Download or read book Eric Voegelin written by Eugene Webb and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2014-12-01 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The order of history emerges from the history of order" is the sentence that opens Eric Voegelin's multivolume work, Order and History. A search for an understanding of the order that can be found in history, and within the human being who is the subject of history, has resulted in a large and complicated body of work by this contemporary philosopher. Eugene Webb offers a full illumination and assessment of that work.
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 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 Order and History written by Eric Voegelin and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation In Search of Order brings to a conclusion Eric Voegelin's masterwork, Order and History. Voegelin conceived Order and History as "a philosophical inquiry concerning the principal types of order of human existence in society and history as well as the corresponding symbolic forms." In previous volumes, Voegelin discussed the imperial organizations of the ancient Near East and their existence in the form of the cosmological myth; the revelatory form of existence in history, developed by Moses and the prophets of the Chosen People; the polis, the Hellenic myth, and the development of philosophy as the symbolism of order; and the evolution of the great religions, especially Christianity. This final volume of Order and History is devoted to the elucidation of the experience of transcendence that Voegelin discussed in earlier volumes. He aspires to show in a theoretically acute manner the exact nature of transcendental experiences. Voegelin's philosophical inquiry unfolds in the historical context of the great symbolic enterprise of restating man's humanity under the horizon of the modern sciences and in resistance to the manifold forces of our age that deform human existence. His stature as one of the major philosophical forces of the twentieth century clearly emerges from these concluding pages. In Search of Order deepens and clarifies the meditative movement that Voegelin, now in reflective distance to his own work, sees as having been operative throughout his search. Because of Voegelin's death, on January 19, 1985, In Search of Order is briefer than it otherwise might have been; however, the theoretical presentation that he had set for himself is essentially completed here. Just as this volume serves Voegelin well in his striking analyses of Hegel, Hesiod, and Plato, it will serve as a model for the reader's own efforts in search of order.
Download or read book Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence written by Thomas J. McPartland and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bernard Lonergan's ambitious study of human knowledge, based on his theory of consciousness, is among the major achievements of twentieth-century philosophy. He challenges the principles of contemporary intellectual culture by finding norms and standards not in external perceptions or reified concepts, but in the dynamism of consciousness itself.
Download or read book The Philosophy of History of Eric Voegelin written by Joseph Augustine Leone and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
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 463 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 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 On the Form of the American Mind written by Eric Voegelin and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1924, not quite two years after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna, Eric Voegelin was named a Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fellow and thus given the opportunity to pursue postdoctoral studies in the United States. For the next twenty-four months, Voegelin worked with some of the most creative scholars in America and at several of the country's great universities, an experience that undoubtedly influenced his scholarly and personal perspectives throughout his life. A more immediate result was the publication in 1928 of On the Form of the American Mind, the young philosopher's first major work, in which his acute perceptions and analyses combine with a conceptual vocabulary struggling to find its own coherence and form. Voegelin begins his inquiry into the form of the American mind with a complex discussion of the concepts of time and existence in European and American philosophy and continues with an extended interpretation of George Santayana, a study of the Puritan mystic Jonathan Edwards, a presentation on Anglo-American jurisprudence, and a consideration of the historian, economist, and political scientist John R. Commons (Voegelin was particularly interested in Commons' views on the mental, political, social, and economic aspects of democracy in modern urban and industrial America). Although admitting that this diversity of themes seems only loosely connected," Voegelin demonstrates the actual overall unity of these various subjects: each concerns linguistic expressions of a theoretical nature. Analysis of On the Form of the American Mind indicates that Voegelin integrated the approaches of Lebensphilosophie into what Georg Misch called the "philosophical combination of anthropology and history," which characterized contemporary trends within the discourse of the Geisteswissenschaften and finally resulted in a theoretical paradigm of philosophical anthropology. Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper provide access to this brilliant study with their two-part introduction. The first part considers On the Form of the American Mind in the context of methodological debates ongoing in Germany at the time Voegelin was writing the book; the second describes Voegelin's American experience and compares his work with similar studies written during the post-World War I period.
