eric - isistatic.org · eric voegelin, whose scholarship exhibits a range as ... compilation of 68...

THE FOUNDATIONS OFVOEGELIN'S POLITICAL THEORY

Anamnesis: Zur Theorie der Geschichte and Politik. By EricVoegelin (Munich: R. Piper & Co., Verlag, 1966). Pp. 395.DM 34.00.

Surely one of the most remarkably creative political scientists andby all odds the leading contemporary political philosopher is

Eric Voegelin, whose scholarship exhibits a range as broad asToynbee ' s, and an originality comparable to Whitehead ' s. Yet it isa curious fact and perhaps an index of the intellectual poverty ofthe profession-if not of the times-that his works are as little readby political scientists as are those of either Toynbee or Whitehead;and that his magnum opus, Order and History ( whose first threevolumes appeared nearly fifteen years ago), has not to this day beenreviewed by any of the three leading journals in the field in thiscountry-The American Political Science Review, The PoliticalScience Quarterly, or The Journal of Politics.' This neglect is, ofcourse, not altogether surprising even though deplorable. There is

'The exception to this statement is the review by Moshe Greenberg ofIsrael and Revelation, Vol. I of Order and History in APSR, Vol. LI (1957),pp. 1101-1103. The designation " leading" is based on circulation which, in1970, was as follows: APSR, 18,000; Political Science Quarterly, 12,100;Journal of Politics, 3,600. Sources of data: Ayer's Directory of Newspapersand Periodicals (Philadelphia, 1971), and Ulrich's International PeriodicalsDirectory ( Portland, Me., 1969-70). The compilation given in Austin Ranney,"Report of the Managing Editor, APSR, 1969-1970," P.S., Vol. III, "SpecialIssue " (1970), p. 601, indicates that 29,000 copies of the Review were printedin March, 1970. The reputation and standing of the various journals is dis-cused briefly in Richard L. Merritt and Gloria J. Pyszka, The Student PoliticalScientist 's Handbook (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), pp. 126/29; cf. AustinRanney et. al., "Report of the Committee on Journals; American PoliticalScience Association, " in P.S., Vol. I (1968), p. 31. Of the major journals inthe field, so far as I can see, only two have reviewed all three of the pub-lished volumes of Order and History: The Review of Politics, Vol. XIX(1957), pp. 403-409; Vol. XXI (1959), pp. 588-96, both by Gerhart Niemeyer;and The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences,Vol. CCCX (1957), p. 233, by Edgar J. Fisher; and Vol. CCCXIV (1958),pp. 163-64, 187-88, by Truesdell S. Brown.

VOEGELIN'S POLITICAL THEORY 31

evidence that the significance and the immediate impact of intel-lectual attainment are inversely proportional; and since the timeof Socrates it has been an occasion for wonderment rather thana complacent expectation whenever the best men are accorded therecognition by their contemporaries that is their due.

In an ideological climate of opinion dominated by positivism,Marxism, and Freudianism, Voegelin speaks in the strange tongueof the philosophia perennis and makes but few concessions to whathe has called the theoretical illiteracy of intellectuals in generaland of fellow academics in particular. From the perspective of theprevailing climate of opinion, he seems to us an unintelligible" jargon" which has little in common with the language of aprofession accustomed since the time of Charles Merriam-to adegree since Burgess, Lowell and Bentley-to the parlance of the"science of politics. " Voegelin not only speaks in an apparently"private language " but also challenges the basic assumptions ofmodish American political science, scientific and traditional alike.Any such challenge is inevitably distasteful to those with ingrainedcontrary habits of mind and conflicting vested interests; and thealleged obscurity of expression easily excuses the offended from thenot inconsiderable intellectual effort necessary to comprehension.If Somit and Tanenhaus speak for a consensus of American politicalscientists, it is generally agreed that Voegelin' s work is "impressive"

but not "widely read. " 2 In short, his teaching rates admiring lipservice but typically falls on deaf ears.

But it is a matter of pathological consequence when one of thefinest scholars and minds in a field is ignored by the profession atlarge. What may be taken for the typical state of mind in theprofession in this respect is worth at least a glance in passing. Itis well illustrated, following the fashionable method of a case-studyof decision-making, by the comments of three (anonymous, but not

fictitious) readers for the APSR of a short paper recently submitted

2 Albert Somit and Joseph Tanenhaus, The Development of AmericanPolitical Science: From Burgess to Behavioralism (Boston, 1967), p. 188. Onthe ideological climate see Voegelin, "On Classical Studies," forthcoming inProceedings, Conference on the Uses of Antiquity for the Modern World, heldin Rome, April 1-3, 1971; " Immortality: Experience and Symbol, " HarvardTheological Review, Vol. LX (1967), pp. 237-41, 248-64; "On Debate andExistence, Intercollegiate Review, Vol. III (1967), pp. 143-52; Anamnesis,pp. 239-53.

32 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

there, which examined certain salient dimensions of Voegelin ' sthought in a technically precise and utterly authoritative way-ifscience may be permitted a peek for empirical purposes into theclassified documents of a nameless but extensive archive of rejectionnotices.

Referee Alpha (shall we call him) was more than sympathetic.He was enthusiastic, finding the piece interesting, important-even"magnificent" and at least potentially "a ` mind-blowing ' experi-ence. " He warmly recommended publication, a recommendationwhich, however, our Editor managed to find less than irresistible.Alpha, amidst these unseemly raptures (which our Author thoughtto be richly deserved), did also write in this sobering vein, how-ever: "The article both inspires me and troubles me . . . [there are]certain weaknesses in an otherwise superb effort. . . . The mainproblem . . . is that the author uses too damned much jargon. NowI know that word is usually reserved for contemporary members ofcontemporary disciplines and technology. But they are not theonly guilty parties. Any use of a private language, even if itis formerly a general language that has become private throughdisuse, is jargon. " Referee Beta crisply recommended rejection andexpressed himself with engaging candor and at some length:

. I have never considered myself a "behavioralist." . . . At thesame time, I am some kind of a positivist. This means to me thata distinction exists between facts and values. . . . I want state-ments to be clear. . . . The prime fault with sections 2 and 3[of the manuscript] is that they are, not clear. Here, of course, therejoinder might be that the lack of clarity is more a comment onmy own intellectual equipment than on the MS. And in a waythe rejoinder is perhaps sound. I have made it a rule that, sincemuch more stuff is written than I can hope to read, I will confinemyself to what is reasonably understandable. On this basis I havethrown aside writing of the type that appears in sections 2 and 3of this MS. . . . but on those occasions when I have looked intothe kinds of writing just mentioned I have concluded that theydidn 't have enough to offer to justify the effort. The present MSconfirms the earlier judgments. I have read it very carefully, andhave re-read and pondered many of its parts. I am puzzled and in-credulous.. .. To be honest about it, I suspect that if sections 2and 3 could be made clear I would consider them quite unsound.

In one of the specific comments on a passage, Beta reinforced his

VOEGELIN ' S POLITICAL THEORY 33

earlier statements in this delightfully ingenuous way: "The fact thatthe MS rejects positivism is especially striking in this paragraph.Since I am a positivist, the paragraph comes close to being gobble-dygook to me. Its meaning is not clear; and insofar as it is clearit is unconvincing. " The opinion of Omega came third; it wasbrief, measured, and serenely declarative, benefitting the end. Theinitial and decisive one of the three sentences of the opinion read:"This is an intelligent and well-written paper, but it does notmake any point that merits publication. "

The comments reflect reactions that range between admirationand uncomprehending incredulity; the judgment of intelligence andthat of obscurantism and nonsensical triviality; excited interestand dogmatic rejection on the basis of admitted, resentful prejudice.The preponderant weight falls, of course, on the negative end of thescale where the decision of "unsuitability " is made with an authority

affecting 18,000 political scientists.Since the identities of the authors of these several privileged

communications, and the identity of the author of the essay inquestion, are protected by anonymity from all save the editor ofthe Review, these materials may with propriety be cited to docu-ment and representatively illustrate-not the perils of publishingfamiliar to every writer-but rather to display the pervasive andprofound communication gap, ideological impasse, and the effects

of these in the editorial behavior of the principal organ of theprofession as factors that operate ruthlessly and thoroughly todeflect serious (or any other kind of) consideration by American

political scientists of such works as the book before us.It may well be doubted, of course, whether the misfortunes of

the particular writer of our case-study are necessarily indicative ofa pattern or of the fate of other (perhaps abler) authors of a similarorientation; however, substantial evidence might be adduced to

support further the construction that political science does havesuch a "media" problem as has here been intimated. For example,not only have the second and third volumes of Order and History

been politely ignored by the Review (and all three volumes by the

other two leading journals), but so also has Anamnesis, which was

published five years ago; and Voegelin, with a bibliography ofover 80 printed articles, has himself published but one essay in the


Review, and that nearly thirty years ago, "Political Theory andthe Pattern of General History " (1944). 3

The work under review here will do regrettably little to relievethe kinds of difficulties of comprehension complained of by theReview's referees. It displays scholarship of the highest orderfrom end to end and is written in superbly supple and elegant,often beautiful German. There is, after all, a technical philosophicalvocabulary developed by the Greeks of antiquity, one employedwith persistence down to the present. Eric Voegelin has masteredthat vocabulary as have few others, and he uses it as the indispens-able instrument for elucidating in a precisely meaningful way thephenomena of political existence to which he addresses himself.The writing sometimes sparkles with humor, frequently with in-candescent luminosity such as one encounters in the best poetry,and above all it consistently displays a clarity of statement andliterary grace which occasionally rise to aphoristic pungency, butall in the language of philosophical discourse. Now this has alwaysbeen a "private language " in the sense that only the learned-andnot the common run of men-can be expected fully to understand it.But the language of precise rational speech in use continuouslyby educated people for two-and-a-half millennia can hardly betermed "jargon"-except by the uncomprehending vulgar, ofcourse. And I fear that it is just such vulgarity that we havehere to confront; not the vulgarity of this or that person, or class

3APSR, Vol. XXXVIII (1944), pp. 746-54. Thirty of the 81 publishedarticles are in the English language. For Voegelin 's bibliography see thecompilation of 68 articles and review-essays given in Alois Dempf, HannahArendt and Friedrich Engel-Janosi (eds.), Politische Ordnung and MenschlicheExistenz: Festgabe fiir Eric Voegelin zum 60. Geburtstag (Munich: C. H.Beck Verlag, 1962), pp. 604-612. Essays published since 1962, in addition tothose cited above and elsewhere in this paper, include three reprinted inAnamnesis: "Das Rechte von Natur," (pp. 117-33) ; "Was ist Natur? " (pp.134-52) ; and "Ewiges Sein in der Zeit, " (pp. 254-82). In addition were alsopublished:, "Democratie and Industriegesellschaft, " in Die unternehmerischeVerantwortung in Unserer Gesellschaftsordnung (Cologne and Opladen,1964), 96-114; "Der Mensch in Gesellschaft and Geschichte, " Osten. . Zeit-schrift fiir Offentliches Recht, Vol. XIV (1964); "Die deutsche Universitatand die Ordnung der deutschen Gesellschaft, " in Die Deutsche Universitat imDritten Reich ( Munich, 1966), pp. 241-82; "The Eclipse of Reality," inPhenomenology and Social Reality ( The Hague, 1970); "Henry James ' ` TheTurn of the Screw, ' " Southern Review, Vol. VII, New Series (1971), pp.3-48.

VOEGELIN 'S POLITICAL THEORY 35

of persons, but the vulgarity which afflicts and marks the age andto greater or lesser degree all of us in it.

The phenomenon before us is the inversion of categories and ofexistence whereby learned discourse comes to be seen as barbarousgibberish and the private vulgarities of the multitude_ as educationand public wisdom. It was noticed by Plato in his time and givenmemorable expression in a passage climaxing in this statement:

[A]ll these private persons who take pay [the Sophists] . . . teachnothing but these very dogmas which the multitude pass and theopinions which they opine when they gather together; and thisthey call wisdom. It's like a keeper with a huge, powerful monsterin charge. He learns by heart all the beast's whims and wishes. . . learns his language, too-what sounds he usually makes atwhat, and what sound uttered by another creature quiets himand what infuriates him. The keeper learns these lessons perfectly inthe course of time by living with him, and calls it wisdom: thencompiles a handbook of veterinary art and sets up as a professor.He knows nothing, in truth, about these dogmas or whims of themultitude, whether any of them is beautiful or ugly, good or evil,just or unjust, but gives a name to each according to the monster'sopinions, calling beautiful what pleases the monster and evil whatannoys him; he has no other principle in all this, but he callsnecessities just and beautiful; and how really different by naturenecessity is from good he has never seen himself and he is unableto teach another. Don't you think in heaven 's name that such aone would be a strange educator?

The phenomenon does not disappear with the philodoxers ofancient Athens, the Sophists. For as Stanley Rosen rightly says inhis recent book, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay: " [T]he many

have always disliked philosophy; the new historical phenomenonafter Hegel is the acceptance of the tastes of the many by the few,in however esoteric a manner this acceptance might be phrased."

4

One may say that the esoteric phrasing of the tastes and perceptionsof the many by the few is the very definition of jargon; and itis the rejection of both these vulgar tastes and of the particularjargon which is their linguistic receptacle and eikon in our own'

4Rosen, Nihilism ( New Haven, 1969), p. 92. For a discussion of "The In-verted Philosophy of Existence, " see Voegelin, Order and History (3 vols todate; Baton Rouge, 1956-), III, 31-39.


post-Hegelian age which makes Voegelin 's work as foreign to con-temporary professors as was the Athenian Stranger 's.

II

Anamnesis is divided into three parts (entitled "Recollection,"

"Experience and History, " and "The Order of Consciousness") andis composed of thirteen separate pieces of varying length and widelydiffering subject matters. The eight essays comprising Part Twohave previously been published, three of them in English languageversions; the remainder of the volume is seen here for the firsttime. The earliest piece was first written in 1937; the latest wascompleted in 1966. At first glance the volume appears to bea patchwork of miscellaneous studies drawn from here and there,dusted-off and refurbished for the present occasion. The author,evidently sensitive to this appearance, tells us that there is, however,a unifying thread to be followed through the maze: the threadis the theory of consciousness with which Voegelin has steadilybeen concerned since his first book, Uber die Form des Ameri-kanirchen Geistes, published in 1928.

The four pieces of Part I ("In Memoriam Alfred Schutz, "

"Letter to Alfred Schutz about Edmund Husserl, " " Concerning theTheory of •Consciousness," and "Anamnesis") together with thelong essay of Part III ( "What is Political Reality? " ) develop thetheory of consciousness explicitly, and this review will concern itselfmainly with these materials. The eight essays of the interveningPart II (the bulk of the volume, pages 77-280) reflect and ex-emplify it; they fall into four groups of two essays. The first groupconsists of "Historiogenesis" and "Eternal Being in Time, " thefirst and final pieces in the section. Both address the problem oftime, the former showing that the ancient Oriental empires de-veloped, never cyclical, but rhythmic and linear historical constructions, the latter seeking to relate the conception of time tothat of the transcendental beyond, to lay the foundations for a phi-losophy of history beyond the obsessive constructions of the ideologies,and to establish the linguistic indices and terminology requisitefor such a philosophy. A second group includes "The Law ofNature" and "What is Nature? " which deal with problems of Classi-cal politics, especially of Aristotle, the former essay analysing therelationship of noetic experience to the symbolisms whereby the

VOEGELIN' S POLITICAL THEORY 37

philosopher seeks to delineate the rules of right action for menin society, the latter exploring the experience and symbolization ofconsciousness of existing from a Ground. The third group isdevoted to analysis of salient problems of the constitution of ecu-menic empires and of the impact of Asian thought and actionupon Europe especially as seen through Western and Mongoliandiplomatic relations during the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries( "The Humanists' Image of Timur, and "The Mandate ofGod" ). The final group, "Bakunin' s Confession," and "JohnStuart Mill-Freedom of Discussion and Readiness to Discuss, "

considers aspects of the ideological climate of the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries, the former dealing with the revolutionaryaspiration to establish a perfect realm, the latter with the eclipseof reality, the consequent collapse of free discussion, and the arrayof techniques devised by ideologues to inhibit rational discussion.'

In the first sentence of The New Science of Politics (1952),Voegelin stated that "The existence of man in political society ishistorical existence; and a theory of politics, if it penetrates toprinciples, must at the same time be a theory of history" (p. 1).That theory of history was to be unfolded in Order and History;and when the first of the three published volumes of the workappeared in 1956, the first sentence of the "Preface" gave us theheading and set sail for the present from ancient Mesopotamia andEgypt in these words: "The order of history emerges from thehistory of order" (I, p. ix). A few lines further on the enterprisewas clarified: " [W]hile there is no simple pattern of progress orcycles running through history, its process is intelligible as astruggle for true order. This intelligible structure of history, how-ever, is .. a reality to be discerned retrospectively in a flow ofevents that extends, through the present of the observer, indefinitelyinto the future. Philosophers of history have spoken of this reality

"Der Befehl Gottes" (pp. 179-222) is a translation and expansion of theEnglish "The Mongol Orders of Submission to European Powers, 1245-1255,"Byzantion, Vol. XV (1941), pp. 378-413; "Die Beichte Bakunins" (pp.223-38) is a translation of the English "Bakunin ' s Confession," Journal ofPolitics, Vol. VIII (1946), pp. 24-43; "John Stuart Mill-Diskussionsfreiheitand Diskussionsbereitschaft" (pp. 239-53) appeared in English translation as"On Readiness to Rational Discussion" in Albert Hunold (ed.), Freedom andSerfdom: An Anthology of Western Thought, trans. R. H. Stevens (Dordrecht,Holland, 1961), pp. 269-84.


as providence . . . [and in doing so] they referred to a reality beyondthe plans of concrete human beings-a reality of which the originand end is unknown and which for that reason cannot be broughtwithin the grasp of finite action " (ibid.) By this restatement thetheory of politics that had been expanded into the theory ofhistory in 1952 was further metamorphosed into the philosophy oforder to be attained through recollection and analysis of the trailof experiences and their symbolisms manifested in the field ofhistory. The first sentence of the present volume (published as weawait the continuation and conclusion of Order and History, in anow promised fourth and final volume to be entitled In Search ofOrder), provides yet a further reformulation of the central thesisof Voegelin's political philosophy: "The problems of human orderin society and history arise from the order of the consciousness.The philosophy of consciousness is for that reason the centerpieceof a philosophy of politics " (Anamnesis, p. 7) . By this 1966 formu-lation, the philosophy of politics is further augmented by the ex-periences and symbolisms through which the process of unconscious-ness articulates itself overtime. The clues provided by the successionof first-sentence formulations are intended to be complementary andnot conflicting or contradictory; and, in fact, the author statesthat the materials published in the first part of Anamnesis (andwritten in 1943) express the theory of consciousness "presupposed"by both The New Science of Politics and Order and History; thattheory is exemplified here in the other essays as in the mentionedlarger works; and it is expanded and deepened in the most recentof these writings, the very important concluding essay, "What isPolitical Reality?" Just how the pieces of the puzzle go togetherit will be a part of the business of this review to see. In any event,Anamnesis no doubt supplies a missing link essential for the properunderstanding of Voegelin's thought.

"The philosophy of order, " the author says, "is the process inwhich we as men find the order of existence in the order of con-sciousness " (Anamnesis, p. 11). Plato expressed his own philosophyof consciousness in terms of the symbolism of Recollection. SinceVoegelin builds his theory on the foundation supplied by Plato,the meaning of the symbolism there is topical. Plato appears tohave coined the word anamnesis from mnemosyne ( memory or

remembrance; mythically, the Mother of the Muses) ; its meaningis remembering-again, recollection, or reminiscence (cf. Philebus

VOEGELIN' S POLITICAL THEORY 39

34A-C; 60A-E). The Well of Memory is known from the Orphictablets, amulets buried with the dead and indispensable sourcesof knowledge for Orphic eschatology. The inscription of the Petelia

Tablet reads as follows :

Thou shalt find on the left of the House of Hades a Well-spring,And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.To this Well-spring approach not near.But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory [Mnemosynes].Cold water flowing forth, and there are Guardians before it.Say: "I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven;But my race is of Heaven (alone). This ye know yourselves.And lo, I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quicklyThe cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory."And of themselves they will give thee to drink from the holy

Well-spring,And thereafter among the other Heroes thou shalt have lordship... .

The divine origin of man is affirmed; it is nurtured, and hisheavenly destiny saved, through the blessed water of Remembrance.The nameless and forbidden well of the tablet is connected withthe person of Lethe (Forgetfulness) in Hesiod (Theogony, 227) ;and Lethe appears for the first time as a water, a river, at the endof Plato ' s Republic (621), where she is also called Ameles ( Un-

mindfulness.) No less to Plato than to the Orphics and to Hesiod,Lethe is from the first thoroughly bad and is identified with the un-consciousness of death and with the living death which is forgetful-ness of that which ought to be remembered-the amnesia of the souland society of which Voegelin speaks at the beginning of Order

and History. It is the ignorance in the soul (agnoia) which nullifieswisdom in the Republic; and it combines with vice to obscuretruth, thereby binding the soul to earth, in the great myth of thePhaedrus (248D) .

Truth in Greek (aletheia) itself connotes an uncovering, un-concealing, or unforgetting; Plato etymologically designates it as"an agglomeration of Theia ale (divine wandering), implying thedivine motion of existence" (Cratylus 421B; cf. 411A-413C). Theexperience of deja vu or anamnesis not only is offered as evidence

6 Quoted from Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion( New York, [1922]), pp. 573, 659f.


of the immortality of the soul and of metempsychosis by Plato;but it is also the sign of essential humanity itself and is equatedwith intuitive or noetic reason (Nous) : that mysterious divinesomething in man, the highest rational faculty or capacity of intel-lect whereby the transcendental Ideas and undemonstrable FirstPrinciples of scientific knowledge are, through participation, graspedand known.' Plato writes in the Phaedrus (2490-E) :

[T]he soul which has never seen the truth will not pass into humanform. For a man must have intelligence of universals, and be ableto proceed from the many particulars of sense to one conceptionof reason; -this is the recollection of those things which our soulsaw while following God-when regardless of that which we nowcall being she raised her head up towards the true being. Andtherefore the mind of the philosopher alone has wings; and this isjust, for he is always, according to the measure of his abilities,clinging in recollection to those things in which God abides, and inbeholding which He is what He is. And he who employs arightthese memories is ever being initiated into perfect mysteries andalone becomes truly perfect. But, as he forgets earthly interests andis rapt in the divine, the vulgar deem him mad, and rebuke him;they do not see that he is inspired.

