The following message was written by Jim Rhodes and posted at his request:
I suggest starting with the basic Greek meanings. Check
Liddell and Scott. Allotriosis means estrangement, loss of
substance, thus, estrangement from one's own substance. A
rather specialized word that must have an interesting
history. Apostrophe means turning back or away from, with a
flavor of hostility toward that from which one has turned.
Periagoge means turning around. So does epistrophe, except
that it also carries a sense of returning to something as
you turn around.
Next, recognize that Voegelin is analyzing thinkers who
appropriated the common Greek meanings of those 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.
Third, above all,
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.
Fourth, 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
to become that. It just meant "turning around." When you
talk to your students, just say "turning around."
I hope this helps.
Best wishes,
Jim
