Noetic Science —Part 3
by Thomas J. McPartland
Thomas McPartland is Professor and Chairman of the Whitney Young School of Honors and Liberal Studies at Kentucky State University in Frankfort. This essay is taken from his book, Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence, which appears in the Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy, and is available from the University of Missouri Press. This chapter and the related succeeding chapter appear in five parts, with permission of the publisher.
Limits of Aristotle's Analysis
If we can extrapolate this core of noetic science from the writings of Aristotle with some plausibility, we nevertheless should not be surprised that it has been muddled, overlooked, or even denied by commentators and philosophers. Aristotle, however, has himself contributed to the confusion. Aristotle first develops terminology applicable to the most generic discipline possible: that which deals with being as being. From the Metaphysics he then can gather terms for his investigation of being as changing, his Physics.
From both the Metaphysics and the Physics he can employ terms in his study of being as self-changing, his De Anima. This hierarchy of disciplines causes problems when he reaches the specifics of the human situation. When he examines, for example, nous, he is examining a principle of rational self-change, but the categories of metaphysics, physics, and psychology cannot do strict justice to the nuances of noetic consciousness. The faculty psychology Aristotle relies upon differentiates souls by potencies, potencies by acts, acts by objects, and objects by either efficient or final cause.
This approach will strain any attempt to explore such "elusive" aspects of noetic consciousness as self-transcendence, interiority and spiritual presence.36 And the language of faculty psychology might not be very suggestive of an "exegesis" of "nonobjective reality." It can easily tempt one to look at nous as part of a system or as a theoretical object "out there." This temptation will become more acute if one interprets episteme as an ordered set of propositions. Voegelin notes how Aristotle's use of such categories from his metaphysics and physics as matter and form hampers his investigation of political topics (for example, constitutional order) and contributes to a "derailment" of his political philosophy.37
Another barrier Aristotle erects to an ample treatment of noetic consciousness is his identification of being with substance.38 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.39 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. 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's 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. 40
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 light 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.
Noetic Science as Philosophy of Consciousness
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.41 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. Human consciousness, however, can also exhibit luminosity when the concrete consciousness is of a concrete person engaging in the concrete process of questioning.42 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.43
The horizon of luminosity is the horizon of an incarnate inquirer in search of the transcendent ground of existence. 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.44 Voegelin's philosophy of consciousness explores noetic consciousness directly without the cage of a faculty psychology or the intrusion of metaphysical categories. Informed by phenomenology and modern existentialist concerns, it is also quite consonant with Aquinas's focus on being as the act of existing.
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 life 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 modern 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 modern situation.
This supreme task of restoration should not, however, lead us to conclude that Voegelin does not appreciate the more "earthly" features of political existence. He commends the proemium of the Institutes of Justinian for dividing authority into three facets: power, reason, and spirit.45 Power concerns internal order and defense against external enemies. If a polity has the authority rooted in power, it has articulated itself as an agent that can act in history, and it, accordingly, has "existential representation," an institutional embodiment of its capacity for action.46 Articulation and representation have technological, economic, social, and cultural preconditions. Here it is quite appropriate to examine the polity in terms of efficient cause. It is precisely this manner that Aristotle conducts empirical investigations to shed light on how to avoid "revolutions" and how to promote the stability of a regime by considering such factors as the form of government and the degree of participation of citizens.
Voegelin, too, is acutely aware of the authority of power. Indeed, he praises the insight of such "realist" thinkers as Machiavelli and Hobbes into the exigencies of power and admires their avoidance of moralizing clichés.47 Not surprisingly, Voegelin is totally conversant in his writings with the major political trends throughout history from the Mesopotamian city-states to the cold war. He traces in great detail, for example, the articulation of the English polity in the late Middle Ages, arguing that its parliamentary style of representation was based upon historical accidents. He shows in a book-length study that, by contrast, his own Austria after World War I had no adequate political articulation.48 As a result, Voegelin insists, its appropriate constitution is an authoritarian one. To impose democratic self-rule would be to foster the collapse of the incipient political society and would succumb to Utopian formalism, if not Utopian fancy.