This same identification-or at least close alliance-of anamnesiswith noetic reason is to be seen in the dilemma posed to Socratesin the Meno that through inquiry one "either . . . will learn nothingor what he already knows" (to accept Aristotle 's formulation)which is resolved through the famous experiment with the slaveboy that shows "all inquiry and all learning is but recollection, "

understanding learning to mean knowledge (episterne) of truthin terms of unchanging principles of essence.'

7Phaedo 73-6; 92; Symposium 208; Meno 81ff; Republic 617; Timaeus42, 91; cf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1140b31-1141a9; 1177a12-1178a8;Posterior Analytics, 100b5-14: Cf. Martin Heidegger, Was ist Metaphysik?(Frankfurt, 1960), pp. 10ff, trans. as "The Way Back Into the Ground ofMetaphysics, " in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, ed. Walter Kauf-mann (Cleveland and New York, 1956), pp. 210ff, for remarks on atetheia.One must be warned, however, that the common philosophical vocabularyshared by Voegelin and Heidegger generally does not carry a common meaning.

8 Posterior Analytics 71a29; Meno 80E, 81E; cf. Euthydemus 293Eff. Cf.the discussion of "wissende Fragen and fragende Wissen," in Anamnesis, pp.150-52, 290, and at note 45, below.


III

Because the process of consciousness informs and adumbratesthe field of history, the best point of access for a critical under-standing of Voegelin ' s political philosophy remains the historicalsymbolisms. The approach permits the discussion of Anamnesis inthe context of both earlier and subsequent writings. The impressivecontinuity of his thought over a period of four decades also invitesthis approach, for Voegelin ' s attention to these problems did notcease five years ago with the publication of this book. The twocomplexes of experiences and symbolisms-those of the field ofhistory and those of the process of consciousness-are held togetherby the only "constant" that Voegelin can find in either field. Thislink and constant is Man himself; more specifically it is the processof man " in search of his humanity and its order. " We must thenhere begin with the first sentence of the "Introduction " to Orderand History: "God and man, world and society form a primordialcommunity of being."

9The quaternarian structure of being

indicates both the starting point of Voegelin 's philosophy of historyand the range within which the inquiry moves. The sentence alsosupplies pertinent information about the meaning of experience andsymbolization. Reality is symbolized as a community of being ar-ticulated into a four-fold relationship.

The field of being is not, however, simply postulated. Rather itarises in the symbol-forming consciousness as an expression ofexperience, in its most comprehensive reach. The mode of thiscomprehensive and fundamental experience is implicit in the termcommunity. Being is no abstraction but is concretely apprehendedas the divine Ground; nor is it a "thing" which can be an "object"

9Voegelin, Order and History, I, 1. The exploration of the question of"constants " ( " intelligible structure " ) in history and consciousness is expliciton the first page of the "Preface " of Order and History (quoted earlierabove) ; it is profoundly developed in the recent paper from which I havejust quoted, Voegelin, "Equivalences of Experiences and Symbolization inHistory," in Eternitd e Storia (Florence, 1970), pp. 215-34; to be reprintedin Voegelin, In Search of Order, Part 2, chap. viii, Vol. IV of Order andHistory (forthcoming in 1972). The balance of the present, essay throughSection V (inclusive) is an expanded and revised version of my "Eric Voege-lin and the Nature of Philosophy," Modern Age, Vol. XIII (1969), pp. 152-68, which is reprinted here with the kind permission of the editors of thatjournal.


of "outward" or external experience in the mode of perception,any more than can be "man" or "world" or "society. " Neitherabstractions nor things, the termini express the content of man'sinner experience of conscious participation in a whole greater thanhimself and both like and unlike himself. This embracing wholefinds its resting point in what is concretely known to be the divineGround which encompasses all that is. The experienced whole issymbolized as "being" (ousia) in philosophical language. The coreof the experience forms as the sense of mutual interpenetration,sameness, and oneness of all that falls within the purview ofconsciousness.

This essential oneness or "consubstantiality" is not, however,perfect homogeneity but is articulated by tensions within the fieldof consciousness which are identified as separate polarities. These"poles" are designated by the symbols which define the structuralboundaries of experienced reality. Hence experienced consub-stantiality of being differentiates itself as a community in whichman participates as a polarity and member. It is precisely thetension of this partnership that man-and this means the concreteconsciousness of each man-experiences and knows as the essen-tiality of his being. In Voegelin ' s words, "Man's partnership inbeing is the essence of his existence. . . ." Or, alternatively, " the`specific nature of man ' is his `consciousness of the existentialtension to the Ground ' ." 10 The second formulation can be takenweight. "Partnership " is synonymous with "participation"; andman' s "consciousness" forms precisely as this same "participation. "

Hence the essence of man is this luminous inward dimension (orconsciousness) which forms as participation in the divine Groundof being. Participation is, therefore, the pivotal conception for anunderstanding of Voegelin 's theories of consciousness, experience,symbolization, and reality and, so, of his whole philosophy. 1 '

It perhaps must be emphasized that the "experience" now underdiscussion is the " inner" experience which forms as participation-not the "outward" experience of sensory perception of " things." TheKantian critique raised persuasive doubts as to the very possibility

"Order and History, I, 2; Anamnesis, p. 340.as the equivalent of the first only if participation is given full

11For a further discussion of participation see Voegelin, "Immortality:

Exreri ence and Symbol, " pp. 235-79.


of fully "objective" perceptual experience of "things in themselves" ;it suggested that the experience of "things " depends upon a complexinterpretive operation of the human mind in which what is appar-ently objectively observed partakes heavily of the observing subject.This process is described in Kantian language as the " injection"

of thingness into perception by the "synthetic function of pureintuition and the synthetic unities of pure understanding. " 12 Evensuch objectivization as this is a late development in the differentia-tion of human consciousness and is merely a further mode ofsymbolization-one of distinctive merit in bringing to hand themode of material reality of things existing in time and space. Inthe current climate of positivistic and behavioralistic obsession inthe humane disciplines, it will perhaps be salutary to recall Goethe 'sobservation that "all fact is in itself theory. " 13 And it is in anyevent evident that the material and quantifiable do not exhaust thewhole of experienced reality. No account which takes only thesefactors into consideration can possibly form a sufficient basis for theunderstanding of man in his humanity or for the science of politics.

Beginning, then, from the experience of participation, and fromthe understanding that participation is the form of consciousnessitself, it can be said that whatever man knows he knows from themanifold of experience gained from his inevitable perspective ofparticipant in the community of being. The oneness or unity ofbeing is juxtaposed to the oneness of the nature of man, accordingto Voegelin 's key interpretive principle. The range of experience,moreover, is always present in the fullness of its dimensions.Finally, the structure of the range, insofar as it attains articulationin consciousness, varies from compact to differentiated. Y4 Thedifferentiation of experience and symbolization is the manifestationof the intellectual and spiritual-of the specifically human-in thehistory of mankind. Indeed, it is the very action which constitutessocieties and creates history itself.

From the matrix of experience a man gains partial under-standing of the order of being and of the obligations of existence.Yet the paradoxical quality of the perspective of participation must

12Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, trans. Ralph Manheim

(3 vols.; New Haven, 1953-57), III, 60.131bid., III, 25.14Order and History, I, 60.

. 44 THE POLITICAL SCIENCE REVIEWER

he emphasized. Man is thrown into and out of existence withoutknowing either the how or the why of it.

He is an actor playing a part in the drama of being and, throughthe brute fact of his existence, committed to play it without knowingwhat it is. . . . Both the play and the role are unknown. But evenworse, the actor does not know with certainty who he is himself.

. Man's partnership in being is the essence of his existence,and this essence depends on the whole, of which existence is a part.Knowledge of the whole, however, is precluded by the identity ofthe knower with the partner, and ignorance of the whole precludesessential knowledge of the part. This situation of ignorance withregard to the decisive core of existence is more than disconcerting:it is profoundly disturbing, for from the depth of this ultimateignorance wells up the anxiety of existence. 15

The anxiety of existence, the mystery of being and the horrorof a fall from existence into the nothingness of non-existence, moti-vates the creation of "symbols purporting to render intelligiblethe relations and tensions between the distinguishable terms in thefield." Man ' s essential ignorance of himself and being, while apermanent attribute of existence, one given paradigmatic expressionin the irony of Socratic ignorance, is not complete ignorance. Yetit is not in the spirit of a detached search for scientific truth thatman seeks to render existence intelligible; rather it is out of theanxiety of a fall from being that he searches the texture of theexperiential content of consciousness to render existence itselfmeaningful.

The "primary experience" centers in the apprehension of thecosmos as divine and generates the first great symbolic form, themyth.

This cosmos of the primary experience is neither the external worldof objects encountered by man when he has become a subject ofcognition, nor is it the world created by a world-transcendent God.It is rather the cosmos of an earth below and a heaven above; ofcelestial bodies and their movements, of seasonal changes, of fertilityrhythms in plant and animal life; of human life, birth, and death;and above all, as Thales still knew, it is a cosmos full of gods. Inthe Memphite Theology imperial order is established by a drama of

' Ibid., I, if.


the gods that, by virtue of the consubstantiality of all being, is per-formed on the human plane as the drama of Egypt's conquest andunification; in the Sumerian King List, kingship is created in heavenand lowered on earth; and two-thousand years later, in Jewishapocalypse, there is still a Jerusalem in heaven, to be lowered onearth when the time for God's kingdom has come; Yahweh speaksfrom Mount Sinai, out of a fiery cloud; the Homeric Olympiansdwell on earth, on a mountain reaching into the clouds, and theyhave quarrels and agreements affecting the destinies of peoples inAsia and Europe; the Hesiodian gods Uranus and Gaea are in-distinguishably heaven and earth themselves, they enter into aunion and generate the gods, and the generations of gods in theirturn generate the races of man. This togetherness and one-in-an-otherness is the primary experience to be called cosmic in thepregnant sense. Y6

Wherever the great cosmic mythologies appear-and they ap-pear in all the ancient empires, from Egypt to China-they reflectthe experience characterized in the foregoing passage. The creationof myth is the work of men motivated by the anxiety of existence.Myth is an expression of this anxiety and its conquest by a com-pact search for the Ground articulated in concrete imagery. Neitherfor Voegelin nor for Cassirer is myth simply " irrational" thought:rather it is compact or undifferentiated, pre-philosophical and pre-scientific thought which comprehends within itself compact equiva-lent of more differentiated thinking, including the mythic equiva-lent of noesis-of rational, etiological thought."

The process of syrrfbolization at the level of the cosmic mythdisplays certain "typical features" of interest in the present context.Five of these can be enumerated."

(1) The experience of participation is predominant, the ex-perience of the oneness or consubstantiality of the whole of beingof which man himself is a part.

(2) There is reflected a preoccupation with the lasting andpassing of the partners in the community of being, their durability

16 Quoted from Voegelin, unpublished draft of Order and History, IV,chap. i, ms p. 10.

17 See Cassirer, Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, I, 88ff, 93ff, 111-114,285-316; II, xivff, 4ff, 16ff, 35ff, 43ff, 60f, 69f, 71ff, 171ff, 194ff, 252ff, 258n;III, xif, xiii, 13, 22ff, 48ff, 62f, 68, 73, 83, 99f, 102, 107. In Voegelin seeespecially "Historiogenesis" , in Anamnesis, pp. 79ff.

