On Debate and Existence: Excerpts from Voegelin

In our capacity as political scientists, historians, or philosophers we all have had occasion at one time or another to engage in debate with ideologists – whether communists or intellectuals of a persuasion closer to home. And we have all discovered on such occasions that no agreement, or even an honest disagreement, could be reached, because the exchange of argument was disturbed by a profound difference of attitude with regard to all fundamental questions of human existence – with regard to the nature of man, to his place in the world, to his place in society and history, to his relation to God. Rational argument could not prevail because the partner to the discussion did not accept as binding for himself the matrix of reality in which all specific questions concerning our existence as human beings are ultimately rooted; he has overlaid the reality of existence with another mode of existence that Robert Musil has called the Second Reality. The argument could not achieve results, it had to falter and peter out, as it became increasingly clear that not argument was pitched against argument, but that behind the appearance of a rational debate their lurked the difference of two modes of existence, of existence in truth and existence in untruth. The universe of rational discourse collapses, we may say, when the common ground of existence in reality has disappeared.

Corollary: The difficulties of debate concern the fundamentals of existence. Debate with ideologists is quite possible in the areas of the natural sciences and of logic. The possibility of debate in these areas, which are peripheral to the sphere of the person, however, must not be taken as presaging the possibility in the future that areas central to the person…will also move into the zone of debate…. While such a possibility should not be flatly denied, it also should be realized that there is no empirical evidence on which such an expectation could be based….

The Second Realities which cause the breakdown of rational discourse are a comparatively recent phenomenon. They have grown during the modern centuries, roughly since 1500, until they have reached, in our own time, the proportions of a social and political force which in more gloomy moments may look strong enough to extinguish our civilization – unless, your course, you are an ideologist yourself and identify civilization with the victory of Second Reality. In order to distinguish the nature of the new growth, as well as to understand its consequences, we must go a little further back in time, to a period in which the universe of rational discourse was still intact because the first reality of existence was yet unquestioned. Only if we know, for the purpose of comparison, what the conditions of rational discourse are, shall we find our bearings in the contemporary clash with Second Realities. The best point of departure for the comparative analysis of the problem will be St. Thomas’ Summa contra Gentiles. The work was written as an exposition and defense of the truth of Christianity against the pagans, in particular against the Mohammedans. It was written in a period of intellectual turmoil through the contacts with Islam and Aristotelian philosophy, comparable in many respects to our own, with the important difference that a rational debate with the opponent was still possible or – we should say more cautiously – seemed still possible to Aquinas….

Truth about the constitution of being, of which human existence is a part, is not achieved in an intellectual vacuum, but in the permanent struggle with preanalytical notions of existence, as well as with erroneous analytical conceptions. The situation of debate thus is understood as an essential dimension of the existence that we recognize as ours; to one part, the quest for truth is the perpetual task if disengaging it from error, of refining its expression in contest with the inexhaustible ingenuity of error. Philosophy, as a consequence, is not a solitary but a social enterprise….

Aquinas, following Aristotle, considers it the task of the philosopher to consider the highest causes of all being…. There is talk about a first mover of the universe – who must be assumed to be an intellect – from whom emanates somehow an order of being that is at the same time an order of truth. Why should we be concerned with a prime mover and his properties? – you will ask. And does the matter really improve when Aquinas identifies the prime mover as a demonstration of the existence of God? At the risk of arousing the indignation of convinced Aristotelians and Thomists I must say that I consider such questions quite pertinent. The questions must be raised, for we do no longer live, as did Aristotle and Aquinas, at the center of a cosmos…. We can no longer express the truth of existence in the language of men who believed in such a cosmos, moved with all its content by a prime mover, with a chain of aitia, of causes, extending from existent to existent down to the most lowly ones. The symbolism of the closed cosmos, which informs the fundamental concepts of classic and scholastic metaphysics, has been superseded by the universe of modern physics and astronomy.

Nevertheless, if we admit all this, does it follow that Aristotelian and Thomist metaphysics must be thrown on the scrap heap of symbolisms that once had their moment of truth but now have become useless?

You will have anticipated that the answer will be negative. To be sure, a large part of the symbolism has become obsolete, but there is a solid core of truth in it that can be, and must be, salvaged by means of some surgery….

