To sum up the last week's series of posts in pursuit of the nature of tradition, I have arrived at the following impasse:
1. The dichotomy between the internal and external views of the temporal character of tradition has to be abandoned, because as a religious being searching for piety, I cannot be satisfied with an interpretation which situates me as an outside observer of tradition.
2. The dichotomy cannot be abandoned, because it seems to involve forfeiting the position from which the most can be seen, rolling back consciousness to a point before it discovered the externally historical presentation of tradition; in other words, it seems to involve a willful denial of what the tradition of the philosophy of history has come to know and has passed on to me as my inheritance from it.
I am not sure that I should regard these demands as being equal in force, but I do so regard them. In an attempt to reconcile them, therefore, I am looking for a way to hold on to the synoptic view afforded by the external interpretation while removing the one-sidedness of an "external" position. For this reason it will not content me to retreat to the internal position any more than to abandon myself to the external. For, as I have been saying all along, the very notion of an internal point of view, as one side of a fundamental division, is a function of the external view which lays this division down in the first place--so that the intention to retreat (known as "traditionalism") fails from the outset by capitulating to the very thing it is trying to flee.
Of course it is true that the explicit distinction between the external and the internal has as its precondition in the 'distanced consciousness' which affords the 'synoptic view' of which the external view of history is a shining example. The question is: what is it which, remaining implicit in this explicit distinction, comprehends it "in advance"? Is it not the fact that such an explicit distinction between internal and external can only be made in keeping with the implicit possibilities of understanding which have been inherited prior to its possible emergence? In short, isn't the very notion of an outside observer of tradition made possible and intelligible only within the bounds of very unique tradition which we call the western tradition? In this case, there is no need to assert your first point above (i.e. 1.), since the reason for your dissatisfaction with an external view is not because of some belief or vestige of piety but because this very view is at variance with what it seeks to accomplish (i.e. synopsis). The external view is by its own standards not external enough, i.e. because it, taken alone, fails to take account of and make explicit the implicit and inherited understanding which bestows upon it its proper meaning and possibility. Because what is thus called for is an escape from the external view without deviating from its most proper intention and aim, there is likewise no call to "roll back consciousness" since any such retreat would fail to recognize that the implicit component of the external view which the latter fails to attain to is not found by naively representing the past from an external point of view, but from pursuing what has not yet been seen in the PRESENT external view ---i.e. what remains implicit for future thinking to first of all think.
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