The Historical Ideal Type of Reality

Abstract

The historical ideal type of reality conceives of the beyond as transcendence, in constant tension with the world within which a universal humanity progressively moves in time. This tension between world and transcendence organizes the structure of the temporal order of events as an indefinite progression. I argue that the shape of this time structure is determined by the discovery (or invention) of transcendence within the Judaic and Greek cosmology, the ulterior Christian conception of unified human kind under one God, and its related consequences for the conception of a universal human history. Historical cosmology, according to Eric Voegelin (1974), emerges through an imperial thrust that encompasses several cultures and is forced to discover or create its own sacred roots to existence. Here, I want to argue that historical reality is also conditioned by myth and it shares this characteristic with primitive and mystic types of reality. From a diachronic perspective, historical reality and mythical reality do not converge as their preeminent verbal structures cannot establish a dialogue: They are incommensurable with respect to each other in their sequential coherence, as is illustrated by the contrast between historical objective reality and fiction.