The Time of Theory

Abstract

longer comes from its harmony with a cosmic order, but from a different harmony: an abstract identity between all individuals. A serious problem must be faced by this society: how to recognize when an event has happened. In order to testify that an event has occurred, you need someone who must be at the same place at the time it occurred, in order to perceive it and then to bear witness to it. But this is not enough. The witness must be socially recognized as a good witness in order for everyone to recognize that the event he has witnessed occurred. In a society no longer founded on the order of the cosmos (and thus on the authority of a priest-king whose testimony is backed by competence and social position), events must be democratically validated. But how to avoid the confusion of voices, since no one has the authority to decide the value of a perception, of an aisthesis-to employ the Greek term, for the story actually concerns the Greek cities between the eighth and sixth centuries before Christ. It does not really matter if the individual perception remains in a private domain, but what happens if someone arrives in the agora, yelling that a foreign army is coming? On this kind of occasion, it is important to stop any useless discourses on the validity or non-validity of the perception, and make a decision quickly. Thus it was decided that certain citizens should be chosen, based on good social standing and a reputation for probity, and sent to see what had happened, if indeed something had happened. And until they returned, no one had the right to say anything about the eventuality of what may have happened. As soon as they came back and testified what they had seen, public discussion could legitimately take place. These citizens bore the collective title of theoria-those who have seen or