Posted on 12/08/2002 12:25:26 PM PST by betty boop
Yep, that's what it all seems to boil down to, gore3000. It is a quite futile attempt at self-divinization....
One door away from Heaven, The Book of Counted Sorrows
We live each day and hour.
One day away from Heaven,
But it lies beyond our power
To open the door to Heaven
And enter when we choose.
One door away from Heaven,
And the key is ours to lose.
One day away from Heaven,
But, oh, the entry dues.
And just a "hi" to you, A-G.
The point is, people will not understand each other if they do not share a common experiential basis. We can't work together to "discover truth" if we can't even understand each other.
....reason-via-revelation only works if you a priori accept the validity and truth of revelation.
Voegelin is not saying that we have reason via revelation. The noetic structure of human existence is discovered by man via his experience of his position in the world and reflection on same. Aristotle had no access to revelation; intellect and reason were still fully functioning.
Hello logos!!! SO GOOD to see you. You've been really "scarce" around here lately. Hope all is well with you and yours.
Thank you so much for the lovely verses..."so very near, and yet ineluctably beyond the reach of our own unaided powers...."
WRT to above italics: You will probably not be surprised to learn that I expected the reaction to this post would tend to "prove" its premise. Speaking as a battle-scarred veteran of 'way too many Evo-Crevo threads, I had some suspicion that this might be the case....
Oh, I know exactly what the point is - you can't see what Voegelin sees unless you're predisposed to seeing it by sharing his fundamental worldview. Which is about three millimeters and one fig leaf away from saying that truth is subjective and dependent on perception - truth depends on perception, perception depends on experience, therefore truth depends on experience. No thanks. Putting a tie and jacket on relativism doesn't make it any more palatable to me.
Voegelin is not saying that we have reason via revelation.
Oh, come on - of course he is:
I have spoken of questioning knowledge and knowing question in order to characterize the experience that I have called noetic, for it is not the experience of some thing, but the experience of questioning rising from the knowledge that man's being has not its ground in itself. The knowledge that being is not grounded in itself implies the question of the origin, and in this question being is revealed as coming-to-be, albeit not as a coming-to-be in the world of existing things but a coming-to-be from the ground of being.- Anamensis
Divine reality is being revealed to man in two fundamental modes of experience: in the experience of divine creativity in the cosmos; and in the experience of divine ordering presence in the soul.
The two modes are always structures in man's consciousness of divine reality, but they are not always conscious in the form of reflected knowledge. The experience is the area of reality where the revelatory appeal from the divine side meets with the questing response from the human side, and reflective meditation on the response is preceded by millennia of less reflected response in the form of cosmological symbolization. Only late in history, when man becomes aware of himself, of his spirit and intellect, as an active partner in the cognition of divine reality, will the two modes be discerned and adequately symbolized. Only when the response becomes luminous to itself as a quest for the divine ground, and when the quest becomes an act of reflective questioning, will man find himself moving either in the direction of divine creativity toward a Beginning of things, or in the direction of the ordering presence within his soul toward a divine Beyond as its source.
- The Beginning and Beyond
Not the Christian revelation (although some long ago debated even that.) But how long has it been since I read the Nichomachean Ethics? Book six? And the phronimos who had wisdom? I don't have my copy here . . .
You ain't alone, kiddo! He's a workout for sure. Must have something to do with the fact that although he writes here in English (I don't think this essay is a translation), he thinks in German.... :^)
Both Aristotle and Plato were attune to a source that gets entirely lost in Kant. Nowadays its OK to call it intuition.
LOL - You're too much, BB. Anyone agreeing with Voegelin is evidence confirming his basic rightness, and anyone questioning Voegelin with a modicum of skepticism...is also evidence confirming his basic rightness. Heads you win, tails I lose. May I politely suggest that you've stacked the deck, consciously or unconsciously, in favor of continually reinforcing that which you already believe to be true? ;)
Okay. But does that intuition come from within or without? It seems pretty clear what Voegelin thinks about that ;)
True, cornelis -- but the Christian seems to be the type of revelation that general_re has in mind. (He lets us know he doesn't think much of it.) It seems that both Plato and Aristotle had a Source from which they were able to draw their most profound insights into the nature of man, the structure of consciousness, etc. This does have the quality of revelation, for they recognized this Source does not lie within the field of existent things....
A lot of people think that Aristotle, unlike Plato, was little interested in "divine things." Yet without the divine, there can be no wisdom, which is "higher" than mere knowledge such as can be known through the study of existent things. Nichomachean Ethics is replete with references to the divine....
No, no - I try not to limit myself like that. Any sort of revealed truth, Christian or otherwise, suffices for my purposes here.
He lets us know he doesn't think much of it.
True. Look, even if I accept the existence of revelation, upon what basis do I evaluate the truth of that which is revealed to me? Well, I'm not really supposed to do that - revelation is true by definition, rather conveniently. And then I'm supposed to go forth and reason, based on revealed truths that I have no rational basis for accepting as true, except for a definition that dances right on the edge of tautology.
Well, if that's the case, that reason is predicated on axioms that I am expected to accept as true without any proof that they are true (which it is, of course), how do I know that revealed truths are a better basis for reason than axioms I invent myself, and which I also have no rational basis for believing to be true? Oh, wait - I know that revealed truth is better than my own bootstrapped axioms because it's...revealed. Or something equally circular.
And there's the problem. It's great if you already believe as Voegelin believes, but if you don't, the best anyone can come up with is "just take my word for it". Which is more or less exactly what Voegelin was saying in the bit I quoted in my very first post, and 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"....
You may indeed, general_re. Thanks for the politesse; but I'm not "reinforcing" anything -- just trying to explain some very difficult material that I believe is timely and valuable to the understanding of current cultural and civilizational problems....
As to what I believe to be true -- I truthfully believe that I do not possess the truth. The truth is not an "object" to be "possessed." As long as the universe keeps rolling along, the truth continues to unfold....
And FWIW, I don't hold much truck with "doctrinal thinking" of any description. Such thinking "filters" reality in such a way as to cut it down to our own size, so to speak. Filters are designed to omit parts of reality. That is their purpose. And to the extent that we depend on them, we may only succeed in achieving a false sense of security, based on an illusionary sense of knowledged "possessed".
I'm sure you can think of examples of doctrines that have nothing to do with religion. The "school philosophers" specialize in their construction; the Darwinists have their doctrines. But you will not find doctrines in Plato or Aristotle -- or Voegelin, for that matter. These men are more interested in getting the questions right than in coming up with answers....
The "revealed truth" is neither "revealed" nor "true" for a person if it does not evoke an answering response in his or her spirit and mind. Revelation is an appeal to man; he doesn't have to respond. If it is God making the appeal to us, then it seems to me, well, prudent not to hold that appeal in contempt -- even if one cannot respond directly to the appeal oneself.
Perhaps. Perhaps the reason I don't follow along with Voegelin is because I think he's asking the wrong questions.
The "revealed truth" is neither "revealed" nor "true" for a person if it does not evoke an answering response in his or her spirit and mind.
In that case, Voegelin falls down and can't get up right at the beginning. From my perspective, and from the perspective of a great many others, there is no "revealed" truth. And how does Voegelin counter that? By telling me that if I believed in revelation...I'd believe in revelation. Not very helpful. ;)
In his eight-segment taped lecture on Maimonides Thirteen Principles of the Jewish Faith, Dennis Prager posits, "That the believer has to account for unjust suffering. The atheist has to account for everything else."
Best.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.