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To: betty boop
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.

96 posted on 11/16/2008 6:11:30 AM PST by PasorBob
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To: PasorBob
I gather you are not a Vöegelin fan, PasorBob; nor a fan of classical philosophy. Vöegelin is not a system builder; nor does he seek to create "doctrines." He follows the Socratic-Platonic model, which essentially begins with psyche — that would be his "initial mystery." I agree with you that psyche is pretty mysterious, if that was your point.

You still haven't told me what you think his "article of faith" is. Or which of his 30+ books you've read. Sounds to me like you made a quick stop at Wikipedia; and the article about Vöegelin over there was obviously written by someone suffering from a profound case of anoia.

100 posted on 11/16/2008 10:40:05 AM PST by betty boop
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