Eric Vogelin Institute

THE EXPERIENCE OF TIME AND PLACE: A VOEGELINIAN PERSPECTIVE

Copyright 2000 Jack D. Elliott

I. Introduction

I address herewith the interlinked roles of the landscape and history in human experience and symbolization. To my knowledge neither Voegelin nor his many interpreters, with the exception of Brendan Purcell, have given much attention to this ubiquitous dimension of human experience, and it is ubiquitous because the landscape is a ubiquitous component of our everyday experience.² I attempt to highlight the nature of landscape symbolism and use Voegelin's work, particularly regarding the paradoxical structure of consciousness, to elucidate it. Furthermore, I will examine some aspects of the historic preservation movement, a collection of government agencies and non-profit organizations which have a substantial impact upon the way that historic places are perceived and interpreted today, through which the symbolism of the historic landscape is both promoted and deformed.

Given Eric Voegelin's emphasis on personal experience and anamnesis, perhaps I can be forgiven beginning this essay with a reminiscence. I was raised on the site of an extinct nineteenth century town--Palo Alto, Mississippi--where my family had resided since my great-great-grandfather founded it in 1846. There were however, no buildings remain from the old town, giving the ostensible impression that there was little temporal depth. However, as a small child I began to discover physical clues to a deeper past. In and around our yard, fragments of pottery and bricks, rusted nails, and other artifacts, recalled past activities in Palo Alto. Sunken roads running through our pasture marked the sites of old streets while depressions in the ground marked the sites of filled-in cisterns.

I eventually learned to collect a wide variety of facts--from the ground, from oral history, and from written records--and transform them into a history or story, if you will, of Palo Alto, which began with the founding, continued through the rise, then decline of the town, until the only continuing thread was the history of my family which culminated in me, the teller of the tale. This opened various questions, most notably the rather

¹Brendan M. Purcell, "In Search of Newgrange: Long Night's Journey into Day," in Richard Kearney (ed.), The Irish Mind. Exploring Intellectual Traditions, (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1985), pp. 39-55; also published as Chapter 2 of Brendan M. Purcell, "Newgrange after the Dawn of Humanity," in The Drama of Humanity Towards a Philosophy of Humanity in History," (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 56-74. paradoxical position of being both the teller of the story and part of the story at the same time. I also became aware of the role of my imagination in the whole process, and that the story was a collection of mental images of peoples and places, which all pointed me to times and dimensions beyond the everyday. As a result of this experience, particular places in the landscape, came to inchoately represent more than just a collection of dirt, buildings, and trees; here I learned of the power of places to evoke a dimension of mystery in the midst of the everyday.

In later years, my work in Israel aroused a sense of the symbolism inherent in ancient sites--tells and ruins--that went beyond the positivistic focus of archaeology. Furthermore, I began to see a relationship between the archaeological sites and the Holy Land shrines which only differed from archaeological sites by degree. The end result is that I began to see a continuity between the everyday places that we live in and the places that we regard as being sacred.

On November 4, 1987, I was examining the new arrivals shelf at the Mississippi State University Library when I stumbled across a volume entitled In Search of Order by one Eric Voegelin, a name that I had only briefly encountered in the works of sociologist Peter Berger. I daresay that few will disagree when I say that this book is probably not the best introduction to Voegelin. Indeed, being unfamiliar with his previous work and his terminology, I found much of it to be incomprehensible. However, there was something about it that rang true. I was immediately struck by the self-reference of the text, in which the writer through self-reference in the text recalled my experience of being both an actor in and the teller of the tale of Palo Alto.

Intuiting that there was something present in that slim volume, I set out to read Voegelin and his interpreters. With this and through continued reflection, it became increasingly apparent that my youthful interest in historic places had a linkage with the complex process associated with the emergence of symbolic and sacred places. It also seemed clear that there was also an integral relationship with fundamental issues pertaining to the mystery of "consciousness' and the structure of conscious within reality.

Voegelin and Aristotle on Noesis

Copyright 2000 David D. Corey

Since the philosopher Eric Voegelin has come under criticism as of late for his use of politics to "stamp out manifestations of deformed consciousness," the time may be right to reflect on the motivations and limits of Voegelin's work.¹The limits, in particular, are sometimes difficult to keep in view while Voegelin is expounding upon the totality of being, the myriad dimensions of human consciousness, and the nature of order in personal, social and historical existence. But in fact Voegelin's work is limited-more than his magisterial tone might suggest-to offering general insights into the structure of being as opposed to offering a specifically ethical or political science. That, at any rate, is what I hope to make clear in the pages that follow. And if I am right in this regard, a consequent fact will be that Voegelin stands unfairly accused if he is accused of using politics for much of anything at all; for while his investigation of the structure of being may supply grounds for a philosophical critique of various ideological programs, it certainly does not itself supply a starting point for political action. Another way of saying this is that Voegelin does not offer his readers a substantive ethical or political theory-one that, like Aristotle's, considers the question of human action in particular with an eye to being useful.² Now to seasoned readers of Voegelin this limit to his work may seem obvious, but no one to my knowledge has bothered to discuss it in writing. And yet it is well worth clarifying, not only because an awareness of it is essential to understanding Voegelin's own philosophical project, but also because the very fact of this limit raises important questions about the possibility of relating Voegelin's insights to a more substantive ethical-political theory.


¹ For this and other criticisms see Shadia B. Drury, "Augustinian Radical Transcendence: Source of Political Excess," Humanitas 12, no. 2 (1999): 27-45, especially p. 43.

