Voegelin’s Noetic Science

Aristotle, Voegelin, and the Philosophy of Consciousness

Perhaps more than any other philosopher in the twentieth century, Eric Voegelin has offered a philosophy of consciousness that parallels and complements that of [Bernard] Lonergan. Voegelin, whose life spanned much of the twentieth century, was educated in a German philosophical environment that emphasized neo-Kantian methodologies and Husserl’s transcendental ego. Voegelin’s own philosophical development took him beyond the perspectives of these restricted horizons, as he would come to view them, to consider the true experiential origins of order in personal life and in historical existence. Voegelin’s prodigious scholarly work in numerous volumes of his history of political ideas and his history of symbols, comparable in scope to that of Toynbee’s, had as its motivating center his philosophy of consciousness.¹

The foundation of philosophy, for Voegelin, is, as we shall explore later in this chapter, neither propositions nor observations but the concrete consciousness of a concrete person. More exactly, it is the concrete consciousness of a concrete person engaged in the process of inquiry that has no bounds save those of the radical scope of questioning itself, that questions up to the very ground of existence, that operates in an expanding horizon primordially open to transcendence. Breaking, as does Lonergan, from the model of subject confronting object, Voegelin stresses that concrete consciousness is participatory consciousness. Self-transcending consciousness participates in the very transcendence it seeks. This means, then, that there is no privileged position outside of the process of consciousness—and the process of history—to contemplate consciousness. The philosophy of consciousness therefore grounds, and is inextricably connected to, a philosophy of history. Voegelin pours his vast historical erudition into a kind of retrospective appropriation of the differentiating insights into the structure of participatory consciousness. This effort is itself a continuation of the event of philosophy under the concrete historical conditions of our age.

This chapter and the two concluding ones will engage in a dialogue between the positions of Lonergan and Voegelin, a dialogue that moves from the philosophy of consciousness to the philosophy of history. To initiate the dialogue we shall consider in this chapter Voegelin’s own engagement with Aristotle over the prospect of a noetic science. Since, for Voegelin, noetic science must necessarily become a philosophy of consciousness, Voegelin’s retrieval of Aristotle’s position on noetic consciousness is part and parcel of his development of a contemporary philosophy of consciousness. Lonergan, too, develops his cognitional theory through his encounter with Aquinas and Aristotle, and does so in a way that clearly suggests a parallelism of his approach with that of Voegelin.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Lonergan’s cognitional theory might help make sense of some of the more difficult Aristotelian texts so as to validate Voegelin’s interpretation. Thus, our discussion of Aristotle and Voegelin on noetic science will be given direction by Lonergan’s cognitional theory. This introduction to Voegelin’s philosophy of consciousness will also prepare us to consider what Lonergan regards as pivotal for a critical philosophy of consciousness and for a resultant philosophy of history, namely, the project of self-appropriation, the subject matter of the next chapter.

Political Science and Noetic Science

Political science is a late bloomer in the history of human consciousness, and it rarely blossoms at that. It can arise only when certain technological, economic, and civilizational conditions allow for the flourishing of a theoretical culture (as in the case of ancient Hellas), and, Voegelin notes, it need arise only when the predominant myths of the political cosmion have lost their magic and enchantment (as, for example, during the great crisis of the Peloponnesian War). However, there are also decidedly philosophical and spiritual conditions for the emergence of political science. For political science is nothing less than the articulation of the roots of the order of the polity, and these roots are precisely the dynamics for the very search for order itself. The search is a reflective, self-transcending process of openness to transcendence. Explicit identification of the source of order, moreover, takes its poignancy from an acute experience of disorder in the surrounding society, placing authentic political science in critical contention with the prevailing interpretations of social order.²

Such is Voegelin’s understanding of political science and of what the originators of political science, Plato and Aristotle, meant by that enterprise. Political science therefore has as its foundation a reflective awareness of the normative structure of human existence. This structure is “noetic consciousness,” and its reflective awareness—which gives rise to theoretical culture—is the “noetic differentiation of consciousness.” Thus, for Voegelin, political science is based upon, if not virtually equivalent to, noetic science. Indeed, he suggests that we can substitute for political science—with its modern positivist and ideological connotations—the term noetic interpretation. If by “science” Voegelin means the more inclusive sense of the German Wissenschaft, which embraces more than modern natural science, then “noetic science” is simply the explication of the normative structure of human existence, that is, noetic science is the explication of the self-transcending process of cognitive, moral, and spiritual inquiry. Whenever the self-interpretation that is constitutive of the polity seeks to interpret its own intelligibility, norms, and ground, whenever we have such a critical interpretation of the self-interpretation of society, we have an attempt at “noetic exegesis.”³