[I]f we remove…everything that smacks of cosmological symbolism, there remains as a piece de resistance the argument that a universe which contains intelligent beings cannot originate with a prima causa [first cause, prime mover] that is less than intelligent]….

The second operation must extend to the prime mover itself. We must distinguish between the symbolic construction and the reality to which it refers; and we must be aware of the curious relations between the firmness of conviction that such a reality exists and the credibility of the construct. If the motivating experiences are known to the reader and shared by him, the construct will appear satisfactory and credible; if the experiences are not shared…the construct will become incredible…. Aristotle could indulge in his construction with assurance because the experiences which motivate the symbolism were taken for granted by everybody without close scrutiny; and Aquinas, in addition to living in the same uncritical safety of experience, could as a Christian theologian blend the truth of the prime mover into the truth of revelation. Today the validity of the symbol, and with its validity the reality to which it refers, is in doubt, because the experiences which motivated its creation for their adequate expression have slipped from the public consciousness….

The immediate experiences presupposed in Aristotelian metaphysics are not difficult to find in the classic sources…. [W]e find ourselves referred back to nothing more formidable than the experiences of finiteness and creatureliness in our existence, of being creatures of a day as the poets call man, of being born and bound to die, of dissatisfaction with a state experienced as imperfect, of apprehension of a perfection that is not of this world but is the privilege of the gods, of possible fulfillment in a state beyond this world…. [W]e can see philosophy emerging from the immediate experiences as an attempt to illuminate existence….

Human existence, it appears, is not opaque to itself, but illuminated by intellect (Aquinas) or nous (Aristotle). This intellect is as much part of human existence as it is the instrument of its interpretation. In the exegesis of existence intellect discovers itself in the structure of existence; ontologically speaking, human existence has noetic structure. The intellect discovers itself, furthermore, as a force transcending its own existence; by virtue of the intellect, existence not only is not opaque, but actually reaches out beyond itself in various directions in search of knowledge. Aristotle opens his Metaphysics with the sentence: “All men by nature desire to know.”…

With regard to things, the desire to know raises the questions of their origin, both with regard to their existence…and their essence [nature]. In both respects, Aristotle’s etiological demonstration arrives ultimately at the eternal, immaterial prima causa as the origin of existing things. If we now shift the accent back from the construct of doubtful validity to the experiences that motivated its construction, and search for a modern terminology of greater adequacy, we find it offering itself in the two great metaphysical questions formulated by Leibnitz in his Principes de la nature et de la grace, in the questions: (1) Why is there something, why not nothing? and (2) Why is something as it is, and not different? These two questions are, in my opinion, the core of true experience which motivates metaphysical constructions of the Aristotelian and Thomist type. However, since obviously no answer to these questions will be capable of verification or falsification, the philosopher will be less interested in this or that symbolism pretending to furnish the “true” answer than in the questions themselves. For the questions arise authentically when reason is applied to the experiential confrontation of man with existent things in this world; and it is the questions that the philosopher must keep alive in order to guard the truth of his own existence and well as that of his fellowmen against the construction of a Second Reality which disregards this fundamental structure of existence and pretends that the questions are illegitimate or illusionary….

Man discovers his existence as illuminated from with by Intellect or Nous. Intellect is the instrument of self-interpretation as much as it is part of the structure interpreted. It furthermore turned out that Intellect can transcend existence in various directions in search of knowledge…. By virtue of the noetic structure of his existence…man discovers himself as being not a world unto himself, but an existent among others; he experiences a field of existents of which he is a part. Moreover, in discovering himself in his limitation as part in a field of existents, he discovers himself as not being the maker of this field of existents or any part of it. Experience acquires its poignant meaning through the experience of not being self-generated but having its origin outside itself. Through illumination and transcendence, understood as properties of the Intellect…human existence thus finds itself in the situation from which the questions concerning origin and end of existence will arise….