  ² On the intended usefulness of Aristotle's ethics, see e.g. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 11.2: "The purpose of the present study is not, as it is in other inquiries, the attainment of theoretical knowledge: we are not conducting this inquiry in order to know what virtue is, but in order to become good, else there would be no advantage in studying it. For that reason, it becomes necessary to examine the problem of actions, and to ask how they are to be performed. For, as we have said, the actions determine what kind of characteristics are developed" (translation Ostwald). Of course, it is questionable in what sense even Aristotle's ethical theorizing can be said to supply a starting point for action. As Stephen G. Salkever argues, theory is by nature abstract while sound actions and policies must account for present conditions; therefore theory would seem incapable of directly determining the actions or policies we should take. See Finding the Mean: Theory and Practice in Aristotelian Political Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), especially pp. 135-150. But, at the same time, Aristotle's ethical and political theorizing does seem to me to succeed in its goal of enlightening its audience with respect to actions in a way that Voegelin's theorizing does not.

There are numerous ways to bring the limits of Voegelin's work into clearer view, but I shall do so by comparing Voegelin's understanding of noesis to that of Aristotle. Noesis is a type of intellectual activity, a seeing or apperception performed by the cognitive faculty referred to by the ancients as nous. Noesis was considered by many ancient thinkers including both Plato and Aristotle to be the most god-like human activity and the cause of our consciousness of order.³ In Voegelin's work, nous and noesis are crucially important symbols, for Voegelin was interested in the problem of rediscovering and defending human order against the ever-increasing disorder of his age. Thus Voegelin adopted the notion of noesis from the ancients as a way of symbolizing the human experience of order. Noesis figures prominently in almost all areas of Voegelin's work from his theory of consciousness to his studies in history and his analyses of modem politics. And yet when compared to Aristotle's treatment of noesis, Voegelin's treatment appears distinctly limited. No one to my knowledge has pointed this out. But a careful comparison of Aristotle and Voegelin on the notion of noesis proves to be a valuable exercise indeed, for when the limits of Voegelinian noesis come into view, the limits of his political science in general come into view as well.⁴ Voegelin on Noesis

³Literature on noesis and nous in Plato and Aristotle. 

¹⁹See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics VD. Aristotle restricts the meaning of episteme in the Ethics to its most precise sense-conclusions reached by demonstration concerning things that are imperishable, exist of necessity and cannot be otherwise (one thinks of the conclusions reached by math and logic). But Aristotle often uses episteme in a less restricted sense to refer to deductions reached in the realm of changeable things such as plants, animals, souls and even individual and political actions. For the purposes of this paper, I am using episteme in the less restrictive sense. For an admirably clear and helpful discussion of episteme and nous in Aristotle's Ethics, see C.D.C. Reeve, Practices ofReason: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1992). 1 am not, however, persuaded by Reeve's unorthodox argument that Aristotle understood ethics and politics to be pure sciences in the most restrictive sense.

  Phronesis is a faculty for deliberating well about what is good and advantageous for oneself, and is the primary faculty used in ethical and political action.²⁰But episteme and phronesis are nothing without nous, for they depend upon it for their beginning. As Aristotle sometimes formulates it: nous moves from what is "better known to us" (i.e. particulars) to what is "better known in itself' (i.e. universals), while episteme and phronesis take the road back from universals to particulars.²¹ In other words, nous establishes the universals or first principles (archai) from which scientific demonstrations and ethical deliberations proceed.

Now the question is how are we to relate nous in these passages to the so-called "Platonic-Aristotelian" nous we find in Voegelin? It is a difficult question to answer because the sources seem so different in spirit. But, in a sense, we might say they are similar. For nous functions in both cases as a faculty through which we apprehend the order of reality. When, in Voegelin, nous is said to apprehend the internal structure of consciousness and the divine ground of being, it is certainly apprehending the order of reality; and likewise when, in Posterior Analytics, it is said to apprehend universals from sense perception it is apprehending the order of reality as well-for universals are the means by which the world of particulars makes sense to us; universals bring order to particulars. The problem remains, of course, that Aristotle does not associate nous with "the divine" in the Posterior Analytics as he does elsewhere and as Voegelin is wont to do; but something is clearly going on in the Posterior Analytics that cannot be fully explained in terms of sense perception and memory. How, after all, does a universal take a stand in our mind? Sense perception and memory are of particulars; repeated sense perceptions and memories are still of particulars. So, whence our experience of the universal? We are indeed tempted to view nous as an act of participation with the divine, even if Aristotle sometimes fails to mention it.²²

But why does Aristotle not mention the divine in the passages discussed above, and why does he place so much emphasis upon sense perception and the formative role nous plays in science and ethics? The answer, I believe, is that there are two distinct uses to which the universalizing powers of nous can be put: one that necessarily casts attention upon the divine, and another that casts attention more locally upon episteme and phronesis. Unfortunately, we run into a problem of terminology at this point, so for the purpose of clarity let me differentiate these two uses of noesis with the adjectives "theological" and "scientific-practical." I hope it will become clear what I have in mind .²³

Scientific-practical noesis is the exercise of nous with an eye to engaging in various sciences, ethics and politics. In this mode, nous does its universalizing work upon all sorts of puzzling pluralities from trees and animals to human actions and constitutions, attaining for the inquirer various universals from which deductions and deliberations can proceed. But this use of noesis is at once complete and incomplete. It is complete in terms of the sciences it makes possible. Sciences proceed from noetic

²⁰See Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics VI.5, especially 1139b33. 

This last point is precisely the point that Aristotle makes in Ethics 1.6, where he addresses the irrelevance of the Platonic "form of the good" to the science of ethics. Perhaps one may think that ... by treating the absolute Good as a pattern, we shall gain a better knowledge of what things are good for us, and once we know that, we can achieve them. This argument has, no doubt, some plausibility; however, it does not tally with the procedure of the sciences. For while all the sciences aim at some good and seek to fulfill it, they leave the knowledge of the absolute good out of consideration. Yet if this knowledge were such a great help, it would make no sense that all the craftsmen are ignorant of it and do not even attempt to seek it.²⁶

 Ethics is the science of deliberating well about particular human actions, and such deliberation indeed depends upon a noetic universal." But the universal in question is not the universal of all universals, nor would that assist us in ethical deliberations. The universal in question is the common element shared by all human actions thought to be good, and this common element or universal is the propensity of certain types of action to promote human happiness.²⁸ Thus the first principle of ethics is not the ground of being, nor is an investigation into the ground of being a contribution to the science of ethics.

²⁵ See note 19.
²⁶ Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Martin Ostwald (Englewood Cliffs: Library of Liberal Arts, 1962),
1096b35-1097a8. All following quotations from the Ethics use the Ostwald translation.
²⁷For a more detailed account of the way noesis supplies the first principle of ethics see ibid. 1143a35-b5.
²⁸It should be stressed here that Aristotelian ethics, though similar in structure to the other sciences in
reasoning upward noetically to a first principle (arche) and then downward deductively to particulars, is different from other sciences on account of its imprecision. Thus it may well tell us what general types of action are worthy of pursuit, but it cannot tell us precisely what to do on any given occasion; such knowledge would always involve consideration of particular circumstances. 

The point of citing the passages above is to show that Aristotle recognizes the potential of using noesis in two ways. Like Plato and like Voegelin, he recognizes the potential of using it to ascend to a vision of the divine ground of being, but he also recognizes the potential of using it to launch forays into the various fields of science from biology and zoology to ethics and politics. Voegelin, by contrast, views noesis strictly in the theological way. His noetic visions are of the sort that reaches to the very boundaries of human consciousness, to the universal of all universals, to the divine ground from which the structure of human consciousness and of reality becomes luminous.

Now if I am right to view Aristotelian noesis as functioning in two distinct ways and toward two distinct ends, then the question must be asked why Voegelin has appropriated the theological but not the scientific-practical experiences behind the symbol. Did Voegelin not recognize the scientific-practical use of noesis? Did he recognize it but reject it for some reason? Did Voegelin perhaps suppose (contra Aristotle) that meditation on the divine ground of being would supply the starting point for ethical-political deliberation? These are questions that cannot be easily answered, as far as I can tell, based on what Voegelin has written. One possibility is that Voegelin did recognize the scientific-practical use of noesis but simply thought that Aristotle had said what needed to be said regarding its formative function in ethical and political science. But the way that Voegelin writes about noesis seems to me to tell against this view. I have in mind Voegelin's commentary on a particular passage of Aristotle where the scientific-practical use of noesis comes up.

In Metaphysics Il.ii.9-10, Aristotle is in the process of showing that the causes of things cannot regress infinitely but must stop somewhere and, in order to demonstrate this, he turns his attention briefly to the so-called "final cause" (to hou heneka) of human action. The text reads as follows:
Further, the Final cause of a thing is an end [telos], and is such that it does not happen for the sake of something else, but all other things happen for its sake. So if there is to be a last term of this kind, the series will not be infinite [apeiron]; and if there is no such term, there will be no Final cause. Those who introduce
infinity do not realize that they are abolishing the nature of the Good [agathoul] (but no one would attempt to do anything if he were not likely to reach some limit [peras]); nor would there be any nous in things, for the man who has nous always acts for the sake of something, and this is a limit [peras], because the end is a
limit.²⁹

Oakeshott's view of this matter squares well with the procedures we find employed by Aristotle.³⁵ The intellectual activity that Aristotle terms theoria in Ethics book 10 involves noesis and is an essential and supremely excellent human activity, but it neither is, nor does it substitute for a science of ethics or politics. This is why, when Aristotle comes to talk about theoria in the Ethics, he cuts the discussion rather short, claiming that "a more detailed treatment lies beyond the scope of our present task."³⁶ Similarly, theorizing about the structure of the human soul, while perhaps preliminary to the study of ethics and politics, does not exhaust or in any way substitute for these latter

³⁴ Michael Oakeshott, On Human Conduct, 11. 

³⁵My claim here is only that Oakeshott and Aristotle share a similar view of the autonomy of ethical and political inquiry from the study of metaphysics or "first things." When it comes to the substance of ethical and political science, however, Oakeshott and Aristotle disagree in important respects centering mostly on Oakeshott's rejection of the teleological approach set out by Aristotle in Ethics I and Politics 1. Thus, where Aristotle explains human action in terms of its ends (telos) and in terms of the function of the human life, Oakeshott explains human action in terms of its "postulates." See Michael Oakeshott, "Logos and Telos," in Rationalism and Politics and Other Essays, Timothy Fuller, ed. (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991); on "postulates," see On Human Conduct, pp. 9-12. 

³⁶ Ethics I I 78a 23. 19


sciences. For the study of the soul is essentially a biological investigation, even though the human soul transcends the souls of most other animals in possessing reason (in the most pregnant sense of the term). But the study of ethics and politics is something different still-it is to inquire not only into the human soul-and thus the distinctly human function-but also to ask what it would mean to be a human being in action .³⁷ Thus, to employ noesis always in the theological manner and never to employ it in relation to human action is, if Aristotle and Oakeshott's view of the matter is correct, to forfeit the possibility of a science of ethics and politics. This would lead us to the following conclusion: Voegelin cannot offer a substantive ethical or political science based on noesis because he does not employ noesis in a manner that would establish the first principles of such a science.

