Posted on 12/08/2002 12:25:26 PM PST by betty boop
Suffice it to say that calling Voegelin a "nihilist" caused my reaction. Voegelin may be many things, but a nihilist is certainly not one of them. Neither is he a sophist. As for learning about him, BB can do much better than I on that score. The New Science of Politics is considered his most influential work.
Anyhoot, FWIW, jumping in:
1. Voegelin states that it is difficult, if not impossible, to “debate” with “ideologists” when the subject matter pertains to the “sphere of the person” – that is, to aspects of human existence that do not lie within the purview of the natural sciences or logic.
2. The “ideologist” in this context can be defined as a thinker who -- “preanalytically” -- assumes that only those aspects of reality that are susceptible to the critical model of the scientific method are “real”; all other aspects of reality are either illusionary or of no importance. The assumption rules out consideration of vast sectors of human experience that cannot be made to fit this model – unless first restated in terms of what the scientific method can purportedly validate or falsify. For instance, “mind” becomes “brain” – for mind is inaccessible to scientific technique in a way that brain is not. For Voegelin, such a maneuver is a shift away from the “truth of existence” to untruth. It is a reduction of the person for the purpose of fitting him to a model that is inherently materialistic or phenomenalistic in character. The “sphere of the person” is severely whittled down to fit the preanalytical notion-become-premise.
3. In particular, the sphere of the person is so whittled down that there is no way to consider generic problems of the human condition, which typically express as key, perennial questions regarding human existence and the nature of man and his place in the universe, his relations with his fellow human beings and with God. The questions are “perennial” in the sense that human beings down the ages have always asked precisely these questions. Categorically, they are the type of questions that the scientific method cannot address. Science, simply put, does not speak this language at all.
4. This is precisely the type of questions that the great classical and Christian thinkers have engaged. Voegelin’s “On Debate and Existence” examines the classical and Christian view of this subject matter in the great culminations (provisionally) achieved by Aristotle and Aquinas – who do speak this language, and sublimely.
5. Yet as Voegelin notes, starting roughly around the sixteenth century, with the stunning breakthroughs in the physical sciences, this older body of thought about things human has been increasingly, effectively eclipsed. On the surface of things, this is entirely understandable; because for Aristotle – and Aquinas after him – the model of the universe was the “closed cosmos” – a spherical cosmos surrounded by the starry firmament with “our world” at its very center, ordered by a First Cause or Prime Mover who moved every aspect of the hierarchy of being, from least to greatest, throughout time. Obviously, the amazing strides of the physical sciences utterly have exploded the basis for such “cosmological symbolism.” We know our universe truly is not like what it appeared to be to the ancient Greek, or to the thirteenth-century scholastic doctor.
6. But when new discoveries seem to challenge these older “symbols,” Voegelin insists that doesn’t mean we have to ditch the symbol, and start all over from scratch. Instead, he urges us to consider the experiential basis that gave rise to the articulation of the symbol in the first place. For such symbols are an attempt to describe human lived reality. In the case of the Aristotelian and Thomist symbologies, Voegelin insists “there is a solid core of truth” in them – for they are works of the human intellect and spirit meditatively expressing the lived experience of human beings. In short, they are works concerning the human condition which, arguably, has not changed much over time. (Arguably, the only thing about man that really changes is the tools he uses….)
7. Certainly, what has not changed about the human condition are the items on Voegelin’s list: “…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,… 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….”
8. Voegelin says we must discover the solid core of truth in these symbols by a surgical process that seeks to remove all their cosmological elements. When we do that, we are left with the irreducible insight that a universe that contains intelligent beings cannot originate from a cause or source that is less than intelligent itself. The intellect, having “discovered itself,” recognizes that it does not have the character of an “accident” or a culmination of random events, nor did it “create” itself. Further, it recognizes itself as a “force transcending its own existence” – that is, the intellect is capable of reaching out and engaging objects of knowledge that are outside or “beyond” itself – the things of the natural world among them – and of forming concepts about them (Voegelin calls this “ideation”), and then of testing the concepts analytically and experientially (reason).
But essentially, all this relies on the “preanalytical notion” (the unproven premise) that the world is intelligible -- because its order arises from an intelligent cause. And thus, Aristotle’s “prime mover” has indeed been “smuggled [back] in with the unproven premise,” through the back door as it were. Yet this appears to be unavoidable; for once we recognize that the universe is “ordered,” we cannot reasonably entertain the proposition that order has an accidental or random cause, so it must be the product of intelligence. And perhaps reasoning by analogy to our own self-aware intelligence, we therefore conclude that the first cause or prime mover of the universe is also a self-aware Intelligence.
Or as Voegelin puts it, “…knowledge of the something that “exists” beyond existence is inherent to the noetic structure of existence.” It is “preanalytical” in precisely this sense. It seems to have something to do with the structure of noetic consciousness (i.e., intelligence) itself.
9. And so we get to Leibnitz’s two seminal questions: Why is there something, why not nothing? And why are things the way they are, and not some other way? These questions are substantively motivated from the same experiential and rational basis that moved Aristotle to speculate on the prime mover and the chain of causation.
Voegelin reminds us, however, that these questions are utterly incapable of either verification or falsification – that is, they are not properly “scientific questions.” Yet these pesky questions inevitably seem to “arise authentically when reason is applied to the experiential confrontation of man with existent things in this world.” We might say it is human nature to ask them.
