Voegelin

From Eric Voegelin, 'The New Science of Politics'
c.II, 'Representation & Truth'
in 'Modernity Without Restraint', pp.139

...This is the crucial point on which the meaning of history depends. Theory is not just any opinion about human existence in society; is rather an attempt to formulate the meaning of existence by explicating the content of a definite class of experiences. Its argument is not arbitrary but derives its validity from the aggregate of experiences to which it must permanently refer for empirical control. Aristotle was the first thinker to recognize this condition of theorizing about man. He coined a term for the man whose character is formed by the aggregate of experiences in question, and he called him the spoudaois, the mature man. The spoudaios is the man who has maximally actualized the potentialities of human nature, who has formed his character into habitual actualization of the dianoetic and ethical virtues, the man who at the fullest of his development is capable of the 'bios theoretikos'. Hence, the science of ethics in the Aristotelian sense is a type study of the spoudaios. Moreover, Aristotle was acutely aware of the practical corollaries of such a theory of man. In the first place, theory cannot be developed under all conditions by everybody. The theorist need perhaps not be a paragon of virtue himself, but he must, at least, be capable of imaginative re-enactment of the experiences of which theory is an explication; and this faculty can be developed only under certain conditions such as inclination, an economic basis that will allow the investment of years of work into such studies, and a social environment that does not supress a man when he engages in them. And, second, theory as an explication of certain experiences is intelligible only to those in whom the explication will stir up parallel experiences as the empirical basis for testing the truth of theory. Unless a theoretical exposition activates the corresponding experiences at least to a degree, it will create the impression of empty talk or will perhaps be rejected as an irrelevant expression of subjective opinions. A theoretical debate can be conducted only among spoudaioi in the Aristotelian sense; theory has no argument against a man who feels, or pretends to feel, unable of re-enacting the experience. Historically, as a consequence, the discovery of theoretical truth may not at all find acceptance in the surrounding society. Aristotle had no illusions on this point. To be sure, like Plato, he attempted a paradigmatic construction of a social order that would express the truth of the spoudaios, in Politics VII-VIII; but he also asserted with firm regret that in none of the Hellenic poleis of his time could there be found a hundred men who were able to form the ruling nucleus of such a society: any attempt at realizing it would be utterly futile. A practical impass seems to be the result.

A study of the experiences is impossible in the present context. In view of the vastness of the subject, even a lengthy sketch would be pitiably inadequate. No more than a brief catalogue can be given that will appeal to your historical knowledge. To the previously mentioned love of the sophon now be added the variants of the Platonic Eros toward the kalon and the agathon, as well as the Platonic Dike, the virtue of right superordination and subordination of the forces in the soul, in opposition to the sophistic polypragmosyne; and above all, there must be included the experience of Thanatos, of death as the cathartic experience of the soul which purifies conduct by placing it into the longest of all long-range perspectives, into the perspective of death. Under the aspect of death the life of the philosophical man becomes for Plato the practice of dying; the philosophers' souls are dead souls -in the sense of the Gorgias- and when the philosopher speaks as the representative of truth, he does it with the authority of death over the shortsightedness of life. To the three fundamental forces of Thanatos, Eros, and Dike should be added, still within the Platonic range, the experiences in which the inner dimension of the soul is given in height and depth. The dimension in depth is probed through the anamnetic descent into the unconscious, into the depth from where are drawn up the 'true logoi' of the Timaeus and Critias.

The discovery and exploration of these experiences started centuries before Plato and continued after him. The Platonic descent into the depth of the soul, for instance, differentiated experiences that were explored by Heraclitus and Aeschylus. And the name of Heraclitus reminds us that the Ephesian had already discovered the triad of love, hope, and faith that reappeared in the experiential triad of St. Paul. For the 'via negativa' Plato could draw on the mysteries as well as on the description of the way toward truth that Parmenides had given in his didactic poem. And there should be mentioned, as close to the Platonic range, the Aristotelian philia, the experiential nucleus of true community between mature men; and again the Aristotelian love of the noetic self is hearkening back to the Heraclitean followership of the common Logos of mankind.