However, this conclusion should be refined by at least two additional considerations. First, Voegelin may yet offer his readers a "substantive" ethical and political science even if he does not employ noesis toward this end. We should remember that scientific-practical noesis is only one among many methods of making sense of ethical deliberation and action. There is also revelation through divine vision or scripture, as well as "common sense."³⁸ However, Voegelin does not to my knowledge offer a substantive political science based upon these modesof apprehension either. In fact, he understands revelation much like he understands noesis-as an expression of the tensional structure of existence supplying insight into the ground of being.

³⁷ "Biological" in the Aristotelian sense. For an insightful discussion of the biological underpinnings of Aristotelian ethics and politics, see Stephen G. Salkever, Finding the Mean, pp. 137-142. On the distinction between studying the soul as an end in itself and studying ethics and politics, see Aristotle Ethics 1. 13: "The student of politics must obviously have some knowledge of the workings of the soul .... but he must do so with his own aim in view, and only to the extent that the objects of his inquiry demand: to go into it in greater detail would perhaps be more laborious than his purposes require." 

 ³⁸On the nature and limits of common sense, see Eric Voegelin "About the Function of Noesis" pp. 211 - 13; and cf. Eric Voegelin, On the Form of the.4merican Mind, trans. Ruth Hein, in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Jurgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper, vol. I (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1995), pp. 29 ff. 

Secondly, while the use that Voegelin actually makes of noesis may not tell us what types of actions and policies are ethical, it may yet lead us to rule some out, at least indirectly. In the appendix to his essay "Reason: the Classic Experience," Voegelin presents the classical insights into the structure of consciousness on a grid. On the vertical axis, he places the hierarchical levels of being experienced in the human psyche: inorganic nature, vegetative nature, animal nature, passions, reason and divine nous. On the horizontal axis, he places the widening contexts of human consciousness in person, society, and history.³⁹ The directional flow of order in the diagram is important. On the vertical axis, order flows upward in a "foundational" way (one cannot have divine insights without an inorganic and vegetative nature as a foundation), but at the same time order flows downward in a "formative" way (the divine "informs" reason; reason "informs" the passions, and so on). On the horizontal axis, by contrast, order flows only in the foundational way from person through society to history. Now with these noetic insights in view, Voegelin articulates three fundamental principles "to be considered in any study of human affairs .⁴¹ The "principle of completeness" tells us not to view any single sector of the grid autonomously, neglecting the entire context.⁴¹The "principle of formation and foundation" tells us not to reverse or otherwise distort the directional order. And the "principle of metaxy reality tells us not to immanentize the experiences of a

³⁹Voegelin, "Reason: the Classic Experience," in Anamnesis, pp. 112, 113-115. The noetic differentiation of man's historical consciousness is Voegelin's own addition to the classical analysis.

 ⁴⁰ Ibid. p. 113. 

⁴¹ I do see possible grounds for a Voegelinian critique of Aristotle here: in isolating the human good in his study of ethics, and in seeking the noetic first principles of ethics without reference to the divine ground, Aristotle violates Voegelin's "principle of completeness". One line in Voegelin's "What is Nature" even hints at Voegelin's having intended such a criticism: "Aristotle's idea of man as an immanently formed thing having its fulfillment in a this-worldly happiness is something definitely influenced by [reduced to?] the model of an organism." (See "What is Nature?" p. 84.) But if Voegelin intended to make such a critique of Aristotle, it is muted, to say the least. 21

 Beyond by viewing divine perfection as something either in us or attainable in society or history. As these principles make clear, there is a certain applicability of theological-noetic insights to politics, but it is a merely negative one. Theological-noetic insights supply an "instrument of critique" by reference to which the fallacies and reductionisms of the ideologists become clear .⁴² Thus, insofar as actions and policies are motivated by systems of ideas, Voegelin's insights have political importance of the first order. Voegelin's philosophy may not tell the Nazi soldier how to act, but it will tell him in no uncertain terms that his political motivations are fallacious.

VOEGELIN AND ARISTOTLE WHAT IS NOETIC SCIENCE?

³ Ibid., I. xiv, M. 62-63, V, 13-14. 4 1 Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis, trans. Gerhart Niemeyer (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), p. 89-, Published Essays, 1966-1985, pp. 45-46, 265, 371-3 74.

⁴Order and History.,II,III,V,chap.1;Eric Voegelin. Published Essays, 1966-1985,vol. 12 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. ed. Ellis Sandoz (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. 1990), chap. 10; What is History? And Other Unpublished Writings. vol. 28 of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. ed Thomas A- Hollweck and Paul Caringella (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1990), chap. 5.

Indeed he suggests that we can substitute for "political science" - with its modem positivist and ideological connotations - the term "noetic interpreation" ⁵ If by "science" Voegelin means the more inclusive sense of the German Wissenschaft, which embraces more than modem natural science, then "noetic science" is simply the explication of the normative structure of human existence: that is, noetic science is the explication of the self-transcending process of cognitive, moral, and spiritual inquiry."⁶ Whenever the self-interpretation that is constitutive of the polity seeks to interpret its own intelligibility, norms, and ground, whenever we have such a critical interpretation of the self-interpretation of society, we have an attempt at "noetic exegesis."⁷

2. Voegelin and Aristotle

⁵Anamnesis. p. 146.