10. Thus was the universal basis of rational discourse understood, up til the modern centuries, and the emergence of the builders of Second Realities. Typically, denizens of Second Reality refuse to engage any and all questions whose answers cannot be validated by the scientific method. They don’t seem to mind in the least that this is a “surgical procedure” that makes it impossible to consider the human condition (“the sphere of the person”) as such. Further, it renders human intellectual history irrelevant. It even forbids the asking of questions whose rational answers would tend to undercut the supremacy of its “preanalytical notions.”
Voegelin quotes an amusing little line from the chapter headings of Elias Canetti’s Auto da fe that neatly summarizes the thought process of the ideologue of Second Reality: “A Head Without a World – Headless World – The World In One’s Head.”
There is no common ground of rational discourse with the thinker of Second Reality, for he has lost his capacity or will for self-transcendence, such that he can engage the world “outside his head.” In obviating the world “outside his head,” he moots all questions regarding its ordering cause. (“God is dead.”) Therefore, “the world is only what I think it is – it is the world inside my head.”
This is a willful, absolute flight from reality, an absolute refusal to apperceive what sane human beings have been thinking about for millennia. How does one “debate” with a person like this? What common ground can be found on which a debate could reasonably be based?
Ah, yes, bb - the denial of self which one must embrace to be a materialist. Thoughts, ideas, ideated concepts, the mind itself, all are the prime movers of transcendent reality, but not only of transcendent reality - for without the transcendent self we could not appercieve the material world at all. It takes a mind forming thoughts to make sense (slight pun intended) of all that we see, touch, hear, taste and smell, for all these sensations are routed through our nerve endings to our brains where, finally, they are noticed transcendentally - or not at all. Or perhaps more succinctly, if a tree falls in the forest without someone to hear it, is there sound? There are sound waves, of course, but if there is no mind to translate the signals of the nerve endings (and the brain is a giant nerve, let's not forget), then effectively, there is no "sound".
In short, were it not for the immaterial, the materialist would not be aware of his own existence.
Great insight, logos. The materialist denies the ground upon which his entire existence rests and depends. Strikes me as being some kind of weird form of suicide.
Or maybe an exercise in "self-lobotomy?" If so, for what purpose?
logos, I think this is such an excellent elaboration of what Voegelin means by transcendance in this essay -- one of the modes of his model of noetic consciousness, Intellect-Transcendence-Ideation-Reason. Thank you so very much!
I think I like this guy.
There is no common ground of rational discourse with the thinker of Second Reality, for he has lost his capacity or will for self-transcendence, such that he can engage the world “outside his head.” In obviating the world “outside his head,” he moots all questions regarding its ordering cause. (“God is dead.”) Therefore, “the world is only what I think it is – it is the world inside my head.”
This is a willful, absolute flight from reality, an absolute refusal to apperceive what sane human beings have been thinking about for millennia. How does one “debate” with a person like this? What common ground can be found on which a debate could reasonably be based?
Which is very ironic because modernists claim to be "realists." In my experience, they have a lot in common with little children who cover their ears and scream when confronted with uncomfortable realities.
Despite all the protestations to the contrary, the modernist rejection of God has more to do with a desire to hold onto a particular sinful habit than anything else. Peter Kreeft argues convincingly that it's all about sin, particularly sexual sin. He cites Augustine's Confessions in this regard. Sinful modernists, postmodernists or whatevers are content with a state of perpetual doubt and moral relativism. Anything to keep the ball of doubt in play. And so, sadly, they remain slaves to their sins in the name of "freedom." Hopefully they will soon learn that slavery to sin is a false freedom, and that only the truth can set you free.
Holding onto a sinful habit.
If I were an atheist, I think I would save my money to buy a plane ticket to Italy to see whether the blood of Saint Januarius really did liquefy and congeal miraculously, as it is supposed to do annually. I would go to Medjugorge. I would study all published interviews of any of the seventy thousand who saw the miracle of the sun at Fatima. I would ransack hospital records for documented "impossible", miraculous cures. Yet, strangely, almost all atheists argue against miracles philosophically rather than historically. They are convinced a priori, by argument, that miracles can't happen. So they don't waste their time or money on such an empirical investigation. Those who do soon cease to be atheists—like the sceptical scientists who investigated the Shroud of Turin, or like Frank Morrison, who investigated the evidence for the "myth" of Christ's Resurrection with the careful scientific eye of the historian-and became a believer. (His book Who Moved the Stone? is still a classic and still in print after more than sixty years.)Argument from History
by Peter Kreeft
How many atheists or agnostics dare to click on these links? Eucharistic Miracle of Lanciano. Our Lady of Guadalupe. Stigmata.
But if they are used for such a noble purpose, will they go to Hell? Possibly an unmined strategy for saving souls.
Thank you so much, Aquinasfan, for your replies, and for the great links! I read the article from Peter Kreeft on the sexual basis of sin that was posted here a few months back, and thought it was an excellent analysis. I gather from the Confessions that St. Augustine had a bit of a "wild oats" problem himself, that caused him to postpone receiving the sacrament of baptism until he was in his forties (or something like that), which delay was a source of great anxiety to Monica, his mother. In the end, however, he became a saint and doctor of the Church. So certainly there is hope for sinners who sincerely repent. It has been said that every saint was a sinner once....
Thanks again, Aquinasfan, for writing.
Hey, tpaine! It wasn't my suggestion.... :^) I don't think it's noble to "use" people. I think WT is pulling our legs with this business about tricking atheists into a noble purpose, which might save them from Hell.
The action of God, the Lord of history, and the co-responsibility of man in the drama of his creative freedom, are the two pillars upon which human history is built.
From the Fatima link you gave us, Aquinasfan. Thank you!
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