Voegelin, Eric
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Eric Voegelin and the Good Society
John J. Ranieri
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ASIN: 0826210120 |
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- A Great Intro to Voegelin
- A Masterful Synthesis
- Not perfect, but still brilliant
- Learned
- Classical Politics in age of Enlightenment Tyranny
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The New Science of Politics (Walgreen Foundation Lectures)
Eric Voegelin
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Book Description
"Thirty-five years ago few could have predicted that The New Science of Politics would be a best-seller by political theory standards. Compressed within the Draconian economy of the six Walgreen lectures is a complete theory of man, society, and history, presented at the most profound and intellectual level. . . . Voegelin's [work] stands out in bold relief from much of what has passed under the name of political science in recent decades. . . . The New Science is aptly titled, for Voegelin makes clear at the outset that a 'return to the specific content' of premodern political theory is out of the question. . . . The subtitle of the book, An Introduction, clearly indicates that The New Science of Politics is an invitation to join the search for the recovery of our full humanity."--From the new Foreword by Dante Germino
"This book must be considered one of the most enlightening essays on the character of European politics that has appeared in half a century. . . . This is a book powerful and vivid enough to make agreement or disagreement with even its main thesis relatively unimportant."--Times Literary Supplement
"Voegelin . . . is one of the most distinguished interpreters to Americans of the non-liberal streams of European thought. . . . He brings a remarkable breadth of knowledge, and a historical imagination that ranges frequently into brilliant insights and generalizations."--Francis G. Wilson, American Political Science Review
"This book is beautifully constructed . . . his erudition constantly brings a startling illumination."--Martin Wright, International Affairs
"A ledestar to thinking men who seek a restoration of political science on the classic and Christian basis . . . a significant accomplishment in the retheorization of our age."--Anthony Harrigan, Christian Century
Customer Reviews:
A Great Intro to Voegelin.......2007-04-27
This was the first of Voegelin's works that I ever read, and I think it is a great intro to his thought. First of all, "The New Science of Politics" is one of his more important works. His construction of modern gnosticism within this piece is a very significant challenge to the foundation values that are the hallmark of modernity.
If this is the first of Voegelin's works that you will be reading, and if you're anything like me, this will be a very hard book to get through. The writing is very hard, and that is compounded by the fact that the concepts being discussed are so profound. If you get a vague idea of what Voegelin is trying to say after reading this book then you are doing just fine. I read this book first, and then read Modernity Without Restraint: The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 5), which includes this book along with two others related to modern gnosticism. I learned a lot more and understood Voegelin a lot more clearly the second time I read this work; so if you find yourself confused, keep on going and you'll get there...
A couple other of Voegelin's collected works that deal with the topic of modern gnosticism are: Published Essays: 1940-1952 (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 10); Published Essays: 1953-1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 11); and Published Essays: 1966-1985 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 12). The last of those three deals with modern gnosticism the least, so start with the first two if you're looking for addition material.
Voegelin is a great thinker and his work is very challenging. Yet I think his ideas contain profound truths that moderns like us would do well to consider. Five stars for a classic piece of conservative political philosophy.
A Masterful Synthesis.......2002-09-22
Eric Voegelin, who died in 1985, is one of the giants of intellectual history and political philosophy. Unfortunately, he is far less well-recognized outside of a small scholarly community than some of the poseurs who foist quack theories on the public under the guise of "political philosophy." The New Science of Politics, based on Voegelin's Walgreen Lectures, can be read as a theoretical companion to his magisterial Order and History, a five-volume elaboration of the theories presented here. Voegelin provides an examination of political community and its representations through symbolic appropriation and the underlying basis of political order throughout history. Equally, Voegelin deals with misappropriation of symbols in the form of Gnosticism, which emerged at the dawn of the middle ages. His diagnostic exercise leads to an examination of modernity, which is characterized by advance and decline, the nature of of our own times. Modernist movements such as Nazism and Communism embody gnostic misappropriation of the symbolization of order. Writing in the immediate postwar period as an Austrian refugee from Hitler, with a command of ancient and modern philosophy and history and access to documentation in a dozen languages, Voegelin both lays the foundation for a return to the Aristotelean tradition of political philosophy and analysis and provides the personal witness of a research physician who has examined the patient at close hand. There is no better short book in our times for accomplishing Dr. Johnson's admonition to clear your mind of cant, or providing a sound basis for recognizing the corruption of intellectual and personal standards in current politics and scholarship, or the infection of scholarship by extremist politics. Voegelin has a number of brilliant students carrying on his work. However, unlike acolytes of Leo Strauss and Allan Bloom and their neo-conservative entourage, who represent a very different and self-referential strain in modern political analysis, Voegelin's students have not populated the high offices of government. Given the power of Voegelin's model presented in The New Science of Politics, I expect and hope that his long-term influence will weigh decisively in the war on modernity and its pernicious supporting social science-based infrastructure. To understand the contours of the problem, The New Science of Politics is an indispensible guide and a model of elegant anlysis and writing.
