Download or read book The Eric Voegelin Reader written by Charles R. Embry and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2017-10-20 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the time Eric Voegelin fled Hitler’s regime and made his way to the United States in 1938, he had already written four books criticizing Nazi racism, establishing what would be the focus of his life’s work: to account for the endemic political violence of the twentieth century. One of the most original political philosophers of the period, Voegelin has largely avoided ideological labels or categorizations of his work. Because of this, however, and because no one work or volume of his can do justice to his overall project, his work has been seen as difficult to approach. Drawing from the University of Missouri Press’s thirty-four-volume edition of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin (1990-2009), Charles Embry and Glenn Hughes have assembled a selection of representative works of Voegelin, satisfying a longstanding need for a single volume that can serve as a general introduction to Voegelin’s philosophy. The collection includes writings that demonstrate the range and creativity of Voegelin’s thought as it developed from 1956 until his death in 1985 in his search for the history of order in human society. The Reader begins with excerpts from Autobiographical Reflections (1973), which include an orienting mixture of biographical information, philosophical motivations, and the scope of Voegelin’s project. It reflects key periods of Voegelin’s philosophical development, pivoting on his flight from the Gestapo. The next section focuses on Voegelin’s understanding of the contemporary need to re-ground political science in a non-positivistic, post-Weberian outlook and method. It begins with Voegelin’s historical survey of science and scientism, followed by his explanation of what political science now requires in his introduction to The New Science of Politics. Also included are two essays that exemplify the practice of this “new science.” Voegelin started his academic career as a political scientist, and these early essays indicate his wide philosophical vision. Voegelin recognized that a fully responsible “new science of politics” would require the development of a philosophy of history. This led to the writing of his magnum opus, the five-volume Order and History (1956–1985). This section of the Reader includes his introductions to volumes 1, 2 and 4 and his most essential accounts of the theoretical requirements and historical scope of a philosophy of history adequate to present-day scholarship and historical discoveries. In the course of his career, Voegelin came to understand that political science, political philosophy, and philosophy of history must have as their theoretical nucleus a sound philosophical anthropology based on an accurate philosophy of human consciousness. The next set of writings consists of one late lecture and four late essays that exemplify how Voegelin recovers the wisdom of classical philosophy and the Western religious tradition while criticizing modern misrepresentations of consciousness. The result is Voegelin’s contemporary accounts of the nature of reason, the challenge of truly rational discussion, and the search for divine origins and the life of the human spirit. During his philosophical journey, Voegelin addressed the historical situatedness of human existence, explicating the historicity of human consciousness in a manner that gave full due to the challenges of acknowledging both human immersion in the story of history and the ability of consciousness to arrive at philosophically valid truths about existence that are transhistorical. The essays in this final section present the culmination of his philosophical meditation on history, consciousness, and reality.
Download or read book Eric Voegelin written by Maichael P. Federici and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-09-03 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.
Download or read book Transcendence and History written by Glenn Hughes and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2003-05-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transcendence and History is an analysis of what philosopher Eric Voegelin described as “the decisive problem of philosophy”: the dilemma of the discovery of transcendent meaning and the impact of this discovery on human self-understanding. The world’s major religious and wisdom traditions are built upon the recognition of transcendent meaning, and our own cultural and linguistic heritage has long since absorbed the postcosmological division of reality into the two dimensions of “transcendence” and “immanence.” But the last three centuries in the West have seen a growing resistance to the idea of transcendent meaning; contemporary and “postmodern” interpretations of the human situation—both popular and intellectual—indicate a widespread eclipse of confidence in the truth of transcendence. In Transcendence and History, Glenn Hughes contributes to the understanding of transcendent meaning and the problems associated with it, assisting in the philosophical recovery of the legitimacy of the notion of transcendence. Depending primarily on the treatments of transcendence found in the writings of twentieth-century philosophers Eric Voegelin and Bernard Lonergan, Hughes explores the historical discovery of transcendent meaning and then examines what it indicates about the structure of history. Hughes’s main focus, however, is on clarifying the problem of transcendence in relation to historical existence. Addressing both layreaders and scholars, Hughes applies the insights and analyses of Voegelin and Lonergan to considerable advantage. Transcendence and History will be of particular value to those who have grappled with the notion of transcendence in the study of philosophy, comparative religion, political theory, history, philosophical anthropology, and art or poetry. By examining transcendent meaning as the key factor in the search for ultimate meaning from ancient societies to the present, the book demonstrates how “the decisive problem of philosophy” both illuminates and presents a vital challenge to contemporary intellectual discourse.