18The following enumeration is drawn from Order and History, I, 3-11.


and transiency, and this looks to the construction of images whichportray an apprehended hierarchy of existence-from man tosociety to the cosmos and the everlasting gods themsleves.

(3) Participation is heightened into attunement to the orderof being, to the lasting and enduring as this is distinguished throughthe experience of a hierarchy of unequally enduring existences. Itis through attunement to the truth of existence that myth assuagesthe anxiety of a fall; in attunement man "hearkens to that whichis lasting in being . . . maintains a tension of awareness for itspartial revelations in the order of society and the world . . . listensattentively to the silent voices of conscience and grace in humanexistence itself."" The soul thereby remains "open" (in Bergson ' ssense) to the divine Ground; and this openness is the substance ofhuman rationality. 20

(4) The attempt is made to make the essentially unknowableorder of being intelligible as far as possible through the creationof symbols which interpret the unknown by analogy with the really,or supposedly known. It is under this aspect of the process ofsymbolization that the life of man and society are represented asreflecting the visible order of the cosmos, as a microcosm or a cos-mion. Human existence is integrated through ritual and myth intothe perceptible rhythms of the cosmic order. The differentiationof the primary experience, perhaps spurred by some social crisis,develops the tendency to penetrate further the field of experience,to reverse the symbolism and so symbolize the order of societyand the world on the pattern of the well-ordered soul attuned tothe unseen God beyond the visible cosmos-that is .as a macro-anthropos, as a "MAN" written in large letters. 21

(5) The analogical character of symbols is understood earlyin the process of symbolization, perhaps from the very beginning.On the one hand, symbol and referent tend to blend and assumean identity; yet, on the other hand, the very abundance and ap-parent contradictoriness of symbolic representations of divine order

Y9Order and History, I, 4.

20Anamnesis, p. 289. Cf. Henri Bergson, Two Sources of Morality andReligion, trans. R. A. Audra and Cloudesley Brerton (New York, 1935),esp. pp. 168, 228ff, 240ff, 252, 265, 280-306. Also Voegelin, New Scienceof Politics ( Chicago, 1952), p. 79.

"-Plato, Republic 368D-E; see Voegelin, Order and History, III, 69f.


reflect a tolerance of symbolization rooted in the knowledge thatreality outruns representations which are inevitably partial andinadequate. Symbolization is no more than a serious play. Thisearly tolerance reflects the insight that the order of being can berepresented only imperfectly-but in a multiplicity of mutuallycomplementary and valuable ways. "Every concrete symbol is truein so far as it envisages the truth, but none is completely true inso far as the truth about being is essentially beyond human reach." 22

Yet the limits of tolerance can be and are reached when sym-bolization itself becomes a source of error about the order of being.Then the issue of the unseemliness of symbolisms is raised (as inXenophanes and Plato), which provokes with new intensity theanxiety and horror of a fall from being through imperfect attune-ment fostered by a false theology perpetuated through outwornsymbols. Lastly, the differentiation of the fundamental experienceby the " leap in being" which reveals the unseen God of transcen-dence historically carries with it a revulsion against any symboliza-tion: the Holy of Holies stands empty, no images are carved tohonor this God; and what the Agathon is Plato cannot say.

23

The mystery of the transcendent divine partner in being, whoreveals himself as the I AM THAT I AM and finds his mostsuitable name in the unpronounceable Tetragammaton YHWH,

24

emerges out of the differentiation of the primary experience in the"pneumatic" mode. Israel creates the symbolism of the ChosenPeople in the present under God and articulates itself in theHistorical Form of existence. The form of the myth is decisivelybroken and its authority dissolves. History thereby becomes the newform of existence for universal mankind and is first constituted bythe experience of the world transcendent God. The representativeact taken by Moses for Israel is taken by Israel as God ' s ChosenPeople for all mankind. 26

Less radically but no less certainly, the primary experiencedifferentiates in the "poetic" mode in the horizon of ancient

22Order and History, I, 7.

"Republic 517B. See Voegelin, Order and History, III, 112ff; Anamnesis,pp. 338ff.24

Exodus 3:14; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, 13, 11;Voegelin, Order and History, I, 402-414; Anamnesis, p. 338.25

Order and History, I, 115.


Greece. This is the achievement of the mystic-philosophers cli-maxing in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Here the symbolic formof existence is not paradigmatic history (such as is recounted inthe Old Testament) but philosophy which finds optimal symbolicexpression in the Platonic dialogue. In contrasting the Logoi ofphilosophy and revelation, Voegelin remarks that when "man is insearch of God, as in Hellas, the wisdom gained remains genericallyhuman."

26Differentiation of the primary experience in Israel

occurs as a passion, "as a response to a revelation of divine being,to an act of grace, to a selection for emphatic partnership withGod," not as the result of human action but as an encounter witha divine initiative the human response to which is symbolized asconversion in the religious sense. 27 In Israel, God is in search ofman; in Hellas man is in search of God. "The word, the dabar,"Voegelin writes,

immediately and fully reveals the spiritual order of existence, aswell as its origin in transcendent-divine being, but leaves it to theprophet to discover the immutability and recalcitrance of the world-immanent structure of being; the philosopher's love of wisdomslowly dissolves the compactness of cosmic order until it has be-come the order of world-immanent being beyond which is sensed,though never revealed, the unseen transcendent measure. 28

Still, the contrast between the pneumatic and noetic modes ofdifferentiation is far from being absolute, as is clear from bothHellenic philosophy and from the New Testament. The insight ofthe mystic philosophers is gained not only by means of the noeticmode of the philosophical inquiry (zetema) which ascends thearduous way (methodos) through the realms of being to the pointwhere the divine Ground is sensed in a transcendental beyond( Plato ' s epekeina). This reflective, rational, self-conscious searchfor the Ground also is accompanied by and intertwined with thepneumatic mode of its Dionysian variety; for example, the pneu-matic element is displayed in the eroticism of the Socratic soulas it strives toward the divine Sophon as the fulfillment of itslimitless desire. So, also, the philosopher's symbolization of the

"Ibid., I, 496.17 Ibid., I, 10.28 Ibid., II, 52.


existential impact of the Vision of the Good is conversion-thePlatonic periagoge or turning about of the whole soul: away fromworld and society as the sources of misleading analogy and untruth,toward the true source of order and of the only knowledge thatcan claim to be scientific.

What at first approach seems an intricate yet clear contrastin modes of experiential differentiation between Israel and Hellasdisplays yet greater complexity on closer examination, as Voegelinargues in Anamnesis. 2° Both pneumatic and noetic components ofthe primary experience differentiate in the Hellenic horizon andfind decisive symbolization in the form of philosophy itself. Noris this simply, it may be emphasized, a mythic "hang-over " or avestige of the old compactness-although this element is presentas a third factor as well, since the valid insights gained throughmyth into the order of being are of abiding value to mankind.There is no "getting beyond" myth in certain respects.

The differentiated noetic and pneumatic experiences can beseen together in the Hellenic horizon, for example, in the Phaedo(69C) where the very goal of philosophy itself is identified as theequivalent to mystical participation in the divine. Socrates ex-pressed the matter as follows: "For `many,' as they say in the mys-

teries, ` are the thyrsus-bearers but few the mystics '-meaning as I

interpret the words, ` the true philosophers. ' In the number of

whom, during my whole life, I have been seeking according to myability, to find a place. . . ." Viewed from the perspective of thedifferentiated noetic science of Classical philosophy, the meaningof this statement is that the optimal clarity of the Logos of con-sciousness is such that the philosopher ' s grasp of the Logos of therealms of being is comparable in profundity to that attained throughinitiation into the Bacchic mysteries. The Greek term renderedas mystics in Jowett's translation is Bakchos, which is equally the

God and God-related man. 30 In arising out of mythic compactness,

29Republic 518 D-E; Order and History, III, 68; Anamnesis, pp. 311, 328.

He has recently carried this argument very much farther, as we shall presentlysee. On the stunning analysis of the noetic structure of the movement in thesoul which climaxes in the death and resurrection of Christ and its essentialcontinuity with Classical philosophy see Voegelin, "The Gospel and Culture,"

in Jesus and Man's Hope, Vol. II of Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Festivalof the Gospels (2 vols to date; Pittsburgh, 1970-), pp. 59-101.

soAnamnesis, p. 292.


itself an undifferentiated compound of pneumatic, noetic and otherexperiential modes, Classical philosophy differentiated its specificform of participation in unbroken continuity with the pre-philo-sophical mythical form. The mythic elements in philosophy remainsufficiently intact so that Voegelin states that "Our knowledge oforder remains primarily mythical, even after the poetic experiencehas differentiated the realm of consciousness and noetic exegesishas made its Logos explicitly clear.""

It is precisely this interpenetration of the noetic mode with themythic experience on one side and with pneumatic experience onthe other which compels consideration of the derailment of philoso-phy. Before following this thread farther, however, the generalconsequences of the differentiation of experience through the leapin being must be clarified.

The decisive consequence for order of the leap in being, whetheroccurring in the pneumatic or noetic mode through revelation orthrough philosophy-is the radical de-divinization of the world."The new locus of the divine is a "beyond" of existence, a realityexperienced as transcending the visible reality. The structure ofbeing itself thereby changes through dissociation and now receivesthe spatial-metaphorical linguistic indices immanent and tran-scendent.

33The new task is faced of relating man 's existence in a

world which is free of the gods to the divine Ground of being"located in the beyond of transcendence. It is at least in partto meet this demand that Greek metaphysics developed the symbolparticipation ( Plato's methexis, Aristotele's metalepsis),

34

Through the experience of transcendent Being man is releasedfrom the old imperial order of the cosmological form. The divinesource of being lies in a transcendental beyond, and no earthlydivinity mediates its efficacy. The Chosen People of Israel arefree and stand collectively in the present under God; and thisimmediacy carries over into Christianity where it is the individual

31Ibid., p. 290.32Cf. New Science of Politics, pp. 106ff; "World-Empire and the Unity

of Mankind, " International Affairs, XXXVIII (1962), pp. 176ff; "Was istNatur? " in Anamnesis, pp. 139ff; also my "Voegelin ' s Idea of HistoricalForm," Cross Currents, Vol. XII (1962), pp. 42-47.

"Order and History, I, 10f; Anamnesis, pp. 141, 275, 316f, 322f.34Anamnesis, pp. 290ff, 307ff; on the Platonic metaxy see ibid., pp.

266ff, 317.

VOEGELIN ' S POLITICAL THEORY - 51

human person who stands in freedom in immediacy to God.The very form of philosophy develops in the awareness of theautonomy of the individual soul. It arises through the oppositionof solitary thinkers to the disorder of the corrupt public order,expressed in the conventions of the polls, and to the dogmaticvulgarity of the Sophists for whom "man in the measure."

3bPhi-

losophy therefore affirms the constitutive centrality of freedomboth to itself and to man. Freedom is understood to be an essentialcondition for the realization of the specific nature or essence ofman through the contemplative life. Plato found it to be theone good thing about democracy. For Plato, of course, knew thatin his new found freedom man can rebel and reject the truth ofbeing. He can form conceptions of order built out of the diseasedmotivations of self-love, the unreality of dreams, and the libido

dominandi and, so, effectively ignore the divine Ground of beingaltogether-as in the case of the modern ideological systems andthe empires they dogmatically order.

