3/15/2008
Eric Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, vol. 3 - Order and History
Aristotle and Plato, Part II, chap. 7, pp. 271-292
Joanne Tetlow, J.D., Ph.D.
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"Plato to Aristotle: From Transcendental Forms to Immanent Experience"
Voegelin resolutely debunks the common trope that Plato is a transcendental idealist and Aristotle an immanent realist. The human proclivity for
generalized stereotypes is laid bare by Voegelin's refusal to succumb. He will not jump to such banal conclusions that Plato's Republic
or Aristotle's best polis is about the "ideal state," or that Aristotle is a systematic thinker, thus making his fragmentary Politics
problematic. Despite Aristotle's critique of Plato's insistence on a high level of unity by way of a community of wives and property in the
Republic, Aristotle has far more agreement and continuity with Plato than is usually acknowledged. To begin with, it is important to note that
Aristotle arrives at Plato’s Academy 20 years after its start, when Plato was over 60 years old. The Socratic tradition of philosophy as a way
of life had been recognized in the doctrinal symbols of the "immortality of the soul," "right order of the soul," "true being of the Idea," and "order
of reality through participation in the Idea." Why Aristotle differs from Plato can be explained by the fact he arrives on the scene at a
juncture when new problems needed attention.
One key question was how the Platonic transcendental forms as a separate existence could be experienced in empirical reality? Aristotle
responded by defining the form in empirical reality as understood through noesis. On the immanent level, essence begets essence in the infinite,
uncreated stream of reality itself. Aristotle's focus on the immanent essence discerned through the noetic function does not mean he rejected the
transcendental dimension; rather, according to Voegelin, he recognized that the only way to express the relation between the transcendental and immanent
is by way of analogy using the terms derived from our own immanent being. Thus, Voegelin observes an intellectual "thinning-out" in
Aristotle. Plato's symbolic expression of the transcendent in myth is reduced to Aristotle's conception of the prime mover. Something is
lost here. A central theme in Voegelin's philosophy is that derailment occurs "when the symbols are torn out of their experiential context and
treated as if they were concepts referring to a datum of sense experience." (277) Turning the experience of transcendence into philosophical
concepts undermines the "mystery" inherent in the divine-human encounter.
Voegelin notes the conflicts which have arisen in Christianity by applying Aristotelian philosophic concepts to revelatory symbols. For
example, using the terms "nature" and "person" in attempting to explain the mystery of the Incarnation caused years of dispute until the Council of
Chalcedon (451); applying the ideas of "form" and “substance” to the mystery of the Eucharist has created the unending debate between Catholics and
Protestants; and expecting the perfection of supernatural grace to occur in our immanent existence has led to early and modern Gnosticism. Voegelin
questions whether these "philosophies" of order have interpreted symbols of transcendence according to their original meaning, or merely are a
development of speculative topoi far from Plato's love of the divine measure. But, it is possible to understand Christianity without
these philosophical concepts? Or, do these Aristotelian categories subvert the inexplainable mysticism of divine encounter?
A second distinction between Plato and Aristotle, which seems more positive, is that after Plato there is a clear differentiation of the political,
religious, and noetic; and so, a crisis in civilization can occur in one sector, e.g., the political, without occurring in another sector, e.g., the
religious. What marks historical epochs is not political events, but the spiritual. Because of cyclical history, the decline and crisis of
the Greek polis is not an absolute end. It can also be a new beginning of spiritual understanding. Even so, Voegelin sees Aristotle as
"thinning-out" again, because if his theory of knowledge is based on the theory of cycles, there are no new discoveries, only objective historical facts
to explain. One senses in Voegelin a loss of transcendence in the transition from Plato to Aristotle.
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