Download or read book Eric Voegelin s Asian Political Thought written by Lee Trepanier and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-06-22 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The rise of Asia in global affairs has forced western thinkers to rethink their assumptions, theories, and conclusions about the region. Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought brings together a mixture of established and rising scholars from both Asia and the West to reflect upon the political philosopher’s thought about China, Japan, Korea, Central Asia, and India. From Voegelin’s writings, readers will not only understand how Voegelin’s approach can illuminate the fundamental principles and issues about Asia but also what are the challenges and possibilities that Asia offers in the twentieth-first century. For those who want to move past the superficial commentary and clichés about Asia, Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought is the book for you.
Download or read book Anamnesis written by Eric Voegelin and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 6 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin offers the first translation of the full German text of Anamnesis published in 1966. The previous English edition, translated by Gerhart Niemeyer, focused largely on the sections of Anamnesis dealing directly with Voegelin's philosophy of consciousness. It omitted some of the extensive historical studies on which the philosophy of consciousness was based. To properly understand Voegelin's work, however, it is essential to give equal weight to the empirical as well as the philosophical aspects. This complete version of Anamnesis captures the full integrity of his vision. It is at once scientific, in the sense of fidelity to the demands of historiographic scholarship, and philosophical, in exploring the significance of the texts for the meaning of human existence in society and history. Anamnesis is a pivotal work within Voegelin's intellectual odyssey. Alone among Voegelin's books, it reveals an author looking back and taking stock of his growth rather than customarily forging ahead into new regions and new problems. This critical work is both a recollection of Voegelin's own development, reaching back even to his infant memories, and a demonstration of the anamnetic method as applied to a wide range of historically remembered materials. Written as more than just a collection of essays, Anamnesis is the volume in which Voegelin works out for himself the reconceptualization of what Order and History, and by definition his central philosophical approach, is going to be. By revisiting his previous work--a departure from Voegelin's usual scholarly habits--he found at last the literary form for the kind of empirical philosophical meditation that had long absorbed his labors. Parts I and III contain biographical and meditative reflections written by Voegelin in 1943 and 1965, respectively. The first part details the breakthrough by which Voegelin recovered consciousness from the current theories of consciousness. Part III begins as a rethinking of the Aristotelian exegesis of consciousness, and then expands into new areas of awareness that had not come within the knowledge of classic philosophy. Between these two meditative selections are eight studies that demonstrate how the historical phenomena of order gave rise to the type of analysis which culminates in the meditative exploration of consciousness.
Download or read book Science Politics and Gnosticism written by Eric Voegelin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-03-27 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science, Politics and Gnosticism comprises two essays by Eric Voegelin (1901-85), arguably one of the most provocative and influential political philosophers of the last century. In these essays, Voegelin contends that certain modern movements, including positivism, Hegelianism, Marxism, and the "God is dead" school, are variants of the gnostic tradition he identified in his classic work The New Science of Politics. Voegelin attempts to resolve the intellectual confusion that has resulted from the dominance of gnostic thought by clarifying the distinction between political gnosticism and the philosophy of politics.