36

IV

The discussion at this point opens on a field of formidablequestions which are explored in rich detail in Anamnesis. 37 Whatis the noetic experience and science-the "Noese " as Voegelin termsit-which symbolically forms as true philosophy? How is noeticknowledge of reality related to the non-noetic modes of experienceand symbolization and the whole of man ' s knowledge of reality?What is the "derailment" suffered by philosophy and how is itto be remedied? We shall briefly address each of these questions.

The terms noese, noetic experience, noetic interpretation andthe like derive from the technical vocabulary of Classical phi-

losophy, specifically from the term Nous which means severally

reason, thought, and mind. Aristotle contrasts Nous with calcula-

tive or inferential reasoning (dianoia) in the Nicomachean Ethics,and it may therefore be understood, in its highest aspect, as theintuitive property of reason (in Bergson ' s sense) .by which "funda-

3"Order and History, II, 169, 273f; Anamnesis, pp. 117-33.

"Republic 557B, 562B-566; Anamnesis, pp. 223-53."See especially the concluding essay "What is Political Reality?", Anam-

nesis, pp. 28

3-354 .


mental principles" of science are grasped without intermediarysteps of ratiocination, either deductive or inductive. In so faras Voegelin specifically defines political science as the "noetic in-terpretation" of political reality, the concrete meaning of theexpression can be suggested by saying that Noese is an interpreta-tion of political reality substantially like that given by Plato andAristotle. 38

This preliminary information is not without significancesince it immediately precludes the understanding of political sciencein terms of a propositional science of phenomena which operateswith axioms, strives to be systematic, and models itself throughmethodological rigor on the natural and mathematizing sciencesof the external world. 3 ° The noetic interpretation of reality, onthe contrary, arises out of the tension in political existence whichforms between, on the one hand, the historically grown self-understanding of a society (as found in its laws, customs, socialconventions, institutions, literature, formulations of its politicalleadership, and the like) and, on the other hand, the reflective,self-conscious individual thinker 's experience of existential order. 40

The " tension" in political reality, therefore, is not an external"object" of experience; rather it is an inner experience or " tension"

of the concrete consciousness of specific individual persons whoknow themselves to be at odds with society with respect to funda-mental issues of existence. This existential tension (arising outof the perceived conflict between conventional and noetic "truths" ),and the resultant anxiety of existence to live in order, then providesthe impetus for a rational inquiry or search for the truth of being-for the true order of man 's existence within the world, society,history and divine reality. This search-the Socratic zetema in theRepublic, for example-is conducted into the vertical dimensionof existence, into the depths and heights of consciousness. It seeks

38Nicomachean Ethics VI, 6, 1140b31-1141a8; Anamnesis, pp. 284, 286f.

Cf. Rosen, Nihilism, pp. 7ff, 151-58, 187-90. See also the discussion in my"The Philosophical Science of Politics: Beyond Behavioralism, " in GeorgeW. Carey and George J. Graham, Jr. (eds.), Perspectives on Political Science(New York, forthcoming, 1972).

3 °Cf. Anamnesis, pp. 283ff, 318; New Science of Politics, pp. 3ff; Science,Politics and Gnosticism, (Chicago, 1968), pp. 15-22. See also Leszek Kola-kowski, The Alienation of Reason: A History of Positivist Thought, trans.N. Guterman (Garden City, N. Y., 1969).

"Anamnesis, p. 285.


to discover through a meditative sifting of the contents of experiencethe source and configuration of ultimate reality and its order. Thisintrospective quest Voegelin terms the "search for the Ground"-the aition, arche-or ultimate cause. 41

The meditative search for the divine Ground brings to essentialclarity awareness of a second existential tension, that between theman and the divine Ground itself. This is seen superficially as thelink of reason as it functions to justify the opposition of the manto the inroads into the psyche of disorders prevalent in society byappealing to principles of order called abstract ideas or philosophicalabsolutes. Such an intellectualized characterization of the process,however, while valid as far as it goes, is an insufficient accountand the major source of fundamental error about the philosophicalinquiry and the very nature of philosophy itself. For it is theexperiential rather than the merely ideational dimension of theactivity which is decisive. Philosophy is born out of the travailof the anxiety of existence. It finds the way toward the truth bya search for the divine Ground whose ontological direction isknown through a man 's experience of participation in the com-munity of being.42 Distinctive to the philosophical effort is theidentification and evocation of reason-logos, nous, ratio-as thespecific element in man which (1) illuminates consciousness, (2 )directs, controls, and guides the search for truth, (3) possessesan intrinsic affinity for the divine Ground and a decisive kinshipwith it.

Among the results of the specifically noetic act, therefore, espe-cially the following may be noticed: (1) the differentiation inthe experiential mode of participation of nous or reason (thereflective self-consciousness of the being man) as also the intelligiblecore of divine Being, the source of all order and truth and the ulti-mate Ground of "cause" (in Aristotle 's language) of being itself;(2) the differentiation of reason itself in the -symbolic mode ofself-reflective cognitive inquiry (zetesis) called philosophy, whichilluminates with intelligence the loving search for the divineGround; (3) the development of conceptual instruments that areboth the outcome and the means of the noetic exegesis; that sym-

411bid., pp. 288, 287-315, passim; 148ff.42lbid., p. 289.


bolically "fix" the content of the inquiry in its experiential as wellas conceptual aspects in the consciousness; that, when taken alltogether, comprise a fabric of critically authenticated knowledgecarrying convincing claim to objective scientific truth and becom-ing "political science" and "philosophy" regarded as subject fields.Nous is, by Voegelin ' s account, both the directional factor ofconsciousness and the substantial structure or order of consciousness.Rationality in existence may therefore .be identified with whatBergson called the "openness" of the soul; and irrationality withthe closure of the soul against (or mistakenness about) the Ground.

43

The foregoing account of noese can be given greater specificityif placed in the context of Aristotle ' s Metaphysics, as analysed byVoegelin. The first sentence of the Metaphysics becomes intelligiblein a new sense: "All men by nature desire to know [the Ground] "

(980a) . 44 Aristotle developed the noetic exegesis of this perceiveddesire for the Ground, as well as of the Ground 's actualizing at-tractiveness, through the symbol of the participation (metalepsis)in one another of two entities bearing the name nous (Met.1072b20ff) . By nous he designated both the human capacity ofintelligent search for the Ground as well as the Ground of beingitself-that which is experienced as the Mover who gives directionto the inquiry. In Aristotle ' s realm of thought, which was thefirst to differentiate concepts out of mythic symbols, synonymity ofexpression means, however, to be of the same kind, or samenessthrough generation (genesis). He wrote: "We must next observethat every thing (ousia) is generated from that which has thesame name (ek synonymou)" (1070a4f). "That thing whichcommunicates to other things the same name (to synonymon) is inrelation to them itself the highest thing of that kind (malista aouto) "

(993b20ff) . The synonymity of noetic entities implies, therefore,the origin of human reason in the divine nous. In terms of themythical symbolism of synonymity-through-genesis, Aristotle under-stood the tension of consciousness as the reciprocal participation(metalepsis) of two entities of Nous in one another. "From theside of the human nous, the knowing questions and questioningknowledge [wissende Fragen and fragende Wissen], that is the

431bid., pp. 152, 289, 296.

44 Cf. ibid., p. 323. The balance of this paragraph is a close paraphraseof ibid., p. 290.


noetic act (noesis), is cognitive participation in the Ground ofbeing; the noetic participation, however, is possible because it ispreceded by participation of the divine in the human nous.""

Voegelin 's discovery of the retention in the Aristotelian ontologyof the mythic experience of substantive participation of man inthe divine-and of the divine in man-is of great importance. Itenables one to see more clearly the relation of philosophical ex-perience and symbolization to the matrix out of which they differ-entiated; it exhibits the dependence of philosophy upon the morecompact experience in decisive respects. The Aristotelian participa-tion (metalepsis) is neither merely a metaphor nor merely a meansof designating parallel attributes in man and the divine; rather it isthe noetic expansion of the mythic insight that the participation ofman in the divine is constitutive of the being of man in its specificessence, i.e. in the rational dimension. The philosophical anthro-pology developed in the Ethics can then be read in a new light.For Aristotle 's famous analysis that the highest part of man is theactive reason-and the most perfect happiness of man is thecontemplative life because the noetic activity called "philosophicwisdom" is the highest virtue of the highest part of man andtherefore most proper to him-climaxes in the description of sucha life as more than merely human. "For it is not in so far as heis man that he will live so, but in so far as something divine ispresent in him...." Then, paradoxically, Aristotle specificallyidentifies the very nature of man with reason: nous is each manhimself, the noetic life is the life of man 's true self, and hence alsothe happiest (N.E. 1177b26-1178a3) . The paradox dissolves onlyif proper weight is accorded Aristotelian participation in its fullexperiential dimension. Man is not as he appears. The core andconstitutive factor of the human essence is his "immortalizing(athanatizien)" participation through reason in the divine Nous orGround of being. Apart from this man is not human."man. For the analysis of the passage cited from the Nicomachean Ethics(X, 7), see Voegelin, "Immortality: Experience and Symbol, " pp. 272f,

The experience of the consubstantiality of the community of

4elbid., p. 290; cf. pp. 150-52.

4G Cf. ibid., p. 340 for specific and synthetic (or composite) essence ofwhere he classifies athanatizien, phronesis, and philia as "existential virtues"

-a third category supplementing the ethical and dianoetic virtues named byAristotle himself. Cf. Anamnesis, pp. 124-33.


being is neither destroyed nor negated through philosophical differ-entiation. Rather it is intensified and achieves analytical clarity.Yet this process entails abstraction, and though an advance (ironi-cally enough), itself contributes to the subsequent loss of awarenessof the engendering experiences which the noetic concepts articulate.From this fact, Voegelin asserts, the derailment of philosophy in thepost-Aristotelian period arose. The whole new philosophical vo-cabulary was permeated at the time of its differentiation (especiallyby Plato and Aristotle) by the experiences which it explicates. Butthis immediacy soon was lost.

The process of noetic exegesis and the verifying experiencesupon which truth depends arose out of myth and the primaryexperiential encounter with the divine cosmos. It supplied a dif-ferentiated corrective of the earlier, more "compact " knowledge,but it did and can not totally supplant that knowledge. The keyconcept, human nature, for example, was not developed throughinductive logic but as the term for the "non-existent reality " ofman-i.e., neither a " thing" nor "divine" but an In-Between(metaxy) of consciousness-which loves the divine Ground ofbeing, the noun arising from the concrete experience of a philoso-phizing man as the designation of the essence of his being." Whatis true of the philosophical experience of human nature may alsobe said of the experience of presence under God, which the prophetpneumatically apprehends as concretely his essence or specific hu-manity.

The propositon that all men qua men equally possess such anature, and are therefore essentially the same-whether they vividlyexperience their specific humanity in the full light of differentiatedconsciousness or not-is not, however, Voegelin states, a productof the specific experience of this or that prophet or theorist. Thisinsight derives, rather, from the primary experience of the cosmosin which each participates in his proper measure, the men as men,god as god; it rests upon this experience as a fundamental sup-position. The insights of the philosopher can thereby be advancedas universally valid knowledge or science, as representative truthof consequence for the order of society and history. The philosophersdeveloped specific symbols to express the primordial experience of

47Anamnesis, pp. 40, 266ff, 291, 300, 304ff; " Immortality: Experience

and Symbol," pp. 251, 261, 274; "Gospel and Culture," pp. 63ff, 71-75, etc.

