Heilke - Anamnetic Tales: The Place of Narrative in Eric Voegelin's Account of Consciousness PDF

Anamnetic Tales: The Place of Narrative in Eric Voegelin's Account of Consciousness Author(s): Thomas W. Heilke Source: The Review of Politics , Autumn, 1996, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 761- 792 Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Rev...

Anamnetic Tales: The Place of Narrative in Eric Voegelin's Account of Consciousness Author(s): Thomas W. Heilke Source: The Review of Politics , Autumn, 1996, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 761- 792 Published by: Cambridge University Press for the University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1408620 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms University of Notre Dame du lac on behalf of Review of Politics and Cambridge University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Review of Politics This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  Anamnetic Tales: The Place of Narrative in Eric Voegelin's Accou of Consciousness Thomas W. Heilke Although "story" and "narrative" are frequently mentioned in Voegelin's account of the structure and dynamics of human consciousness, neither he nor his commentators have closely analyzed in a direct fashion the importance of these terms to that account. This article examines their significance to Voegelin's extended analysis. But theoria suggests taking a view of a large stretch of territory from a considerable distance, and this is just what the people I shall be discuss- ing do. They all specialize in standing back from, and taking a large view of, what Heidegger called the "tradition of Western metaphys- ics"-what I have been calling the "Plato-Kant canon." The items in this canon, the works of the great metaphysicians, are the classic attempts to see everything steadily and see it whole. The metaphysicians attempt to rise above the plurality of appearances in the hope that, seen from the heights, an unexpected unity will become evident-a unity which is a sign that something real has been glimpsed, something which stands behind the appearances and produces them. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, Solidarity I am not a trained historian, but I am an American Mennonite hunting for workable fragments from our experience, partly because the rest of the world-before it considers me anything (female, Christian, Mennonite, mother, student of literature, writer)-considers me an American. So I must examine my Mennonite roots in the context of the American soil in which they have taken nourishment these past three hundred years. As a person particularly interested in storytelling and the force of storytelling among my people, I want a history that will "see life steadily and see it whole," a view of our past from which good fiction, good philosophy, good theology, good poetry, good art and good deeds can grow. Joyce Clemmer Munro, "Passing on the Torch," The Mennonite Quarterly Review My thanks to Barry Cooper, Clarence Sills, Stuart Warner, and the several anonymous referees and the Editor of this journal for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 762 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS But how does the listener recognize the story to be true, so recognition of its truth he is forced to reorder his existence? W he believe the story to be true rather than consider it som private opinion concerning the order of his preference? To q this class only one answer is possible:... [it] will have no au truth unless it speaks with an authority commonly present in consciousness... [unless it] indeed speaks what is common the order of man's existence as a partner in the comprehend Eric Voegelin, In Search of Orde It is not news that Eric Voegelin's life-long philo investigations begin and end with a theory of human ness. Indeed, several recent book-length treatments of h either contain the word "consciousness" directly in th are otherwise deeply engaged with its problems.1 Its cen Voegelin's thought is unquestionable. Voegelin conten theory of consciousness was the central constituent of a politics and perhaps its necessary basis.2 Accordingly, it core of his life-long study of political order, and it w center of his critique of modernity, which he viewed terms of parallel crises in intellectual thought and the p politics. Voegelin's extensive analysi of consciousness, which ranges in time from the first chapter of his 1928 work, On the Form of the American Mind, to the posthumous In Search of Order, is cast in philosophical categories and employs critical methods of inquiry. But this analytical way of coming to the problem is only one part of articulating a theory of consciousness, and only one way- even if the most important-in which Voegelin did so. It is what might typically be called the path of metaphysics, and what 1. Among others, see: Michael Franz, Eric Voegelin and the Politics of Spiritual Revolt: The Roots of Modern Ideology (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); Glenn Hughes, Mystery and Myth in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1993); Kevin Keulmann, The Balance of Consciousness: Eric Voegelin's Political Theory (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990); Michael P. Morrissey, Consciousness and Transcendence: The Theology of Eric Voegelin (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994); Ronald D. Srigley, Eric Voegelin's Platonic Theology: Philosophy of Consciousness and Symbolization in a New Perspective (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1991). 2. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952). This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 763 Voegelin called "noetic" philosophy.3 It receives most attention of Voegelin's commentators, interpreters, and leaving out the role of narrative in Voegelin's consideratio I intend to explore here. Narrative as both a mode and a topic of study has entirely faded from the scholarly scene, and it has w renewed attention in the past few decades.4 The studies of White, Paul Ricoeur, and Hans Kellner, to mention only recall for us the centrality of narrative discourse to h understanding. Ricoeur, for example, suggests that the "te character" of human experience is a universal feature "marked, organized, and clarified" for us "by an story-telling in all its forms."5 Accordingly, the ability to understand stories is central to making sense of our exper Ricoeur's argument suggests that we should not be su that "story" and "narrative" occur frequently in Voegelin's posthumously published volume. The notion of story crucial role in this volume; but neither in this work, whic his summation of his theory of consciousness,6 nor els does Voegelin subject these literary terms to close a Narrative remains a central but largely unexamined elem his theory of consciousness. Similarly, Jiirgen Gebhard attention to the importance of the notion of story in Voe understanding of the philosopher's work, but he, too, develop the theme.7 It is my purpose to do so here. I w that the importance of narrative to Voegelin's the consciousness resides in the narrational qualities of 3. On Voegelin's suspicion of metaphysics, see Eugene Webb, Philos Consciousness (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1988), pp. 4. For useful introductions, see Hans Kellner, Language and Hi Representation: Getting the Story Crooked (Madison, WI: University of W Press, 1989); Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative (Ithaca: Corell U Press, 1986). 5. Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), p. 2. 6. See the "Forward" by his widow, Lissy Voegelin, in Voegelin, In Search of Order, vol. 5 of Order and History (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987). 7. Jiirgen Gebhardt, "Epilogue," in Voegelin, In Search of Order, pp. 109-18. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 764 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS existence and consciousness itself, and therefore in the manner in which narrative displays human realities, includes the way it does so in the philosophical analyse accounts of those realities. Narrative conveys order, str and meaning prior to a philosophical exegesis of either ex or narrative, but it also appears as an ordering feature o exegesis itself. The Metaphors of Consciousness Given its core role in Voegelin's thought and its prep ant place in the secondary literature, the outlines of Voe theory of consciousness are well-known to any but his casual readers. I rehearse its basic features only as a me establishing a starting point for examining the role na plays in Voegelin's work. Perhaps the most accessible, yet condensed introducti Voegelin's theory of consciousness is contained in his met of the "quatemarian structure" of human existence and self-reflective actor who finds himself on a known, yet un knowable, yet unknowable stage. These two well-kn metaphors both occur in the "Introduction" to Israel and Rev They reveal several central themes and regulative princi Voegelin's analysis of consciousness. We are introduced h the notion of a structure of consciousness, but also to its ult unfathomable quality; to the problem of anxiety, but also t possibility of enquiry; to the problem of mystery, but a possibility of knowledge. Finally, the metaphors contai political principles that are uncovered for Voegelin in a understanding of human participation in being. "God and man, world and society," Voegelin begins, "f primordial community of being." This "quaternarian stru of this primordial community both is and is not a "dat human experience." It is a datum of our experience insofar participate in it, but since it is not given to us as though it w object of sense-experience, external to us, it is "knowabl from the perspective of participation in it."8 Thus, th 8. Voegelin,Israel and Revelation, vol. 1 of Order and History (Baton Louisiana State University Press, 1956), p. 1. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 765 principle: our knowledge of our own existence is structure this knowledge is not the knowledge of an object. Since ex is not an object, we cannot readily uncover a morpholog yet we and our knowledge of it are a part of this self existence, not in the manner of a free-falling, free-floati self-cognizant giddiness, but rather, as a structured, yet n known awareness and self-awareness of participat "something." Moreover, this "perspective of participation" can be profoundly disturbing, because, if existence is not an object, participation in it "does not mean that man, more or less comfortably located in the landscape of being, can look around and take stock of what he sees as far as he can see it." Rather, man is not a "self-contained spectator," but an actor, "playing a part in the drama of being and, through the brute fact of his existence, committed to play[ing] it without knowing what it is." Voegelin continues on a comic note that if one were to find oneself in a "situation of feeling not quite sure what the game is" or how play it, one could, "with luck and skill" endeavor to extricat oneself from it, "and return to the less bewildering routine o [one's] life." But human existence is not a game in this sense: we are not "partially involved" in existence, for "participation existence itself." There is neither an exit from existence, nor an Archimedean point above it: "There is no vantage point outsid existence from which its meaning can be viewed and a course action charted according to a plan, nor is there a blessed island to which man can withdraw in order to recapture his self." Uncertainty and freedom, contingency and necessity are th contours of our existence. We find ourselves in a state of determined indeterminacy and contingent necessity. The "quaternarian structure" of existence on a pre-set "stag is not created by the bearer of consciousness, but given to The "play"-our existence-has already begun, and our role, least in its broadest outlines, is assigned. We neither create recreate ourselves. To do so is like trying, in the absurd N idiom, "to jump over one's own shadow." It is a magical op tion, an illusion induced by resentment against the givenne 9. Ibid. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 766 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS the condition "on-stage." Paradoxically, this resentm least its omnipresent possibility-reveals an indeterm the heart of this seemingly determinate situa "quaternarian structure" of existence is both given an gent. The actor on the stage possesses certain freedom them a transcending ability to ask questions, and the fr fashion within wider limits the order of the God-man-world-society complex. In this se is not entirely wrong: we do, in many, var respects, fashion our own existence. We cann we can move about the stage: "The role of played in uncertainty of its meaning, as an a on the edge of freedom and necessity."10 As these features of our existence become reveal a troubling quality at the core of e metaphors of the play and "quaternarian stru to articulate: At the center of his existence man is unknown to himself and must remain so, for the part of being that calls itself man could be known fully only if the community of being and its drama in time were known as a whole.... Knowledge of the whole, however, is precluded by the identity of the knower with the partner, and ignorance of the whole precludes essential knowledge of the part. This situation of ignorance with regard to the decisive core of existence is more than disconcerting: it is profoundly disturbing, for from the depth of this ultimate igno- rance wells up the anxiety of existence." Thus, we neither know completely who we are, what we are, "where" we are, nor what we are doing. Yet we find ourselves asking questions about precisely these matters; and the questions may make us anxious. Indeed, this experience of the ineffable is often met with precisely the move that Voegelin rejects: we seek to "return to the less bewildering routine of [our lives]." When the anxieties that produce such a "return" in the face of ignorance become extreme, alienation and psychic diremption may result, leading to at least two types of response. First, the anxieties can manifest themselves in the Ciceronian list of symptoms that 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid., p. 2. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 767 ! point to a disease of the mind: "restless mone status seeking, womanizing, overeating, addiction and snacks, wine-tippling, irascibility, anxiety, desir stubbornness, rigidity of attitude, and such fears of other human beings as misogyny and misanth pathology that leads to such behaviors is, in a vocabulary, the outcome of a "rejection of reason," a the order of being as it is discerned in consci articulated-among other places- in Voegelin's two There exists, moreover, a second, more pow politically destructive possibility. Anxiety and fe ineffable, mysterious qualities of human existenc produce resentment. Coupled with a will to domi resentment may, in turn, lead one to speculate on th of performing magical operations from within existe its shape, to make the ineffable transparent, the known, the inscrutable manipulable. This is t millenarian revolutionaries from the thirteenth ce ideological activists of the modern age. Anxiety and revolt notwithstanding, our participa "stage" is "not blind, but illuminated by consci experience a participation in being that is illumin knowledge of participation itself. And this illumi sufficient to render regulating principles that refuse into the self or the expansion of a will to power from Voegelin carefully describes: There is an experience of participation, a reflective tensio radiating sense over the proposition: Man, in his existenc in being. This sense, however, will turn into nonsense if on subject and predicate in the proposition are terms whic tension of existence, and are not concepts denoting objec such thing as a "man" who participates in "being" as enterprise that he could as well leave alone; there is, rath thing," a part of being, capable of experiencing itself a furthermore capable of using language and calling this consciousness by the name of "man." The calling by a nam a fundamental act of evocation, of calling forth, of constitu 12. Voegelin, Anamnesis, trans. and ed. Gerhart Niemeyer (N University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), pp. 100, 99. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 768 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS of being as a distinguishable partner in the communi theless, fundamental as the act of evocation is-for it all that man will learn about himself in the course itself an act of cognition.'3 The evocation is not an act of cognition, becaus which remains unknown-the center or essence of man's existence and its place in the whole-but it is the manifestation of a discovery: When man discovers his existence in tension, he becomes conscious of his consciousness as both the site and the sensorium of participation in the divine ground. As far as consciousness is the site of participation, its reality partakes of both the divine and the human without being wholly the one or the other; as far as it is the sensorium of participation, it is definitely man's own, located in his body in spatiotemporal existence. Consciousness, thus, is both the time pole of the tension (sensorium) and the whole tension including its pole of the timeless (site).'4 Other evocations, or symbols, or expressions of experience may follow as this "sensorium" -consciousness itself- is explored in its depth, height, and breadth. The results of this exploration replicate the intangible mysteriousness of existence between birth and death: "Such terms as immanent and transcendent, external and internal, this world and the other world, and so forth, do not denote objects or their properties, but are the language indices arising from the Metaxy [the In-Between of human existence] in the event of its becoming luminous for the comprehensive real- ity, its structure and dynamics. The terms are exegetic, not descriptive."15 The exegetical language indices, or evocations, or expressions cast up by the self-exploration of consciousness arise from the self-illuminating event(s) of consciousness itself, appearing in the (narrative) context of the (narrated) experiences of 13. Voegelin, Israel and Revelation, p. 2. 14. Voegelin,"Immortality: Experience and Symbol," in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Ellis Sandoz, vol. 12, Published Essays: 1966-1985 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), p. 91. 15. Voegelin,"The Beginning and the Beyond," Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 28, What Is History? and Other Late Unpublished Writings (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), p. 185. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 769 consciousness that every human being "has" or "can have." they re-evoke the dynamic and structure of consciousness This evocation, moreover, turns out to be susceptible to the refinement, so that "explorations" of consciousness or of h existence can lead to greater critical awareness of its d and structure. In other words, the self-illumination of consciousness is not historically static: it can be both progressive, in the sense that its features can be more clearly articulated and differentiated by means of the symbols we generate whil exploring them, or regressive, in the sense that these exegetic symbols of experience can-for a variety of reasons-be rejected forgotten, or misused as "concepts" related to objects. Such neglec and misuse once again hides from us those experiences of th structure and dynamic of consciousness that once produced th more-refined symbols, which experience these symbols themselves are intended reflexively to (re-)evoke. Voegelin's work demonstrates the theoretical refinement o such an analysis of consciousness. Beginning with ancient myths and moving through Plato's dialogues and other texts, Voegelin proceeds to "a reflective exegesis of the structures o consciousness" that includes tension, poles, intentionality, and luminosity as its guiding terms. And his results constitute an advance in this field of study. Voegelin's "greater theoretica refinement of analysis," Glenn Hughes rightly suggests, "is du to the third structural dimension of consciousness beyond it intentionality and luminosity, its reflective distance to itself becoming sufficiently recognized, explored, and articulated." I Voegelin's work, the self-analysis of consciousness is furthe differentiated, so that "reflective distance itself comes into view." The structural and thespian metaphors have so far yielded the following results: (1) consciousness is not an object, yet it known as a datum of experience in that it is our mode of existence (2) this mode has the analogical quality of "participation" in "something." Consciousness is not a separate topic of existenc but the mode of existence of human beings; (3) there is no escape from this mode, nor an "outside of" this mode that can be known (4) human participation in existence is both free and determined, 16. Hughes, Mystery and Myth, p. 36. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 770 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS I uncertain and contained; (5) the mode of existenc transcended only in the sense of an ability to ask questi it, but the transcending questions (for example, Leibn is there something rather than nothing?" "why do thing they do, and not otherwise?") are intelligible only as transcending participation of consciousness in exist cannot be given a definitive answer;l7 (6) Anxiety and re may attend the transcending questions or one of the oth experiences of conscious participation in an unk "something," and these troubling responses may result e a withdrawal into the material self or in a variety of exercises designed to make the "something" fully k manipulable; (7) consciousness appears to itself in mor mode: three-intention, luminosity, and reflexivity-ar and these three may, therefore, be individually differentiated; (8) human participation in the reality rev consciousness takes on the quality of self-transparent "r and self-conscious participation in it. Intention, Luminosity, and Reflexivity in Consc This preceding exercise in metaphorical refle consciousness is itself an exercise in the self-illumination of consciousness. Its cursory exploration of the luminosity, intentionality, and self-reflexivity of consciousness serves as a useful anchor for understanding in brief form the three basic "dimensions" of human consciousness as Voegelin gradually articulated them during. a lifetime of scholarship. The importance of narrative to the manner in which these three dimensions manifest themselves, and, reflexively, the centrality of these three dimensions to any narrative demands a brief preliminary exegesis of their structure and dynamic, including summary lexical definitions. The intentionality of consciousness refers to "the property of consciousness whereby it is oriented toward cognitive objects."'8 The luminosity of consciousness refers to the property 17. Cf. ibid., p. 107. 18. Eugene Webb, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1981), pp. 283-84. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 771 of consciousness whereby it is oriented toward itself as or as a constituent part of the universe of cognitive obj an event of participating illumination in the re comprehends the partners to the event."19 Finally, r refers, as we have seen, to the quality of consciousnes consciousness becomes cognizant of itself and to itself c its own cognitive structures and processes. The structure of consciousness, made up of th dimensions, is paradoxical; it is a sign of clarity, not con remain cognizant of this fact. The "equivocation" that co the "paradox of consciousness" is the fact that "we consciousness as something located in human beings bodily existence," at the same time that "we know located consciousness to be also real" in and of itself. In the first sense-in bodily located consciousness-reality assumes for conscious beings "the position of an object intended." Reality is "external," an object of our consideration and manipulation. In the second sense, the self-same reality in which the "concretely located consciousness" participates is "not an object of consciousness but the something in which consciousness occurs as an event of participation between partners in the community of being." Thus: In the complex experience, presently in process of articulation, reality moves from the position of an intended object to that of a subject, while the consciousness of the human subject intending objects moves to the position of a predicative event in the subject "reality" as it becomes luminous for its truth. Consciousness, thus, has the structural aspect not only of intentionality but also of luminosity.2 Voegelin borrows from Plato to symbolize this paradox as an existence "in-between" our bodily existence and the compre- hending whole, where consciousness is "located" on the one hand, and of which it is a constitutive part on the other. No invention of a system (of signs or concepts) to overcome this paradox is possible, because there is no "outside" from which the resolution of the paradox is possible.21 Narrative most clearly 19. Voegelin, In Search of Order, pp. 15-16. 20. Ibid., p. 15. 21. Ibid., pp. 16-18. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 772 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS articulates the paradox without seeking to resolve it; it the aporetic nature of human experience, but it cannot rel from the corresponding aporetic tension.22 We have seen that Voegelin gradually uncovered characteristic of consciousness' appearance: it is no intentional and yet participatory; it is also self-ref Consciousness "knows itself," revealing itself or its proc discovery to itself. Voegelin symbolized this dimen consciousness as "the reflective distance of consciousness to its own participation in thing-reality and It-reality." When brought to persistent remembrance, this reflexive quality of consciousness prevents the thinker from derailing into misconstructions and gnostic or magical speculations. Deliberately to recall one's own experience of the realities revealed in consciousness is to engage in the anamnetic experiments first attempted by Plato and narratively re-enacted by Voegelin.23 To repeat, the central argument of this article is that these Voegelinian distinctions and the role that his theory of consciousness plays in his overall thought cannot be properly understood apart from a consideration of the workings of narrative in his thought, or, more directly, the work that narrative does in the self-understanding of consciousness. Since existence and consciousness are neither categories nor objects, but exegetical symbols, how do we "point" to them, as it were? How do we communicate their qualities, their sheer being-there? We do so by means of symbols.24 But symbols, apart from context, are merely the aesthetic decorations of a polite nihilism. The context, the connecting fabric, is given by a narrative, and this narrated context encompasses an existential reflection, as William Thompson clarifies: At the very least, narrative brings home the inseparability of form and content, the need to participate in the form to "experience" the content/ meaning. The lived, dramatic quality of life (what Voegelin calls the "event" dimension of story), with its "divine-human movements and countermovement," its elements of living activity, tension, struggle, 22. Cf. Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 53. 23. Voegelin, In Search of Order, pp. 40-41. 24. Voegelin, Israel and Revelation, p. 3ff; Voegelin, "The Beginning," p. 185. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 773 reversal, etc., finds its irreplaceable expression in narrativ event dimension of every story involves an attempt to convey into the order of reality."25 For this reason, Voegelin concludes that "the story is bolic form the questioner has to adopt necessarily when an account of his quest as the event of wresting, by the of his human search to a divine movement, the truth from a reality pregnant with truth yet unrevealed."26 Narrative and Metaphysics To state the preceding another way, Voegelin eng kind of exegesis of critical exploration that Nicholas Lash as the role of theology, philosophy, or "metaphysics" wit Christian tradition. According to Lash, Christian pra narrative practice. More specifically, it is a pr autobiographical or "self-involving" narrative, in wh narrator is located within the story she tells. The sto articulates the Christian story and its meaning, but she also an integral part of it.27 In a certain sense, then, it i while "on-stage" the story of existence "on-stage." Th of theology, "metaphysics," or (noetic) philosophy wi tradition has been to serve as a regulative critique for th that are being told. Their role is decidedly not to offer de "proofs" of God's existence and so forth. Rather, they are of ascertaining and testing rigor in logic, conceptual c and terminological consistency when Christians tell their or talk about them. It is a "non-narrative mode of discourse" that is a critical reflection on the story being told.28 25. William Thompson, Christology and Spirituality (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1991), pp. 29-30. 26. Voegelin, In Search of Order, p. 24. 27. Nicholas Lash, "Ideology, Metaphor and Analogy," in The Philosophical Frontiers of Christian Theology: Essays Presented to D. M. MacKinnon, ed. Brian Hebblethwaite and Stewart Sutherland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 74. Thompson's interest in Voegelin's pursuit of narrative is purely in the context of his own concern with Christological/experiential dialogue, and not with a view to Voegelin's larger philosophical project (Christology, pp. 7-12). 28. Lash, "Ideology," p. 76ff; cf. Voegelin, Anamnesis, p. 206. The usage here implies, incidentally, that Voegelin's two metaphors of consciousness with which This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 774 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS * I But what sort of a thing, then, is narrative? Firs precisely a "dimension" of consciousness, nor a but rather, like language and temporality, for exam nent of consciousness in and through which con its objects are reflected to itself. In simple terms, it mode through and in which the "actor on stage" existence "on-stage." Like consciousness, narrativ intentional (a story told by someone) and lumino "emerges from the It-reality"29). The structure of is thereby replicated along these two dimensions in of narrative.30 Second, a narrative is not, strictly speakin symbolism, but a mode of symbolization. It is an or speak, of the symbols of experience into a conc Michael Wyschogrod's term, it is a work of "intelli is "a working endowment rather than a theory active in the absence of a philosophical theory about of the universe and the structure of mind that ena the rationality inherent in the world." Intelligence "a quality of brightness that enables all normal hum some extent and some to an extraordinary extent to and implications in complex situations." Narrative i pre-noetic manner in which such relations, imp insights are expressed.31 In Hayden White's ter Ricoeur, it is a "'grasping together' of the elements in which 'meaningful action' has occurred," and t "configured" "through the instrumentality of plot thereby becomes the material that noetic philosoph I began this article are, in fact, brief stories. This implication f the present paper. 29. Voegelin, In Search of Order, p. 24. 30. Cf. White, Content of the Form, pp. 51-52. 31. Michael Wyschogrod. The Body of Faith: Judaism as C (Minneapolis, MN: Winston Press, 1983), p. 5; cf. Ricoeur, From T 32. White, Content of the Form, pp. 50-51. This "grasping to us of Voegelin's early statement that "the historical line of mea a rope over an abyss into which everything that cannot clin Sinnlinie der Geschichte lauft wie ein Seil fiber einen Abgrun sich auf ihm nicht halten kann, hinabstiirtzt" [Uber die Form d Geistes (Tiibingen, 1928), p. 14]). This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN I I By Voegelin's own account-and Lash concurs-such a philosophical explication or exegesis can never become an activity of transforming into concepts the symbols that the narrative employs to express the experienced realities of the narrator (or theologian). It can only be a kind of indirect "pointing," a particular use of analogy: "The forms of Christian discourse are set between the poles of metaphor and analogy, of narrative and metaphysics."33 If it becomes the former, we begin to talk as if-to use our previous metaphor-the "stage" and the "quaternarian structure of consciousness" were objects and topics; the "balance of consciousness" is then lost.3 (We are reminded again of the need for persistent remembrance of the existential tension between human wisdom and ignorance). The metaphors one weaves into a story to express one's experiences of the Divine or of existence in consciousness are therefore not a conclusion, a result, or a final determination, but a beginning. They are, in Lash's words, a road map, not the countryside. All such metaphors are, like the indices of Voegelin's analyses, exegetical symbols, not determinative concepts. We must not mistake the map for the reality: because our "knowledge of existence is from within, not without," it is limited by the impossibility of a universal and absolute perspective that only an "external" onlooker can supply. It consequently must be mediated symbolically, which is to say that it is communicated in tropes.35 Such tropes, even at the highest levels of differentiation and theorization, remain the constituent linguistic elements of a story that is ultimately and simultaneously the "story told by the It," and "the story [that] emerges from the It-reality." It is a story of which we remain a part and within which we are therefore bounded even as we seek philosophically to differentiate its components.3 33. Lash, "Ideology," p. 72. Cf. Lash's valuable comments on Thomas Aquinas's philosophical method, pp. 79-85. 34. The term is Voegelin's. It refers to "the precarious awareness of the conditions of existence in the metaxy ["Plato's symbol representing the experience of human existence as 'between' lower and upper poles: man and the divine, imperfection and perfection, ignorance and knowledge, and so on."], easily lost when the experience of being drawn toward the transcendental pole becomes sufficiently vivid to tempt one to expect escape from the metaxy and from the existential tension that characterizes it" (Webb, Eric Voegelin, pp. 278, 284). 35. Voegelin, "What Is History," pp. 3-13; Anamnesis, pp. 175-82. 36. Kellner, Historical Representation, chap. 9; Webb, Philosopher of History, p. 271; Thompson, Christology, pp. 28-29; Voegelin, In Search of Order, pp. 24, 21, 26. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  776THE REVIEW OF POLITICS I This noetic quality even of narrative and the nar luminosity of consciousness lead Voegelin to reflect t deepest participatory (metaleptic) level, "story" itself "the symbolism that will express the awarene divine-human movement and counter-movement in for truth." This reflection does not, however, reduce merely another exegetical symbol. Rather, as we saw ear Telling a story in this metaleptic sense of the term is not a choice. The story is the symbolic form the questioner has necessarily when he gives an account of his quest as th wresting, by the response of his human search to a divine m the truth of reality from a reality pregnant with truth yet u Moreover, the story remains the constant symbolism of the when the tension between divine and human story is redu zero of identity as in the dialectical story told by the self-iden of the Hegelian system.37 Accordingly, Voegelin's extensive use of concepts, ne and re-symbolizations, if they remain bereft of conte stories, threaten to descend once more into a kind of cism, an intentionalist, reificatory "description" of cons Its corollary political threat, as Richard Faber tendent correctly asserts, is a kind of reactionary, cons authoritarianism.3 Narrative can, therefore, play a key exegesis of consciousness, because it provides a contex exegetical symbols, which reduces somewhat the thre scholastic reification, and thereby helps to control th themselves. On the other hand, using narrative as a way of uncovering Voegelin's theory of consciousness may only reproduce the existential problem he notes in the matter of mystery, because narrative is itself an attempt to force closure. In a study comparing annals and chronicles as historical narrative, Hayden White concludes that narrative requires "the capacity to envision a set of events as belonging to the same order of meaning," which in turn "requires some metaphysical principle by which to translate 37. Voegelin, In Search of Order, p. 24. 