Voegelin's Philosophy of History and Human Affairs, with Particular Attention to Israel and Revelation and Its Systematic Importance
Ellis Sandoz
Voegelin's Philosophy of History and Human Affairs, with Particular Attention to Israel and Revelation and Its Systematic Importance - Volume 31 Issue 1
/core/cambridge-core/public/images/favicon.ico
Cambridge Core
Eric Voegelin's master work is Order and History, published over a period of three decades with the fifth and final volume appearing posthumously in 1987. The focus of attention here is on the first of these volumes, Israel and Revelation (1956), which may be regarded as intellectually the sequel of volumes two and three, since the writing of those volumes (published in 1957) antedates composition of the study of Israel. From the outset, Voegelin makes clear that his concern is with a philosophy of order historically grounded as the primary means of combating the contemporary crisis of human existence, which he identifies with pervasive deformation of consciousness by ideology and the threat of civilization's extinction through totalitarian mass movements. Thus the task is to regain reality through a recovery of the principal experiences upon which man's historical existence is dependent, with both diagnostic and therapeutic intentions. The attention to the historical record is a means of anamnetically overcoming the social amnesia that threatens to extinguish human existence as it has emerged over millennia back to the Stone Age. Diagnosis and therapy are intended to go hand in hand, since the eclipse of reality, and especially of its highest and hegemonic dimension, the divine Ground of being, in favour of various substitute grounds, is the principal danger to be understood and addressed. The enduring experience of open existence in history is glimpsed, in man's continual Exodus in loving partnership with God, in tension toward the mystery symbolized in eschatological fulfillment.

1 Most of the references to Voegelin's works are cited using the following abbreviations: AR Voegelin, Eric, Autobiographical Reflections, ed. by Sandoz, Ellis (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989Google Scholar); rpt. with an index, 1996. (To be reissued as Vol. 34 of CW.) CW The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, projected 34 vols. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press), Vol. 12: Published Essays, 1966–1985, ed. by Ellis Sandoz (1990); Vol. 28: What Is History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings, ed. by Thomas A. Hollweck and Paul Caringella (1990); Vol. 27: The Nature of the Law and Related Legal Writings, ed. by Robert A. Pascal, James L. Babin and John W. Corrington (1991); Vol. 1: On the Form of the American Mind, trans, by Ruth Hein, ed. by Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper (1995). Other volumes of Voegelin's Collected Works recently published or in press are Vol. 2: Race and State, and Vol. 3: History of the Race Idea, both volumes translated by Ruth Hein and edited by Klaus Vondung. The 2,600-page typescript remnant of Voegelin's vast study of “History of Political Ideas” is under publication in eight volumes as a subset of Collected Works by University of Missouri Press (Columbia, Mo.). The initial volumes of the History were published in 1997: Hellenism, Rome and Early Christianity, ed. and intro. by Athanasios Moulakis, general introduction to the series by Thomas A. Hollweck and Ellis Sandoz: Vol. 1: History of Political Ideas (Collected Works, Vol. 19) and The Middle Ages to Aquinas, ed. by Peter von Sivers, Vol. 2: History of Political Ideas (Collected Works, Vol. 20); in press and due out in 1998 are: The Later Middle Ages, ed. by David Walsh, Vol. 3: History of Political Ideas (CW21) and Renaissance and Reformation, ed. by David L. Morse and William M. Thompson, Vol. 4: History of Political Ideas (CW22). NSP Voegelin, Eric, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952Google Scholar); rpt. 1987 with a foreword by Dante Germino. OH Voegelin, Eric, Order and History, 5 vols. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956–87Google Scholar), Vol. 1: Israel and Revelation (1956); Vol. 2: The World of the Polis (1957); Vol. 3: Plato and Aristotle (1957); Vol. 4: The Ecumenic Age (1974); Vol. 5: In Search of Order (1987). Israel and Revelation is cited herein as OH1. WPG/SPG Voegelin, Eric, Wissenschaft, Politik und Gnosis, Inaugural Lecture at the University of Munich (Munich: Kosel Verlag, 1959Google Scholar). English translation by William J. Fitzpatrick: Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism: Two Essays, intro. by Ellis Sandoz (1968; rpt. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, Gateway Editions, 1997). The 1997 edition, cited herein, is newly set and paged, and it is indexed.