VOEGELIN'

S POLITICAL THEORY 5 7

the community of being and the uniquely political communalityof a mankind which partakes of being. Heraclitus spoke of theLogos as the common (xynon) in man, as that in which all menqua men participate, and which becomes the existential source oforder in so far as men consciously agree in it (homologic). ForAristotle the common is the Nous, and his symbol for the orderingof society through participation of all men in Nous is the homo-

noia-a term which found its way into Paul ' s vocabulary as thedesignation of the Christian community which is bounktogetherin likemindedness. 48

The general phenomenon confronted in the Noese, then, is thedifferentiation of the specifically rational component of the mythicexperience in its identification as noetic through the conceptuallanguage of philosophy. The Bakchos of the mystery religions which

is equally the god and the god-related man becomes the divine

Sophon and the philosophical life which partakes of it for Plato;

it becomes the Aristotelian Nous which is both divine and theessence of man, for his very humanity is measured by the degree ofhis actualizing (immortalizing) participation in the divine Reason.In Voegelin the mythical symbolism is pushed still farther into thebackground, when instead of speaking of "Bakchos

" or "Nous" he

speaks of tension to the Ground. Yet the process of bringing tooptimal clarity through dissociation the various realms of beingmust not be one in which the sense of their identity is either negatedor lost; for this consubstantiality, first apprehended in the primaryexperience of the compact consciousness, remains an insight ofpermanent validity, the very matrix of man

' s understanding of the

embracing intelligible order.49

V

The derailment (parekbasis) of philosophy in the wake of

Aristotle occurred primarily because the experience of which

48Anamnesis, p. 291. Also, Order and History, II, 179f, 231, 237. See

G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven, The Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A CriticalHistory with a Selection of Texts (Cambridge, Eng., 1960), pp. 187ff. Aris-totle, Nicomachean Ethics VIII, 1155a22; IX, 1167a22; cf. Politics II,1262b7, 1263b38. Romans 15:5; Philippians 2:2, 20; cf. I Corinthians1:10; Philippians 1:27.

49 Anamnesis, pp. 291f.


philosophy is the symbolic form was not itself made central. 60 Theobscurity of the engendering experiences when approached throughthe symbols employed by Aristotle has been suggested by the fore-going discussion of participation. Why the experience was not moreclearly made central may be explained by the fact that Aristotle ' sphilosophizing lay in such proximity to the myth that he perhapsfailed to anticipate the possibility of the abstraction of the philo-sophical symbols from their experiential context. Such a detach-ment, however, did occur historically; and Voegelin contends thatthe result was a fundamental misunderstanding of philosophywhich persists to this day.

51

The detachment of the symbols from their evocative experiencestook the general form of treating the language employed by thephilosopher in explicating his relation to the transcendent Groundeither as propositional assertions about the external world, or simplyas topoi-topics of speculation without reference to any experientialcriterion apart from the internal consistency demanded of a logicalconstruct. In either case the fallacious result is an ignoratio elenchiby which much so-called "philosophical" argument becomes simplyirrelevant by effectively splitting dianoia from noesis, identifying"reason" with the former, "irrationality" with the latter-a proce-dure usefully traced in modern philosophy by Stanley Rosen inhis recent study, Nihilism. The historical epoch which is the cul-tural monument to this perversion is the so-called "Enlightenment"

which might better be named the "Age of Unreason. " For theresult is the truncation of reason and a grotesque parody of philoso-phy, which historically eventuated in the latter ' s wholesale explicitabandonment in favor of modern natural science as a more effec-tive means of grasping external reality and (at the same time)the dogmatic assertion of " truth" from the standpoints of con-tending "systems" ranging from left-wing Hegelianism to Neo-Thornism. 62 The humane disciplines, then, were left to oscillatebetween these polarities; and contemporary political science is" theorized" from "positions" in a spectrum which runs from dog-matic positivism to dogmatic metaphysics by " theorists" who displaythe full fury of the odium theologicum implicit in their mutually

5olbid., pp. 313ff.

5'Cf. ibid., pp. 325ff for a historical sketch of the derailment.52lbid., pp. 302f; 313.


exclusive dogmatisms. The resultant mess was well captioned byVoegelin ' s blunt response-uttered in my hearing-when askedhis opinion of Arnold Brecht 's encyclopedic study of twentieth cen-tury political theory : "There hasn ' t been any.""

Voegelin's point is that the episteme politike was lost long

before Comte and Marx made their ostentatious exodus fromphilosophy, as Comte himself very nearly understood. The morassof relativism and contentious dogmatism-comprising a veritable"Dogmatomachie,"

54as it were-into which political science fell;

has both ruined the discipline and been destructive of Americanpolitical existence itself. That the damage has not been evengreater is mainly ascribed to two reciprocating factors: the generaltheoretical soundness of the Anglo-American political tradition,and the good common sense of political scientists who spurn"theory" and content themselves with making political processesand the institutional operations of government intelligible. 5J

In the common sense rejection of ideology and its attendantdestruction of reality, Voegelin sees a genuine residue of noese, asign of spiritual and intellectual health and existential resistanceto contemporary disorder which can become the rallying pointfor the reconstitution of a viable philosophical science of politics.Common sense, which has its philosophical representative in theeighteenth century Scottish school of that name, was defined byThomas Reid as that "certain degree" of rationality "which isnecessary to our being subjects of law and government, capableof managing our own affairs, and answerable for our conducttowards others. This is called common sense, because it is commonto all men with whom we can transact business, or call to accountfor their conduct''

Ss"Common sense is a compact type of ra-

tionality," Voegelin adds. Its insights cannot be made into proposi-tions that can then become principles of a science of politics, butit has solid merit and theoretical promise; and it is both the pre-

supposition and starting point of noetic experience. "The civilized

53Ibid., p. 313. The volume in question is Brecht, Political Theory: The

Foundations of Twentieth Century Political Thought ( Princeton, 1959).64Anamnesis, pp. 328ff.55

1bid., pp. 351ff, 354; New Science of Politics, pp. 187ff."Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man [1785], Essay

VI, chap. ii (Cambridge, Mass., 1969), p. 559; quoted in Anamnesis, p. 352.


homo politicus does not need to be a philosopher, but he musthave common sense.""

The restoration of political science and of philosophy cannotbe effected simply by correctly understanding Aristotle; but thisis, indeed, a necessary first step. For Aristotle clearly knew theachievement and the nature of philosophy; and since this clarityis not today generally appreciated, it must briefly be reflected upon.Philosophy through the distinctive noetic experience and the infer-ential and noetic powers of intelligence differentiated the primarycosmic experience. In the place of a cosmos full of gods, thereemerged a de-divinized world and, correlative to it, divinity con-centrated in the world-transcendent Ground of being. The realmsof being under the post-noetic dispensation could be designatedby the spatial-metaphorical indices of immanent and transcendentwhich correspond, respectively, to the world of things in space andtime and to the divine Being of the world-Ground "beyond" spaceand time. The residue of myth in Aristotle, especially in the cos-mology, was no decisive handicap to the prospering of philosophyafter his time. The real obstacle lay, rather, in the incompletecondition in which he left the philosophical vocabulary. He didnot provide conceptual instruments adequate to cope in requisiteprecision with the highly diverse content of the noetic experienceand to make the new theoretic structure of being clear.

It was, for example, plainly the intention of Aristotle that theexpression being (ousia) should generally designate the wholerange of reality. To fulfill this intention and avoid subsequent mis-understandings, it would have then been necessary to create avocabulary which specified the several modes of being with un-mistakable clarity. This Aristotle failed to do. Hence Voegelin,as he engages in the task of establishing a noetic science of mansatisfactory in the light of present knowledge, takes hold of theAristotelian ontology and epistemology at just this point; and heproceeds in Anamnesis and in more recent works to develop a full-scale theory of the modes of being. The principal modes or per-spectives of reality are three in number: (1) the Mode of thing-ness, of existence in space and time, (2) the Mode of divineBeing beyond time and space, and (3) the Mode of the "In-Between," the non-objective reality of consciousness, its tensions

"Anamnesis, pp. 352f.


and dimensions-i.e., the noetic reality itself. JB Since whatever manknows of reality he knows in his consciousness, the core of theendeavor is the creation of the philosophy of consciousness.

The noetic interpretation of reality is, of course, not the onlyone thrown up by men out of the anxiety of existence, nor is itthe socially dominant one. 5 ° All that man says about the ulti-mate meaning of his existence, by Voegelin 's account, is finallytraceable either to this fundamental anxiety or to the experienceof alienation; and the characteristic trait of responses to theseexperiences is to seek the Ground. The symbolisms of the mythof the divine cosmos which precede the specific differentiation ofnous by the philosophers display a rational component of searchfor the ultimate cause; and the evinced presence of this processpermits classification of many ancient myths under the categoriesof theogony, cosmogony, anthropogeny, and historiogensis, for ex-ample. The classification depends upon identification within themyths themselves of connective quasi-etiological chains which derivethe experienced reality of the separate participants in the communityof being from an ultimate Ground or first "cause. " The rationalconcern of men in the cosmological civilizations to comprehendthe source and structure of being and its order is thereby evidenced.In addition, various types of pneumatic experiences as representedin the great world religions compete with noese as authoritative

symbolizations of existential truth.Philosophy is, in short, but one of the sources of man' s knowl-

edge of reality. GO Nor can it even claim to be the most profoundmode of experience. The prophet and the mystic speak with anauthority which exceeds the grasp of the philosopher in the experi-ential dimension as well as in impact upon the order of concretesocieties, in so far as the issue is nascent or renascent "religion."

Philosophy is the form of existence of no society in history up untilnow, Voegelin notes. The mystic ' s quest for the divine ground

takes him into the divine presence and into the ineffable "unground"of apophatic contemplation and mystical theology. It achievesencounter with reality at a depth which appears to transcendreason itself; and it is not subject even to analogical communica-

a"Ibid., p. 300.

b9Ibid., pp. 299, 322 and passim."Ibid., pp. 333-40.


tion in either rational discourse or mythopoeic representation butfinds utterance only through the irrational rationale of paradoxand in the ultimate silence of the contemplative who beholds theineffable and unfathomable mystery of Being.

This is to say neither that mysticism is to be depreciated northat philosophy is a subordinate mode of knowing. Mysticism-aswell as revelation and myth is a great source of man ' s knowledgeof divine Being, and philosophy has no quarrel with it: "Classicalnoese and mysticism are the two pre-dogmatic realms of knowledge(Wissensrealitiiten) in which the Logos of consciousness was op-timally differentiated."" Yet the mystical eschatology of Plato,it is instructive to note, is concentrated in the myth which thenserves as a more differentiated symbolism. The truth of mythclearly is affirmed by Plato. But it is a pneumatic truth that defiesadequate conceptualization. It supplements the truth of philosophy,supports its orientation of man ' s existence toward the divineGround, and even inspires the philosopher in his work. Still itcannot form the basis of noetic analysis and empirical assertions.Like cosmic myth, mysticism is a great and unique mode of humanknowledge. Philosophy, for its part (Voegelin wrote in 1943),through the noetic act achieved in meditation, penetrates to thepoint where consciousness experiences the proximity of the divineGround, and so formulates the ontological hypothesis of transcen-dent Being; but it cannot go out of the beyond of the finite anddraw the strictly transcendent and infinite into consciousness as adatum of immanent experience."

