Phenomenology and Prolepsis
The science of complexity facilitates a theological reformulation in seeking a radical expression of freedom of God, which allows a gift of creativity to a self-organizing universe to come into being. A divinely created universe is a self-organizing system with freedom and creativity, implying a proleptic view of continual creation from God’s future.
A notion of prolepsis can be seen in post-Aristotelian Greek philosophy, especially in the case of Stoics. Here, pneuma (the spirit of life-world) directs the cosmos and pervades the physical body by transmitting sensory information as processed and experienced to the soul as unified and rational (reason and intelligence). Prolepsis (precondition) is an innate disposition as seen in the concept of God and the good, which plays a significant role in human ethical and rational life.
On the other hand, prolepsis as a figure of anticipation represents the future in the present reality, facilitating the construction of some future event in present-minded prediction. It also implies attention and memory as fundamental defining factors in shaping proleptic consciousness under the horizon of life-world, which allows for the dialectic interplay of the present (here-and-now or vivid description) and the past (there-and-then or analepsis in flashback). Prolepsis draws upon activates rhetorical knowledge, articulating a human cognitive response to a particular unknown future event.
( Ashley R. Mehlenbacher, “Rhetorical Figures as Argument Schemes – The Proleptic Suite,” Argument & Computation 8 (2017), 234 [233–252]).
Prolepsis signifies an intentionality of protension in synthesizing a radical reflection of the past for vivid present (retention as a representation) through anticipation moving under the transcendental influence of the life-world. Present is in the service of the future in the stream of the time. Prolepsis reasoning can be universally claimed in human intelligent mind correlate with world openness.
In fact, a Stoic idea of the seminal reason (logos spermatikos) underlines the cosmic source of order, which is influential in Justine Martyr; the Logos (John 1) exists as the logos spermatikos universally present in the minds and hearts of all human beings. There would be a potential relationship between the seminal reason and prolepsis, but such connection needs to be featured in public theology of nature, when it comes to dealing with cybernetic world of complexity imbued with feedback, catalytic reaction, and symbiosis.
Prolepsis as a rhetorical figure involves also an argument strategy (proleptic suite), by which to construct some future event in the biblical context of vivid present (Ps. 87:1, 22:18, and Ezek. 1:1). Especially, in Matthew 27:52 the resurrection of the dead, in Jewish apocalyptic terms, took place proleptically at the death of Christ. Proleptic argument is used to turn the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection into fulfillment of Jewish messianic expectation into vivid present, while relocating a horizon of protension within the framework of Christian eschatology.
God’s future correlates with the present reality of Christ’s reconciliation and resurrection, which is in the narrative order related to the present reality of God’s future. We have the anticipation of the future of God (universal term) brought into a discursive present of Christ’s resurrection (concrete); thus, we have prolepsis in the dialectical frame of the concrete universal, synthesizing the seminal reason with human anticipation of the future—proleptic consciousness. Our proleptic consciousness underlying faith is shaped by the life-world of reconciliation and the living reality of resurrected Jesus Christ in his impartation of the Holy Spirit to the faith community.
Prolepsis of Life-World and Social Formation
In the proleptic view of life-word, I am concerned with the Santiago school of thought; self-awareness is tied to language, and its approach to language is undertaken in a careful analysis of communication, which implies mutual coordination of behavior among living organisms through mutual structural coupling. Our linguistic distinctions exist in the network of structural couplings which is woven through language, and meaning arises in our linguistic distinction and communication through self-reflection. To be human is to live in language and communication by coordinating our behavior and bringing forth a world with others.[1]
Endowed with reflective consciousness, Santiago’s theory does not need to discard the dimension of intersubjective communication and hermeneutical dialogue with the literary world. In this dialogical interaction we bring forth a world with others in enhancing horizon of meaning, critical thinking, and emancipation from sedimentation of the past. A bringing forth of a world (externalization) is structurally coupled with life-world underlying our understanding, society and culture through language and social communication.
This epistemic stance facilitates public theology in constructing social epistemology concerned with an articulation between religious discourse, agency, and social systems in functional differentiation. It features significance of postsocial (non-human) relations in which object-centered environments have a defining role in shaping individual identity and mediating human relationships. Epistemic cultures are shaped by affinity, necessity, and historical coincidence, since they make up how we know what we know in a given field.[2]
Autopoietic nature of epistemic cultures can be seen in its production, dissemination, and expansion in globalized knowledge society along with object-centered environments and their transformations in the network of power relations. Systems evolve according to symbolic material interests, while structures changing in hierarchical stratification according to power relations.
This systemic view of religious construction of reality advances a model of elective affinity between ideas, material interests, and power relations in the course of history and society. Ideas rely on continual feedback and travel on its actual trajectory oscillating around the preset direction in the river of the history. Social scientists, like steerspersons, have the skill of steering a boat of ideas in finding its elective affinity among casually adequate, multiple elements in dealing with symbolic material interests and power relations in terms of deviation, control, or misuse to justify ideological legitimacy and social discourse. This epistemic procedure entails the immanent critique coming from the religious idea of the future of God, which shines upon the beginning and the present (Rev. 22:5).
The epistemic holism does not necessarily contrast evolution (functional differentiation in self-organization) with revolution (structural transformation in the dissipative structures) through complexity, catalytic mediation, and co-creation. This applicability fuses into the social scientific theory of elective affinity, which focuses on interaction, emergence, and new development.
A plot of elective affinity (seen in Goethe’s novel) is compared to the chemical theory of reaction in regard to attraction, conflict, replacement, degeneration, and even tragic end. Indeed, chemical affinity can be reconstructed in human social systems and through collective catalytic reactions in terms of cybernetic-phenomenological operation.
Given this, I am concerned with Max Weber’s study of Protestant ethos (ideal factors) and capitalist spirit (real factors) through elective affinity, in which religious idea (or knowledge) is led and constructed by social material interests. A sociological concept of casually adequate elements implies the articulation between history and social structure, which remain crucial as environment for system of self-organization and human agency.
History is connected with social process and dissipative structure of agency (class/status) in the network of symbolic material interests, epistemic legitimacy of social discourse (a general system of knowledge including ideology as false consciousness), and power relations. A proleptic view of world reality is concerned with world complexity with functional differentiations and takes into account a regime of systems communication.
In fact, Luhmann’s problem can be detected in his approach to the excessive structural coupling in terms of self-organization and process. So, he leads to reduction of world complexity, while his external observing position is bound to selection capability, which runs into a political theory of decisionism and a general theory of ideology in contrast to a critical theory of ideology.[3]
[1] Maturana and Varela, The Tree of Knowledge (Boston: Shambhala, 1987), 244.
[2] Karin K. Cetina, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), 1.
[3] Habermas, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, 460-1.