Anyone can do the Voegelin cha-cha - it's easy. Just jump right in ;)
Well, which is it, faith or reason that tells you that the answers exist? Why should deep answers to those questions A) exist, and; B) be accessible to us? These would hardly be the first questions, after all, that are fundamentally unanswerable, either because there is no answer or because the answer is inaccessible to us. Of course, pragmatist that I am, I can't help but point out that an inaccessible answer is equivalent, for all practical purposes, to no answer at all.
What if the only tenable answer to the question of "why is there something rather than nothing?" is "How else would you have it be?" Which may seem trivial and unsatisfying to some, but I don't worry about that. In the grand scheme of things, BB, we are small. And it is a curious sort of egoism for small creatures like us to insist that everything in the universe and beyond be accessible and satisfactory.
Voegelin spends much time asking questions that don't have answers, in the hopes that answers can be teased out of the fabric of reality and spirit - of course, he would disagree that there are no satisfactory answers for Leibniz, I think. But recognizing that some questions don't have answers for us is the beginning of developing a sense of perspective, and an understanding of the place we occupy. Carrying on as though the universe can cough up an answer to why there is something rather than nothing is a way of arrogating to ourselves a place we cannot claim, and a perspective we cannot have.
Some things are mysteries to us. Some things will always be mysteries to us. This is the nature of what it means to be human.
For others, it is the beginning of "Second Realities."
Both, general_re. For I have it both by “faith” and “reason” that the universe is intelligible; and I seem to be intelligent in some degree. Therefore, there’s something for reason to do….
Why should deep answers to those questions A) exist, and; B) be accessible to us? These would hardly be the first questions, after all, that are fundamentally unanswerable, either because there is no answer or because the answer is inaccessible to us.
These questions may be “unanswerable,” in the sense of not being answerable in the sense of establishing certainty. But because we have no certainty, does that mean the questions ought not to be raised? Our own human experience forces these kinds of questions on us. And for millennia, men have been asking them, and coming up with the best “answers” of which they were capable. There is no “final” answer; for the point is, these are open questions. They are the very questions that human beings ask, and have been asking, apparently ever since there have been human beings.
Perhaps we ask them because of our own perceived sense of “smallness” (a relative term), our sense of finitude, our sense of contingency: “[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 … 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”….
An attempt. Men try. And men fail. But for all that, it seems to be man’s irrepressible nature to try, even at the risk of failure. To try against the background of existential uncertainty seems to be a mark of man.
Where do men get this idea of “perfection” not attained or attainable “in this world?” Where does such a notion come from? For that matter, where did we get the idea that there is such a thing as truth – be it knowable or unknowable?
Of course, pragmatist that I am, I can’t help but point out that an inaccessible answer is equivalent, for all practical purposes, to no answer at all.
Forgive me, general_re, but IMHO, this is a thoroughly “smart-*ss” take on your part. The point is, men act as if there were answers to be had, that all answers are potentially accessible. We might not get them “now”; but we’ll get them “sometime.” If this weren’t so about man, human progress would cease, and mankind would sink into pure animality.
And it is a curious sort of egoism for small creatures like us to insist that everything in the universe and beyond be accessible and satisfactory.
Well, go figure, general_re, that such a small thing as man feels himself up to the challenge of understanding his world. I can’t speak for others; but for myself, I don’t insist that everything be “accessible” to me – for I know that is impossible, for reasons of my own insufficiency, and the sheer size of the problem. And I don’t require the universe to be “satisfactory” to me – in the sense that I believe I can “constitute it” better, that is along lines more congenial to me personally. To try to see the world truthfully as it is, for what it is -- that is enough of a challenge for me.
Personally, I’d prefer a world in which people could be kind to each other, to live in liberty and justice and peace and beauty and goodness and all of that. But I know it ain’t gonna happen – absent divine intervention. And Christian Revelation tells us that’s exactly what’s going to happen some day. I cannot “perfect” the world (though I can try to work on me, recalcitrant material that I am….); if the world is “perfectible” at all, I’m pretty sure that sort of thing is beyond the powers of human kind.
Voegelin spends much time asking questions that don’t have answers, in the hopes that answers can be teased out of the fabric of reality and spirit -- of course, he would disagree that there are no satisfactory answers for Leibniz, I think.
There are no answers if we can’t “tease them out of the fabric of reality and spirit.” There wouldn’t even be questions without that fabric.
Truth, you might say, is a “work in progress.” I don’t think Voegelin puts himself in the position of deciding whether various answers to Leibnitz’s questions are “satisfactory” or otherwise “up to snuff.” The fascination for him is how human beings of different times and cultures answer these questions. He’s fascinated with the ubiquity of the questions themselves – it seems to signify a kind of “property” (if we can call it that) of the human spirit that man perennially engages precisely these questions. In a certain strict sense, there are no “right” or “wrong” answers – the search for truth is a quest, never a final possession.
Some things are mysteries to us. Some things will always be mysteries to us. This is the nature of what it means to be human.
No disagreement here, general_re. Thanks for writing.