⁶ On Voegelin and Wissenschaft, see Manfred Henningsen. "Introduction" to Eric Voegelin. Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions. The View Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, vol. 5 of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000). p. 10.

⁷ Ibid., P. 148.

that the language of noetic science is that of 'linguistic indices," which explicate the "movement of
participation" in "nonobjective reality."⁸

If, however, this is what we take to be noetic science, we must consider whether this kind of science could possibly be what Aristotle means by science (episteme) and reason (nous).

Voegelin indeed claims that noetic science, as he conceives of it, is consonant with the basic direction and impetus of Aristotle's thought. Aristotle, he argues, portrays the dynamics of noetic; consciousness in a complex of symbols, ranging from those expressing human self-transcending unrest (''wonder"as the source of all science, the "desire to know" as a drive all humans share by nature, and the correlative "flight from ignorance") to those identifying the divine transcendent ground of unrest (the-pure act of nous)⁹ Aristotle, according to Voegelin, highlights the participatory nature of noetic consciousness in his treatment of the activity of nous as the process of immortalizing C-Making noetic life divine compared to human life) and in his insistence that the goals of political life are excellences which can be known only by the person who possesses them, the spoudaios.¹⁰

But a commonplace reading of various Aristotelian texts on episteme and nous would conclude that episteme is exclusively a matter of demonstrative knowledge and that nous, by total contrast, is an intuition of the indemonstrable principles of demonstration. In addition, many interpreters would presuppose that indemonstrable principles are foundational propositions upon which all definitions must be grounded. The connection of episteme and nous would seem to be an elusive one. If episteme is exclusively an ordered set of propositions, then how can there be a noetic science of the type Voegelin proposes? Would not such an Aristotelian science fall into the trap of

⁸ Ibid,,chap. 9.
⁹ Ibid, pp. 91-97.
¹⁰ Order and History, U1, 30 1.

what Voegelin would consider a propositionalist fallacy? Not only would this putative Aristotelian
science fail to do justice to the participatory nature of noetic consciousness but it would make a
retrieval of interiority highly problematic. Reinforcing this tendency is a traditionalist interpretation,
held by Ross among others, that would see Aristotle's account of the origin of universals as that of
a somewhat mechanical process from sense perception to memory to repeated experiences. ¹¹ Would
not noetic science, for Aristotle, be an oxymoron?

We are therefore faced with the question whether Voegelin had read too much of his own position into Aristotle. Behind this question, however, is a much more fundamental hermeneutical issue. Can an interpreter ever "read" Aristotle's meaning by some kind of simple perception of the text? The Hermeneutics of the Empty Head, the interpretive model favored, for example, in positivist circles, would locate a textual meaning "out there" to be looked at 'in here."¹² In fact, if interpreters have minds, their horizons will always come into play in their interpretations, and their horizons will include, explicitly or implicitly, philosophical assumptions - even in the case of pure philologists. But the richer, the more insightful, the horizon of the interpreter the richer, the more insightful, the interpretation.

¹¹Citations in Patrick Byme, Analysis and Science in Aristotle (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), p. 173, n. 27.

¹²Bernard Lonergan, Method in 7heology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), p. 157.

¹³Werner Jaeger, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik des Aristoleles (Berlin: Weidmann, 1912), pp. 138-148, cited approvingly by Joseph Owens, 7he Doctrine of Being in Aristotelian Metaphysics, 2^nd ed. (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1963), p. 75, and by W. D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1924), 1, xiv, n. 1.

demands philosophical insight on the part of the interpreter. The only relevant question is which
philosophical perspectives will be most successful in entering Aristotle's philosophical horizon: That
of Voegelin? That of conceptualists (for whom science equals a set of propositions)? Or that of
empiricists? It is interesting to note that both of the latter perspectives have frequently been adopted
by philologists, reflecting the contemporary climate of opinion.

It is the burden of this paper to show how a series of plausible interpretations of episeme and nous vindicate Voegelin's assertions about Aristotelian noetic science. It will be helpful, first, to trace briefly how in the pre-Aristotelian tradition the terms nous and 1heoros had religious and existential resonances. Our main focus will then be on the possibilities that episteme is not restricted to demonstrations and that it is intimately tied to the activity, potentialities, and habits of nous. In so doing we can shed fight on how nous could simultaneously be the principle of the principles of episteme, the dynamism of human inquiry, the norm of human existence, the participation in the divine, and the basis of authentic political life. We can also discern how, in one respect, nous transcends episteme but how, in another respect, it exhibits the rudimentary features of episteme.

Aristotle certainly coined words to fit his philosophical needs and distinctions. And yet he did not five in an historical vacuum. The terms nous and theoros - used extensively by Aristotle - had traditional meanings that conveyed a decidedly existential theme of a participatory movement of human quest and of divine presence.

Aristotle is a philosopher whose overriding insights come as a result of making incisive and powerful distinctions. He handles, for example, Parmenides' problem of motion by distinguishing between potential being and actual being. He solves numerous quandaries of the pre-Socratic nature philosophers by diftbrentiating four causes. So we must pay attention to the distinctions he brings to bear in his treatment of episteme and nous.

²¹Jager. "Theorizing," pp. 239-240; Navone. The Jesus Story. p. 105.

²²Jager, "Theorizing,", pp. 237-23 M

²⁶On Interpretation. I 16a4-9.
²⁷ Physics, III. 1 20la.28-29.
²⁸Posterior Analytics, II .19 100b5-17.