Voegelin and Aristotle

There is a peculiar quality to noetic science. We have used such terms as reflection, explication, and exegesis to describe the way noetic science formulates meaning. Since the subject matter of noetic science is the normative structure of human existence, the subject matter is not a distant object that can be known either by logical deduction or by simple empirical observation. One must participate in the structure of existence in order to know it. The participation has a double dimension to it, for the structure of existence is itself a participation in transcendence. And, furthermore, since the structure of existence is a dynamic, normative process of self-transcending openness to the horizon of transcendence, its reality cannot be adequately captured in a conceptual system or the type of definitions that refer to objects in the external world. So Voegelin concludes that the language of noetic science is that of “linguistic indices,” which explicate the “movement of participation” in “nonobjective reality.”⁴

If, however, this is what we take to be noetic science, we must consider whether this kind of science could possibly be what Aristotle means by science (episteme) and reason (nous). Voegelin indeed claims that noetic science, as he conceives of it, is consonant with the basic direction and impetus of Aristotle’s thought. Aristotle, he argues, portrays the dynamics of noetic consciousness in a complex of symbols, ranging from those expressing human self-transcending unrest (“wonder” as the source of all science, the “desire to know” as a drive all humans share by nature, and the correlative “flight from ignorance”) to those identifying the divine transcendent ground of unrest (the pure act of nous)⁵ Aristotle, according to Voegelin, highlights the participatory nature of noetic consciousness in his treatment of the activity of nous as the process of immortalizing (“making noetic life divine compared to human life”) and in his insistence that the goals of political life are excellences that can be known only by the person who possesses them, the spoudaios.⁶

Nevertheless, a commonplace reading of various Aristotelian texts on episteme and nous would conclude that episteme is exclusively a matter of demonstrative knowledge and that nous, by total contrast, is an intuition of the indemonstrable principles of demonstration. In addition, many interpreters would presuppose that indemonstrable principles are foundational propositions upon which all definitions must be grounded. The connection of episteme and nous would seem to be an elusive one. If episteme is exclusively an ordered set of propositions, then how can there be a noetic science of the type Voegelin proposes? Would not such an Aristotelian science fall into the trap of what Voegelin would consider a propositionalist fallacy? Not only would this putative Aristotelian science fail to do justice to the participatory nature of noetic consciousness, but it would also make a retrieval of interiority highly problematic. Reinforcing this tendency is a traditionalist interpretation, held by Ross among others, that would see Aristotle’s account of the origin of Universals as that of a somewhat mechanical process from sense perception to memory to repeated experiences.⁷ Would not noetic science, for Aristotle, be an oxymoron?

We are therefore faced with the question of whether Voegelin had read too much of his own position into Aristotle. Behind this question, however, is a much more fundamental hermeneutical issue. Can an interpreter ever “read” Aristotle’s meaning by some kind of simple perception of the text? The Hermeneutics of the Empty Head, the interpretive model favored, for example, in positivist circles, would locate a textual meaning “out there” to be looked at “in here.”⁸ In fact, if interpreters have minds, their horizons will always come into play in their interpretations, and their horizons will include, explicitly or implicitly, philosophical assumptions—even in the case of pure philologists. However, the richer, the more insightful, the horizon of the interpreter, the richer, the more insightful, the interpretation.

The Aristotelian corpus indeed poses special hermeneutical difficulties. Aristotle did not write systematic treatises. He employed terms in different senses for different occasions. Perhaps, as Werner Jaeger suggests, they were something like school logoi, intended for reading out loud, for partial memorization, and for discussion.⁹ Whatever the nature of the texts, their philosophical content demands philosophical insight on the part of the interpreter. The only relevant question is which philosophical perspectives will be most successful in entering Aristotle’s philosophical horizon: That of Voegelin? That of conceptualists (for whom science equals a set of propositions)? Or that of empiricists? It is interesting to note that both of the latter perspectives have frequently been adopted by philologists, reflecting the contemporary climate of opinion.

