208 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
state. Scholarly discussion of political subjects, Voegelin argued,
while being concerned with developing sharply defined concepts
of their subjects, ignored the fact that their definitiveness did not
hold in reality. Methodology, Voegelin stated, had replaced on-
tology, so that the scientific method falsely constituted the object
of its science, guaranteeing the unity of the scientific object by
the unity of a methodological system of categories. The object of
research that concerned a certain segment of reality, such as the
state, was subordinated to the method used to approach reality,
and since methodology was a closed system of categories, so the
object was determined by it. Hence, he urged political science to
distinguish between political symbol on the one hand and theo-
retical concept on the other, and not simply attempt to assign to a
political symbol an epistemologically correct meaning. Thus,
By recognising political language for what it is, we integrate it into
the reality of the state as one of its components. Refusing to misun-
derstand the creation of a political symbol as an act of perception,
renouncing the assumption that the political symbol has to mean
something and not just be something, allows us to understand it
as a symbol in the full richness and force of its expression.... The
elements of the situation in which the political symbol has its place
become visible only when we do not act as if the perspective of the
concept were identical with the perspective of the symbol.^44Voegelin’s analysis of the contradictions both within Nazi race
ideology and political science’s methodological preoccupations
can be read, like Landauer’s analysis of the state, as a critique of
arche, substituting imaginary reality for reality itself.
Landauer, in turn, described what he considered the original pur-
pose of science. In order to generate knowledge about the mean-
ing of its experiences, he argued, the individual has to explore the
world, providing her senses with objective data for her soul to in-
terpret.^45 Yet, being is not only experienced by the senses, but also
by the spirit, non-linguistically and non-rationally.^46 It follows that
the world cannot be explained materialistically alone, for the emer-
gence of the spirit from material is mystery.^47 Rather, Landauer
argued, the purpose of science is to contemplate experience so
that practice can be meaningfully attuned to knowledge.^48 This