But where is the origin and end of existence to be found? As a preliminary to the answer we must interpret the phenomenon of questioning itself; and for this purpose we must add to illumination and transcendence two further properties of the Intellect,…ideation and reasoning. Through illumination and transcendence existence has come into view as an existent thing in a field of existent things. Through the ideational property of the Intellect it is possible to generalize the discovered characteristics of existence into a nature of existence, to create an idea of existence, and to arrive at a proposition that origin and end of existence are to be found in one existent thing no more than in another. To be not the origin and end of itself is generically the nature of existent things. With this proposition we have reached the experiential basis for extensive demonstrations of both Aristotle and Aquinas that the infinite regress in search of an origin can have no valid result; the postulate of the peras, of the limit, is the symbolism by which both thinkers acknowledge the truth that origin and end of existence is not to be found by ranging indefinitely over the field of existent things. But if it is not to be found in the field of existent things, where is it to be found? To this question, Intellect, by virtue of its reasoning power, will answer that it is to be found in something beyond the field of existent things, in something to which the predicate of existence is applied by courtesy of analogy.…

To what purpose should an understanding of existence be expanded into the symbolic forms of metaphysics of the Aristotelian or Thomist type? What purpose could be served by the prime mover, converted by Aquinas into proofs for the existence of God, especially since they prove nothing that is not known before the proof is undertaken? I have tried to show that the knowledge of the something that “exists” beyond existence is inherent to the noetic structure of existence. And this result is confirmed by Aristotelian and Thomist demonstrations in which the postulate of the peras, whenever it is formulated, is richly studded with the suspicious adverbial expressions of evidently, obviously, clearly, which indicate that the premise of the argument is not derived from any demonstration, but that the prime mover which emerges from the demonstration has in fact been smuggled in with the unproven premise…. [T]here seems to suggest itself the possiblity that demonstrations of this type are a myth of the Logos offered by the Intellect as a gift of veneration to the constitution of being….

I have…used the expression truth of existence. We can now define it as the awareness of the fundamental structure of existence together with the willingness to accept it as the conditio humana [human condition]. Correspondingly we shall define untruth of existence as a revolt against the conditio humana and the attempt to overlay its reality by the construction of a Second Reality….

We have traced the problem of truth in reality as it appears in the strange-sounding formulations of Aquinas and Aristotle to its origin in the noetic structure of existence. We shall now resume the problem of debate as it presented itself to Aquinas.

The Summa contra Gentiles defends the truth of faith against the pagans. But how can one do that, if the prospective partner to the debate will not accept the argument from Scripture?… It is difficult to argue the truth of faith against the Gentiles, [Aquinas] admits, because they do not agree with us in accepting the authority of any Scripture by whiich they may be convinced of their error. And then he continues: “Thus, against the Jews we were able to argue by means of the Old Testament, while against heretics we are able to argue by means of the New Testament. But the Mohammedans and pagans accept neither the one nor the other. We must, therefore, have recourse to natural reason, to which all men are forced to give their assent.”…

The passage formulates succinctly the problem of debate in the thirteenth century and, together with it, by implication the profound difference which characterizes the situation of debate in our own time. For every debate concerning the truth of specific propositions presupposes a background of unquestioned topoi held in common by the partners to debate…. In a debate with the Jews the unquestioned topoi are furnished by the Old Testament; in a debate with heretics, by the New Testament. But where do we find them in a debate with the Gentiles? It seems to me no accident when in the answer to this question Aquinas shifts from the earlier language of Intellect to the language of Reason, without further explaining the shift…. If Aquinas believes that he can rely on the power of Reason to force the assent of the Gentiles, he tacitly assumes that the reasoning of the Gentiles will operate within the same noetic structure of existence as his own – a quite justified assumption in view of the fact that the Mohammedan thinkers were the very transmitters of Aristotle to the Westerners. For obviously – that is, obviously to us – the logical operations of Intellect qua Reason will arrive at widely different results, if Reason has cut loose from the condicio humana. The unquestioned topoi which Thomas has in common with the Gentiles of his time, to whom he addresses his argument, so unquestioned that he does not even formulate them but can just take them for granted, are the topoi of existence. He can justly assume that his opponents are just as much interested as he is in the why and how of existence, in the questions of the nature of man, of divine nature, of the orientation of man towards his end, of just order in the actions of man and society, and so forth.