It is the burden of this chapter to show how a series of plausible interpretations of episteme and nous vindicates Voegelin’s assertions about Aristotelian noetic science. It will be helpful, first, to recall briefly how in the pre-Aristotelian tradition the terms nous and theoros had religious and existential resonances. Our main focus will then be on the possibilities that episteme is not restricted to demonstrations and that it is intimately tied to the activity, potentialities, and habits of nous. In so doing we can shed light on how nous could simultaneously be the principle of the principles of episteme, the dynamism of human inquiry, the norm of human existence, the participation in the divine, and the basis of authentic political life. We can also discern how, in one respect, nous transcends episteme but how, in another respect, it exhibits the rudimentary features of episteme.

Nous and Theoros: The Historical Context

Aristotle certainly coined words to fit his philosophical needs and distinctions. Yet, he did not live in a historical vacuum. The terms nous and theoros—used extensively by Aristotle—had, as we have seen, traditional meanings that conveyed a decidedly existential theme of a participatory movement of human quest and of divine presence.¹⁰  The original meaning of the word nous, associated with the revolution of the sun god, evoked a sense of returning home from darkness and death to light and consciousness. Reflecting this cycle were the names of the fabulous creatures the hero Odysseus encountered on his perilous journey home: the Cyclops, Circe, and Calypso. Odysseus, “the wanderer,” who “saw the townlands and learned the minds of many distant men,” in his return home to Ithaca had to contend with the forces of darkness, whether in the cave of the barbarous Cyclops, the cave of seductive Calypso, or the twilight cavernous bay of the frightful Laistrygones. Whereas Odysseus’s nous extricated him from the entrapment by the Cyclops, Parmenides’ journey with the goddess above “the beaten track of men” and the “abode of the night” granted him through the exercise of his nous a vision of being. The original imagery of the journey of nous was given its most celebrated and vivid portrayal as the upward ascent of the prisoner in Plato’s allegory of the cave.

Likewise, the original Greek meaning of the word theorist referred to a sacred journey in search of meaning. The theoros was a person sent on a sacred mission to oracles or to religious festivals, such as the Olympic Games. The theorist had to venture forth, searching along the road, in order to question and transmit faithfully a divine message. Indeed, the theoeroi were simultaneously spectators and participants on their journey, not disengaged Cartesian observers, since theorion was the place where they competed in the games as official participating delegates. Thus, the theorists guarded against dogmatism as they traversed beyond the pale of the everyday to the “festive and awesome realm of the divine,” but, like Plato’s prisoner from the cave, they would eventually return, transformed, to the home country where their journey began.

In Plato’s Laws, the theoroi were precisely to embark upon a course of inquiry about the outside world, most especially to visit divinely inspired men, only to come back to the native polis to share the spectacle. Out of this religious background emerged the Greek idea of reason: for gradually theoria came to be connected with travel inspired by the desire to know, and eventually it referred to the knowledge acquired while traveling. Thus, philosophers were theoroi on the noetic road of inquiry. We can infer that no less for Aristotle than for his predecessor Plato, the use of the terms nous and theoros expressed experience of an irruption of divine reality on the road of inquiry. And when we carefully examine strategic meanings of episteme and nous in Aristotle’s writings, we find confirmation of this postulate.

Episteme and Nous

Aristotle is a philosopher whose overriding insights come as a result of making incisive and powerful distinctions. He handles, for example, Parmenides’ problem of motion by distinguishing between potential being and actual being. He solves numerous quandaries of the pre-Socratic nature philosophers by differentiating four causes. So we must pay attention to the distinctions he brings to bear in his treatment of episteme and nous.

In particular, as Patrick Byrne notes, we must pay attention to distinctions of act, potency, and habits. This should not be surprising since nous is “rational soul,” and, according to Aristotle, there are three kinds of things in the soul: pathe, dύnameis, and hexeis. Pathe, literally “passions” and frequently translated as “emotions,” are not restricted to emotions but seem to include sensations, memories, and various kinds of thoughts. The pathe are endurings or receivings of the potential of motion, change, or movement.

If we recall Aristotle’s definition of motion (kinesis) as the “fulfillment of potency as potency,” then we can say that the pathe are really motions or acts.¹¹  Dύnameis, on the other hand, are the potentialities of the soul relative to the acts. Finally, hexeis, as recurrent activities of the potentialities, are habits. Let us then elucidate Aristotle’s conceptions of episteme and nous by applying these distinctions.

