The Loss of  the Concrete

[There was an intellectual and moral decline in English society from the late 17th century onward despite material prosperity.]  [These] two symptoms characterize the amplitude of the loss of the concrete. . . The concrete is lost with regard to the fundamental orientation of existence through faith, and it is lost with regard to the system of symbols and concepts by which the orientation of existence is expressed.  The two losses are related to each other because the loss of orientation through faith prevents the creation and clarification of symbols, and at the same time the perversion of meaning in the realm of symbols and concepts prevents the return to the orienting experiences.  The devastation is far-reaching. . . .

[The contemporary critic Bishop George] Berkeley focused his diagnosis in the symbols of materialism and freethinking, and we shall follow his analysis.  We shall accept the two symbols as signifying the principal sources of confusion, and we shall lend them a preliminary precision by defining them as materialization of the external world and psychologization of the self.

The Materialization of the External World

By materialization of the external world we mean the misapprehension that the structure of the external world as it is constituted in the system of mathematized physics is the ontologically real structure of the world. The tendency of mistaking the laws of mechanics for the structure of the world makes itself felt strongly even by the middle of the seventeenth century under the influence of Galileo's discoveries and even more so under the influence of Cartesian physics.

. . . . The movement gains its full momentum, however, only with the publication of Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, of 1687. The impact of this masterful systematization of mechanics on his contemporaries, coming at a time when the sources of an active faith were drying up, must have had a force that is difficult to reproduce imaginatively today. To a spiritually feeble and confused generation, this event transformed the universe into a huge machinery of dead matter, running its course by inexorable laws of Newton's mechanics. The earth was an insignificant corner in this vast machinery, and the human self was a still more insignificant atom in this corner. . . .

The obliteration of the substance of nature through the
propositions of mathematized science that could still be resisted at the
beginning of the seventeenth century had become  an almost accomplished social fact at the beginning of the eighteenth century.  The obliteration had been so thorough that Western thought has not completely recovered from the blow even today.

The first shock, of course, wore off, and the recovery of substance became the preoccupation of the foremost Western thinkers. Nevertheless, from the age of Newton the great cleavage runs through the Western world between the thinkers who submit to the "fallacy of misplaced concreteness" (as Whitehead has named this philosophical mistake) and those who can free themselves of it. It is not an exaggeration to say that in the history of Western civilization Newton's Principia Mathematica is at least as important as the cause of the great schism in Western thought as it is important in the advancement of science.

Psychologization of the Self

By psychologization of the self we mean the misapprehension that through reflection on the stream of consciousness, and on the experiences given in it, the nature of man or the substance of the self can become known. This second misapprehension is closely related to the first one. When man no longer experiences himself as embedded substantially in the cosmos, when the unity of creation that embraces man is torn asunder into a perceived structure of the world and a perceiving self, problems peculiar to Cartesian and post-Cartesian metaphysical speculation arise. When the experience of substantial participation of man in the world is interrupted, doubts arise about whether the reality as it appears to the perceiving subject is indeed the reality of the external world, and if the reality of an external world is assumed, intricate problems of the relation between the external world and the self impose themselves.

Historically they appear in the speculation of Malebranche and Leibniz under the title of the psychophysical problem. The self has become a consciousness that by sensations and ideas refers to an external world—though it remains enigmatic how the external world can affect consciousness in such a manner that sensations and ideas are produced. It remains equally enigmatic why the reference of these images to an external world should be considered trustworthy.

If the idea of psychologization were carried out consistently in a philosophical system, the result would be a strict solipsism of a stream of consciousness with complete annihilation of all reality outside the stream. This radical possibility, however, need not concern us here because it does not occur in any historically relevant instance. In the historical situation at the beginning of the eighteenth century all instances of psychologization compromise to some degree with reality.

The degree of the compromise is a historical problem, and correspondingly so is the degree of destruction of reality. As the minimum of compromise the situational pressure induces the acceptance of the external world, at least so far as it enters into the system of Newtonian physics. The Lockean compromise with its distinction of primary and secondary qualities is typical. Primary qualities are solidity, extension, figure, motion, number, etc.; these qualities are "really" in bodies whether our senses perceive them or not. Secondary qualities such as color, heat, light, etc., do not exist "really" but are sensations in the stream of consciousness. ^FN

Beyond this minimum of acceptance the field of variants opens richly. With profound disturbances of the elementary experiences of participation in the cosmos, even the reality of the realm of matter becomes doubtful. Such disturbances cause particularly deep ravages with regard to transcendental reality because the persuasive assurance lent to the reality of the realm of matter by means of the pragmatic tests of experiment and astronomical observation does not exist for transcendental reality.

With regard to the radical transcendence of the world there is only genuine participation through the trembling experience of faith as substance and proof of things unseen (Hebrews 11:1). Moreover, the symbolism of the dogma has grown historically as the expression of nuances of active faith. When the light of faith is extinguished, the dogmatic symbols lose their luminosity of meaning and become a dead letter, a jungle of logical inconsistencies, and a collection of unverifiable propositions. When the symbols no longer glow with the inner light of faith, the time has come for their examination under the external light of reason.

The symbolization of transcendental reality does not stand up too well under the light of reason. But again: there is no complete annihilation but rather a gamut of compromises. Never was there a greater penumbra of thought than when men were enlightened, because reason itself, by whose light the mysteries of religion were to be examined, was a historically somewhat sputtering notion. The reason that emerges in the philosophy of Locke and of his Deistic followers and successors is not a well-defined function of the human mind but a gradually thinning, secularist derivation of the Christian logos.

The antithesis of the light of faith that fills the religious symbols with meaning from within, and of the light of reason by which they are examined from without, must be understood historically as signifying two terms of a series of notions that paper over in spurious continuity the real distance between them. The rationalism of Lockean reason develops gradually out of the suprarationalism of the Christian logos.    

FN. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975), bk. II, chap. 7, "Of Simple Ideas of Both Sensation and Reflection," 128 ff.

Revolution and the New Science

CW  Vol 24  (History of Political Ideas, Vol VIII)
Chapter 4  The English Quest for the Concrete

§2  The Loss of the Concrete
pp 163-167.

This quote is taken from a collection of  Voegelin quotations which can be found HERE