2 The present article—apart from the epilogue—concentrates on Voegelin's writings themselves with little direct reference to the burgeoning secondary literature or to comparisons with the work of other writers addressing related issues. The primary intent is to get clear on Voegelin's presentation in an extensive body of work still surprisingly unfamiliar to many political theorists almost a half-century after The New Science of Politics first saw the light. There exists, indeed, a substantial secondary literature, and those interested in it can consult for guidance the excellent compilation of Geoffrey L. Price, ed., Eric Voegelin: A Classified Bibliography, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 76 (1994), 1–180. This extensive bibliography is periodically updated electronically in the Voegelin—Research News, archive address: vax2.concordia.ca/˜vorenews. Another help for readers new to Voegelin's writings is the glossary appended to Webb's, EugeneEric Voegelin: Philosopher of History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 277–289Google Scholar. Since 1986, the Eric Voegelin Society has conducted programmes of up to nine panels in conjunction with the American Political Science Association's annual meetings; for the thirteenth annual meeting in 1997, see PS: Political Science and Politics 30 (1997), 311, 355 and passimGoogle Scholar see also Eric Voegelin Institute website at http://www2.artsci.lsu.edu/voegelin/voegelin.html for additional programme, conference and bibliographic information.

40 O'Connor, R. Eric, ed. and intr., Conversations with Eric Voegelin, Thomas More Institute Papers, 76 (Montreal: Thomas More Institute, 1980Google Scholar), 138. For this substantive and extended meaning of reason see the listing from Voegelin's 1967 Candler Lectures given inSandoz, Ellis, “The Philosophical Science of Politics beyond Behavioralism,” chap. 14, in Graham, George J. and Carey, George W., eds., The Post-Behavioral Era: Perspectives on Political Science (New York: David McKay, 1971), 285–305Google Scholar, esp. 301–02; also Sandoz, Ellis, “Medieval Rationalism or Mystic Philosophy? Reflections on the Strauss-Voegelin Correspondence,” in Emberley, Peter and Barry , Cooper, eds. and trans., Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934–1964 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 19936), 297–319Google Scholar, esp. 308–10; and Germino, Dante, “Leo Strauss versus Eric Voegelin on Faith and Political Philosophy,” Revista internazionale di filosofia del diritto, 4th ser., 72 (1995), 527–548Google Scholar. The detailed analysis underlying the summary given in the text is presented in “Reason: The Classic Experience,” CW12, 265–91; it is related to a comparative analysis of key philosophical and New Testament texts given in “The Gospel and Culture,” ibid., 172–212; also Voegelin's death-bed meditation entitled “Quod Deus Dicitur?” in ibid., 376–94. Rejection of the distinctions traditionally separating faith and reason as empirically insupportable is argued by Voegelin in “The Beginning and the Beyond: A Meditation on Truth,” CW28, 173–232: “We can no longer ignore that the symbols of ‘Faith’ express the responsive quest of man just as much as the revelatory appeal, and that the symbols of ‘Philosophy’ express the revelatory appeal just as much as the responsive quest. We must further acknowledge that the medieval tension between Faith and Reason derives from the origins of these symbols in the two different ethnic cultures of Israel and Hellas, that in the consciousness of Israelite prophets and Hellenic philosophers the differentiating experience of the divine Beyond was respectively focused on the revelatory appeal and the human quest…” (211). See also Caringella, Paul, “Voegelin: Philosopher of Divine Presence,” in Sandoz, Ellis, ed., Eric Voegelin's Significance for the Modern Mind (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1991), 174–205Google Scholar. The Thomas Altizer and Voegelin exchange is particularly relevant in Sandoz, Ellis, ed., Eric Voegelin's Thought: A Critical Appraisal (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1982), 179–198Google Scholar, along with other essays included and Voegelin's own epilogue to the volume; see also CW12, 292–303.