Cognitive Habits

The strongest argument for restricting episteme to demonstrations seems to be found in a passage from the Posterior Analytics where Aristotle claims that there can be no episteme of the first principles of demonstration since these principles cannot themselves be demonstrated.¹² If science cannot demonstrate the undemonstrable principles of demonstration, then it must be an intelligence other than science, namely, nous, that can grasp those principles. But the contrast between episteme and nous in this passage is not an absolute one. Rather, it is a contrast between episteme and nous precisely as “cognitive habits” (hai pen ten dianoian hexeis). The habit of episteme is the studied ability to work on a certain range of facts, to employ proofs about the facts, and to master sets of related proofs all pertaining to a unified field of inquiry. Episteme, in this sense, is the skill, familiarity, and ease of one capable of drawing together interconnected demonstrations of reasoned fact. One has at one’s disposal, for example, theorems that one retains in the background of one’s horizon, present habitually rather than actively.

This habit of episteme, is not, however, an isolated one, but, on the one hand, is grounded in lower habits that it both incorporates and subsumes and, on the other hand, is, in turn, incorporated and subsumed by a still higher habit. The lower habits that ground episteme are memory and “experience” (empeira).¹³ Memory is the drawing together recurrently of sense perceptions. Empeira is the habitual association of memories of sense perception. Far from arguing for some mechanical model of Universals as derived from sensations, Aristotle is presenting the emergence of higher habits of the soul from lower habits.¹⁴ Just as empara is a higher habit than memory since the person of “experience” can grasp a single connection, a logos, among different memories, making such a person of “experience” one capable of good judgments, so episteme is a higher habit of empeira. For episteme grasps the reason why of the connection.

The person of experience, for example, may use various mathematical techniques, but the person of episteme, the mathematician, formulates precisely the operations and rules involved in the techniques. Without empeira there could be no material basis for episteme, but episteme transcends that basis. So, too, nous as habit transcends episteme as habit. Nous as habit is the studied ability to penetrate beyond the demonstrations of episteme to the preconceptual, pre-propositional intelligibility of the reason why. Without the habitual familiarity with the sciences there would be no material basis for nous as habit, but nous goes beyond episteme by grasping the undemonstrable principles.

We notice here that Aristotle’s approach is to postulate dynamically interrelated sets of habits, ranging in ascending order from memories of sense perceptions, to empeira, to episteme, to nous. They give us a glimpse of the structure of human existence, an existence whose locus is the physical world but whose reach goes beyond increasingly into the nonmaterial realm: from the physical connections of memory, to the intelligible connections of empeira, to the reason why of the intelligible connections in episteme, to the reason why of the reason why in nous. But we must consider further distinctions of episteme and nous to witness an even further opening of the structure of human existence.

Cognitive Acts

We have thus far dealt with Aristotle’s treatment of episteme and nous as distinct but functionally related habits in his effort to differentiate scientific demonstrations from the undemonstrable principles of demonstrations. How, then, are we to take Aristotle’s seemingly paradoxical, if not contradictory, assertions that not all episteme is demonstrable and that there is an epistemic grasp of immediate principles? ¹⁵

The paradox, and contradiction, disappears if we interpret episteme in this context as act. ¹⁶ For a cognitive act to be epistemic it can meet either of two requirements: (1) it can know the cause of a fact and that it could not be otherwise; and (2) it can be the answer to the scientific question, what is it? ¹⁷ A clear example of such an epistemic act would be knowing a scientific demonstration, for a demonstration entails knowing that a fact is, knowing that it could not be otherwise, and knowing what it is. The knowing what it is (to ti estin) provides the middle term of a syllogism, but it is not itself ultimately the result of deduction; it is a preconceptual insight into a formal cause. Although the insight plays off images, it is not reducible to images, percepts, or sensations. Here Aristotle extends the meaning of science beyond an ordered set of propositions and rejects the reduction of scientific meaning to sense experiences, thereby avoiding both conceptualism and radical empiricism.

The meaning of science is extended still further, however, when episteme is applied to the type of cognitive act that grasps immediate principles. Knowing an immediate principle is to know that it is, what it is (formal cause), and that it cannot be other than it is (also formal cause). To know the principle of noncontradiction, for example, is precisely to know that it is, what it is, and that it cannot be other than it is. This kind of knowing thus meets the two criteria for an epistemic act adumbrated above. The startling conclusion, then, is that episteme can grasp indemonstrable principles. Is this not to say that such an act of episteme is also an act of nous and that therefore nous, in this sense, is science? And can we not, by extension, likewise call the epistemic act that grasps the middle term as noetic? Indeed, Aristotle is quite unmistakable in identifying nous as the act of cognition (to noetikon) that grasps (noiei) the forms in the images. ¹⁸ Noetic consciousness therefore is inherently scientific consciousness.

