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Introduction 1 INTRODUCTION Over the last hundred years or so in the modern world there has been much worthy discussion in the philosophical arena, but the outcomes do not all deserve to be described as philosophy. Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) in his writings distinguished between “opinions” and philosophy. In the course of his studies Voegelin became increasingly aware of what he described as the phenomenon of modernity, and he desired to analyse this particular twentieth century difficulty. The pressing question for him was the problem of totalitarianism in modern Europe. He had written: “The principal problem to which I refer is the fact that war against a totalitarian power, with the ruling group of totalitarian sectarians firm in its faith and willing to sacrifice the people to the bitter end for its domination, can only end with the horrors of physical destruction - that we know from the Hitler case.”1 Taking account of this problem Voegelin saw the spiritual crisis of the modern age as fundamentally a crisis of consciousness. The realisation led him to analyse the question of ideologies which he saw as an attempt to construct a “second reality”.2 The outcome of these modern ideological deformations, he argued, had led to a closed society; that is, a society closed against “the ground of being”. Voegelin uses the term to 1Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, edited by Ellis Sandoz. (Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University, 1989), p.117. Voegelin was referring to the American problem of the Vietnam war in the light of Europe’s two totalitarian wars. 2 The term second reality was drawn from Robert Musil’s book, Man Without Qualities, first published in German in 1930. 2 refer to that undefinable supreme reality as the origin or arche of all things. Voegelin refers to the “divine ground”. He writes, “The ground is not a spatially distant thing but a divine presence that becomes manifest in the experience of unrest and the desire to know.”3 To counter this situation Voegelin realised he would have to investigate the question of consciousness and formulate an alternative approach to what he termed those “apodictically certain philosophies”.4 Voegelin had studied neo-Kantianism and thinkers such as Comte, Hegel and Marx. He was also familiar with the theories of such writers as Heidegger, Husserl and Freud. These thinkers had constructed “systems” of consciousness. Voegelin contended that reality cannot be created or contained in such “systems” but must as it were be “discovered” through the opening of the soul of the philosophers to the ground of order. Such was the path taken by the classic philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and after them, the Christian writers (Augustine, Aquinas) and later remnants found in the Scottish common-sense philosophers (Reid and Hamilton). The aim of this thesis is to examine noetic reason or the life of reason as illuminated by Eric Voegelin. He has argued that the life of reason is significantly missing from modern Western thought. For most philosophers in the post-Enlightenment era “reason”, as a study, is the investigation of the techniques, the processes of human 3Voegelin, Order and History, The Ecumenic Age, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press), Vol. 4, p. 184; “On Hegel: A Study in Sorcery” in Published Essays, 1966-1985, edited with an introduction by Ellis Sandoz, Vol. 12 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), p. 354. “Divine ground” or “ground of being” is a notion that Voegelin uses to refer to the source of being. He sometime uses “God” but wished to consider other expressions of this reality. See his essay “Anxiety and Reason”, in Eric Voegelin, What is History? And Late Unpublished Writings, Vol. 28, p. 67 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). See also Voegelin’s phrase “search of the Ground”, the aiton, arche or ultimate cause. Refer to Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis: Zur Theorie der Geschichte und Politik (R. Piper: Munich, 1966). The edition used here is translated by Gerhart Niemeyer Anamnesis (Indiana: Notre Dame University, 1978), Chapter 8, “The Consciousness of the Ground”. See also “Reason: the Classic Experience” in Published Essays, 1966-1986, Vol. 12, p. 271. 