72 See Sandoz, The Voegelinian Revolution, chap. 7: “Principia Noetica: The Voegelinian Revolution,” 188–216. Good presentations of Voegelin's political science are given in Cooper, Barry, The Political Theory of Eric Voegelin (Lewiston/Queenston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986Google Scholar); Cooper, Barry, The Restoration of Political Science and the Crisis of Modernity (Toronto: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989Google Scholar); Barry Cooper, Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science (forthcoming). See also Germino, Dante, Beyond Ideology: The Revival of Political Theory (1967; rpt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972Google Scholar); Ranieri, John, Eric Voegelin and the Good Society (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1995Google Scholar). Voegelin's work considered as a “new science” under the aspects of epistemology and ontology has been studied in the following three political science unpublished Ph.D. dissertations at Louisiana State University: Seung-Hyun Baek, “Reality and Knowledge in Voegelin's Political Philosophy,” submitted in May 1989; Charles Warren Burchfield, “Eric Voegelin's Mystical Epistemology and Its Influence on His Theories of Ethics and Politics,” submitted in August 1994; and Todd Eric Myers, “Nature and the Divine: Classical Greek Philosophy and the Political in the Thought of Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin,” submitted in May 1997. Background in terms of the “German Context” of Geisteswissenschaft and Staatslehre is concisely given in the “Editors' Introduction” to CWI, ix-xxxv, where Jürgen Gebhardt outlines some of the key connections of Voegelin's work to Edmund Husserl, Max Scheler, Karl Jaspers and discusses his exodus from the neo-Kantianism of his mentor, Hans Kelsen, and the “pure theory of law” (Reine Rechtslehre). Voegelin's intentions are directly suggested by his early article “Zur Lehre von der Staatsform,” Zeitschrift für öffentliches Recht 64 (1927), 572–608Google Scholar, and more fully in the unpublished manuscript fragment entitled Herrschaftslehre und Rechtslehre, which dates from circa 1931, and runs some 125 pages in typescript (Hoover Institution, Voegelin Archives, box 53, file 5). The developments of the early period in Voegelin's thought have been carefully studied by Chignola, Sandro in “Fetischismus der Normen: Tra normativismo e sociologia: Eric Voegelin e la dottrina dello stato (1924–1938),” Rivista Internazionale di Filosofia del Diritto, 4th ser., 70 (1993), 515–565.Google Scholar

73 Cf. NSP, 31, 52, 117, 133. “Unoriginal thinking” is formulated in the essay “Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization” as follows: “The validating question will have to be: Do we have to ignore and eclipse a major part of the historical field in order to maintain the truth of the propositions, as the fundamentalist adherents of this or that ideological doctrine must do; or are the propositions recognizably equivalent with the symbols created by our predecessors in the search of truth about human existence? The test of truth, to put it pointedly, will be the lack of originality in the propositions” (CW12, 122, emphasis added).

75 Anderson, Bernhard W., “Revisiting Voegelin's Israel and Revelation after Twenty-five Years” (unpublished conference paper, University of Manchester, July 1997), 1–2Google Scholar. For detailed analysis of Voegelin's writings from the perspective of theology and religion, see Morrissey, Michael P., Consciousness and Transcendence: The Theology of Eric Voegelin (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994Google Scholar), esp. the comparison with Bernard Lonergan, 171–226; also Kirby, John and Thompson, William M., eds., Voegelin and the Theologian: Ten Studies in Interpretation, Toronto Studies in Theology, 10 (New York6: Edwin Mellen Press, 1983Google Scholar); Thompson, William M., Christology and Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1991Google Scholar), esp. chap. 2. Of particular interest for this dimension of Voegelin's work is CW19, The History of Political Ideas, Vol. 1: Hellenism, Rome and Early Christianity, ed. by Moulakis, esp. 30–47, and “Part Two: Christianity and Rome,” 149–224. See also Hughes, Glenn, Mystery and Myth in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993).Google Scholar

76 The Weberian aspect of Voegelin's political science is discussed in AR, 11–14, 16, 33, 45–46 and throughout. It is the subject of a lively debate between Jürgen Gebhardt and Lawrence, Frederick G., who favours Voegelin the mystic-philosopher, in McKnight, Stephen A. and Price, Geoffrey L., eds., International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 10–58Google Scholar. This volume also includes a valuable classified bibliography by Price. That the imagined two Voegelins—scientist and mystic—are not mutually exclusive but complementary also can be seen from Voegelin's lecture “On the Greatness of Max Weber [1964]” which concludes by suggesting that Weber considered himself to be a mystic. See Voegelin, Eric, Ordnung, Bewusstsein, Geschichte: Späte Schriften—eine Auswahl, ed. by Opitz, Peter J. (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1988), 78–98.Google Scholar