But the contrast between epsteme and nous in this passage is not an absolute one. Rather it is a contrast between episteme and nous precisely as "cognitive habits" (hai peri ten dianoian hexeis).'²⁹ The habit of episteme is the studied ability to work on a certain range of facts, to employ proofs about the facts, and to master sets of related proofs all pertaining to a unified field of inquiry. Episteme, in this sense, is the skill,
familiarity, and ease of one capable of drawing together interconnected demonstrations of reasoned
fact. One has at one's disposal for example, theorems that one retains in the background of one's
horizon, present habitually rather than actively. This habit of episteme, is not, however, an isolated
one, but, on the one hand, is grounded in lower habits that it both incorporates and subsumes and,
on the other hand, is, in turn , incorporated and subsumed by a still higher habit. The lower habits
that ground episteme are memory and "experience" (empeira).30 Memory is the drawing together
recurrently of sense perceptions. Empeira is the habitual association of memories of sense perception. Far from arguing for some mechanical model of universals as derived from sensations Aristotle is presenting the emergence of higher habits of the soul from lower habits.³¹ Just as empeira is a higher habit than memory since the person of "experience" can grasp a single connection, a logos, among different memories, making such a person of "experience" one capable of good judgments, so episteme is a higher habit of empeira. For episteme grasps the reason why of the connection. The person of experience, for example, may use various mathematical techniques, but the person of episteme, the mathematician, formulates precisely the operations and rules involved in the techniques. Without empeira there could be no material basis for episteme, but episteme transcends that basis.

29 Ibid . II. 19 100b5-6.
30 Ibid, II.19 99b38-100A9:Metaphysics, I.1 980B26-981a12
31 ByRNe, Analysis and Science in Aristotle. pp. 171-178.

So, too, nous as habit transcends episteme as habit. Nous as habit is the studied ability to penetrate
beyond the demonstrations of episteme to the pre-conceptual, pre-propositional intelligibility of the
reason why. Without the habitual familiarity with the sciences there would be no material basis for
nous as habit, but nous goes beyond episteme by grasping the undemonstrable principles.

We notice here that Aristotle's approach is to postulate dynamically interrelated sets of habits, ranging in ascending order from memories of sense perceptions, to empeira, to episteme, to nous. They give us a glimpse of the structure of human existence, an existence whose locus is the physical world but whose reach goes beyond increasingly into the nonmaterial realm: from the physical connections of memory, to the intelligible connections of empeira, to the reason why of the intelligible connections in episteme, to the reason why of the reason why in nous. But we must consider further distinctions of episteme and nous to witness an even further opening of the structure of human existence. 

4.2 Cognitive Acts

The paradox, and contradiction, disappears if we interpret episteme in this context as act.³³ For a cognitive act to be episternic it can meet either of two requirements: (1) it can know the cause

of a fact and that it could not be otherwise; and (2) it can be the answer to the scientific question, What is it?"³⁴ A clear example of such an epistemic act would be knowing a scientific demonstration, for a demonstration entails knowing that a fact is, knowing that it could not be otherwise, and knowing what it is. The knowing what it is (to ti estin) provides the middle term of a syllogism but its not itself ultimately the result of deduction; it is a pre-conceptual insight into a formal cause. While the insight plays off of images, it is not reducible to images, percepts, or sensations. Here Aristotle extends the meaning of science beyond an ordered set of propositions and rejects the reduction of scientific meaning to sense experiences, thereby avoiding both conceptualism and radical empiricism.

The meaning of science is extended still further, however, when episteme is applied to the type of cognitive act that grasps immediate principles. Knowing an immediate principle is to know that it is, what it is (formal cause), and that it cannot be other than it is (also formal cause). To know the principle of non-contradiction, for example, is precisely to know that it is, what it is, and that it cannot be other than it is. This kind of knowing thus meets the two criteria for an epistemic act adumbrated above. The startling conclusion, then, is that episteme can grasp indemonstrable principles. Is this not to say than such an act of episteme is also an act of nous and that therefore nous, in this sense, is science? And can we not, by extension, likewise call the epistemic act that grasps the middle term as noetic? Indeed Aristotle is quite unmistakable in identifying nous as the act of cognition (to noetikon) that grasps (noiei) the forms in the images.³⁵ Noetic consciousness therefore is inherently scientific consciousness.

36 lbid., III.5 430al4-15.

37 W. K- C. Guthrie. A History of Greek Philosophy. 6 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 198 1). VI, 315. n. 1.

38De Anima, III.5 430al4ff.

40 Generation of.4nimals. 11.3 736b5-8.

⁴¹Bvrne. Analysis and Science in Aristotle. pp. 167-169: that the Divine Nous is the mover of creative intelligence is the thesis of Jonathan Lear. Aristotle: the Desire to Understand (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).

images to move nous to receive intelligible forms. The relation of nous to reality, then, is not one of
passive perception but rather one of active engagement. Mind is not, for Aristotle, a mirror of nature.
Nous is able "to make and become all things" because the horizon of wonderment is an expansive,
sel-transcending horizon correlative to the unrestrictedness of the desire to know that is embedded
in human nature.⁴² Nous itself is also the norm of scientific inquiry and thus its inherent principle.
Nous, as wonderment, sets the criteria for the asking of scientific questions; nous, as passive potential,
sets the criteria for the answering of scientific questions and hence the criteria of scientific
propositions and scientific demonstrations.⁴³ This means that the standard for what makes episteme
episteme is the luminosity of nous.

