Parenesis

Paranesis (from ancient Greek παραίνεσις paraínesis "advice, admonition") usually describes the character, function or genre of a text as a warning speech , which is usually kept general instead of formulating concrete ethical norms, and several individual instructions according to purely rhetorical points of view and strung together without paying particular attention to internal logic. A famous example can be found in the so-called Epitaphios, the speech of the fallen by Pericles , as it was passed down to Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War . Seneca and other Stoic philosophers call pareneesis a philosophical discipline that draws practical consequences from a philosophical teaching. In Old and New Testament exegesis , certain warning text units, such as the speeches of Moses and Paul , are referred to as Paraneses, whereby the term is often used synonymously with that of the Parakleses. Frequently paraeneses contain protreptische elements.

A modern example of the use of the term can be found in Arthur Schopenhauer , who titled the fifth chapter of his aphorisms on wisdom with "Paränesen und Maximen".

literature

• Article parenesis . In: Walter Jens (greeting), Gert Ueding (Hrsg.): Historical dictionary of rhetoric , Vol. 6 . Niemeyer, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-484-68106-3 .
• Article parenesis . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie , Vol. 25 . P. 737 ff.

Web links

Wiktionary: Paränese  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

• Klaus Koenen:  Paränese (AT). In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (Eds.): The Scientific Biblical Lexicon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ep. Mor. 95.1.