Voegelin demonstrates that and how the complex
consciousness-reality-language must be held together in tension, and studied
together. I think that there is another complex, one of knowing, that must be
explored together: philosophy-science-mystical experience. None of these three
forms of knowing reality is sufficient in itself, but all three must be used
together to understand reality.
Without philosophy, mystical experience can
degenerate into incoherence, or gnosis, or dogmatic fundamentalism. In common
usage, the word “mystical” often means a kind of incoherent truth—“begins in
mist and ends is schism.” Without philosophy, science can degenerate into
scientism, grounded on mistaking intentionality (knowing of things in the
external world) as the only form of knowing; and science blossoms into
philosophy when the scientist asks the questions beyond the range of
intentionality, questions of ultimate reality. To borrow Leibniz’ two
fundamental questions: “Why is there something, why not nothing?” and “Why is
the world as it is, and not some other way?” These are questions for a
philosopher, and I would think that at least some scientists allow them to
bubble up into consciousness from time to time as they pursue their knowledge of
structures in the world, of “de rerum naturae.”
Philosophy without mystical experience degenerates
rapidly into logic chopping, into word games, into sterile definitions, or
sophistry, or “metaphysics,” or even atheism or nihilism. Anyone who seeks to
speak about the divine, for example, must ever keep in mind the tension between
knowing and unknowing, between revelation and unrevealed reality, so well
summarized by Voegelin: “Even when the divine Beyond reveals itself in its
formative presence, it remains the unrevealed divine reality beyond its
revelation” (In Search of Order, p. 97). Without such awareness, any claim to
“revelation” degenerates into dogmatic beliefs, fundamentalism, biblicism, or at
its worst, gnostic claims to certainty. I know of no “religion” that does not
embody the problem of degenerating mystical experience, and more generally, of
the loss of contact with reality as experienced.
Philosophy and science both begin in wonder, and
proceed by questioning and seeking the truth about reality—seeking insights into
the mysterious Whole in which we find ourselves. Science studies particular
parts of the whole; philosophy seeks to understand something about the whole in
which everything participates. Philosophy has flourished without science, as in
Plato; but Plato had a sharp knowledge of mathematics, language, political
reality, and the like. In Aristotle, philosophy and science blossomed together,
although Whitehead’s claim that “Aristotle founded science, but ruined
philosophy,” deserves at least some consideration. (I have not seen a
destruction of philosophy in Aristotle, but I am aware that some of Aristotle’s
summary insights became taken as definitions or axioms for thinking in
generations after him. Example: “man is the rational animal,” or “God is the
First Mover,” and so on; and even compared to Plato, one often senses in drier
passages of Aristotle some weakening of the grounding in mystical experience.)
The history of philosophy amply demonstrates that philosophers need to know what
other philosophers have thought, as they enter into the historical dialogue that
is an essential part of philosophy; and the study of history, as in the history
of philosophy, requires historical science.
In every direction in which my mind searches, I am
quickly faced by the reality of my ignorance. The Whole, the divine ground, the
particular structures of reality, exploring consciousness itself—all arouse in
me an undying, often disturbing sense of not-knowing. This sense can be, and
often has been, so intense that I have been tempted to give up the search for
knowledge. But then I ask myself: What is the alternative to some search for
truth about reality? To indulge in a life of pleasure-seeking, or of
money-making, or of various diversions? It seems to me that the human task is
to respond to beauty, to do good, and to seek the truth. Beauty awakens wonder
and gratitude. Doing good brings happiness and pleasure. Seeking truth
enlightens the mind and delights the heart. What else is life for, but these
fundamental human activities?
Addendum: Three wonders.
Often I experience three wonders, or have three
wonder-filled experiences, at the beginning of each day: the move from sleep /
dreaming into waking; seeing that Moses is alive, although usually soundly
asleep at that time; and seeing the stars above when I first step out of the
house. In a sense, these three experiences all affirm life: that I am alive;
that one I love is alive; and that the whole cosmos is alive with astounding
beauty.
