A REASONABLE LIST

This (non-exhaustive) list of competing motivations between the classical ideal and a (post)Modern intellectual position is culled from an erudite essay by Eric Voegelin entitled:  On the Classics, and reflects on the emasculated approach by most ‘institutes of Higher Learning’ in the Western world towards the teaching and learning of Classical studies. 

I find the list rather compelling though I have prefaced it with a verse from another ‘classical’ source of greater importance (IMO) than every other one written since the beginning of time and motivated by the Platonic idea that reason and logic have their source in Reason and Logic, i.e. The LOGOS!

Proverbs 16:9 In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps

The effort of the Greeks to arrive at an understanding of their humanity has culminated in the Platonic-Aristotelian creation of philosophy as the science of the nature of man. Even more than with the Sophistic of their times the results are in conflict with the contemporary climate of opinion. I shall enumerate some principal points of disagreement:

1. Classic: There is a nature of man, a definite structure of existence that puts limits on perfectibility.
Modern: The nature of man can be changed, either through historical evolution or through revolutionary action, so that a perfect realm of freedom can be established in history.
2. Classic: Philosophy is the endeavor to advance from opinion (doxa) about the order of man and society to science (episteme); the philosopher is not a philodoxer.
Modern: No science in such matters is possible, only opinion; everybody is entitled to his opinions; we have a pluralist society.
3. Classic: Society is man written large.
Modern: Man is society written small.
4. Classic: Man exists in erotic tension toward the divine ground of his existence.
Modern: He doesn’t; for I don’t; and I’m the measure of man.
5. Classic: Man is disturbed by the question of the ground; by nature he is a questioner (aporein) and seeker (zetein) for the whence, the where to, and the why of his existence; he will raise the question: Why is there something, why not nothing?
Modern: Such questions are otiose (Comte); don’t ask them, be a socialist man (Marx); questions to which the sciences of world-immanent things can give no answer are senseless, they areScheinprobleme (neopositivism).
6. Classic: The feeling of existential unrest, the desire to know, the feeling of being moved to question, the questioning and seeking itself, the direction of the questioning toward the ground that moves to be sought, the recognition of the divine ground as the mover, are the experiential complex, the pathos, in which the reality of divine-human participation (metalepis) becomes luminous. The exploration of the metaleptic reality, of the Platonic metaxy, as well as the articulation of the exploratory action through language symbols, in Plato’s case of his Myths, are the central concern of the philosopher’s efforts.
Modern: The modern responses to this central issue change with the “climate of opinion.”

 In Locke the metaleptic reality and its noetic analysis is transformed into the acceptance of certain “common opinions” which still bear an intelligible relation to the experience from which they derive. The reduction of reality to opinion, however, is not deliberate; Locke is already so deeply involved in the climate of opinion that his awareness for the destruction of philosophy through, the transition from episteme to doxa is dulled. Cf. Willey’s presentation of the Lockean case.

Hegel, on the contrary, is acutely aware of what he is doing when he replaces the metaleptic reality of Plato and Aristotle by his state of alienation as the experiential basis for the construction of his speculative system. He makes it explicitly his program to overcome philosophy by the dialectics of a self-reflective alienated consciousness. 

In the twentieth century, the “climate of opinion” has advanced to the tactics of the “silent treatment.” In a case like Sartre’s, metaleptic reality is simply ignored. Existence has the character of meaningless facticité; its endowment with meaning is left to the free choice of man. The choice of a meaning for existence falls with preference on the opinion of totalitarian regimes who engage in mass-murder, like the Stalinist; the preference has been elaborated with particular care by Merleau-Ponty. The tactics of the “silent treatment,” especially employed after the Second World War by the “liberation rabble,” however, make it difficult to decide in individual cases, whether the counterposition to metaleptic reality is deliberate, or whether thelibido domimndi is running amok in a climate of opinion that is taken for granted, without questioning, as ultimate reality. On the whole, I have the impression, that the consciousness of a counterposition is distinctly less alive than it still was at the time of Hegel. Philosophical illiteracy has progressed so far that the experiential core of philosophizing has disappeared below the horizon and is not even recognized as such when it appears in philosophers like Bergson. The deculturation process has eclipsed it so thoroughly by opinion that sometimes one hesitates to speak even of an indifference toward it.
7. Classic: Education is the art of periagoge, of turning around (Plato).
Modern: Education is the art of adjusting people so solidly to the climate of opinion prevalent at the time that they feel no “desire to know.” Education is the art of preventing people from acquiring knowledge that would enable them to articulate the questions of existence. Education is the art of pressuring young people into a state of alienation that will result in either quiet despair or aggressive militancy.
8. Classic: The process in which metaleptic reality becomes conscious and noeticaIIy articulate is the process in which the nature of man becomes luminous to itself as the life of reason. Man is the zoon noun echon.


Modern: Reason is instrumental reason. There is no such thing as a noetic rationality of man.
9. Classic: Through the life of reason (bios theoretikos) man realizes his freedom.
Modern: Plato and Aristotle were fascists. The life of reason is a fascist enterprise.
The enumeration is not even remotely exhaustive. Everybody can supplement it with juicy items gleaned from opinion literature and the mass media, from conversations with colleagues and students. Still, they make it clear what Whitehead meant when he stated that modern philosophy has been ruined.