Avoiding a Voegelinian Scholasticism

by James M. Rhodes

[A recent comment by Professor Rhodes posted at the evforum online seems important enough to publish here for the benefit of a larger audience..]

[We need to] recognize that Voegelin is analyzing [Greek] thinkers who appropriated the common Greek meanings of [various] terms for special uses, to designate specific movements of the spirit. Then stop worrying about the words and concentrate on the designated movements. It is important to grasp the movements of the spirit that occurred in the cases analyzed, not the words for their own sakes.

[Above all we need to] avoid falling into a new, Voegelinian scholasticism. Do NOT reify either the words or the movements of the spirit analyzed. Kierkegaard's "physician of souls" cannot compile a DSM-IV* of the spirit, as if allotriosis could be a syndrome parallel, say, to schizophrenia, always with such and such characteristics, traceable to certain damaged genes or chemical imbalances or what have you. The spirit can devise infinite possibilities of messing up. New ones will always come along. So, confine the words appropriated for the cases analyzed to the cases analyzed. If you apply them to new cases, note well the analogous character of your usage. Concentrate on the reality under observation, whatever words you find to describe it.

Lastly, take Plato's example and to the greatest extent possible avoid the creation of a technical vocabulary. Use ordinary language to talk to ordinary people. Generally, people are not impressed or enlightened by terms that they do not understand. "Periagoge," for example, was not a weighty technical term when Plato used it, nor did he mean it to become that. It just meant "turning around." When you talk to your students, just say "turning around."      

*  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition