Reaching for a Bridge Between Consciousness and Reality: The Languages of Eric Voegelin

The title of this article evokes the problem in the pursuit of which Eric Voegelin, one of the foremost political philosophers in the twentieth century, produced his work. To inquire into what is called here "the movement unto knowing between reality and consciousness," Voegelin progressively differentiated his language concerning "reality" and "consciousness." In fact, language itself became for him a central theme. In his late essay The Beginning of the Beginning he added to the notions of reality and consciousness that of "language," in one and the same "complex"" It is through language, he maintained, that reality becomes present to consciousness. To know reality means to enter into the "story" that reality is. In his quest for a theory of consciousness, the acme of his theory of politics, Voegelin found himself compelled to develop a theory of language.