80 David Levy explores this subject in books cited in note 78. The starting point for Voegelin, that is, in his work of the 1930s, was the Platonic-Aristotelian and Christian anthropology of Max Scheler and of one of his mentors at Vienna, Othmar Spann. See Max Scheler, Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos (1928) as well as Der Formalismus in der Ethik und die materiale Wertethik (1913–1916), Vom Umsturz der Werte (1915), Vom Ewigen im Menschen (1921) and Vom Wesen der Sympathie (2nd ed., 1923), all published in Gesammelte Werke, 9 vols. (Zurich and Munich: Francke Verlag, 1954–1976). Spann, Othmar, Gesellschaftslehre (Leipzig: Quelle und Meyer, 1923Google Scholar). For discussion and analysis see Petropoulos, William, “The Person as imago Dei: Augustine and Max Scheler in Eric Voegelin's Herrschaftslehre and The Political Religions” (unpublished conference paper, 1993, 1997)Google Scholar. Petropoulos concludes: “Meditation as the basic form of philosophizing, and the person as imago Dei, remain of fundamental importance throughout Voegelin's philosophical career” (ibid., 36). See also Kessler, Udo, Die Wiederentdeckung der Transzendence: Ordnung von Mensch und Gesellschaft im Denken Eric Voegelins (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann Verlag, 1995Google Scholar); and Henriques, Mendo Castro, A Filosofia Civil de Eric Voegelin, dissertation for Doctor in Philosophy degree, Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon, 1992.Google Scholar

81 Much of the secondary literature is taken up with these aspects of Voegelin's writings. To be mentioned here are only a few select items: Webb, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History, previously noticed; Webb, Eugene, Philosophers of Consciousness: Polanyi, Lonergan, Voegelin, Ricoeur, Girard, Kierkegaard (Seattle; University of Washington Press, 1988Google Scholar); L'Histoire et ses interprétations; Entretiens autour de Arnold Toynbee sous la direction de Raymond Aron (Paris: Mouton, 1961Google Scholar); McKnight, Stephen A., ed., Eric Voegelin's Search for Order in History (expanded ed., 1978; Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987Google Scholar). The issues of modernity and Gnosticism within Voegelin's theories of politics and history are addressed in Sandoz, Ellis, Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky's “Grand Inquisitor” (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971Google Scholar); Schall, James V., Reason, Revelation, and the Foundations of Political Philosophy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987Google Scholar); Opitz, Peter J., ed., Eric Voegelin, Alfred Schütz, Leo Strauss, Aron Gurwitsch: Briefwechsel über Die Neue Wissenschaft der Politik (Freiburg and Munich: Karl Alber Verlag, 1993Google Scholar); McAllister, Ted V., Revolt against Modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and the Search for a Postliberal Order (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1996Google Scholar); Langan, Thomas, Being and Truth (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996Google Scholar); McKnight, Stephen A., The Modern Age and the Recovery of Ancient Wisdom: A Reconsideration of Historical Consciousness, 1450–1650 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991Google Scholar); McKnight, Stephen A., ed., Science, Pseudo-Science, and Utopianism in Early Modern Thought (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1992Google Scholar), which examines the Hans Blumenberg—Karl Löwith, Voegelin debate over modernity; Germino, Dante, Political Philosophy and the Open Society (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982)Google Scholar; Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (rev. and expanded ed., 1957, 1971; rpt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1981Google Scholar); Vondung, Klaus, Die Apokalypse in Deutschland (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1988Google Scholar); Walsh, David, The Mysticism of Inner-Worldly Fulfillment: A Study of Jacob Boehme (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1983Google Scholar); Zanetti, Gianfrancesco, La Trascendenza e L'Ordine Saggio su Eric Voegelin (Bologna: Cooperative Libraria Universitaria, 1989Google Scholar); Franz, Michael, Eric Voegelin and the Politics of Spiritual Revolt: The Roots of Modern Ideology (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992Google Scholar); Keulman, Kenneth, The Balance of Consciousness: Eric Voegelin's Political Theory (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990Google Scholar). On various aspects of Liberalism see Forster, Karl, ed., Christentum und Liberalismus: Eric Voegelin, Erich Mende, Paul Mikat, Gustav Gundlach, Alexander Rüstow, Paul Luchtenberg, Wilhelm Geiger (Munich: Karl Zink Verlag, 1960Google Scholar); Sandoz, Ellis, A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1990Google Scholar); Walsh, David, After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom (1990; rpt. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America, 1995Google Scholar); Walsh, David, The Growth of the Liberal Soul (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997Google Scholar); Sandoz, “The Crisis of Civic Consciousness,” noted previously; Syse, Henrik, “Natural Law, Religion, and Rights: An Exploration of the Relationship between Natural Law and Natural Rights, with Special Emphasis on the Teachings of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke” (unpublished Doctor Artium dissertation, University of Oslo, Faculty of Arts, Department of Philosophy, 1996Google Scholar).