The Significance of Plato's Philebus in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin
Bernat  Torres Morales uic-es.academia.edu
The Significance of Plato's Philebus in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin
Abstract This article situates the concept of liminality within anthropology, philosophy and sociology, and underlines the connections across the disciplines by showing how the role of experience is crucial to a full understanding of the term, however applied. In order to point to the dynamics of liminal moments, the article introduces three complementary terms, namely “imitation”, “trickster” and “schismogenesis”. The usefulness of the concept of liminality is then demonstrated via a diver- sity of examples, including the analysis of intellectual “generations”. Liminality helps to study events or situations that involve the dissolution of order, but which are also formative of institu- tions and structures. It is argued that the neglect of liminality in philosophy and social theory but also in social and political life is a serious hinder to a fuller grasp of some of the most problem- atic aspects of modernity. Keywords: Experience, generational analysis, history of thought, imitation, liminality, Kant, Plato, schismogenesis, transition, transformation.

Some of Voegelin's remarks, like the one found in the beginning of The Ecumenic Age that the “structure of reality is not there to be seen by everybody” can appear problematic. The idea that not everyone has access to the all-important “experience of order” is at the very least unsettling. But even further, it seems at odds with Voegelin’s insistence that we must put great stock in the “equivalences of experience” amongst persons and across cultures. This paper dispels the tension between these two claims, showing that when Voegelin’s sense of “experience” is rightly understood and paired with the important concept of "anamnesis," Voegelin's extended arguments about the ability to philosophize and how it affects one's access to political reality becomes more intelligible.

This paper considers the extent to which Eric Voegelin’s mature writings supply a basis for a substantive ethical and political science. It does so by examining Voegelin’s understanding of nous as the ground for theorizing, and by relating this back to Aristotle. Aristotle is shown to have understood the activities of nous in two distinct ways. On the one hand, nous is the divine activity of the soul exploring its own ground. But nous is also induction (epagôgê) of the first principles of science through sense perception, memory and experience. The two basic activities of nous are related, but they have different values when it comes to the world of particulars. It is the argument of this paper that a substantive ethical and political science—one that sheds light on particulars—must include the inductive employment of nous and that the exclusion of this from Voegelin’s political science results in some discernible limitations.