Not perfect, but still brilliant.......2001-09-10
"The New Science of Politics" is the best short work in the oeurve of the great philosopher and political scientist Eric Voegelin. In it he describes, among other things, an effective methodology for studying the political experiences of peoples; the philosophical errors at the roots of scientism and positive social sciences, which seek to apply an irrelevant mathematical method to human behavior, which can only be comprehended on it's own terms; the existential underpinnings of virutally every revolutionary ideology the West has ever known in a spiritual revolt against the nature of human existence; and the dynamics of the kinds of political movements that arise from such experiences. This is nothing less that an attempt to ground human political life in an existential philosophy and to contruct from that understanding a method for rigourously and accurately studying those patterns of life. Voegelin's book is a milestone in human thought and a light in the abyssal darkness of Modernity.
Still, it is not without it's flaws. Voegelin persistently and completely misread Nietzsche, taking him to be an enemy of reality, when in fact Nietzsche rejected so mush of the Western tradition because he found in it a nihilist hatred for reality and existence that Voegelin also opposes. Likewise, Voegelin seems to take Christianity as either a sui generis phenomenon or a development out of Greek philosophy, when in fact it is neither. Christianity is the product of an evolution within the boundaries (and thus the experiences) of ancient Judaism. In order to understand Christianity as itself, it must be taken for the organic outgrowth from that background that it was. Voegelin thus persistently misunderstands the essence of Christianity, which he seems to confuse with semi-Platonic Augustinianism. Finally, Voegelin never seeks to analyze the metaphysical truthfulness of the existential experiences that he finds undergirding political life. He just takes it for granted that the quasi-Platonic cosmology that he adheres to is the true order of reality. This leaves him open to metaphysical criticism.
Nonetheless, this is a brilliant introduction to Voegelin's work and to the demented nature of modern ideology and it's roots in spiritual revolt.
Learned.......2001-01-08
Eric Voegelin was one of the most learned scholars of the 20th century. This work, which goes beyond what might be considered a "science of politics," is a fairly complete exposition of some of the central themes of philosophy, particularly how they relate to politics. Voegelin's thesis is (in part) roughly as follows: Christianity, particularly in its Augustinian version, dedivinzed the universe. In this process, man saw his limited, creaturely role. However, various revolutionary movements arose which sought to redivinize man and society. These movements were largely "gnostic" in orientation. This gnosticism can be seen in the revolutionary philosophies of our time, such as Comteianism, Marxism, and Nazism. "These Gnostic experiences . . . are the core of the redivinization of society, for the men who fall into these experiences divinize themselves by substituting more massive modes of participation in divinity for faith in the Christian sense." [p. 124.] One gnostic phenomenon Voegelin calls "immanitizing the eschaton" in which revolutionaries attempt to create utopia on earth. They often follow a version of Joachim's "three ages" scheme: for example, Comte's approach to history (theological, metaphysical, and scientific phases); the Marxian three stages of society (primitive, class-based, and communistic); and Nazism with its "Third Reich." [pps. 112-13.]
Voegelin's learning is nothing short of astounding. He is at ease discussing topics as diverse as ancient philosophy, the inscriptions of King Darius I, the Mongol Orders of Submission, and various Puritan literature.
There are a couple problems with this work. First, Voegelin has a rather freewheeling use of the term "gnosticism" which he seems to apply to just about everything he doesn't like. For example, the Protestant Reformation was "the successful invasion of Western institutions by Gnostic movements." [p. 134.] While gnosticism may be an appropriate way to describe various movements that sprung up at the time of the Reformation, this is an unfair characterization of Protestantism as a whole. [See Murray Rothbard's essay "Karl Marx as Religious Eschatologist" in The Logic of Action II.] In fact, Voegelin goes so far as to call Calvin's Institutes a "Gnostic Koran"! [p. 139.] He also sees gnostic elements in Paul and Isaiah, among others. Second, it's kind of hard to determine exactly what Voegelin's own views are. Although he has been praised by many Christian writers, he apparently wasn't a Christian in the traditional sense. He called himself a "mystic." [Michael Franz, Eric Voegelin and the Politics of Spiritual Revolt, p. 70 n. 11.] In fact, David Gordon, echoing R.J. Rushdoony, recently stated that Voegelin was himself a gnostic! [David Gordon, Mises Review, Fall 2000.]