4.4 Nous as Episteme

To be sure, if episteme were solely demonstrative, then noetic science might be an oxymoron. The gap between the indemonstrable nous and demonstrable episteme would be a chasm. For how could the undemonstrable shed fight on the demonstrable? Conversely, how could there be a demonstration of the undemonstrable? And, furthermore, how could the demonstrable demonstrate itself? And the undemonstrable explain itself? But in the face of these apparent quandaries we have the luminosity of nous as the measure of science. The quandaries arise from the horizon of conceptualism, which demands that the essence of science be an ordered set of propositions. Wonder, on the contrary, is the source of science, and wonderment causes the reception of intelligible forms.

Moreover, noetic inquiry about episteme bears the hallmarks of episteme in its proper and

42 Metaphyics, I. I 98W2.
43Byme, Analysis and Science in Aristotle. p. 187.

extended meaning. For nous affirms that episteme - both as epistemic acts that grasp forms and as
habits of demonstration - is a fact and that it cannot be otherwise than it is; and nous inquires about
what it is. More remarkable and startling is the sense in which noetic inquiry about nous likewise
bears the hallmarks of episteme. Nous is a fact; it cannot be otherwise than it is; and inquiry about
it asks what it is.. Noetic discourse about episteme and nous surely follows the same cognitive and
logical laws that govern episteme, for the source is the same: nous.

4.5 The Self-Luminosity of Nous

And yet we must not lose sight of the absolutely unique status of nous in the structure of human existence. We can consider nous again in terms of Aristotle's threefold distinction of potentialities, habits, and acts. As potentiality it is dynamic; as habit it is self-transcending; as act it is divine-like perfection. All these characteristics are interconnected as part of a unity.

Noetic science in asking the question what is nous is asking about the dynamic principle of human nature. Nous, with its acts, potentialities, and habits, is the self-transcending normative principle of change and rest in human life. While the contemplative fife seeks knowledge for its own sake, employs scientific demonstrations, and focuses on the universal and the necessary, and while the practical fife seeks action, employs the "practical syllogism," and focuses on the particular and the contingent, these differences should not obscure the fact that they both share what is highest in human life. They both participate in the self-transcending normative process of questioning, which ranges from involvement with the images of physical things to the self-luminosity of the pure act of nous. They both share in noetic consciousness. All the virtues, both theoretical and practical, are inherently interrelated.⁵⁶ This means that in authentic political life - a kind of phronesis that Aristotle calls the virtue of political wisdom - that which is best and divine in us is actualized. ⁵⁷ The subject matter of political science therefore concerns the participation of human nous in the activity of the Divine Nous.

5. Limits of Aristotle's Analysis

58 Bernard Lonergm, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas. vol. 2 of Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert NL Doran (Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 1997), pp. 2-5.

59 DeAnima. M4 415al4-20: Lonergan, Verbum. pp. 4-5.

Another barrier Aristotle erects to an ample treatment of noetic consciousness is his identification of being with substance.⁶¹ This may be rooted, as Voegelin argues, in Aristotle's "immanentizing" tendency, the propensity to divinize the eternal recurrence of cosmic order, the positing of a transcendent, completely immaterial unmoved mover notwithstanding. ⁶² In any event, the distinction of essence and existence, such as Aquinas, for example, makes, would seem to provide metaphysical categories better suited to addressing the participatory nature of noetic consciousness.⁶³ Aquinas equates being with to-be (esse). Only divine transcendence is pure to-be; all other beings exist by participation in pure to-be. Aquinas' metaphysics, of course, was still attached to an Aristotelian faculty psychology, so that his philosophy could not fully exploit his metaphysical distinction of essence and existence to explore human interiority.⁶⁴

Whatever the limits of Aristotle's analysis of noetic consciousness, noetic science does pervade the Aristotelian corpus, and to recognize it is not to read into Aristotle's text some idiosyncratic philosophical position. The contemporary task is rather to appropriate the insights of Aristotle about noetic consciousness and in appropriating the insights to develop his ideas so as to transcend his limitations.

Since the time of Aristotle Christian pneumatic consciousness has radically emphasized both divine transcendence of the cosmos and human participation in divine presence; the recent study of comparative religion has indicated parallels in other religious traditions; Aquinas, Schelling, and Kierkegaard have differentiated essence and existence; the Scientific Revolution has discovered a universe that is no longer a cosmos of eternal recurrence; phenomenology has replaced faculty
psychology; and historical consciousness has expanded the theological and political horizons. In fight
of these developments the task today is to transpose Aristotle's noetic science into a philosophy of
consciousness. And this, of course, is what Voegelin has attempted to do, moved by the spirit of
wonderment in the face of the disorder of his time.

⁶¹ Etienne Gawn, Being and Some Philosophers. 2nd ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies1952), chap. 2..
⁶² Order and History, III 307-310, 362-366.

⁶³ David B. Burrell. Knowing the Unknowable God.- Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1986.
⁶⁴Lonergan. Verbum, "Introductiom"

The foundation of political science, for Voegelin is neither a set of propositions nor a set of observations about objects in the external world. It is the concrete consciousness of a concrete person. Or rather it is the concrete consciousness of a concrete person under certain concrete, existential conditions.⁶⁵ For human consciousness ordinarily exhibits intentionality - which Voegelin defines as awareness of objects in the spatial field, as befitting the embodied nature of human consciousness.⁶⁶ But human consciousness can also exhibit luminosity when the concrete consciousness is of a concrete person engaging in the concrete process of questioning.⁶⁷ The more radical and open the questioning - the more it questions about the meaning of human life, the more it searches for the ground of human existence - the more self-reflective can the luminosity be. Luminosity is therefore an inherently participatory act. It is, moreover, a participatory act that is experienced as a theophanic event at the intersection of time and the timeless.⁶⁸ The horizon of luminosity is the horizon of an incarnate inquirer in search of the transcendent ground of existence. ⁶⁹ This horizon, according to Voegelin, using the materials of the phenomenology of comparative religion, is that of the Greek mystic philosophers, including Aristotle, but it equally embraces the spiritual quests expressed, in more differentiated fashion, in the writings of the Israelite prophets, the Gospels, and the Pauline Epistles and, in less differentiated fashion, in the Upanishads, the teachings of the Buddha, the Amon hymns, and Babylonian incantations.⁷⁰ Voegelin's philosophy of
consciousness explores noetic consciousness directly without the cage of a faculty psychology pr the
intrusion of metaphysical categories. Informed by phenomenology and modern existentialist concerns
it is also quite consonant with Aquinas-focus on being as the act of existing.

