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Anamnetic Tales: The Place of
Narrative in Eric Voegelin's Accou
of Consciousness
Thomas W. Heilke
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.
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762 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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).
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 763
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764 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 765
9. Ibid.
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766 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., p. 2.
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 767
!
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768 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 769
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770 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
I
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 771
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772 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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.
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 773
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
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774 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
* I
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN
I I
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776THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
I
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 777
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778 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 779
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.
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780 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 781
I
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THE REVIEW OF
7 POLITICS
I I
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 783
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
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784 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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.
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 7
I I
"Anamnetic Experiments"
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786 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
I
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 7
I I
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788 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 789
I
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).
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790 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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.
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NARRATIVITY IN ERIC VOEGELIN 791
!
Conclusions
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792 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS
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