These however are precisely the assumptions that we can no longer make in the situation of debate in our time. Going over again the list of Aquinas, we must say that we cannot argue by the Old Testament, nor by the New Testament, nor by Reason. Not even by Reason, because rational argument presupposes the community of true existence; we are forced one step further down to cope with the opponent (even the word debate is difficult to apply) on the level of existential truth. The speculations of classic and scholastic metaphysics are edifices of reason erected on the experiential basis of existence in truth; they are useless in a meeting with edifices of reason erected on a different experiential basis. Nevertheless, we cannot withdraw into these edifices and let the world go by, for in that case we would be remiss in our duty of “debate.” The “debate” has, therefore, to assume the forms of (1) a careful analysis of the noetic structure of existence and (2) an analysis of Second Realities with regard to both their constructs and the motivating structure of existence in untruth. “Debate” in this form is hardly a matter of reasoning (though it remains one of the Intellect), but rather of the analysis of existence preceding rational constructions; it is medical in character in that it has to diagnose the syndromes of untrue existence and by their noetic structure to initiate, if possible, a healing process.

I would welcome a short summary. I suspect that it will not be philosophy, a much debased word these days. "Philosophy" does not refer to every way of looking at the world, or to religious views as such (although the existence and nature of God can be philosophical questions). What is philosophy? In some ways, that is the essential philosophical question. Or, as Leibniz put it, why is there something rather than nothing? A philosophical answer to that question is reasoned, and not just a conclusion (e.g., God created the universe; the universe began with a big bang). Reason is a hallmark of true philosophy--not belief or faith. One of the assumptions of reason is that all rational people can argue and debate philosophy. Voegelin appears to negate that basic assumption of rational discourse, and say either that people who disagree are crazy or that they live in an alternate reality. These are self-serving statements, and if widely adopted have the effect of shutting down philosophy, not fostering it. Compare Voegelin to Socrates. Now, I am not a big Socrates fan, especially these days when he has been sainted by some or coopted by others to further their pedophile machinations, but surely Socrates (as presented by Plato) is an archetype of the philosopher. And Socrates held that all people could be taught philosophy, that debate and discourse were possible and desirable.

And Socrates held that all people could be taught philosophy, that debate and discourse were possible and desirable.

True enough, maro. But Socrates was never able to "teach" the Sophists...presumably because they did not share his "universe of discourse." The great divide between the two "camps" was that the Sophists insisted that "man is the measure of all things" (and thus generally went about telling people exactly what they wanted to hear in "high-blown language," for pay); whereas Socrates believed that the worthy man attunes himself to the divine measure. In many ways, the present dispute, so characteristic of our culture today, is a recapitulation of this most ancient one...and may well come to the same result.

For when the Sophist opponent realized Socrates had "beaten" him in debate, typically he had this nasty habit of going all surly, nasty on him.... That such men had long memories of grievance at the hands of Socrates accounts for the fact that Socrates was tried, convicted, and executed -- preeminently on the testimony of defeated adversaries (e.g., Anytus, Meletus) in debate....

I'll see what I can do about coming up with an "outline," since you express interest (might take me a while, though). Whether it will pass for philosophy, I'll leave it to you to judge.

One thing's for sure, Voegelin is not a "school philosopher," such as, for instance, the German Idealists: Unlike, say, Hegel, or even Kant, he wasn't a "system builder." I really don't know how to classify him -- he's been called a "philosopher of history," and an "historian of philosophy," among other things. I just think of him as a "philosopher of consciousness" or of "open existence" -- which IMHO would place him in the company of Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Kierkegaard (the latter two each in his own way), for examples.

Thank you for writing, maro.

..."just take my word for it"... [which is} what I object to. Either reality and truth are objective, and objectively accessible to all men regardless of their particulars, or it they aren't, in which case the whole question of what reality and truth are is meaningless from the start, other than giving us the trivially true answer that "opinions will vary"....

Hi there general and betty. I was just listening in to the conversation and I hope you will pardon the interjection.

general, do you deny the reality of de se knowledge? Or do you think it right logically, from your world-view, that theoretically all knowledge, given the right circuitry, could be publicly accessible?

One remark I would like to make regarding revelation is that it is not mere private or subjective experience, although it is not exclusive of it. Revelation includes events in space/time history that are the subject of claimed eyewitness reportage. In other words, historical events are available to public scrutiny, and therefore transcend the circularity of reason alone.

Cordially,

As always, you see to the heart of the issue.

general, do you deny the reality of de se knowledge? Or do you think it right logically, from your world-view, that theoretically all knowledge, given the right circuitry, could be publicly accessible?