38. Richard Faber, Der Prometheus-Komplex: Zur Kritik der Politotheologie Eric Voegelins und Hans Blumenbergs (Wiirzburg: Verlag Dr. Johannes Konigshausen + Dr. Thomas Neuberg, 1984), pp. 65-67. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 777 difference into similarity." That is to say, "it requires a 's common to all of the referents of the various sentences that register an event as having occurred."39 But the introduction o subject also introduces a requirement for meaning, which Whit following Hegel, suggests is always a moral one: "If every fu realized story, however we define that familiar but conceptuall elusive entity... points to a moral or endows events, whet real or imaginary, with a significance that they do not possess a mere sequence, then it seems possible to conclude that ev historical narrative has as its latent or manifest purpose t desire to moralize the events of which it treats."40 Such moraliz binds a narrative, closing off certain possibilities even whi may hold open others; it is a form of signification, hence a closu But closures, of course, are not all equivalent. Meaning a consequence vary with the intended signification. Thus, for ample, Voegelin fought against some closures, as in his attack o modem gnostics and others who try to force closure on history a whole. We don't know what the ultimate meaning (if ther one) of history is, and to purport to do so is to attempt to close inherent open-endedness of our bounded existence in time. T move closes off the mystery of being, which is to say it rejects transcendental pole of our existence. It displays ignorance rejection of the wisdom-ignorance tension that the story of co sciousness originally reveals. But other narrative closur rejection of gnostic systems, for example-uphold the mystery being, even while they inspire in us hope and trust. Voege himself imposes certain forms of this sort of closure, which le hostile readers to accuse him of right-wing authoritarianism.41 On the preceding account, narrative is not merely appendage to an account of consciousness because of the wa delivers the truths of consciousness; it is crucial to any su account. This centrality is the consequence of the temporality consciousness: "Everything that is recounted occurs in time, ta time, unfolds temporally; and what unfolds in time can 39. White, Content of the Form, p. 16. 40. Ibid., p. 14. 41. Faber, Prometheus-Komplex, pp. 22-25. Webb has carefully noted some the problems that Voegelin's language and symbolic closures may pro (Philosophers of Consciousness, pp. 119-30). This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 778 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS recounted. Perhaps, indeed, every temporal process is re as such only to the extent that it can, in one way or ano recounted."42 Indeed, "to experience time as future, present rather than as a series of instants in which ever the same weight or significance as every other is to e 'historicality,"' which is to say, meaningful (narrated in time.43 On this reasoning, to repeat, narrative pr material that philosophy dissects; it is anteceden "systematic reflection on consciousness."44 If consciousn in fact, represent itself to itself narratively, then what m delivers and how it does so is not an interesting yet p issue to the problem of consciousness, but an integral co Narrative does not thereby become a structural dim consciousness in the manner of intentionality, lumin reflexivity, because it is not an aspect of the sheer ontic of consciousness as are these primal components. Ra re-word Ricoeur, the time dimension of consciousness mode of self-revealing and self-reflection narrationa account of narrative and consciousness, moreover, makes philosophy a second-order task, attendant in a critical, regulative manner on the stories that "consciousness tells." To make this claim is not to lose sight of the fact that much of philosophy itself is a kind of narrative: insofar as it is an "exploration," we tell a story of that exploration. But this latter narrative checks our first-order narrative, which is expressed not in the analytical, exegetical symbols of philosophy, but in the primary symbols of myth, poetry, and story.45 The argument suggests, of course, that even the symbols embedded in fertility idols, ancient friezes, and paleolithic drawings, for example, are only intelligible because we can make them a part of a narrative (that may, in this case, be a prior structure we bring to them or a structure we translate out of them).46 42. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, p. 2. 43. White, Content of the Form, p. 179; Paul Ricoeur, "Narrative Time," Critical Inquiry 7 (1980): 171. 44. Voegelin, Anamnesis, pp. 36-7; Ricoeur suggests such a relationship, From Text to Action, pp. 9-10. 45. Cf. Voegelin, Anamnesis, pp. 36-37; In Search of Order, p. 21; Webb, Philosophers of Consciousness, pp. 59-62; and section 6 below. 46. For an example of such "sense-making," see White, Content of the Form, pp. 6-11. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 779 The Modes and Purposes of Narrative Voegelin was keenly aware-as are many of his s readers47-of a crisis in contemporary thought concer and concerning human existence more generally. H the language of "loss," "eclipse," and "disorder" or to indicate this crisis.48 Most of the terms that he used were not his own, and the texts from which he drew them indicated that an experience of crisis in thought or in political order has not been limited to our present era. His critical analyses of these texts showed him that such recurring crises in history involved a loss of awareness or a rejection of man's place in the order of being, and that a philosopher's activity could include the recovery of such awareness. Let us then consider the following: how does narrative as we have here described it bring to our awareness the structure an dynamic of consciousness in such a way that they are made transparent for analysis, such that our understanding of ou "place" in the order of things, as it were, can be either articulate or restored? In other words, how does narrative function and what tasks does it perform in regard to consciousness? At the most basic and obvious level, narrative answers the question: what happened? To speak of consciousness is to fal prey to the danger of treating it as a topic or concept, which ma mislead one to forget that it is neither of these, but rather, that refers to a continuous event, a dynamic process. Consciousnes at one level is a "happening," namely a process in reality. At another level, it is constituted by a temporal succession of events which are also processes and events in (and of) reality.49 And, lik any happening, these can only be recalled narratively. This basic fact leads Stanley Hauerwas, among others, to assert in a similar mode to Ricoeur that our lives are essentially narratively formed As meaningful units, both our life as a whole and the distinc episodes within it appear to us as narrative constructions, be 47. Cf. David Walsh, After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations o Freedom (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990); and Franz, Politics Spiritual Revolt. 48. Voegelin, In Search of Order, pp. 45-47. 49. Voegelin, Anamnesis, pp. 12-13, 16-17. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 780 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS cause we are contingent, historically constituted being quire narrative to make our contingent history inte ourselves.50 As a mode of discourse and a topic of study, n encompasses much more than can be considered in th insofar as it provides important entrees into Voegelin's rehearse here only the salient points of its role in r uncovering the decisive features of Voegelin's th consciousness. Without excluding other perspectives, my cue primarily from studies of narrative performed and Christian theological contexts. This approach is ap I think, since Voegelin's concerns were ultimately either or placed into the context of a community of scholar practices of narrative in Christian and Jewish traditions community affairs.51 Even though Voegelin prefer symbolizations and forms of remembrance, Christian studies provide a more accessible deliberation on the character of narrative than Plato's noetic reflections. And since Voegelin did propose to have found particularly well-articulated differentiations of the human experience of existence in the Christian stories, one may expect that an analysis from this narrative perspective will produce immediately pertinent results, not in need of re-translation, for a theory of consciousness seemingly sympathetic to that tradition. Narratives range from the simple folk tales and fables that seek to teach childhood lessons, to the larger biographies and autobiographies that tell the story of a human life (and perhaps tell it whole), to the grand myths and wider historical narratives 50. Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), pp. 24-29. White makes a similar argument in his evaluation and summation of the first two volumes of Ricoeur's Time and Narrative (Content of the Form, pp. 178-81); cf. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 52-87. 51. James Wm. McClendon, Systematic Theology: Ethics (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1986), pp. 170-73, Michael Goldberg, Theology and Narrative: A Critical Introduction (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1982). Hans Kellner, in contrast, seems more skeptical about the possibility of communities built around authoritative narratives (Historical Representation, pp. x-xi, 330-33). This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 781 I of religious and political communities, to the grandes the "It-reality" itself.52 All such narratives have in com of functions that are of immediate concern to the p consciousness and Voegelin's analysis of the structure First, a story displays particularities in such a way that light on the generalities that constitute its particulariti constitute the "family resemblance" (to use Wittgenstei of its particularities in the whole. Accordingly, these intelligence" permit a kind of inductive reasoning. Th nate particular principles of conduct or consciousness w context of consciousness of the whole. Stories become an induc- tive guide for prudent reasoning, deliberation, and action, an for reflection on experience. Second, stories display the essentially contingent character of human existence even as they weave these contingencies into comprehensible whole. Stories are a way of presenting and illu minating complexity, rendering it at least partially transparent, even for those whose analytical faculties are not of the highes quality: "From the intelligible character of the plot, it follows that the ability to follow a story constitutes a very sophisticated form of understanding."53 Thus, both in their inductive qualities an in their display of contingencies within a larger context, stories are a kind of illumination. Stories provide a context within which human existence in its particulars and in its general shape can be understood. Finally, stories perform these two functions by indirection. They do not use analytical categories to "point" to what is being talked about; rather, they use action, plot, and characters to illustrate or illuminate. They are indirect in the treatment of a topic or problem, no matter how intentionalist may be the author's writing. To re-echo Lash, they are metaphorical constructions. How these attributes of narrative operate in practice may be shown, first, in an account of the role of narratives in the more restricted realm of ethical reflection, and then in the broader instance of Voegelin's anamnetic reflections. 52. Voegelin, In Search of Order, p. 13. 53. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, p. 4. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  THE REVIEW OF 7 POLITICS I I System and Story in Ethical Reflection and Con Reflexivity Stanley Hauerwas and David Burrell have argued that narrative is an important, indeed, the central, reso ethical reflection. They maintain that "character and mor only take on meaning in a narrative," that "narr explanation stand in an intimate relationship, and there disagreements involve rival histories of explanation, "narrative functions as a form of rationality" in opposi standard, modern account of ethics that calls for a "moral objectivity" in order to secure ethical certainty.54 In other words, coherent ethical reflection requires not a system, but a story.55 Similarly, moral reflection, in Voegelin's account, requires reflection on who we are and "where" we are, which recurs to reflect on our existence as being "In-between" on the quaternarian stage.56 It seems that reflection on morals or ethics will have a character not dissimilar from reflection on consciousness; in Voegelin's account, at least, the latter subsumes the former. Ethical reflection is a subset of reflections on the order of being. Accordingly, similar arguments can be made on behalf of narrative as a way of illuminating both the intellectual practice of ethical reflection and the deeper Voegelinian question of human consciousness. For Voegelin, narrative conveys the experience and meaning of consciousness beyond the important but-for him-subsidiary role of practical ethical reflection. The deeper role is replicated on the more concrete plane of practical ethical deliberation. Narrative performs its moral functions in the following ways. First, argue Hauerwas and Burrell, to account for our moral life 54. Stanley Hauerwas and David Burrell, "From System to Story: An Alternative Pattern for Rationality in Ethics," in Stanley Hauerwas, Truthfulness and Tragedy: Further Investigations into Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), p. 15. 55. The strength of this argument is demonstrated, I think, in the weakness of Kant's examples in his attempt to illustrate how his unstoried ethical system might work. (See Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton [New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, Inc., 1964], pp. 89-92). 56. Cf. Voegelin, Anamnesis, pp. 97-111. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 783 we cannot take account merely of the decisions we m must also have a "narrative that forms us to have one kind of character rather than another." Similarly, an account of existen in consciousness is not merely an account of intentions, wh Voegelin sees as the principle shortcoming of the German Ideali reaction to the Enlightenment.57 Nor are these narratives th form us "arbitrarily acquired," even though "they will embo many factors we might consider 'contingent."' Such stories are narrative display of our character, which, in ethical reflecti "provides the context necessary to pose the terms of a decisi or to determine whether a decision should be made at all." Accordingly, "as our stories... they will determine what kin moral considerations-that is, what reasons-will count at Hence, these narratives must be included in any account of rationality that does not unwarrantedly exclude large asp our moral existence, i.e., moral character."58 In the same wa structure and dynamics of consciousness are insuffic accounted for by a series of exegetical symbols that ser pointers to our experience of them: we require the conte indirection of a narrative to weave this structure and dy into a comprehending and comprehensible whole. Such considerations are not simply self-authenticating, h ever, and the language in which they are wrought is not a p code: It is exactly the category of narrative that helps us to see that we are not forced to choose between some universal standpoint and the subjectiv- ist appeals to our own experience. For our experiences always come in the form of narratives that can be checked against themselves as well as against others' experiences. I cannot make my behavior mean anything I want it to mean, for I have learned to understand my life from the stories I have learned from others.59 In the same way, Voegelin was fond of claiming that the true test of the validity of a philosopher's results is their lack of originality. Insofar as we hear the symbols that express human experience 57. Voegelin, In Search of Order, pp. 48-54. 58. Hauerwas and Burrell, "System to Story," p. 20. 59. Ibid., p. 21. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 784 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS echoed elsewhere, we can be relatively more assured th so to speak, "getting our story straight."60 Indeed, the of self-authentication is narratively disciplined and The language the agent uses to describe his behavior, to him others, is not uniquely his; it is ours, just as the notions meanings that can be checked for appropriate or inappropr what allows us to check the truthfulness of these accounts of our behavior are the narratives in which our moral notions gain thei paradigm uses. An agent cannot make his behavior mean anything wants, since at the very least it must make sense within his own st as well as be compatible with the narrative embodied in the languag uses. All our notions are narrative-dependent, including the notion rationality.61 But the use of narrative in this sense opens up further cons erations. Let us return to the three epigrams that begin t article: how do we ourselves recover a view of life that "se everything steadily and see[s] it whole," and how do we m this vision recoverable for anyone else? Voegelin's answer w that the story must speak "with an authority commonly prese in everybody's consciousness" and to "what is common (xyn to the order of man's existence as a partner in the comprehend reality."62 To make this one possibility real requires an act imagination. Narrative engages this faculty of imagination delivering not an authoritative teaching, but by "disclos[in world in which its readers are invited to dwell, or [by depictin a character in relation to whom the readers are asked to see themselves."63 A story consequently has a unique "logic of autho- rization" that may or may not compel acceptance, but that permits our own exploratory gestures: The readers are brought into the narratives; it becomes a context for reflection and action. The insights, convictions, dispositions, and so forth that the readers achieve in their interaction with the text are... the 60. Voegelin, In Search of Order, pp. 42-47; Michael Goldberg, Jews and Christians: Getting Our Stories Straight (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1985). 61. Hauerwas and Burrell, "System to Story," p. 21. 62. Voegelin, "The Beginning," p. 175; Cf. In Search of Order, p. 26. 63. Charles M. Wood, "Hermeneutics and the Authority of Scripture," in Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, ed. Garrett Green (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), p. 12. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 7 I I fruits of a struggle. What is achieved is not simply read off th accepted but is rather created throtigh the engagement of th who have their distinctive backgrounds and locations-with t is (or may be) authorized by the text, insofar as it is in keeping sense of the story.... But what is "in keeping with the sens story" cannot be predetermined; it is not latent in the text itsel be produced through the reader's own engagement with the t although the text is normative,... its normativeness does diversity and creativity. Indeed, it positively mandates them We now turn to such a text. "Anamnetic Experiments" The present article begins with three diverse epigrams that all-without using the term-speak of what Ronald Thiemann has called a "followable world."65 It is the world that narrative- not doctrinal metaphysics-provides. Voegelin recorded a brief set of anamnetic experiments that point to such a world, and which his life-work explicates. In them, we see the initial, com- pact representation of a world that Voegelin would then seek noetically to differentiate into its constituent parts. This claim seems to demand that we properly understand not only narra- tive as such, but the specific genre of narrative at hand: what kind of story is it that serves as the material, so to speak, for noetic philosophy, and what is the relationship of such stories to the "story of the It" that is in part revealed by the analysis of these smaller stories? In the account of narrative that I have offered here, stories are the conveyors of "structure and an order of meaning" that seems to depend on the very story itself for its existence.66 For Voegelin we must move one step further (and avoid the nominalism that such an account might imply) to say that narrative is a form of symbolization, referring to and revealing the real, originating experiences of consciousness. Narrative both reveals these experiences and makes their compact revelation in the story 64. Wood, "Hermeneutics," pp. 13-14. 65. Ronald Thiemann, "Radiance and Obscurity in Biblical Narrative," in Green, Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, p. 27. 66. White, Content of the Form, p. 5. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 786 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS I open to further noetic analysis; in this way, nar paradoxically both a symbolization that arises in the " distance" of consciousness, but that is also prior to pre-noetic experiences and the pre-noetic stories of them tell. These originating experiences first appear in a n mode, because they take place in time, and to become in they must be narrated to ourselves, who are time-bound, (narratively formed) beings. The stories of Voegelin's anamnetic experiments are n ply myths, however, because unlike myth, they are u from their very origin to be the compact articulation thing to be further differentiated; this is an underst itself that human consciousness still bound to mythical does not have. When a person gains such self-underst is on the verge of becoming a philosopher. We recall "noesis does not bring knowledge of previously unkn ity, but differentiated insight into hitherto compact enced reality."67 Moving from "narrativity" and narrative generally t sideration of specific narratives, we find immediately th of narrative types we spoke of earlier that culmina uncompletable story of the "It"-existence and its Be self. An account of the experience of consciousness w story of the "It" is a narrative that is the telling of a experience or a series of them. Voegelin's account of ness, in other words, is the telling of the experi consciousness (and these experiences are given by the quality of consciousness that sheds light on its other through the events that bring forth the experiences them intelligible. Such an account can be both cast in a narrative and then explicated in a noetic analysis (and the account of how we com to the explication is itself a narrative). The initial narrative (t "grasping together" of experiences in time) is, I have argued prior both in time and conceptually to the noetic exegesis. Bu what, exactly, is "grasped together" in the anamnetic experiments What, in other words, are the stories, and what are they abou 67. Webb, Philosopher of History, p. 285. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 7 I I They are, to begin, a recounting of episodes from chi memory. Not surprisingly, these episodes are not only rec in narrative form, but the original experiences themsel to have been strongly narrativized even as they made them available to Voegelin's childhood consciousness. The imp of most of the episodes, Voegelin states, is clear to him. I t to mean that he is able without difficulty to read back int episodes the exegetical indices he developed in h philosophical analyses. But the experiences and their na as Voegelin makes eminently clear-are prior to phil These are the "experiences that have opened sou excitement," that have "excited consciousness to the 'aw existence," and "from which issue the urge to further philo reflection."68 We are thus confronted with a triple meaning. The nar experiences of the anamnesis are narrated self-revelat consciousness in compact form. They are also events that i a quest, itself an event that is, in turn, "part of a story tol It, and yet a story to be told by the human questioner, if h to articulate the consciousness of his quest as an act of part in the comprehending story."69 Third, they are therefore in "an It-story that tells itself through the events participatory quests for truth."70 For the alert questioner form, when philosophically differentiated, part o consciousness of the quest as an event whose story must as part of the story of reality becoming luminous for its tr Narrative, therefore, cannot be concretely located at a level of compactness or philosophical differentiation in th of consciousness, but seems implicated into every step unfolding intentionality, then luminosity, then reflex consciousness itself and, thereby, at every level of the "It- But let us consider for a moment the other narrative q of these episodes. Most, but not all of the memories are "s in the clearest sense of containing a plot, action, and chara "The Cloud Castle," for example, seems merely a descr 68. Voegelin, Anamnesis, pp. 36, 37. 69. Voegelin, In Search of Order, p. 24. 70. Ibid., p. 29. 71. Ibid., p. 24. