{Both Pascal the existential Russian blue cat and I have been attempting for some time to grasp the complex ideas of the late Eric Voegelin. As we are both now exhausted by the effort, we have called in Professor Arguendo to see what he can make of ‘Anamnesis,’ a book in which Voegelin explored the nature of consciousness in somewhat the same manner as Augustine explored the nature of time.}
“The analysis of consciousness is a dead end.” (Eric Voegelin)
“Man’s conscious existence is an event within reality.” (Eric Voegelin)
Arguendo, it appears, from my cursory examination of 'Anamnesis,' that Eric Voegelin came to believe—after years of attempting to understand human existence through the study of history, politics, and philosophy—that he needed to focus instead on a basic theory of consciousness: what is “consciousness,” what does it mean to be “conscious,” how and why are we “conscious”?
And so Voegelin waded into the treacherous and largely unmapped terrain of human consciousness. Not unlike scholars who are said to gaze into the well of history and see their own reflection, Voegelin may have identified his consciousness, but not necessarily mine, or, for that matter, yours:
By virtue of their consciousness, human beings are aware of being parts of a comprehensive reality, of which they express their awareness by the symbols of birth and death, of a cosmic whole structured by realms of being, of a world of external objects and of the presence of divine reality in the cosmos, of mortality and immortality, of creation into the cosmic order and of salvation from its disorder, of descent into the depth of the psyche and meditative ascent toward its beyond. Within this rich field of reality-consciousness, there occur the processes of wondering, questing, and seeking, of being moved and drawn into the search by a consciousness of ignorance, which, in order to be sensed as ignorance, requires an apprehension of something worthy of being known; of an appeal to which man can lovingly respond or not so lovingly deny himself; of the joy of finding and the despair of having lost the direction; of the advance of truth from the compact to the differentiated experiences and symbols; and of the great breakthroughs of insight through visions of the prophetic, the philosophic, and the Christian-apostolic type. In brief, Man’s conscious existence is an event within reality, and Man’s consciousness is quite conscious of being constituted by the reality of which it is conscious. Intentionality is a substructure within the comprehensive consciousness of a reality that becomes luminous for its truth in the consciousness of Man.
With all due respect, count me among those who have never been aware of "divine reality in the cosmos" or of any "salvation" from the disorder of existence.
Arguendo, the problem with Voegelin’s search for a theory of consciousness is that it was undermined from the outset by his recognition that “Human consciousness is always the concrete consciousness of concrete persons,” a claim which, if true, means that each human consciousness is unique and that there can be, therefore, no such thing as a universal or generalized “human consciousness”. Voegelin certainly knew this, just as he knew (and said) that abstractions like “mankind” do not exist other than as a linguistic shorthand. Like such fanciful notions as “truth,” “justice,” and “the American way,” “human consciousness” is a concept, not an existent entity. Voegelin did what he could to resolve the seeming contradiction:
If abstract statements about the structure of consciousness were to be accepted as true, they had first to be recognized as true in the concrete. Their truth rested on the concrete experiences of reality by concrete human beings who were able to articulate their experience of reality and of their own role as participants in it, and thus engender the language of consciousness.
However, just as one can never step into the same river twice, “concrete experiences of reality” can never be identical for more than one subjective consciousness; in fact, you and I, given our different consciousnesses, cannot step into the same river at all. Moreover, the articulation of experience is not the same as the experience itself, not to mention (though Voegelin does mention it) that language itself is full of pitfalls, not the least of which is reification (mistaking words for things).
Arguendo, Voegelin wanted to have his cake and eat it too:
The truth of consciousness was both abstract and concrete. The process of verification had to penetrate, therefore, through the engendered symbols to the engendering experience; and the truth of the experience had to be ascertained by a responsive experience that could verify or falsify the engendering experience. Even worse, the process was further burdened with the impossibility of separating language and experience as independent entities. The truth of consciousness, its verification and advance, could not be identified with either the truth of statements or the truth of experience; it revealed itself through participation in reality and it was essentially historical.
Arguendo, and I may well be mistaken, Voegelin here seems to have been saying that the proof is in the pudding; experiences—let us say, theophanies, which Voegelin took very seriously—can only be verified/validated by incorporating them into the life of the recipient (Abraham, Moses, Jesus, etc.) and the life of anyone else who wishes in turn to verify for themselves their truth value. This leads Voegelin to admit that “Truth must be sought not in a theory of consciousness, but concretely in the constitution of the responding and verifying consciousness; and that concrete consciousness is always one’s own. A philosopher, then, must engage in an anamnetic exploration of his own consciousness to discover its constitution by his own experiences of reality.”
By “anamnetic exploration of consciousness,” Voegelin meant tracing one’s consciousness as far back as one could toward its origins, because each individual consciousness is shaped from birth by its experiences. Anamnetic exploration would require serious introspection:
This exploration could not stop short at more recent enrichments of one’s consciousness by learning or by the observation of events, because one’s manner of response to learning and events was precisely what needed to be clarified. The exploration had to go as far back as memory would allow, to reach the strata of reality-consciousness that had been the least overlaid by later accretions. Anamnesis had to capture the childhood experiences that let themselves be captured because they remained living forces in the present constitution of his consciousness.
Arguendo, the child is father to the man; also, “Rosebud”. Having figured that much out, Voegelin then conducted his own “anamnetic experiments,” aka trips down memory lane:
My earliest recollection takes me back to Cologne. My mother took me along on her shopping trips. In a bakery, the saleslady expressed proper admiration for the little creature (me) who could hardly walk, and she asked about my age. My mother informed her: fourteen months. I recall a general feeling of pride about the attention paid to me and a feeling of special significance. This recollection is neither supported nor influenced by information on the part of my family. As far as I know, I first told it when I was more than twenty years old, evoking only the incredulity of my parents.
The memory, and the feelings Voegelin attached to them, is touching; but it does not seem to provide much basis for scientific investigation. Arguendo, it likely did not occur to Eric Voegelin that consciousness is the thing with feathers, or that developing a “theory of consciousness” is akin to trying to catch the wind.
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