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 The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Order and history v 5 In search of order written by Eric Voegelin and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Eric Voegelin and the Problem of Christian Political Order written by Jeffrey C. Herndon and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although some critics of Eric Voegelin's later work have faulted his failure to deal with the historical Jesus and to address the implications of Christianity for social and political life, the recent publication of Voegelin's History of Political Ideas has allowed a more complete assessment of his position regarding the Christian political order. This book addresses that criticism through an analysis of Voegelin's early work. In Eric Voegelin and the Problem of Christian Political Order, Jeffrey C. Herndon analyzes the development of Voegelin's thought regarding the origins of Christianity in the person of Jesus, the development of the church in the works of Paul, and the relationship between an immanent institutional order symbolizing the divine presence and the struggle for social and political order. Focusing on the tension between a spiritual phenomenon based on Pauline faith and the institutionalization of that experience in the church, Herndon offers one of the first examinations of the relationship of the History of Political Ideas to Voegelin's larger body of work. In his wide-ranging study, Herndon explores Voegelin's examination of the problem of Christian political order from the inception of Christianity through the Great Reformation. He also presents a clarification of Voegelin's theory of civilizational foundation and of Voegelin's philosophy of history with regard to Christianity and Western political order. Herndon addresses not only the nagging problem in Voegelin scholarship regarding his relationship with the historical Jesus but also the "Pauline compromises with the world" that enabled Christianity to become the instrument by which the West was civilized. He also shows that Voegelin's interpretation of the historical pressures released by the Great Reformation is important to an understanding of his later work regarding the negative effect of Christian symbols in the creation of ideological disorder. Eric Voegelin and the Problem of Christian Political Order clarifies issues in Voegelin studies regarding the intersection between political theory and Christian concerns, addressing the relation of religious experience to the public sphere of political life in the West and helping to explain Voegelin's contention that the death of the spirit is the price of progress. It offers scholars a perspective heretofore lacking in Voegelin scholarship and a clearer view of Voegelin's understanding of the Christian dispensation and its influence on the course of Western development, history, and philosophy.
Download or read book Voegelin Schelling and the Philosophy of Historical Existence written by Jerry Day and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important new work, Jerry Day brings to light the need for an extensive reinterpretation of the mature philosophy of Eric Voegelin, based on Voegelin's published and unpublished appreciation for nineteenth-century German philosopher F. W. J. Schelling. Schelling, whom Day maintains was one of the most important guides to Voegelin's mature philosophy of consciousness and historiography, has been described as the father of several disparate movements and schools of continental philosophy-chief among them being "Hegelian" idealism and existentialism. This characterization implies that Schelling was a scattered thinker with little or no appreciation for philosophy as a disciplined inquiry into the nature of human affairs. Voegelin was critical of this portrayal of Schelling. He argued that it lacked proper sensitivity for the impressive extent to which this giant of continental thought was able to rise above the "creed communities" of his time and recover the abiding concern of mature philosophers everywhere: the philosophia perennis. Those who claim that Schelling was scattered have failed, according to Voegelin, to appreciate the nonideological breadth of this great philosopher, misled by the splinter movements and schools that arose from mere fragments of his thought. In truth, Schelling founded no school and launched no movement. Instead, he reasoned with the disciplined integrity and wonder of a "spiritual realist." Day argues that Voegelin was a fine interpreter of Schelling, particularly during the decisive years when the central orientation of Voegelin's mature thought was beginning to take hold-between the writing of his History of Political Ideas and its eventual transformation into Order and History. Day gathers an impressive array of evidence to interpret Voegelin's little-known support for Schelling's achievements, while offering detailed analyses and helpful summaries of a vast body of literature that has yet to be translated into English. Day's partial agreement with Voegelin's uncommon assessment of Schelling provides him with the point of departure that leads to one of this book's most distinctive contributions to contemporary thought. It has the rare ability to help clear the way for philosophical realists to make peace with many of their contemporaries, giving them further grounds for accepting the strongest anthropological and psychological insights of recent continental philosophy, while helping them to avoid its tendencies toward nihilistic despair or fideistic historicism. By reading each philosopher through the eyes of the other, Day provides an analysis that will be illuminating for Voegelin scholars and Schelling scholars alike. The book will also appeal to readers with more general interests in the history and development of continental philosophy, political theory, and comparative religion over the past century.
Download or read book Eric Voegelin written by Michael P. Federici and published by ISI Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Readers intimidated or puzzled by Voegelin's often daunting prose will find Federici's volume, the fourth entry in ISI's Library of Modern Thinkers series, an invaluable guide to one of the twentieth century's most imposing - and most impressive - philosophical minds."--BOOK JACKET.
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 The History of the Race Idea written by Eric Voegelin and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the middle of the eighteenth century the effort of philosophy was to place man, with his variety of physical manifestations throughout the world, within a systemic order of nature. Voegelin perceives the problem of race as the epitome of the difficulties presented by this new theoretical approach.
Download or read book Eric Voegelin written by Thomas W. Heilke and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1999 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During his distinguished academic career, Eric Voegelin was described as the most important philosopher of history and consciousness since Toynbee; similarly, Voegelin has been interpreted by his critics using virtually every ideological label available: fascist, communist, liberal, conservative, existentialist, fideist, socialist, reactionary, Jew, Catholic, and Protestant. With startling new insights into the theoretical foundations of Voegelin's writings, Heilke's gripping analysis and compelling conclusions demonstrate how his subject was primarily a philosopher in quest of reality, and why no ideological category can grasp the core of such an intellectual journey.