3 thought (it is “how” we think rather than “what” we think.) It is, for some, rationalisation in the sense of the simplification of complex expressions, or the classification of ideas that seem different but are largely similar. For others, “reason” is the science of logic, or “reason” is a bridge to bring all empirical knowledge into some kind of synthesis. In such studies there is no acknowledgement of the importance of noesis (υοησιζ)5 as understood in current philosophy. Many modern philosophers demand that knowledge must pass the test of either linguistic analysis or empirical proof. Against what he considered to be a narrow contemporary definition of reason, Eric Voegelin’s philosophical perspective constitutes a corrective. He found that the Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy dealt far more comprehensively with “human affairs”. He stated: “...I would make no difference between political science and the philosophy of history, because as Aristotle already formulated it, what the philosopher has to deal with are human affairs. Philosophy is really a philanthropia [study of human affairs]”.6 Elsewhere he wrote: “The effort of the Greeks to arrive at an understanding of their humanity has culminated in the Platonic- Aristotelian creation of philosophy as the science of the nature of man”.7 Voegelin 4Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis (Indiana: Notre Dame University, 1978), p.10. Voegelin considered such an analysis of consciousness in itself as “a dead end”. He wrote, “Something had to be done. I had to get out of that ‘apodictic horizon’ as fast as possible.” 5 Noesis is the activity of the nous. Nous in Greek philosophy meaning “reason”, “spirit”, is drawn from the nous of Anaxagoras and is understood as the cosmic reason that orders the universe and is linked to perception and creativity. Plato considers the nous as the most excellent part of humans. As the Nous rules the world so it controls moral action. Aristotle sees in the nous our characteristic energeia. Theoretical nous is the power of logical thought and practical nous sets goals for the will. The nous is immortal and comes to the body from outside. This applies only to the active, not the passive or potential nous. See Aristotle’s “nous” in Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, translator and editor, Geoffrey W. Bromley (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Herdmans, 1964-1976), pp. 636-637. 6 See Eric Voegelin, “Philosophies of History: An Interview with Eric Voegelin,” New Orleans Review 2 (1973), p.135; Also Eric Voegelin, “Les Perspectives d’avenir de la civilisation occidentale” in L’Histoire et ses interpretations. Entretiens autour de Arnold Toynbee, Raymond B. Aron, ed., (The Hague: Mouton, 1961), p. 136. Voegelin wrote that reason was “the essential character of western civilisation”. 7 Eric Voegelin, “On Classical Studies”, Published Essays, 1966-1985, Vol. 12 , p. 258. 4 declared that “the life of reason” has been displaced by the “climate of opinion” which has taken hold of Western thinking as a result of the Enlightenment which has dominated philosophy for the last two hundred years or more. Voegelin insisted that human beings, who seek to attain a full quality of life, or are searching for that fullness, must be “open” to the challenges of human curiosity, open to the challenge of the depths in reality that we humans can know only by analogy, and so open to divine reality. Plato based his philosophy on noetic reasoning, on the ability of human beings to go beyond themselves in contemplating being beyond the range of our physical experience. Was that an idealistic ambition? No: many philosophers whose works are still read put far narrower boundaries around their thoughts. They devised philosophies to support political movements, or to fit into contemporary movements. Some examples are Comte, Hegel and Marx. Because such philosophies are dogmatic they do not survive the era in which they attain popularity. By contrast, Plato’s philosophy allowed his followers to be open to theophany or revelation. This conception of philosophy also leaves the student free to study the Judaeo-Christian conception of revelation with its accent on the pneuma, or spirit. Having investigated the range of philosophical systems since the Greeks Voegelin not only found them of limited application but also irrelevant. It is a problem that many of us face: we tend to classify philosophies as too difficult, too irrelevant because of their remoteness in time, place or tradition. Voegelin was able to search many pre- Enlightenment philosophies, finding an accommodation with them, through his notion of noetic reason, the ability to transcend visible reality. He was particularly impressed by the works of St. Augustine. In the Civitate Dei he found the key contrast between “amor 5 dei” and “amor sui”. The contrast is between the human spirit confined to its own interest (amor sui), and that which is able to contemplate transcendence (amor dei) at the same time. These important ideas are examined in detail in the chapters which follow. It is emphasised that reason in the noetic sense is significantly different from the post- Enlightenment notion of rationalisation, empirical reasoning, logic and so on. Noesis or noetic knowledge then is that knowledge which is man’s experience of existence and awareness of all areas of reality which includes the spiritual. Knowledge of this type is often present in a “creative minority” (Toynbee), due to its openness to the full structure of reality. It is argued here that the present discipline of limiting reason to rationalisation alone has had serious repercussions in many areas of academic research.
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