Principle of Science

Nous is also the principle of science. Here we can turn to another set of distinctions Aristotle makes about nous, one involving its potentialities. Aristotle differentiates two kinds of noetic potencies, namely, to use the terms of Scholastic commentators, active potency and passive potency. Active nous has the potential “to make all things” (to panta poiein). This nous poetikos, as scholars have frequently called it, is a cause of the nous receiving intelligible forms. Nous poetikos makes (paid) thinking as a kind of habit (hos hexis tis) just as light makes potential colors into actual colors. The nous, conversely, is able to receive the intelligible forms because it, as passive nous, has the potency “to become all things” (to panta gignesthai). The nature of active nous, as Aristotle muses, is a “baffling problem.” ¹⁹ Is active nous my nous as well as your nous? Is it the divine Nous? Is it, as immaterial, immortal?

While these questions have generated controversy among Aristotelian philosophers for two millennia, we can focus on one area for a degree of clarity. When we recall that nous grasps the forms in the images, we may be lead to ask, what moves nous to grasp forms in the images? Although the answer could be the divine Nous, an equally compelling answer, if we are to follow Byrne, and one not at all incompatible with the former, is that the mover is wonderment. ²⁰ It is wonderment—it is the process of inquiry, or, as Lear puts it, the desire to understand—that transforms and perfects images to move nous to receive intelligible forms.

The relation of nous to reality, then, is not one of passive perception but rather one of active engagement. Mind is not, for Aristotle, a mirror of nature. Nous is able “to make and become all things” because the horizon of wonderment is an expansive, self-transcending horizon correlative to the unrestrictedness of the desire to know that is embedded in human nature. ²¹ Nous itself is also the norm of scientific inquiry and thus its inherent principle. Nous, as wonderment, sets the criteria for the asking of scientific questions; nous, as passive potential, sets the criteria for the answering of scientific questions and hence the criteria of scientific propositions and scientific demonstrations. ²² This means that the standard for what makes episteme episteme is the luminosity of nous.

Nous as Episteme

To be sure, if episteme were solely demonstrative, then noetic science might be an oxymoron. The gap between the undemonstrable nous and demonstrable  episteme would be a chasm. For how could the undemonstrable shed light on the demonstrable? Conversely, how could there be a demonstration of the undemonstrable? And, furthermore, how could the demonstrable demonstrate itself? And the undemonstrable explain itself? But in the face of these apparent quandaries we have the luminosity of nous as the measure of science. The quandaries arise from the horizon of conceptualism, which demands that the essence of science be an ordered set of propositions. Wonder, on the contrary is the source of science, and wonderment causes the reception of intelligible forms.

Moreover, noetic inquiry about episteme bears the hallmarks of episteme in its proper and extended meaning. For nous affirms that episteme—both as epistemic acts that grasp forms and as habits of demonstration—is a fact and that it cannot be otherwise than it is, and nous inquires about what it is. More remarkable and startling is the sense in which noetic inquiry about nous likewise bears the hallmarks of episteme. Nous is a fact; it cannot be otherwise than it is; inquiry about it asks what it is. Noetic discourse about episteme and nous surely follows the same cognitive and logical laws that govern episteme, for the source is the same: nous.

The Self-Luminosity of Nous

Yet, we must not lose sight of the absolutely unique status of nous in the structure of human existence. We can consider nous again in terms of Aristotle’s threefold distinction of potentialities, habits, and acts. As potentiality it is dynamic; as habit it is self-transcending; as act it is divinelike perfection. All these characteristics are interconnected as part of a unity. The active potency of wonderment is a moving principle of intelligence and discovery. It is always greater than the propositions that it generates and the habits that it nourishes. Its fluid character makes it elusive, and its creative power renders it “baffling.” We can postulate that the spirit of wonder is the self-transcending transformative mover of the aforementioned series of habits: from memories of sense perception, to the empeira of the person of judgment and good sense, to the procedures of the practiced scientist.

