"Faced with widespread and profound cultural, social, and moral decay, Voegelin theorized that the West had lost its consciousness of certain historical experiences vital to the formation of political, social, and existential order. In Voegelin's terms, historical experiences and their corresponding language symbols illuminated the truth of reality. Language was necessary to articulate "experiences of order" and preserve them over time, since such experiences were rare. The truth of existence embodied in experience was an ordering force because it attuned the open soul to the Agathon (the Good). And a just political and social order, like the just soul, is dependent on this sort of attunement. Unfortunately, historical experience cannot have an ordering effect if the language symbols that preserve it lose their original meaning, as occurs when they are transformed or obscured by ideological movements. Such movements act to detach language symbols from their engendering experiences.
"To regain consciousness of the engendering experiences—and in turn to restore social, political, and existential order—the philosopher must "reactivate the engendering experience in his psyche" and "recapture the truth of reality living in the symbols." In particular, the language symbols of myth, revelation, history, and especially philosophy must be restored to luminosity—that is, reattached to the historical experiences that they attempt to convey—before rational discussion of the questions of order can occur. This recovery of meaning requires the philosopher to recreate the experience imaginatively in an act of meditation and to create "reflective symbols" that articulate the truth of the "original symbols." This understanding of the modern crisis as a loss of consciousness of symbols and experience helps to explain why Voegelin turned to the philosophy of consciousness in his later work."
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