James’s post, "A View from Somewhere of this Month in Pomocon," as I understand him, seems to me to describe a contemporary view of politics that has striking similarities to the age of the classical Greeks who were confronted with the death of their myth and the ongoing challenge of the Sophists.
While we might define our Sophists as the materialists, progressivists, positivists, Marxists, and neoconservatives who are determined to bring about Utopia and the Superman, to one degree or another, the loss of our "myth" is observable in the continuing decline of Christianity.
The Greeks were saved, as Eric Voegelin writes in his essay, "Eschatology and Philosophy: The Practice of Dying," by the discovery that man is "not a mortal, but a being engaged in a movement toward immortality (athanatizein)." This discovery coupled, a few centuries later with the Gospel of Christ and the evangelism of Paul, defined movements in reality that transcend death and open the door to the possibility of the immortality of the soul. The really interesting phenomenon related to these eschatological movements is the idea that they played the dominent role as an "ordering" force within society; they introduced a tension in existenial consciousness that acted to subdue the libido dominandi.
While we have not totally lost this "ordering force," it’s decline is readily observable. As James cogently alerts us to the concurrent decline in those who engage in the "examined " life, a dearth of philosophers in the city, we might ponder our fate as we await the democratic election of the Saviour.
