Kairos

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Kairos on a fresco by Francesco Salviati in the audience hall of the Palazzo Sacchetti in Rome, 1552/54

Kairos ( Greek  Καιρός ) is a religious-philosophical term for the favorable point in time for a decision , the unused elapse of which could be disadvantageous. In Greek mythology , the opportune moment was personified as a deity.

philosophy

In older ancient Greek , the term Kairos is recorded as the right time. It is in contrast to the long period of time Chronos (χρόνος) and the day (ἡμέρα) . For the first time, this peculiarity of the oldest Greek conception of time was problematized by an essay by Hermann Fränkel (1931). The debate was continued critically u. a. by Michael Theunissen in an examination of the poetry of Pindar .

In biblical texts the word Kairos is used for a God-given point in time, a special chance and opportunity to fulfill the commission.

Paul Tillich used the term in the 20th century for his socialist philosophy of history. Immanuel Wallerstein takes up this term again in his book "Unthinking Social Science" in order to formulate a postmodern theory of social change. For Giorgio Agamben the kairos is the time of the messianic fulfillment / suspension of the law, in which the chronos is repeated “compressed”. Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt use it for their post-operaist revolutionary theory.

In philosophy it is the decisive moment itself, in religion Kairos also stands for the decision between belief and unbelief .

mythology

In contrast to Chronos , the Greek god of time, Kairos does not play a minor role in Greek mythology . Ion of Chios (490–421 BC) calls the “youngest son of Zeus” a poetic invention in his triagmos, which is passed down through Roman quotations , but no evidence of an Olympic genealogy . It was only through the bronze sculpture of Lysippus , court sculptor Alexander the Great, that Kairos received a late inclusion in the Olympic heaven of gods.

A cult of Kairos is only known from the - not preserved - altar of Kairos in Olympia , which was set up near a Hermes altar, as Pausanias reports. However, replicas of Lysipp's Kairos testify to a widespread Kairos cult from Hellenism to Eastern Roman times. In iconology , Kairos is moving closer not only to Hermes, the swift messenger of the gods, but also to Tyche , the coincidence, and the nemesis , who punishes human hubris .

Poseidippus of Pella (3rd century BC) also wrote a dialogue between the observer and Kairos in his epigrams from Olympia:

Kairos relief from Lysippus , copy in Trogir

" Who are you?
I am Kairos who conquers everything!
Why are you walking on tiptoe?
I, the Kairos, run incessantly.
Why do you have wings on your foot?
I fly like the wind.
Why do you have a sharp knife in your hand?
To remind people that I'm sharper than a knife.
Why is a lock of hair falling on your forehead?
So that I can be seized by whoever I meet.
Why are the back of your head bald?
Once I've slipped past with my foot flying
, no one will catch me from behind, no matter
how hard they try.
And what did the artist create you for?
You hikers for instruction. "

- Gründel 1996. Col. 1131

The phrase , "the opportunity with Schopf " to pack is returned to this representation of God: If the opportunity is gone, you can not put it more on the bare back of the head. The saying "on a knife's edge" comes from depictions of Cairo with scales balanced on a razor blade.

Representation in the fine arts

Printer's stamp for the printer Andreas Cratander, 1522

The archetype of all Kairos representations is the lost bronze sculpture of Lysippus from Olympia, of which only fragments of a Roman marble copy have survived. A marble relief after Lysipp, kept in Turin, shows the god as a striding, naked youth with curly hair and a shaved head. Wings grow from his shoulder and heel. In his left hand he carries a balance scale , while the index finger of his right hand points to the sinking right scale pan. Some representations on ancient seals and sarcophagi based on this model have survived.

The relief differs in some points from the description of Pausanias: The knife is missing, wings on the shoulder are not mentioned. There are also changes in other attributes over the course of time, for example Kairos is occasionally shown on impellers , an attribute of the nemesis, or balancing on a ball like Fortuna.

In the Renaissance , Kairos could also be visualized as Occasio , the favorable opportunity - theologically also the "opportunity to sin" - as a female personification . One example is Holbein's printer 's stamp for the Basel printer Andreas Cratander from 1522. Here a young woman is shown with flowing hair and a bald head. She holds a knife and dances with winged sandals on a ball. In this representation, attributes of Fortuna and Kairos are combined.

psychology

In psychology, the fear of making decisions is called cairophobia.

literature

Web links

Wiktionary: καιρός  - explanations of meanings, word origins , synonyms, translations
Wiktionary: Kairos  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations
Commons : Occasio  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Pauly-Wissowa. Bath 20/1. 1919. Col. 1508.
  2. ↑ Pausanias V. 14.9.
  3. ↑ Illustration of the Turin relief a. a. ( Memento from May 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Anja Wolkenhauer: Too difficult for Apollo. Antiquity in humanistic printer's marks of the 16th century . Harrasowitz, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 3-447-04717-8 , pp. 216-225 .