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 "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.49 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. He relates the rise of millenarian sentiments to the expansion of urban population in the High Middle Ages. He views the popularity of Luther's ideas as, in part, a function of the printing press. He pinpoints the traumatic influence of Tamerlaine's conquests on the political sensitivity of Renaissance political theorists. He sees the Enlightenment project of establishing a new meaning of Western civilization as a response to a complex of such historical factors as global exploration, commercial expansion, religious fragmentation, and nation-state building.50
Voegelin's enterprise does justice to the full range of noetic consciousness, which can well up from the unconscious, gain insight into images, and ultimately reflect on its own luminosity. His approach is consonant with Aristotle's idea of human reality as a "synthetic nature," stretching from the apeironic depths, through inorganic nature, vegetable nature, animal nature, the passionate psyche, the noetic psyche, to the divine Nous. All in all, he clearly follows the empirical bent of Aristotle (not to be confused with modern empiricism). This is illustrated not only by Voegelin's interest in and grasp of detail but also in his quite Aristotelian procedure of relating means to ends in light of the details. Again, as a case in point, Voegelin's comprehensive rationale for an authoritarian Austrian constitution is based on his assessment of what in the concrete circumstances of post-World War I Austria would best nurture democratic habits by a kind of political education. Voegelin, however, in one important respect expands the empirical range beyond that of Aristotle by addressing in a more explicit and thematic way the historical dimension of human existence.51
Nonetheless, 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 rooted 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.52 And when the entire texture of modern 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 1930s 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."
53 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.
[Part 4 will appear next week. Read Part 2]
NOTES
36. Verbum, 2-5. On Aristotle's differentiation of the soul, see Aristotle, De Anima 2.4.415al4-20.
37. Voegelin, Order and History, 3:333—35.
38. Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, chap. 2.
39. Voegelin, Order and History, 3:307-10, 362-66.
40. On Aquinas's focus on esse, see David B. Burrell, Knowing the Unknowable God: Ibn-Sina, Maimonides, Aquinas; on Aquinas's faculty psychology, see Verbum, intro.
41. Voegelin, Anamnesis, chap. 11.
42. On "Intentionality" and "luminosity,"see Voegelin, Order and History, 5:14-16.
43. Voegelin, Anamnesis, chap. 7; Voegelin, Published Essays, 1966-1985, chaps. 3, 7.
44. On the horizon of the search, see Glenn Hughes, Mystery and Myth in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin, chap. 2; Voegelin, Order and History, 1:85-87, chap. 13; 4: chap. 5, pp. 316-30; Voegelin, Published Essays, 1966-1985, chap. 7, p. 294.
45. Voegelin, The Nature of Law and Related Legal Writings, 70-71; Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans, 79-80; Thomas J. McPartland, "Authenticity and Transcendence: Lonergan and Voegelin on Political Authority," 50-75.
46. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, chap. 1; Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 3, The Late Middle Ages, ed. David Walsh, vol. 21 of Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, 145-54.
47. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 4, Renaissance and Reformation, ed. David L. Morse and William M. Thompson, vol. 22 of Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, chap. 1; Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 5, Religion and the Rise of Modernity, ed. James L. Wiser, vol .23 of Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, 248; Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 7, The New Order and Last Orientation, ed. Jürgen Gebhardt and Thomas A. Hollweck, vol. 25 of Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, chap. 1; Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:228; Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 179; Voegelin, Modernity without Restraint, 234.
48. On the articulation of English political society, see Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 3: chap. 19; Voegelin, New Science of Politics, 38-45; Voegelin, Modernity without Restraint, 117-23. For contrast, see Voegelin, The Authoritarian State: An Essay on the Problem of the Austrian State, trans. Ruth Hein, vol. 4 of Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Gilbert Weiss, commentary by Erika Weinzierl.
49. The abundant bibliographical materials in Voegelin's History of Political Ideas and Order and History amply demonstrate this. But, to cite anecdotal evidence, when Voegelin visited the University of Washington to deliver a series of lectures, I, then a graduate student, was asked to direct him to Prof. Carol Thomas, an expert in Mycenaean and Dark Age Greek history, since Voegelin wanted to keep up on the latest developments in this field. Thomas's work has recently been published (Carol G. Thomas and Craig Conant, Citadel to City-State: The Transformation of Greece, 1200-700 b.c.e.).
50. On the German migrations, see Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 2, The Middle Ages to Aquinas, chap. 12. On the urban context of medieval millennialism, see History of Political Ideas, 4:150-51. On Tamerlaine and the Renaissance, 218-20. On Luther and the printing press, 43-55. On the historical context of the Enlightenment, see Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, vol. 6, Revolution and the New Science, ed. Barry Cooper, vol. 24 of Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, 31-34.
51. Voegelin, Anamnesis, 92; Voegelin, Published Essays, 1966-1985, 268.
52. Voegelin, New Science of Politics, chap. 2; Voegelin, Modernity without Restraint, 129-48.
53. Voegelin, Race and State, 4.
