2.97
We have another image of orbits in the transition from the Erinyes to the Eumenides in Aeschylus:[1] the image of the polis as the centre around which individuals move. Feminine earth deities become bound to masculine Olympian ones, and the idea of retributive justice that’s buried deep in land and blood is replaced by a social justice embodied in the courthouse.
This centralization resonates with the drive we have towards onto-ethical authoritarianism. There’s a supplanting of one religious ontology by another — one onto-ethics by another; and an onto-ethics is always also an onto-politics, onto-theology, onto-epistemology, and so on. The subjugating, assimilating, or negotiating of one onto-theology with or by another is a relatively common occurrence: Titans and Olympians, many gods in the Old Testament, Hinduism and the Buddha.
— But who’s this ‘we’ I’m talking about? Not everyone has longed for authoritarianism. There are other positions, often brutally repressed, oppressed, suppressed. Nonetheless, we see dominant, authoritarian positions stretching back into ‘our’ past, even where those who longed for it often knew not what they did.
The ‘true way’ has always required heretics; it must say ‘no, not that.’ The transition from the Erinyes to the Eumenides is ‘progress’ for one in a particular lineage.
[1] Aeschylus, “The Furies,” in The Oresteia Trilogy.