Classical Politics in age of Enlightenment Tyranny.......1998-08-24
Eric Voegelin New Science of Politics is a masterpiece of classical political theory. His analysis rested upon the idea that the modern political theorist have distorted the classical tradition in order to create a new manufactured political Enlightenment theory. The breakdown of philosophy into a series of political ideologies has created the modern tragedy of bizarre collection of distorted views of human nature. Essentially, Voegelin used the title New Science of Politics to rediscover the essential foundations of politics based on a theory of human rationalism. The current political theorist tend to view the political nature of representation based on a deformed psychological conception of modern man, i.e. Shelley's Frankenstein. The book gives new insights and sources to the essential characteristics of the good society. The book integrates the classical political theories of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to create a philosophical context to analyze the intellectual "second reality" of the modern period. The idea of another "Heaven's Gate" in the post-modern era is contained within the political dialogue of modern nihilism.
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- Deep and Profound
- Gnosticism and Political Religions.
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Modernity Without Restraint: The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 5)
Eric Voegelin
Manufacturer: University of Missouri Press
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ASIN: 082621245X |
Customer Reviews:
Deep and Profound.......2007-03-19
For those of you who are new to Voegelin perhaps a word generally about his work will be helpful. Voegelin was born in Cologne, Germany in 1901. In 1938, he and his wife fled from Germany to the United States. From this context alone it is not surprising that Voegelin is very critical of the Nazis in particular and totalitarian regimes in general. What is perhaps more surprising to those who first come across Voegelin is his claim that regimes such as the Nazis are derivatives of such generally loved intellectual movements as the Enlightenment and Progressivism.
Taken together, the three works published in this volume provide a good basis for understanding how Voegelin comes to this conclusion. In this regard, "The New Science of Politics" is probably the most comprehensive work of the three. However, I would make two suggestions to those who are considering tackling this volume. First, read the first and third (that is, "The Political Religions" and "Science, Politics, and Gnosticism") before reading "The New Science of Politics". I think that the first and third pieces are much easier to read, even though they are less encompassing overall. Second, read "The New Science of Politics" twice. I read that installment for the first time about a year ago and I feel that I understood a lot more the second time around.
Voegelin is a great thinker, and his works in this volume provide a different, and yet very profound way of looking at modern Western society. I think Voegelin's construction of Gnosticism is right on as a critique of the modern psyche. I would recommend this book to anyone looking to explore the work of Voegelin; this is a great place to start. The writing is fairly difficult, but you don't have to understand everything to take a lot from this book.
Gnosticism and Political Religions........2002-01-25
_Modernity Without Restraint_ presents three of Erik Voegelin's essays on the modern political religions, including Marxism, National Socialism, Hegelianism, Nietzschianism, and Heideggerianism. To Voegelin, these thinkers are all best described as "gnostics" and in their effort to create God's Kingdom on Earth seek to "immanentize the Christian eschaton". In "The Political Religions", Voegelin traces back the origin of political religion to the Egyptian worship of the Sun, the cult of Akhenaton. He traverses the history of the Middle Ages, and he shows how the archetype of the Christian apocalypse (a heresy to the orthodox Christian) came to occupy a central role in political religion. He includes a good discussion of the leviathanic state of Thomas Hobbes. Finally he ends with a compelling picture of the National Socialist state embodied in the Fuehrer. Although he was criticized in this essay for not outrightly condemning the National Socialists, Voegelin stated that this in fact just reveals the satanic allure that this political religion holds. To Voegelin, National Socialism is "satanic". In "The New Science of Politics", Voegelin examines various modes of representation from Plato and Aristotle through the Roman Empire. He then discusses the idea of gnosticism; he views the modern political religions as a restoration of the Gnostic heresy (condemned by early Christianity), an attempt to replace faith with certainty and bring about the Kingdom of God on Earth. This idea arose in the apocalyptic tradition, transmitted through the Middle Ages by the followers of Joachim de Fiore. He discusses in particular the case of the English Puritans. According to Voegelin, the modern political philosophies of liberalism, communism, and the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes are under the spell of gnosticism. In "Science, Politics, and Gnosticism", the most interesting of the essays presented, Voegelin delves into the thinkers Hegel, Marx ("an intellectual swindler"), Nietzsche ("the murder of God"), Heidegger, and psychoanalysis and National Socialism. To Voegelin, these thinkers are all "gnostics", and the movements spurred by their philosophies are "ersatz religions".