We can now add specific noetic habits to the series. Indeed, a person familiar with a range of sciences can inquire about what is science itself. This kind of inquiry would go beyond raising questions about the principles of any given science to pose questions about the principles of episteme itself. And here we encounter an incredible eruption of cognitive energy. We certainly have a nous of episteme. Still, if nous grasps the undemonstrable principles and if nous is the principle of science, then nous grasps itself. Nous of episteme leads by its own dynamic necessity to nous of nous. According to Aristotle, the nous, as immaterial, can be the object of thought. ²³

This self-luminosity of nous sparks a new level of habits beyond that associated with nous of episteme. This is the habit of sophia, which, concerned with the highest things, reflects upon both episteme and nous of episteme to understand nous as pure act. Whereas episteme and nous grasp intelligible forms in images, sophia reflects on the intelligible forms already grasped by episteme and nous. It seeks the highest principles, those most unchanging, intelligible, and universal, namely, the subject matter of metaphysics.

The activity of theoria is correlated with the habit of sophia, and, accordingly, Aristotle considers theoria the most perfect and self-sufficient human activity. ²⁴ In theoria the dynamics of nous attain their loftiest manifestation. As all acts of nous, theoria is “pure act” (energeia), but theoria is energeia in its most perfect form, not tainted by potentiality. ²⁵ This leads us to the highest thing and highest principle that theoria can contemplate: nous itself. Theoria grasps that the ultimate cause of cosmic order is the unmoved mover. Nature is a mirror of mind. ²⁶ But the unmoved mover is nous thinking itself. Theoria, then, is nous contemplating nous thinking nous. This is indeed the summit of Aristotle’s investigation, where all major paths converge, whether in his Metaphysics, his Physics, or his Nicomachean Ethics. In the former two works Aristotle depicts the most perfect life, the life of the divine, as noesis understanding noesis. ²⁷ Still, every human act of nous shares in the divine life, albeit momentarily. ²⁸ This is precisely why the ultimate horizon of human existence, including political existence, is defined by self-transcending openness to the divine ground.

Nous and Phronesis

Although less perfect than the theoretical life, the ethical life and the political life, too, share in the activity of nous. Practical intelligence (phronesis) is an act of nous. It is less perfect than theoria because its objects—whether the individual choices of goods that would foster the well-being (eudaimonia) of the individual or the legislative arrangements that would promote human flourishing (arete) within the polis—are less unchanging, intelligible, and universal. ²⁹ We need not dwell on the obvious: how contingency, flux, and particularity pervade the human world. So political science will be science to a much lesser degree than such a discipline as geometry.

To a large extent the analytical side of political science, amid a plethora of contingent circumstances, adjusts means to ends. The ends are the excellences of human nature. The meaning of excellence (arete) is to “function well,” and to “function well” as a human being is to realize the potentialities of human nature. But what is human nature? Human nature, like every nature, is an “internal principle of change and rest.” ³⁰ What is this specifically human principle? The answer is the process of cognitive, moral, and spiritual inquiry, with its own built-in norms, a process of incarnate beings who can nonetheless participate—precariously—in the life of the divine Nous. ³¹ The principle, in short, is noetic consciousness. Noetic science, therefore, by explicating the structure of human existence, provides political science with the goals of political endeavor. The “single science” of government, which aims to determine which government is best, must determine what is the best human life. ³² The best human life, of course, is the life of nous, and the perfection of nous is theoria. But theoria needs phronesis since practical wisdom, including political wisdom (which frames legislation), is the precondition for engaging in theoria. ³³

Noetic science in asking the question what is nous is asking about the dynamic principle of human nature. Nous, with its acts, potentialities, and habits, is the self-transcending normative principle of change and rest in human life. Whereas the contemplative life seeks knowledge for its own sake, employs scientific demonstrations, and focuses on the universal and the necessary, and though the practical life seeks action, employs the “practical syllogism,” and focuses on the particular and the contingent, these differences should not obscure the fact that they both share what is highest in human life. They both participate in the self-transcending normative process of questioning, which ranges from involvement with the images of physical things to the self-luminosity of the pure act of nous. They both share in noetic consciousness. All the virtues, both theoretical and practical, are inherently interrelated. ³⁴ This means that in authentic political life—a kind of phronesis that Aristotle calls the virtue of political wisdom—that which is best and divine in us is actualized. ³⁵ The subject matter of political science therefore concerns the participation of human nous in the activity of the divine Nous.

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.