Good question. I am hesitant to express a firm opinion, since this is essentially calling for my prognostication about what the future holds. As it stands now, I think that it is highly likely that there are things that we will never understand about the universe around us. This should not be taken as a reason to shut down and stop expanding the boundaries of what we know, however - if such a line exists, I do not know where it is. What I do know is that we aren't there yet. ;)

But this is a highly speculative position, of course. I cannot say with any degree of certainty that such a line, even if it exists now, will exist tomorrow. Who knows what tools and methods for examining the world around us will be available tomorrow, or in a hundred years, or a thousand? For all I know, God Himself has left His signature on the universe in such a way that the source is unquestionable and undeniable given the objective application of reason, but we simply don't have the tools to see it yet.

To give you a sort of understanding of the sorts of conceptual problems we have in dealing with the universe, the nearest star to us is 4.3 light-years away, give or take. That's about 7,854,437,234,000 miles. Now, although I can post that number, and we can all marvel at its size, it is plainly impossible to grasp the full meaning this sort of enormous distance in human terms - "human terms" just don't cover that sort of scope. If you tell me your house is a mile down the road, I have some sense of that distance from experience, and I understand the implications of "a mile". Or, if you tell me your city is about 500 miles from some other sort of city, I have some sense of that distance, and I understand the implications of that statement. But posting the number "7,854,437,234,000" does not give us a sense of just how enormously far that is. Grasping that sort of scope is not something our minds are attuned to do.

But, if someone invents that wonderful Star Trek warp drive tomorrow, such that the nearest star is twenty minutes away, that changes things radically. I have a very good conception of what "twenty minutes" means - I'm about a twenty minute drive from downtown, if the traffic is cooperating. Suddenly, that enormous and ungraspable distance has been rendered into human terms, and what seems to be incomprehensible is understandable. That doesn't mean I suddenly grasp how far 7,854,437,234,000 miles is, but it does mean that I don't really have to any more - I can sidestep that gap in my ability to conceptualize, given the right tools.

Which is why I hesitate to draw firm conclusions in this area. As it stands now, there is much we cannot understand. But I can't say what will be tomorrow. Whenever I am pessimistic about such things, I remind myself of what Faulkner once said - "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail." So we shall have to wait and see. ;)

Revelation includes events in space/time history that are the subject of claimed eyewitness reportage. In other words, historical events are available to public scrutiny, and therefore transcend the circularity of reason alone.

True. Then the question becomes one of the sufficiency of the evidence.

Apparently, you pulled my post at #146 because of this smart'-ss' comment:

146 of 151

To betty boop

I didn't create this mess, tpaine. I merely observe it:
"For when the Sophist opponent realized Socrates had "beaten" him in debate, typically he had this nasty habit of going all surly, nasty on him...."

Sure betty, yours are mere "smart '-ss' takes" & observations...

No one should mind when you say: "Of course, you do not believe in God. And so this entire conversation is not merely superfluous, but utterly devoid of meaning to you...."

-- Because your intent is pure. -- Yep, this is clear.

The first use of smart'-ss' on this thread was by betty herself at #112.

- Thus, I used it as above in order illustate her hypocrisy.
And thanks betty, for allowing my post to be pulled without comment or objection.
Whoever instigated having that post pulled is truly a petty little person.

Then the question becomes one of the sufficiency of the evidence.

Agreed. Thanks for your reply. And even then the objective evidence is filtered through our respective colored glasses. It has been my experience, which I hope is (or should be) always regulated by Revelation, that fallen human nature in a perverse sort of way subjects revelation and all other historical evidence to it own criteria for the purpose of retaining independence and autonomy from the Creator. I think it is safe to say that it is the Christian point of view that in our natural state of alienation from God, we tend to reject evidence that interferes with our natural desire to remain independent of Him. As the old saying goes,
"A man convinced against his WILL
is of the same opinion still."

So when Saint Peter asserts that, "We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16) we can evaluate that historical evidence till we're blue in the face, but sometimes with regard to any particular individual it comes down to, not whether the evidence is sufficiently credible, (I believe it is, of course) but simply to the matter of whether or not that individual wishes remain independent of what God has said about the subject. In my view, since there is a Creator who has spoken, then it makes sense that His revelation of Himself is not subject to our criteria, we are subject to it. Circular? Maybe. But no less circular than the view of one who opposes the view. Just my two cents. Thanks again for your reply.

Cordially,

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