Voegelin represents an interesting alternative to modernity and liberalism. And this book among his collected works serves as an excellent introduction to the thought of this profound thinker, philosopher of gnosticism.
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Republicanism, Religion, And the Soul of America (Eric Voegelin Institute Series in Political Philosophy: Studies in Religion and Politics)
Ellis Sandoz
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Published Essays: 1953-1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 11)
Eric Voegelin
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ASIN: 0826212824 |
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Order and History (Volume 5): In Search of Order (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 18)
Eric Voegelin
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ASIN: 0826212611 |
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- Good Stuff
- Ted V. McAllister's account of Machiavelli and Plato.
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Revolt Against Modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the Search for a Postliberal Order
Ted V. McAllister
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ASIN: 0700608737 |
Book Description
Eric Voegelin and Leo Strauss are two of the most provocative and durable political philosophers of this century. Ted McAllister's superbly written study provides the first comprehensive comparison of their thought and its profound influence on contemporary American conservatism.
Since the appearance in the 1950s of Strauss's Natural Right and History and Voegelin's Order and History, conservatives like Russell Kirk, Irving Kristol, and Allan Bloom have increasingly turned to these thinkers to support their attacks on liberalism and the modernist mindset.
Like so many conservatives, Strauss and Voegelin rebelled against modernity, amorality--personified by Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche--and its promotion of individualism and materialism over communal and spiritual responsibility. While both disdained the reductionist "conservative" label, conservatives nevertheless appropriated their philosophy, in part because it restored theology and classical tradition to the moral core of civil society.
For both men, modernity's debilitating disorder revealed surprising and disturbing relations among liberal, communist, and Nazi ideologies. In their eyes, modernity's insidious virus, so apparent in the Nazi and communist regimes, lies incubating within liberal democracy itself.
McAllister's thorough reevaluation of Strauss and Voegelin expands our understanding of their thought and restores balance to a literature that has been dominated by political theorists and disciples of Strauss and Voegelin. Neither reverential nor dismissive, he reveals the social, historical, political, and philosophical foundations of their work and effectively decodes their frequently opaque or esoteric thinking.
Well written and persuasively argued, McAllister's study will appeal to anyone engaged in the volatile debates over liberalism's demise and conservatism's rise.
This book is part of the American Political Thought series.
Customer Reviews:
Good Stuff.......2000-01-13
McAllister really seems to understand Strauss, which is more than can be said about many who write about Strauss (scholars and otherwise). This will serve as a useful antidote. And of course, Voegelin has long been neglected, so any work treating him seriously is a welcome addition. This should be in the library of serious political theorists.
Ted V. McAllister's account of Machiavelli and Plato........1998-05-10
In having Dr. Ted V. McAllister as my Western and American Heritage Professor at Hillsdale College,I was able to fully appreciate his historical views on a personal basis. His knowledge of Niccolo Machiavelli and modernity, and the philosophy of Plato relating to Western history is unparalled. His views in his book are presented in a true and indepth fashion. After being his student for two semesters, I will truely miss his insight and knowledge pertaining to historical matters.
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Published Essays: 1966-1985 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 12)
Eric Voegelin
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ASIN: 0807115959 |
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- The Fun Part: Conversations with Eric Voegelin
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The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers: 1939-1985 (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 33)
Eric Voegelin
Manufacturer: University of Missouri Press
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ASIN: 0826215459 |
Book Description
This second volume of Eric Voegelin's miscellaneous papers contains unpublished writings from the time of his forced emigration from Austria in 1938 until his death in 1985. The volume's focus is on dialogue and discussion, presenting Voegelin in the role of lecturer, discussant, and respondent. By choosing dialogue as the focus of this volume, Petropulos and Weiss are able to show not only the extent to which Voegelin engaged in an exchange of ideas but also his abiding concern for the practical and theoretical conditions necessary in order for this exchange to take place.
