowledge.

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E. Gate of Fate