Introduction to Symposium on Barry Cooper’s Paleolithic Politics: The Human Community in Early Art

Abstract

Barry Cooper’s Paleolithic Politics: The Human Community in Early Art applies Eric Voegelin’s concept of “primary experience of the cosmos” to paleolithic art, which expresses a compact form of consciousness that precedes the cosmological civilizations (Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, and the Achaemenian empire) that Voegelin examined in volume one of Order and History, Israel and Revelation.1 It is the third book that Cooper has written that applies Voegelin’s concepts to materials that Voegelin never wrote about. The other two are New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism, which uses Voegelin’s concept of pneumopathology to study radical jihadis, and It’s the Regime, Stupid!: A Report From the Cowboy West on Why Stephen Harper Matters, which uses Voegelin’s concept of political myth to examine the low-boil stasis of the Canadian regime.2 Voegelin himself studied Paleolithic art and collaborated with paleontologist Marie König, which Cooper describes at length. However, Voegelin never wrote about that work. Because the focus of this volume precedes the materials covered in volume one of Order and History, Paleolithic Politics has received the nickname, “Volume Zero.” As an analysis of the most compact of available compact symbolisms, this book is counterpart to Cooper’s previous book, Consciousness and Politics: From Analysis to Meditation in the Late Works of Eric Voegelin, which considers Voegelin’s analysis of the most differentiated forms consciousness.3 Thus the earlier book establishes the methodology of the present book, although “methodology” is an inadequate term as shall be explained. The reader can assess the relationship of the two books by reading not only Politics and Consciousness but also the review symposium that was published in the Political Science Reviewer.4 Let this introduction, which considers the internal evidence of the present book, suffice. Paleolithic Politics is an unusual book. A superficial reading may frustrate the reader who expects detailed analysis of cave art, perhaps a treatment analogous to a political philosopher’s detailed exegesis of a Platonic dialogue. But this superficiality is misplaced because one does not analyze Paleolithic cave art to understand the politics of their tribes any more than one reads a Platonic dialogue to learn about the everyday politics of Athens. Cooper claims the “fact” of the paintings—the effort to produce them—reflects a spiritual crisis, perhaps a differentiation of consciousness reflecting a separation of the human from the animal. That “fact” brings us closer to why one would read a Platonic dialogue as well. Even so, the reader may be underwhelmed by the attention paid to the artifacts themselves. Instead of intensive analysis of cave and mobilary art, Cooper seems to take an extremely scholastic approach by standing on the shoulders of some of the giants of paleontology, including Marie König, Alexander Marshack, Jean Clottes, Henri Breuil, and André Leroi-Gourhan. The danger of following the example of William of Conches, though, is that by standing on their shoulders you no longer can see the ground; you spend your time interpreting the interpretations of others. However, this book is not a scholastic exercise. For one thing, Cooper devotes considerable attention not to giants of paleontology but to outsiders, those he seems to think can see things more clearly and more directly than the professionals. While Cooper calls Paleolithic Politics applied Voegelinian political science, it is perhaps helpful to consider it also as an exercise of Polanyian personal knowledge. Cooper describes his book in these terms: “The form of the text in this book is a narrative essay rather than a report, a meditation, a poem, or a treatise” (PP xv). “Narrative” and its related quality, “connoisseurship,” are those pre-scientific virtues that Michael Polanyi says enable scientists to practice science.5 Cooper explains: “narrative does not argue or demonstrate, it persuades. In that sense it is pretheoretical or even prescientific. And yet it also guides and contextualizes argument, knowledge, and science” (PP xvi). Narrative or storytelling unites both Paleolilthic artist and twenty-first century political scientist. One chooses facts to study not based upon a preconceived methodology but because the scientist is one who knows already how to proceed in the activity of science. Cooper elsewhere has explained empirical political science by referring to Aristotle’s comment on the unity of