Notes

1. Voegelin, History of Political Ideas (CW 19-26); Voegelin, Order and History (CW 14-18). For references to Voegelin’s intellectual development, see Voegelin, Anamnesis (CW 6), 3-7, 14-19; Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (CW 34), 86; and Voegelin, On the Form of the American Mind (CW 1), intro., 62-63.

2. On political science as response to disenchantment, see Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, 1:228-33. On the search for order, see Voegelin, Order and History, 1: intro. On the response to disorder, see ibid., l:xiv, 3:62-63, 5:13-14, 41; Voegelin, Anamnesis, 89; Voegelin, Published Essays, 1966-1985, 45-46, 265, 371-74.

3. On “noetic differentiation of consciousness,” see Voegelin, Order and History, vols. 3-4, 5: chap. 1; Voegelin, Published Essays, 1966-1985 (CW 12), chap. 10; Voegelin, What Is History? chap. 5. On “noetic interpretation,” see Voegelin, Anamnesis, 146. On Voegelin and Wissenschaft, see Manfred Henningsen, introduction to Modernity without Restraint (CW 5), by Voegelin, 10. On “noetic exegesis,” see Voegelin, Anamnesis, 148.

4. Voegelin, Anamnesis, chap. 9.

5. Ibid., 91-97.

6. Voegelin, Order and History, 3:301.

7. Citations in Byrne, Analysis and Science, 173 n. 27.

8. Method in Theology, 157.

9. Jaeger, Studien zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Metaphysik des Aristoteles, 138-48, cited approvingly by Joseph Owens, The Doctrine of Being in Aristotelian Metaphysics, 75; and by W D. Ross, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, l:xiv n. 1.

10. For discussion and references, see Chapter 7, 155-56, nn. 23-24, above [A reference to the volume from which this essay is taken: Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence].

11. Byrne, Analysis and Science, chap. 7. The following analysis relies heavily on his arguments. On kinds of things in the soul, see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2.2.1105b20. On pathe, see On Interpretation 1.16a4-9. On kinesis, see Physics 3.1.201a28-29.

12. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics 2.19.100b5-17.

13. On the cognitive habits, see ibid., 2.19.100b5-6. On the lower habits, 2.19.99b38-100a9; Metaphysics 1.1.980b26-981al2.

14. Byrne, Analysis and Science, 171-78.

15. Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, 1.33.72b19-24, 1.33.88b38.

16. See Byrne, Analysis and Science, 179-81.

17. Aristotle, Postenor Analytics 1.1.71b9-12, 2.1.89b23-25.

18. Aristotle, De Anima 3.7.431b2.

19. On active nous, see ibid., 3.5.430al4-15. On nous poetikos, see W K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 6:315 n. 1. On active nous making thinking as a “kind of habit,” see Aristotle, De Anima 3.5.430al4ff. On passive nous, see 3.4.429b20-31,3.5.430al5. On acting nous as a “baffling problem,” see Aristotle, Generation of Animals 2.3.736b5-8.

20. Byrne, Analysis and Science, 167-69; that the divine Nous is the mover of creative intelligence is the thesis of Jonathan Lear, Aristotle: The Desire to Understand.

21. See Aristotle, Metaphysics 1.1.980a22.

22. Byrne, Analysis and Science, 187.

23. Aristotle, De Anima 3.4.430a2-5.

24. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 10.7.1177al8-1178a4.

25. Elizabeth Murray Morelli, “Aristotle’s Theory Transposed,” 7.

26. Lear, Aristotle, 306-7.

27. Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.7.1072al9-b30, 12.9.1074bl5-1075all.

28. Ibid., 12.7.1072b26; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 10.7.1177b30-1178a8.

29. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.8.1141b23-24.

30. On arete, see ibid., 1.7.1097b23-1098al9; on “nature,” see Aristotle, Physics   2.1.195b21-22.

31. Third Collection, 172.

32. Aristotle, Politics 4.1.1288b22-23, 6.1.1323bl5-16.

33. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.13.1144bl7-1145a6.

34. Ibid., 6.13.1144b32-1145a6.

35. Hans Georg Gadamer, The Idea of the Good in Platonic-Aristotelian Philosophy, 174-76.

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.

This excerpt is from Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence (University of Missouri Press, 2000); also see “Lonergan and Voegelin: Religious Experience and Historicity Religious Experience,” “Self-Appropriation in Lonergan and Voegelin,” and “Lonergan and Historiography.“

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