IMHO any philosophy that claims to establish positive truth is not philosophy, but something else masquerading in the costume of philosophy. And certain schools do assert this (e.g., positivism, phenomenalism, materialism; utilitarianism, etc., all post-Enlightenment "diremptions" from the classical philosophy). I'm just confirming your observation here PasorBob.
But this does not mean that there is no truth in philosophy. Philosophy explores aspects of reality that are not "physical," or "material." If I wanted to understand the relations between mind and world, for example, would science be of any help to me? Science doesn't have much to say about mind, or psyche, or spirit; and if it has a concept of "world," or even of "reality," it didn't get it from the exercise of the scientific method, but from philosophy.
So clearly philosophy must be a means of acquiring knowledge; for otherwise, how could worldviews arise in the first place?
Please tell me what Eric Vöegelin's "article of faith" is? I've been a student of his for a while now and am most curious to know your view of this.
Eric Vöegelin's consciousness of man and its relation to the "divine ground of being". He is in essence a mystic. His conclusions are rationally derived from his initial mysteries and are therefore mysteries themselves. He begins with an opinion and after torturing the languages of classical philosophy and theology, he ends with an opinion. At best it can be said that his works produce hypotheses, but not true knowledge. After all of his rationalization, he still doesn't know if he knows anything, he simply "feels' that he knows something. For instance, his first reality could simply be a biologically evolved coping mechanism. In other words, Vöegelin's philosophy "works" whether his "first reality" is real or only imagined. He built his philosophical house upon the sand.
You have illustrated the problem with most philosophy. Although your assertion may be absolutely correct, you haven't demonstrated that it is. Please understand that this isn't a criticism of you personally, but of philosophy generally.
Science does have much to say about mind and the world and reality. (Psyche and spirit could be described as part of mind and world and reality). What it says, however, isn't satisfying to mystics, so they reject it out of hand thereby creating a "first reality".