Customer Reviews:
The Fun Part: Conversations with Eric Voegelin.......2004-12-02
This is a big book, running to 484 pages, including the index. This volume, together with Volume 32, is where the editors put materials that don't fit anywhere else. Some of the things included here:
1. CONVERSATIONS WITH ERIC VOEGELIN, from 1967, 1970, and 1975
at the Thomas More Institute in Montreal. It has been
circulating all these years in photocopy or photo offset
versions. It contains some of Voegelin's choicest comments, such
as his remarks on teaching evolution in the schools:
"You get some funny situations. In California now there is a
fight between literalists or providentialists, and biological
theorists. And you get in the textbooks both Genesis and
Darwinian evolutionism as two "theories" of evolution. You see
what that really means? The fundamentalist theologians in
California (fundamentalism was well established there at the
beginning of the century) don't know what a myth is. They
believe it is a theory. They're in ignorance.
"And the biological theorists don't know that Kant has analysed
why one cannot have an immanentist theory of evolution. One can
have empirical observation but no general theory of evolution
because the sequence of forms is a mystery; it just is there and
you cannot explain it by any theory. The world cannot be
explained. It is a mythical problem, so you have a strong
element of myth in the theory of evolution.
"So both the theoretical evolutionists and the fundamentalist
theologians are illiterate. That level of illiteracy is taught
in the text books as "two theories"-neither one of which is a
theory. "
Myth as Environment p 307, 335
The publication of these three conversations was something of an
afterthought. There were four conversations originally and
the first was published in Volume 11 of the CW as "In
Search of the Ground." One can hope that all four conversations
will be reunited in a paperback version in the not-too-distant
future-perhaps with some other informal exchanges.
2. Then there is the question and answer period from the Boston
College conference from 1983 entitled THE BEGINNING AND THE
BEYOND, chaired by Frederick Lawrence. It is here that Voegelin
makes his comment on the Eucharist:
"Parousia means presence, and you remember this presence by
speaking it out: Where the name of Christ is pronounced, there he
is present. But you have to be reminded you are in Christ, and
pronounce it right. It is quite possible that the formulation of
the Eucharist as 'in my remembrance' (which is anamnesis) of
which Paul speaks always evokes the double-meaning of the
remembering of recollection and of remembering in the sense of
establishing what the reality is to be."
Responses at the Panel Discussion of
"The Beginning of the Beginning", p 415, 427.
3. There there are the exchanges between Voegelin and "father of
the atom bomb" J. Robert Oppenheimer at the 1959 Swiss conference
directed by Raymond Aron, "Colloques de Rheinfelden." Also
present: Michael Polanyi and Bertrand de Jounvenel. The chapter
is entitled "The West and the Meaning of Industrial Society:
Excerpts from the Discussion." What is not clear from these
excerpts is that it is pretty much Voegelin "contra mundum" 'though
Aron leans heavily his way. The paper Voegelin delivered at the
conference is found in Vol 11 CW under the title "Industrial
Society in Search of Reason."
4. The transcript of Voegelin's lecture, "Structures of
Consciousness," from the 1978 York University conference is
included. The lecture was videotaped and some have seen it in
this form.
5. In "Natural Law in Political Theory" (1963) we have exchanges
between Voegelin and his Doctor-Father Hans Kelsen. To
put it plainly, they disagree more than once.
6. In "Man in Political Institutions" we have Voegelin and a
distinguished group of colleagues exchanging views, including Alois Dempf and Jürgen Gebhardt.
7. For the literary-minded there are Voegelin's notes on T.S.
Eliot's "Four Quartets."
8. The book concludes with the much-admired "Autobiographical
Statement at Age Eighty-two."
And there is more, but you will have to read the book. It is
one of the most inviting of the the Voegelin volumes. A genuine
delight.
I have put up on the web the table of contents:
http://www.fritzwagner.com/ev/cw/cw_33_contents.html
And the index, beautifully done as always by Linda Webster:
http://www.fritzwagner.com/ev/eric_voegelin_volume_index_list.html#33
Philosophers:
- Voltaire
- Weininger, Otto
- Whitehead, Alfred North
- William Of Ockham
- Wittgenstein, Ludwig
- Zizek, Slavoj
- Abelard, Pierre
- Adamson, Robert
- Adorno, Theodor W.
- Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius
Philosophers
Philosophers