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 788 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS episode. And yet, the possibility of plot and action l castle itself: the "Knight of the Wolkenburg" "dwells" t he "travels much on mysterious business." Where does h What does he do when he is there? Is the Wolkenbur resting-place? Why is he so melancholy?72 Beyond these childish queries for elaboration, out one can fashion a story (but upon which one can also noetic reflection), there is the more important fact tha one implotted character lurks in the deep backgroun anamnetic episode, namely the "I" that has the evocative It seems for this reason that Voegelin deems it nec weave his memories into a wider context, by adding autobiographical-contextual remarks. The story of t whose memories they are is important to the memo selves. This larger narrative provides a portion of the re of the anamnetic event. The easy narrative structures of the memories pass over nearly unnoticed into their anamnetic and illuminating functions. To speak of "metaxy," "balance of consciousness," and so forth is one thing; childhood memories that excite the imagination are another. Here we have, indeed, the creation of worlds that the reader, too, can imaginatively recreate, enter, and explore. And it is not primarily the childish scenes that are recreated, but rather, the puzzles that they evoke. This evocation is part of what Voegelin means when he claims that "the anamnesis had to recapture the childhood experiences that let themselves be recaptured because they were living forces in the present constitution of his consciousness."73 The stories evoke our own memories, and hence, our own reflections. But they do so without philosophical vocabulary, without the need for technical expertise. This easiness of access renders the stories susceptible, however, to multiple interpretations. One can only grimace, for example, at what a semi-literate and dogmatic "Freudian" might make of some of them. And at this point the regulative language and practices of the philosopher become the supplement to the 72. For an interesting interpretation of this recollection, see Gregor Sebba, "Prelude and Variations on the Theme of Eric Voegelin," Southern Review 13 (1977): 651 and 651n4. 73. Voegelin, Anamnesis, p. 13. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 789 I anamnetic experiments. The narratives, Voegelin cautio to do with "excitements from the experience of a transcen in space, time, matter, history, wishful dreams, and wishfu They serve as indices not of sexual repression and complexes, but as indices of consciousness becoming a the wonder and mystery of existence in space and time.74 These episodes of mystery are fragments, irruptions f larger source, namely the consciousness of the participa in this case Voegelin and potentially his readers-that them. Although fragments, they give hints of a larger They serve as a narrated lens, so to speak, on a life tha imagine "steadily and whole." They do not give us this view we can imagine it from there in a way that we cannot fro analysis of consciousness alone in the preceding, an chapters of Voegelin'sAnamnesis. The evocations of wonder for us the basic shape of the "stage" on which the drama ( of life is acted out. This life becomes visible and intelligib imaginative whole. Such visibility might not occur wer forewarned by the prefatory philosophical remarks. B philosophical caveat (which, we recall, is itself narr contextualized in a story of the "quest") does not vitia centrality of narrative; it merely suggests the need for a r framework to govern such narrative. No narrative is self-interpreting. Although one may clearly speak of th sense" of a text or a story, without an exegesis of some kin within a tradition of reading or a tradition of more c articulated analytical inquiry, this "plain sense" re surprisingly illusive. Texts have a "plain sense" on community of consensus. Once again, we are confronte elusive quality of consciousness, whose characteristics are s 74. Ibid., p. 37. Webb argues that Voegelin's inclination "to assume production of interpretive symbols must be a spontaneous, virtually process" displays the influence on his thought of both Schelling and Sch but more especially Kant. Webb's considerations of Ren6 Girard's Ricoeur's) "hermeneutics of suspicion" adds a useful caveat to Voegeli more optimistic view of what the indices of consciousness provide; m symbols can also mislead us by surreptitiously confirming or intr prejudices, justifications for violence, and other evils. Accordingly, ou to wonder and mystery must be open, yet critical (Philosophers of Cons pp. 130ff, 14, 16-18, 206-211). This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 790 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS only by a kind of faith complemented by a commu faithful. This appears to be the case both within a specifically "religious" contexts, as the notion of a of scholars" attests.75 Here again, we are turned to Voegelin's summation concerning the authoritativeness of the anamnetic episodes for an account of human consciousness. Even though these stories have an open-ended quality, this indeterminacy does not imply that "madness and chaos... are our inevitable fate." As Thiemann has it, madness is inevitable only if philosophy is construed as "perfect light that dispels all darkness and banishes all shadows." But Voegelin does not search for a "true foundation for knowledge [that] needs no external illumination, but glows with the light of self-illumination."76 He is not an Enlightenment philosophe. "Madness, darkness, and chaos" are not inevitable if the illumination of narrative coupled with philosophical analysis and exegesis is imperfect, but accepted in its imperfection. Nor, following Thiemann again, does the fact of interpretive diversity "decide the question of whether texts [or anamnetic episodes and their interpretation] yield followable worlds."7 Multiple plausible interpretations, "narrative obscurity," and interpretive multiplicity do not vitiate the possibility and necessity of judgment, the possibility of criteria for preference of one reading over another, or the need for exegetical standards. Instead, they challenge us to reflect carefully as we develop such measures. Voegelin used these episodes to show the inadequacy of determinate theories of consciousness, and to articulate another, more adequate mode of talking about these matters.78 His anamnetic narratives, set within a philosophically disciplining framework, beckon us to have a look. They cannot do more. 75. Cf. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 50-51, 57-58; Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1968), pp. 108-114. A particularly fine example of the role of community in interpretation may be found in the biblical account of the Ethiopian eunuch's conversion to Christianity (Acts 8:1640). See also Kathryn E. Tanner, "Theology and the Plain Sense," in Green, Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, pp. 59-78. 76. Thiemann, "Radiance and Obscurity ," p. 26. 77. Ibid., pp. 26-27. 78. See especially Webb, Philosopher of History, pp. 36-37. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms  NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 791 ! Conclusions The philosopher does not puzzle first and foremost over an experience of the "tensional qualities of existence." Rather, he i puzzled, awed, or bemused by the flowing identity of a crowd (Anamnesis, p. 39), by knowing that he does not know (In Search of Order, p. 40), by the awe inspired by the sonority of a vocable (Anamnesis, p. 38), the experience of distance and perspective (Anamnesis, p. 42), the yearning for perfection (Anamnesis, pp 40-41), and so forth. He is engaged by his storied encounter with reality. When this puzzlement, awe, or rapture becomes lumi- nous to itself in consciousness, the story of philosophy begins. The centrality of narrative to an explication of the dynamics and structures of consciousness implies that one need not be a philosopher or have extraordinary analytical powers to grasp at least the rudiments of the character of one's human existence. Stories deliver up for us a picture of a world. It may be that the dogmatization of such stories means that something of the mystery and depth of being is lost,79 but such reification is not a necessary outcome of telling stories. Indeed, the anamnetic narratives retain for us a hint of the mystery and tensions of being that a "system" cannot sustain and that a systematic account of consciousness may find more difficult to uphold.80 It is for this reason, also- since Voegelin's theory of consciousness does not permit us to refer to the "existence" of the "It-reality" (as though it were a "thing")-that Voegelin refers to the "story of the It." Such a story-which contains both the meta-narrative or narrative base of the "It-reality," but also the mega-narrative or super-narrative of social and political myth and the personal narratives of biography, along with the anamnetic narration of the self-discoveries of consciousness-keeps in view the entirety of reality from "It" to "I" to "Thou," doing so not blindly, but with a view to the whole. Voegelin's anamnetic episodes bring out from hiding (by an act of remembrance) the originating experiences that potentially bind all narratives together in the meaning given by the whole 79. Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, pp. 108-109. 80. Webb, Philosopher of History, p. 35. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 792 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS They re-open for his readers an exploration of the fundamental experiences to whi exploration must recur. They are narratives indirect yet decisive way a true story of the is "commonly present in [our] consciousne presence the stories themselves invo imaginatively to drag up into reflectin experience and puzzles whereof they speak is the sign that the stories speak "what is co man's existence as a partner in the compr can listen, re-enact, and reflect. This content downloaded from 142.231.82.223 on Mon, 16 Sep 2024 00:49:12 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms