Beyond Postmodernism: Restoring the Primal Quest for Meaning to Political Inquiry

• Published in: Human studies 1997-01, Vol.20 (1), p.75-94
• Main Author: Herman, Louis G.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communities; Crises; Dialectic; Humans; Hunter gatherers; Hunting and gathering societies; Logic; Meaning; Methodology (Philosophical); Modernity; Political Science; Politics; Postmodern philosophy; Postmodernism; Reality; Sacredness; Scientific technological revolution; Shamanism; Shamans; Socratic philosophy; Truth; Wilderness
• ISSN: 0163-8548; 1572-851X
• DOI: 10.1023/A:1005382017058

My paper picks up a long ignored suggestion of Sheldon Wolin -- that we use Thomas Kuhn's analysis of scientific revolutions to examine the crisis of "normal" political science. This approach allows us to see the connection between the state of the discipline and the larger crisis of meaning afflicting modernity. I then use Eric Voegelin's notion of a multicivilizational "truth quest" -- or search for meaning -- to make a case for institutionalizing "extraordinary" or "revolutionary" political science. I attempt such a discipline by following Voegelin -- reflecting on "the full amplitude of human experience." Such a meditation takes place within the "first reality of existence" -- Plato's metaxy or the "in-between" -- the experience of human existence between the sacred and the mundane. I bring to Voegelin's exploration of the metaxy the realm of experience which is most radically "other" for modernity -- the primal political order of paleolithic and contemporary hunting gathering societies. I argue that shamanic "Urreligion" and Socratic discussion share a boundary crossing logic which provides a basis for a discipline of "extraordinary political science." Finally I suggest that such a discipline is both the quest for, and, in a sense, a realization of, the 'Good Life' -- a source of order for the individual and society.