VI

The philosophy of consciousness is both the core and technicallymost difficult part of Voegelin' s political theory; moreover, while

the 1943 formulations are presupposed in the subsequent work,they are first and not final statements, and even the further differen-tiations expressed in the 1966 essay on "Political Reality" have

been modified in decisive respects by the most recent publications

61 Anamnesis, pp. 333, 346; cf. p. 48. Cf. the discussion of faith in myPolitical Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoeasky 's Grand Inquisitor (BatonRouge, 1971), pp. 40-72.62

Anamnesis, pp 56ff; cf. p. 42.


especially by the papers on "Immortality" (1967), "Equivalences "

(1970), and the "Gospel" (1971).In the foregoing pages of this presentation, like a cat circling

a dish of hot milk, we have worked around the theory of con-sciousness itself. The discussion has attempted to clarify the ques-tions which, apart from that, have greatest prominence and impor-tance in Voegelin ' s philosophy, those which comprise the founda-tions of his thought and permeate everything he has written thusfar. This accords with his own procedure, since he has, after all,but recently published his underlying theory of consciousness whichhe has tested and revised over the preceding decades.

In the memorial which prefaces the 1943 letter to his dearfriend Alfred Schutz, Voegelin blocked-out the major dimensions ofhis own work as it has appeared over the past thirty years. Theneo-Kantian methodology and the defective instrumentarium sup-plied by modern philosophy as developed from Descartes to MaxWeber and Edmund Husserl had largely to be set aside and anew start made from Classical politics which is the foundation(Grundlage), but not the last word, of all philosophy of socialorder. After this break with the main-currents of modern thought,then, the restoration of a viable theory of politics followed twoprincipal lines. The first was the interpretation of the network ofrationally purposive and planned world-immanent action, especiallyon the basis of theoretical work done by Schutz, whom Voegelindescribes as being, since the former' s death in 1959, "the silentpartner of my thought." The second was the investigation of ex-periences and the central issue of the general relationship betweenexperience and symbolization. Since the accent of reality falls onexperience, Voegelin determined that his vast and well-advancedHistory of Political Ideas must be jettisoned as obsolete to besupplanted by the philosophy of consciousness. This undertakingwas articulated into explorations of the experiences of order, theirsymbolic expression, the consolidating institutions which concretelyfoster order in history, and the order of consciousness itself." The

"Ibid., pp. 17-20. The old History of Political Ideas is a typescriptof about 4,000 pages which I was privileged to read in Munich in 1965.On its qualities cf. the remarks of William C. Harvard, "The ChangingPattern of Voegelin ' s Conception of History and Consciousness, " SouthernReview, Vol. VII, New Series (1971), p. 62. It is planned that In Searchof Order, chaps. xiii and xiv ( "On Schelling" and "On Nietzsche and Pascal" )wil include revised sections of the History.


outlined programme corresponds to what Voegelin has been doingsince the 1940s. Perhaps the milk is cool enough for us to try afrontal assault on the theory of consciousness itself, the procedureto be primarily synoptic rather than a chronological description ofthe unfolding of the theory; and it will begin by establishing linkageswith the previous discussion.

The theory of consciousness is not a propositional account ofa previously "given" structure which can validly be stated onceand for all. This is because the consciousness is no object of ex-ternal perception and " the consciousness " per se neither objectnor subject of any experience of any class whatever. The conscious-ness can only be the concrete consciousness of an individual person;and it is experienced strictly and solely through introspective aware

-

nesses of various of kinds. The " theory " is, therefore, the articula-tion of the content of certain dimensions of a meditative analysis,one which is permeated by the experiences symbolized, and whichcan be verified by critical comparison with accounts given byother philosophers. But the substantial unity of human experienceis not itself experienceable. That the "knowledge" gained andexpressed as a theory has universal applicability to every man isno more empirically warrantable or demonstrable than is (forexample) the assertion that every being called `man" possesses

a common "human nature " and is, therefore, in that sense "equal"

to every other man. This claim to validity is an act of trust orfaith (pistis), one which bridges the gulf separating assertions madeon the empirical basis of "inner" experience and the claim touniversal truth; nor does the difficulty attach only to " inner"

experience-for all "experience" is, in a sense, in fact "inner. "

The sceptic and positivistic pitfall of solipsism is avoidable in thephysical sciences only through the postulation for practical methodo-logical purposes of the uniformity of nature. And if one seeks tolook behind that postulate for reassurance in matters of the presentkind, then the ground of universal statements is "belief in thepremise that a truth concerning the reality of man found by oneman concretely does, indeed, apply to every man. The faith in thispremise, however, is not engendered by an additional experience.. .but by the primordial experience of reality as endowed with theconstancy and lastingness of structure that we symbolize as theCosmos. The trust in the Cosmos and its depth is the source ofthe premises . . . that we -accept as the context of meaning for our


concrete engagement in the search of truth. " 64 Finally, whetherthe theoretical account is expressed in the mythic language of en-tities (such as God, man, soul, cosmos, etc.) or in the more refinedphilosophic language of tensions (such as the field of consciousness,polarities, immanence, transcendence, divine reality, the Ground,etc.) no objectivation or reification is implied; rather the terms areindicative only of the experienced dimensions of the non-existentreality of consciousness itself, and the spatial-temporal vocabularyof the immanent reality of things is employed in the figurativesense compelled by the fact that men have no other language inwhich discursively to express themselves. So much for the epistemo-logical considerations.

"The consciousness, then, is not a given that can be describedfrom without, but an experience of participation in the Ground ofbeing whose Logos can only be brought to clarity through themeditative exegesis of itself. " The consciousness is a process ofever-deepening insight into its own Logos attained through medita-tion; it is the center from which shines forth the concrete orderof human existence in society and history. "A philosophy of politicsis empirical-in the pregnant sense of an investigation of ex-periences which penetrate the whole realm of ordered humanexistence. It requires . . . rigorous reciprocating examination of con-crete phenomena of order and analysis of the consciousness, bywhich means alone the human order in society and history becomesunderstandable . . . [Since] the consciousness is the center fromwhich the concrete order of human existence in society and historyradiates . . . the empirical study of social and historical phenomenaof order interpenetrates with the empirical study of the conscious-ness and its experiences of participation.""

This interpenetration of the experiences symbolized in the fieldof history and those symbolized in the inner experience of participa-tion as expressive of the field of consciousness has been the basisof our presentation here thus far. Hence, the meaning of participa-

64Ibid., pp. 7, 52, 55-58, 286, 353. Quotation from "Equivalences of

Experience and Symbolization in History," ad fin. On the positivist critiqueof universal propositions see Kolakowski, Alienation of Reason, pp. 5, 176.On the uniformity of nature see A. E. Taylor, Elements of Metaphysics (7thed.; London, 1924), pp. 222-33.

86 Anamnesis, p. 8-9, 275f.


tion (which is consciousness itself) and its articulation are alreadyfamiliar to the reader.

The symbolisms may briefly be recalled. The consciousness isexperienced to be a process of participation (methexis, metalepsis)in the "In-Between" (metaxy) of the reality of things, on the oneside, and of the divine Ground of being, on the other side. Theprocess of consciousness forms around the tension of awarenessof the Ground of being, which the Hellenic philosophers articu-lated as the rational (noetic) search (zetesis) for the Ground(aition, arche); and the Ground itself (experienced as Nous)moves (kinesis) the consciousness through actualizing attractivenessto seek It as the common substance of Reason; the beckoning orimpulse from the divine pole of reality also was symbolized as thepull or drawing (helkein) of the divine Ground. The name, then,of that dimension of consciousness which participates most perfectlyin transcendent divine Being is Reason; and the exegetical accountof that participation comprises the philosophy of man.

The tension of participation may, then, be described by thedirectional indices of immanent and transcendent poles of being;and the range of experience is perceived to be coextensive with therange of known reality and to be articulated in correlation withthe several modes or perspectives of reality: thingness-experiencedthrough perception; non-existent reality of consciousness itself-experienced as self-reflective participation in the In-Between; thedivine reality of the Ground-experienced noetically as the actu-alizing Nous and Arche, pneumatically as the attracting, pulling,drawing Creator-Savior God. It is to be noticed, however, that the"drawing" of the Ground is a property of the noetic experience asportrayed in the Republic and the Laws equally with the pneu-matic experience represented in the Gospel of John, where identicallanguage is used. Hence, the experiences can properly be assimilatedto one another in certain essential respects. Whether faith hasthereby become reason, Voegelin does not say; but he does makeunmistakeably clear the fact that the neat distinction between noeticand pneumatic experience and symbolization is obliterated in theinstances cited. 68

Some further details of the analysis of consciousness may now besketched. Voegelin began his consideration of the consciousness

8e lbid., pp. 126, 266ff, 289; Cf. "The Gospel and Culture," passim.


through anamnetic experiments, he tells us, for the purpose ofdiscovering what experiences motivate philosophical thinking. Thatclass of experiences is most fully identified and analysed in thearticle published this year and just cited; and he could hardlyhave known the answer before the mid-1960s-to judge from thepublished materials. The development of his thought in this majordimension is suggested, for example, by the 1943 essay in whichhe quoted from the Fourteenth Century meditation, The Cloudof Unknowing: "It is needful for thee to bury in a cloud of for-getting all creatures that ever God made, that you mayest directthine intent to God Himself. " He then commented: "The purposeof meditation is the annihilation of the content of the world pergradus, from the corporeal world through the spiritual, so as toreach the point of transcendence in which the soul, to speak withAugustine, can turn in the intentio to God." He identified asthe decisive problem of philosophy the question of transcendence,and perceived the philosophizing about time and existence to bethe modern equivalent of Christian meditation. By approachingconsciousness through the experiences of hearing, seeing, and evensmelling, he arrived at the view that consciousness does not itself"stream" except as a peripheral or "border'' experience constitutedin the consciousness itself-not constituting the consciousness. Sen-sory experience could not provide a satisfactory starting point fora theory of consciousness, rather the different mode of "inner"experience had to be

.examined. The speculative phenomenology of

Husserl,- for example, could serve as a substitute for meditationbecause it, too, sought the "existential assurance " of transcendence:"both processes have the function of transcending the conscious -

ness, the one into the individuated body, the other into the worldGround [;] both processes lead to a `point of transitoriness' (`Fliich-tigkeitspunkt') in the sense that the transcendent cannot itselfbecome a datum of consciousness, but that the processes leadonly to the border and make possible the instantaneous borderexperience that may empirically last only a few seconds." "

The specific experiential starting point for the theory of con-sciousness as advanced in 1943 is the phenomenon of attentionand the turning of attention. When thus approached, the conscious-

87 Anamnesis, pp. 14, 33, 36, 37, 41, 42.


ness displays four prominent aspects: (1) it possesses a center ofenergy which can be directed in various ways and degrees of in-tensity to different dimensions of reality; (2) it exhibits itself asa process; (3) the process of consciousness is, throughout, inter-nally luminous; (4) the luminous dimensions of the process calledconsciousness range from past to future, not as empty spaces, butas the structure of a finite process between birth and death. Theexperienced finitude of the process of consciousness supplies themodel for all process and for the conceptual apparatus with whichthe mind inevitably operates, including its reflections on theconsciousness-transcending processes of the infinite and the divine.And this leads to difficult problem areas of prominence in thehistory of thought which can only be indicated here, such as theKantian logical and cosmological antinomies of quantity (end-lessness and eternity), the mythic symbolization of transcendentBeing through finite representations (the "fundamental function " ofmyth), and the process theology from the Pythagorian tetraktys toSchellings' Potenzlehre and A. O. Lovejoy ' s Great Chain ofBeing. 08

What can be observed as lacking in the earlier account ofconsciousness are the features discovered through decades of at-tention to the Classical texts and prominent in the earlier sectionsof the present essay. The key insights are the discovery of con-sciousness to be the In-Between of immanent and transcendentbeing, so that it participates experientially in both; and the dis-covery that the experience which motivates philosophizing is themovement of the soul through the pull of divine reality when thisis actualized in the response of the philosophical man (Aristotles '

spoudaios, Plato ' s daimonios aner) in the desire to know that islove of Wisdom.