Download or read book Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition written by Lee Trepanier and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-02-14 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twentieth-century political philosopher Eric Voegelin is best known as a severe critic of modernity. Much of his work argues that modernity is a Gnostic revolt against the fundamental structure of reality. For Voegelin, “Gnosticism” is the belief that human beings can transform the nature of reality through secret knowledge and social action, and he considered it the crux of the crisis of modernity. As Voegelin struggled with this crisis throughout his career, he never wavered in his judgment that philosophers of the modern continental tradition were complicit in the Gnostic revolt of modernity. But while Voegelin’s analysis of those philosophers is at times scathing, his work also bears marks of their influence, and Voegelin has much more in common with the theorists of the modern continental tradition than is usually recognized. Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition: Explorations in Modern Political Thought evaluates this political philosopher—one of the most original and influential thinkers of our time—by examining his relationship to the modern continental tradition in philosophy, from Kant to Derrida. In a compelling introduction, editors Lee Trepanier and Steven F. McGuire present a review of the trajectories of Voegelin’s thought and outline what often is portrayed as his derisive critique of modernity. Soon, however, they begin to unravel the similarities between Voegelin’s thought and the work of other thinkers in the continental tradition. The subsequent chapters explore these possible connections by examining Voegelin’s intellectual relationship to individual thinkers, including Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Gadamer. The essays in this volume go beyond Voegelin’s own reading of the modern philosophers to offer a reevaluation of his relationship to those thinkers. In Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition, Voegelin’s attempt to grapple with the crisis of modernity becomes clearer, and his contribution to the modern continental tradition is illuminated. The book features the work of both established and emerging Voegelin scholars, and the essays were chosen to present thoughtful and balanced assessments of both Voegelin’s thought and the ideas of the other thinkers considered. As the first volume to examine the relationship—and surprising commonalities—between Voegelin’s philosophy and the continental tradition as a whole, this text will be of interest not only to Voegelin disciples but to philosophers engaged by continental modernism and all disciplines of political philosophy.
Download or read book The Nature of the Law and Related Legal Writings written by Eric Voegelin and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the course of his lifelong, wide-ranging reflections on history and philosophy, Eric Voegelin naturally was drawn to speculate on the nature of law. This volume consists of many of Voegelin's significant writings in this area, most notably the previously unpublished The Nature of the Law. Voegelin completed The Nature of the Law in 1957 while he was a member of the political science faculty of Louisiana State University and teaching a course in jurisprudence at the university's law school. In it he undertakes a philosophical analysis of the law to determine its nature, or essence, and comes to the conclusion that the law does not exist as a discrete entity but instead constitutes the structure of a society. The law, as Voegelin's analysis reveals, is not simply the command of a Leviathan handed down to others. Nor is it simply the result of a social compact among autonomous individuals or the expressed will of a majority securing its own self-defined, immediate worldly interest. It is rather a part of the order that a society discovers and specifies for itself in the effort to secure the common good. Thus laws and legal order have an integral relation with the society that declares them, for in declaring laws the society in some sense structures itself. Also included in this volume is Voegelin's detailed outline for the jurisprudence course he taught at LSU from 1954 to 1957. The outline was distributed to Voegelin's students but otherwise has not been published. In this outline Voegelin is concerned more with the criteria for legal order than he is with the nature of law. Voegelin also prepared for his jurisprudence course supplementary notes that are essentially a compact statement of his views on the law, and the editors have included those notes here. Finally, the book contains reviews, written by Voegelin in 1941 and 1942, of four books on legal science and legal philosophy.
Download or read book Autobiographical Reflections Revised Edition with Glossary written by Eric Voegelin and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2011-06 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 34th volume of the Collected works of Eric Voegelin consists of Voegelin's autobiographical reflections, reprinted from the 1989 edition with additional annotations; a glossary of terms used in Voegelin's writings, illustrated with examples from throughout the Collected works; a volume index; and a cumulative index.
