テュケー

ツキュディデスの歴史観念

抄録

Putting the purpose and form of Thucydides' History together, we must be troubled with a very difficult problem; if we grasp his work in the phase of relative and concrete facts, we are to miss his original design for leaving “an eternal treasure”, but if we consider his book as expression of absolute or general truth of Human Nature, we are to fail to understand the exactness in its facts and the chronological construction.
To solve this aporia, we should suppose that human events cannot be given account of by natural-scientific causal-relation, but by a special conception in his History, τυχη, which is concerned with the temporariness of Human Nature. This temporariness of mortals in historical accidents (ξυντυχιαι) was the one and only precept that Thucydides meant to teach to descendants. By comparing with the time-order of nature, he revealed it as foundamental structure of human beings. Supporing so, we can first understand the unity of the greatest exactness and the widest generality of his History.