The "present" in the luminous process of consciousness thatextends from past to future is, in the 1943 essay, the complex in-terpretative result of radically immanent moment-images whichcomprise the stuff of experience. Through the recent revision of theaccount of experience and of consciousness as the non-objectivereality of the In-Between, the present is expanded to comprehend,not only the moments of past and future, but also the " flowingpresent" of the Eternal. The philosophical experience of the Eternal

881bid., pp. 11, 43-53.


encountered in the tension between the poles of time and eternityis stated as follows: "We remain in the `In-Between, ' in a temporalflowing of experience in which however Eternity is present, in aflowing that certainly cannot be desolved into the past, present,and future of world-time because in every point of flow it carriesthe tension of trans-temporal eternal Being." This apprehensionof the eternal present in time clearly outstrips in profundity theintentio of the Cloud of Unknowing as quoted by Voegelin earlier,although the continuities of thought are apparent.

The "problem " of transcendence that is central to philosophyis likewise transformed: "in the center of philosophizing standsthe experience of the tension to Being from which radiates thetruth of order into the [various] complexes of reality by way ofthe indices [of being: Being, immanent-transcendent, world, etc.]."Where there is the light of the experience of Being, there is alsoan independent world of things, and there is God; for withoutan understanding of world-transcendent reality there is, indeed,no immanent world of nature and things; and there where Godand World meet one another through the experience of Being andare bound together, there is the realm of man, "he who enterswith the experience of himself, as the one experiencing order,into the, knowing Truth of his own order [der mit der Erfahrungseiner selbst als des Ordnung Erfahrenden in die wissende Wahrheitseiner eigenen Ordnung eintritt]. Such a comprehensive rangeof problems appears to me to be the historically constituted heartof all philosophizing." s9

The modes of consciousness are knowledge, forgotteness, andrecollection, Plato ' s anamnesis. What is remembered, however,

is what has been forgotten; and the troublesome task of recol-lecting the forgotten must be assayed because it should not remainforgotten. Through recollection of the forgotten that which oughtto be remembered is brought to the present of knowledge; andthe tension to knowledge shows forgotteness to be the situationof not-knowing, the ignorance (agnoia) of the soul in Plato 's sense.Knowledge and not-knowing are situations of existential orderand disorder. What is forgotten can, however, only be rememberedbecause it is a knowledge in the mode of forgotteness that throughits presence in forgotteness stirs existential discontent in the man,

"Ibid., pp. 286, 3 1 9, 55, 273-7 6.


and this discontent presses toward conscious knowledge. From themode of forgotteness recollection retrieves what ought to be knowninto the present in the mode of knowledge. Recollection is, there-fore, the activity of the consciousness through forgotteness; andthis means that the latent knowledge of the unconsciousness isaroused through recollection and returned in an observable mannerinto specific presence in consciousness, there to be articulated. Thisarticulation is, then, in turn, "fixed" through language by the asser -

tion in consciousness of linguistic images of the content of thepreviously forgotten and inarticulate knowledge. Lastly, whetherthe recollection proceeds out of the resources of strictly auto-biographical experiences or out of the meditation of the historio-graphic evinced experiences of men of distant generations, what isrecollected that preeminently ought to be known and not remainforgotten is the source of man's humanity and the order of societyand history in participating attunement to the divine reality whichis the Ground.'0

VII

Anamnesis is Eric Voegelin 's ninth book (counting Order andHistory as one)," yet had he written only it he would have clearlyestablished his eminence as a philosopher of rank and one of theseminal minds of the century. We have done little more thanprovide helpful hints in this long paper, which is intended to bean invitation to the reader to turn for himself to the original. WhileVoegelin's language and thought do, indeed, present unaccustomeddifficulties, the effort of comprehension finds ample repaymentin information gained and insights attained. That he is not "diffi-cult" for the usual reasons can be said with certainty. Anamnesisexhibits a staggering erudition and, at the same time, a robustnessof thought couched in lucid and felicitous language; a page of thisbook often says more than does a chapter of many another. Andin these full pages one finds all of the big questions being ad-dressed that men, in anxious search of the order of their essential

"Ibid., p. 11.7 -The books not previously cited, excluding translations, are as follows:

Uber die Form des amerikanischen Geistes (Tubingen, 1928); Rasse andStaat ( Tubingen, 1933); Die Rassenidee in der Geistesgeschichte von Raybis Carus ( Berlin, 1933); Der Autoritare Staat (Vienna, 1930); Die politi-schen Religionen ( Vienna, 1938).


humanity amidst the crisis of history and the malaise of existence,rightly demand that political scientists remember.

Philosophical science is both a means of salvation wherebyreason directs man toward the source of being and a means ofcritically appraising the truth of symbolisms which compete withit as authoritative expressions of man' s understanding of reality."In its critical aspect this science serves to identify mistaken, per-nicious, and destructive views of reality and to discredit andcorrect them through rational assessment. It thereby assists in pre-serving the order of human existence and man ' s attunement to thetruth of being in light of the exigencies of life in the world. Thattruth is not always persuasive is a mystery of existence. Philosophyoperates in the fertile field of historical existence, perennially besetby Bacon ' s Idols and the ideological systems which divert menfrom ennui, anxiety and alienation into prisons of their ownmaking-prisons which too often form not only in the minds andsouls of individual persons but, driven by the libido for power,penetrate entire societies and threaten to engulf living mankinditself in a totalitarian hell of this or that description. 73

The search of philosophy is search for the Ground in a differ-entiated mode. In this search the knowledge of revelation andmysticism are allies against the common enemy, dogmatism.7

4And

myth in its concreteness lies ready to hand as the tales out of whichcan ever arise the reorientation of men in existence and theirattunement to the truth of divine Being. For, it is well to remember,the Ground of twentieth century philosophy is the aition of Hesiod.

The foregoing analysis may then be summarized in the followingway.

1. Whatever man knows of reality he knows through experi-ence. The experiences of reality occur in a wide range of modalitiesand find expression in a corresponding variety of forms of sym-bolization. Both experience and symbolization "happen" in thehuman consciousness. Consciousness functions so as to lay hold of

72Anamnesis, p. 325; Order and History, III, 68f.730n the unscientific or derailed status of "systems " and systematic

philosophy" see Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism, pp. 40ff; "OnHegel-a Study in Sorcery," Studium Generale, No. 24 (1971), pp. 342ff.For Pascal' s divertissement, see the Pensees, nos. 139 et. seq., 166, 168. Cf.Gerhart Niemeyer, Between Nothingness and Paradise (Baton Rouge, 1971),esp. chap. iv (pp. 103ff).

74Anamnesis, pp. 328ff.


reality and make it intelligible. Intelligibility is achieved through'the articulation of symbols whose meaning can only be understoodin their proper experiential context. It is of critical importancethat symbols not be divorced from the experiences which haveengendered them and which, in turn, they are meant to evoke inthose who employ them.

2. Myth, philosophy, revelation, and mysticism are symbolicforms of human existence which optimally express distinctivelydifferent, although related, kinds of experiences and communicateordering knowledge of reality. The truth of them all lies at thelevel of the experiences they articulate, not at the level of thesymbols themselves. The myth is expressive of the primary orprimordial experience of the oneness of all that is. It centers inthe representation of the divinity of the cosmos with its interpene-trating community of men, gods, world and society constitutedthrough participation.

3. Mythic participation is compact in the sense that it com-prehensively embraces in at least a latent way the whole range ofreality experienced by men. The compactness of mythic participa -

tion is shattered through the differentiation or dissociation ofmodes of experience held together in incipiency in it. This dis-sociation of modes of experience in two instances takes the formof noetic experience productive of philosophy in ancient Hellasand pneumatic experience in the several forms of revelation inIsrael and mysticism in the horizons of Hellas, Christendom, andelsewhere. The experience of participation is, in both its compactand differentiated modes, attended by anxiety of a fall fromexistence into the nothingness of non-existence which encompassesthe reality of man and all that is. Myth, philosophy, revelation,and mysticism all assuage this anxiety by rendering partially in-telligible the mystery of the structure and order of being and byattuning human existence to it in their unique ways.

4. Philosophy is the symbolic form par excellence of the noeticmode of participation. It is distinguished by its discovery of theself-reflective reason as the specific essence of man and the substanceof the psyche (or consciousness) which both knows itself and itsaffinity with the ultimate divine reality which is its cause, fulfill-ment, and. the Ground of all being. The philosopher's inquiry isthe loving search of reason for the divine Reason in which it par-ticipates and to which it seeks more perfectly to attune itself inthe reciprocal relationship of knower and known, lover and beloved.


The core of the philosophical effort, then-and of human natureitself-, is openness to the Ground as the vertical tension of existencewhich is rendered intelligible through the symbols of rationalexegesis called noesis.

5. The perversion or derailment of philosophical science occurswhenever the symbols thrown up by reason to express the experi-ence of participation in the noetic mode are severed from theirengendering experiential context and treated as speculative topics,or as referring to subordinate realms of being, or as arising outof modes of experience other than noetic participation. Suchperversion, by Voegelin 's account of the matter, has been a pre-dominant characteristic of the history of philosophizing and remainsso today.

6. The restoration of the philosophical science of man entails(a) the rediscovery of the technique of noetic meditation througha study of the writings of those philosophers who were its masters,and (b) the elaboration of a philosophy of consciousness and anontology out of the revitalized noetic or theoretic activity as in-formed by philosophical resources available in the contemporaryhorizon. These tasks are well-advanced, as the richness of Anamnesisalone attests.

7. The work of restoration of philosophy and of political sciencemust not be mistaken for the proclamation of a definitive or ultimatetruth in an apocalyptical manner. Voegelin claims to have perceivedand to have rectified an error of consequence with respect to thenature of philosophical thought, its meaning and truth. This claimis urged with scholarly precision and sobriety. Despite the magni-tude of the claim, one is compelled to say that there is none of theenthusiasm or millenarian overtone in it that characterized Hegel,for example. Voegelin does not even faintly pretend that hiswork will free men of error in the future, that either philosophyor history climaxes in his work, nor is he sanguine in the hope thathis analysis will be persuasive to this or a subsequent generation.Indeed, he appears to be pessimistic in all of these regards. Heclaims only that, as far as he can see, both the diagnosis and thetherapy are sound. In so doing, he remains philosopher andphysician and declines to become prophet and healer.

ELLIS SANDOZ

East Texas State University

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