Essays in Anarchism and Religion

216 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1

All philosophising about consciousness is an event in the con-

sciousness of the philosopher and presupposes this consciousness

together with its structures. Inasmuch as the consciousness of

philosophising is not “pure” consciousness, but rather the con-

sciousness of a human being, all philosophising is an event in the

philosopher’s life history; an event in the history of the community

with its symbolic language; an event in the history of mankind, and

of the cosmos. No “human” in his reflection on consciousness and

its nature can make consciousness an “object” to be confronted;

the reflection is rather an orientation within consciousness with

which he can push to its limits but never cross them.^88

Consciousness, in other words, can only be understood through
the experience of the person to whom it belongs, allowing only
the individual herself direct and unmediated insight into reality
and stepping out of the second reality. These new insights arising
from consciousness have a fundamental impact on the concep-
tualisation of the possibilities and aims of community and are
worthwhile to be explored in more detail.
According to Voegelin, consciousness appears situated within
and contained by the body, functioning to make its specific ex-
ternal reality intelligible.^89 And yet, the concept of body, matter,
or corporeality itself is also already contained within conscious-
ness, so that consciousness is ultimately experienced no less real
than reality itself. Accordingly, it is not a mere thing, but rather a
mysterious force somehow distinguished from thingness. It both
“intends reality” as its object and makes reality “luminous”^90 by
experiencing and philosophising about the “awe of existence.”^91
Consciousness is enclosed from the cosmos surrounding it, as
well as being itself a cosmic principle.^92 Through this particular
“in-betweenness” consciousness experiences additional being that
is other than the existent things and which, therefore, can only
be known in its attributes, but not in its essence. To describe this
peculiar structure of consciousness, Voegelin used the Greek term
metaxy, designating an intermediary and intermediate reality.^93
Anamnesis, then, really refers to the remembrance of metaxy, of
the lasting tension between the intelligible and the unattainable,
“between life and death, immortality and mortality, perfection
and imperfection, time and timelessness, between order and dis-
order, truth and untruth, sense and senselessness.”^94