Download or read book Order and History written by Eric Voegelin and published by . This book was released on 1966 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third volume of the series 'Order and History' completes Voegelin's study of Greek culture from its earliest pre-Hellenic origins to its full maturity with the dominance of Athens. As the title suggests, 'Plato' is the first half of Eric Voegelin's 'Plato and Aristotle'. It is principally devoted to the work of the two great thinkers who represent the high point of philosophic inquiry among the Greeks. Through an absorbing analysis of the Platonic and Aristotelian vision of soul, polis, and cosmos, Voegelin demonstrates how the symbolic framework of the older myth was superseded by the more precisely differentiated symbols of philosophy. Although this outmoding and rejection of past symbols of truth might seem to lead to a chaotic and despairing relativism, Voegelin makes it the basis of a profound conception of the historical process: "the attempts to find the symbolic forms that will adequately express the meaning [of a society], while imperfect, do not form a senseless series of failures. For the great societies have created a sequence of orders, intelligibly connected with one another as advances toward, or recessions from, an adequate symbolization of the truth concerning the order of being of which the order of society is a part." In this view, history has no obvious "meaning," yet each society makes a similar venture after truth. Although every society works out its destiny under different conditions, each nonetheless creates symbols "in its deeds and institutions" which bear the meaning of its own existence. History, then, acquires a unity in the common endeavor toward meaning and order. The rationality and nobility of this view of history has much to say to the present age. -- Publisher description.
Download or read book Revolt Against Modernity written by Ted V. McAllister and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 1996-01-22 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Eric Voegelin and the Politics of Spiritual Revolt written by Michael Franz and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Because Voegelin's basic theoretical position shifted dramatically over the course of his career and because his analysis of ideology and its source was never given full and final expression in a single work, Franz's comprehensive study is especially valuable. The author provides the first sustained examination of Voegelin's contentions that the various and diverse ideologies of the modern age are rooted in a common pattern of consciousness; that Christianity was an important force in the origination of medieval and modern patterns of disordered consciousness; and that an essential equivalence exists among patterns of disordered consciousness across historical eras. He also includes the first analysis of Voegelin's search for forms of individual and social therapy that could serve as counterparts to his diagnoses of spiritual and political disorders
Download or read book Order and History Plato and Aristotle written by Eric Voegelin and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book From Enlightenment to Revolution written by Eric Voegelin and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 1982-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Poor Americans written by Marc Pilisuk and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1971-01-01 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The New Order and Last Orientation written by Eric Voegelin and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Hitler and the Germans written by Eric Voegelin and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation Between 1933 & 1938, Eric Voegelin published four books that expressly stated his opposition to the increasingly powerful Hitler regime. As a result, he was forced to leave his homeland in 1938. Twenty years later, he returned to Germany as a professor of political science at Ludwig-Maximilian University. Voegelin's homecoming allowed him the opportunity to voice once again his opinions on the Nazi regime & its aftermath. In 1964 at the University of Munich, Voegelin gave a series of memorable lectures on what he considered "the central German experiential problem" of his time: Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the reasons for it, & its consequences for post-Nazi Germany. For Voegelin, these questions demanded a scrutiny of the mentality of individual Germans & of the order of German society during & after the Nazi period. Hitler & the Germans, published here for the first time, offers Voegelin's most extensive & detailed critique of the Hitler era. Voegelin interprets this era in terms of the basic diagnostic tools provided by the philosophy of Plato & Aristotle, Judeo-Christian culture, & contemporary German-language writers like Heimito von Doderer, Karl Kraus, Thomas Mann, & Robert Musil. His inquiry uncovers a historiography that was substantially unhistoric: a German Evangelical Church that misinterpreted the Gospel, a German Catholic Church that denied universal humanity, & a legal process enmeshed in criminal homicide. Hitler & the Germans provides a profound alternative approach to the topic of the individual German's entanglement in the Hitler regime & its continuing implications. This comprehensive reading of the Nazi period has yet to be matched.