⁶⁵ Anamnesis, chap. 11.

⁶⁶ Order and History, V, 14-16.

⁶⁷ Ibid

⁶⁸ Anamnesis, chap. 7; Published Essays 1966.-1985. chaps. 3. 7.

⁶⁹See Glenn Hughes, Mystery and Myth in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), chap. 2.

 ⁷⁰Order and History, I 85-87, chap. 13,. IV, chap. 5, 316-330- Published Essays 1966-1985, chap. 7, p. 294.

The philosophy of consciousness is the foundation of political science because the participatory consciousness of questioning is the source of order in both personal existence and the fife of the polity. To ignore the normative status of noetic consciousness, including its spiritual dimensions, is to ignore the most substantial element of political existence. Indeed when political science, and intellectual culture as a whole, ignores, distorts, or denies noetic consciousness, then it is an active accomplice to the cumulative cycle of decline. Since, in Voegelin's view, this is, in fact, what modem political science and modern intellectual culture have done, it is incumbent upon him, as a genuine political scientist, above all else, to restore noetic science under the unpropitious historical conditions of the modem situation.

⁷¹ Eric Voegelin, Me Nature of Law and Related Legal Writings. vol. 27 of Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Robert Anthony Pascal, James Lee Babui, and John William Corrington (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 199 1 X pp. 70-71; Hider and the Germans, tram. Defley Clemens and Brendan Purcell, vol. 31 of77te Collected Works o Enc Voegelin (Columbia: Unviersity of Missouri Press~ 1999), pp. 79-80: Thomas L McPardand, Authenticity and Transcendence: Lonergan and Voegelin an Political Authority (paper presented at Lonergan Philosophical Society, Sam Clara University, October 29, 1999), pp. 50-75.

⁷⁴ History of Political Ideas, 111. chap. 19; The New Science of Politics, pp. 121-123.

Voegelin's own focus on the authorities of reason and of spirit also avoids such a utopian deformation of reality. The norms of noetic consciousness are not abstractions that dwell in some noetic heaven. They are concretely operative in the process of history - or if concretely inoperative, there are dire historical consequences. Voegelin, inspired by Max Weber's lecture on "Science as a Vocation," pours vast erudition into his study of reason and spirit, an endeavor in which he attempts to incorporate the most recent historical scholarship.⁷⁶ His monumental History of Political Ideas is not a conventional history of political ideas because it is a genuine history. It does not treat political ideas as freely floating abstractions or as reified doctrines. As mentioned above, political ideas, for Voegelin, are critical responses to historical crises in which the evocations of society have lost their luster. He locates intellectual and religious developments in their political contexts, and he displays remarkable insight and sensitivity in relating the political contexts to technological, demographic, economic, and social factors. Unlike most orthodox histories of medieval political ideas, for example, which skip from Augustine to Aquinas, Voegelin devotes considerable attention to the German Migrations.⁷⁷ He relates the rise of millennialist sentiments to the expansion of urban

⁷⁷ Eric Voegelin. History of Political Ideas, vol. 2, The Middle Ages to Aquinas, ed. Peter von Sivers, vol. 20 of 77ie Collected Works of Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), chap. 12, vol. 2, 77ze Middle Ages to Aquinas, ed. Peter von Sivers, vol. 20 of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press 1997), chap.2.

⁸¹ Eric Voegelin. History of Political Ideas, vol. 6, Revolution and the New Science, ed Barry Cooper. vol. 24 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin (Columbia. University of Missouri Press, 1998), pp. 31-34.

⁸²Anamnesis, p. 92; Published Essays 1966-1985, p. 268.

⁸³ Ibid

But as dedicated as Voegelin is to empirical sobriety he never loses sight of the core philosophical issue in political science: authority is not exhausted by power but also must be reported in reason and in spirit. In addition to the polity's representation as a power on the field of history there is the polity's representation of transcendent truth through the evocations of reason and spirit.⁸⁴ And when the entire texture of modem civilization has been to downgrade reason into merely instrumental reason and either to deny spirit or to fuse it diabolically into totalitarian revolutionary movements, then, as Voegelin's entire corpus attests, noetic science must proclaim the proper roles of reason and spirit in political existence. From the beginning of Voegelin's career we witness this calling. In opposition to his teacher, Hans Kelsen, whose positivistic formal theory of law investigated law in terms of the horizon in which it operated, Voegelin in the 1930's searched for the "existential experiences" that gave rise to the horizon. He urged a "transformation of the dogmatic system of natural right into an analysis of existential experiences that made regulation of certain institutions.... the inevitable component of any legal order.⁸⁵ Voegelin's search for "existential experiences" led to his restoration of noetic science in the form of his philosophy of consciousness. And thus the prime task of Voegelin's philosophy of consciousness is the restoration of noetic consciousness as the central concern of political science in response to the disorder of the age.

⁸⁴The New Science of Politics, chap. 2.