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| voegelin political religions: Eric Voegelin and the Problem of Christian Political Order Jeffrey C. Herndon, 2007 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. |
| voegelin political religions: New Political Religions, Or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism Barry Cooper, 2005-08 While terrorism has been used throughout the ages as a weapon in political struggles, there is an essential difference between groups who use these tactics for more or less rational political goals and those seeking more apocalyptic ends. Cooper argues that today's terrorists have a spiritual perversity that causes them to place greater significance on killing than on exploiting political grievances. He supports his assertion with an analysis of two groups that share the characteristics of a pneumopathological consciousness - Anum Shinrikyo, the terrorist organization that poisoned thousands of Tokyo subway riders in 1995, and Al-Qaeda, the group behind the infamous 9/11 killings. |
| voegelin political religions: Science, Politics and Gnosticism Eric Voegelin, 2012-03-27 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. |
| voegelin political religions: Politics as Religion Emilio Gentile, 2020-09-01 Emilio Gentile, an internationally renowned authority on fascism and totalitarianism, argues that politics over the past two centuries has often taken on the features of religion, claiming as its own the prerogative of defining the fundamental purpose and meaning of human life. Secular political entities such as the nation, the state, race, class, and the party became the focus of myths, rituals, and commandments and gradually became objects of faith, loyalty, and reverence. Gentile examines this sacralization of politics, as he defines it, both historically and theoretically, seeking to identify the different ways in which political regimes as diverse as fascism, communism, and liberal democracy have ultimately depended, like religions, on faith, myths, rites, and symbols. Gentile maintains that the sacralization of politics as a modern phenomenon is distinct from the politicization of religion that has arisen from militant religious fundamentalism. Sacralized politics may be democratic, in the form of a civil religion, or it may be totalitarian, in the form of a political religion. Using this conceptual distinction, and moving from America to Europe, and from Africa to Asia, Gentile presents a unique comparative history of civil and political religions from the American and French Revolutions, through nationalism and socialism, democracy and totalitarianism, fascism and communism, up to the present day. It is also a fascinating book for understanding the sacralization of politics after 9/11. |
| voegelin political religions: Modernity Without Restraint Eric Voegelin, 2000 Published together for the first time in one volume are Eric Voegelin's Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism.Political Religions was first published in 1938 in Vienna, the year of Voegelin's forced emigration from Austria to the United States. The New Science of Politics was written in 1952 and established Voegelin's reputation as a political philosopher in America. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism was Voegelin's Inaugural Lecture at the University of Munich in 1958 and introduced him to the West German intellectual public. Although these books were written during remarkably different historical circumstances of Voegelin's life, all three present an analysis of modern Western civilization that has lost its spiritual foundations and is challenged by various ideological persuasions. Voegelin critiques in these texts a modernity without restraint. It is a modernity with Hegelian, Marxian, Nietzschean, Heideggerian, positivist, Fascist, and other predominantly German characteristics. The author confronts this modernity with Western meaning as it emerged in ancient Greece, Rome, Israel, and Christianity and became transformed in the European Middle Ages, the Italian Renaissance, and the Anglo- American political formation. This three-in-one volume delves into the intellectual and spiritual complications of modernity, tracing its evolution from the ancient civilizations to the twentieth century. In his substantial new introduction, Manfred Henningsen explores the experiential background that motivated Voegelin's theoretical analyses and the new relevance that his work has gained in recent years with the unexpected collapse of state socialism in East Germany, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union. Modernity without Restraint will be a valuable addition to intellectual history and Voegelin studies. |
| voegelin political religions: Worldview and Mind Eugene Webb, 2009 Looking at a broad spectrum of religions, Webb examines the relation between religion and modernity and explores what psychological analysis reveals about the relationship between stages of psychological development and ways of being religious that range from closed-minded to open-minded tolerance--Provided by publisher. |
| voegelin political religions: Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics Elizabeth Campbell Corey, 2006 Argues that Oakeshott's views on aesthetics, religion, and morality, which she places in the Augustinian tradition, are intimately linked to a creative moral personality that underlies his political theorizing. Also compares Oakeshott's Rationalism to Voegelin's concept of Gnosticism and considers both thinkers' treatment of Hobbes to delineate their philosophical differences--Provided by publisher. |
| voegelin political religions: Political Religions Eric Voegelin, 1986 A translation of Voegelin's Die politischen |
| voegelin political religions: Beginning the Quest Barry Cooper, 2009 Examines an analysis of the legal and political writing of Eric Voegelin during the 1920s and the 1930s. Cooper discusses Voegelin's first systematic effort to bring together the principles of philosophical anthropology with his understanding of comparative social science and examines Voegelin's The Authoritarian State and The New Science of Politics--Provided by publisher. |
| voegelin political religions: Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism Albert Camus, 2007 Contemporary scholarship tends to view Albert Camus as a modern, but he himself was conscious of the past and called the transition from Hellenism to Christianity the true and only turning point in history. For Camus, modernity was not fully comprehensible without an examination of the aspirations that were first articulated in antiquity and that later received their clearest expression in Christianity. These aspirations amounted to a fundamental reorientation of human life in politics, religion, science, and philosophy. Understanding the nature and achievement of that reorientation became the central task of Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism. Primarily known through its inclusion in a French omnibus edition, it has remained one of Camus' least-read works, yet it marks his first attempt to understand the relationship between Greek philosophy and Christianity as he charted the movement from the Gospels through Gnosticism and Plotinus to what he calls Augustine's second revelation of the Christian faith. Ronald Srigley's translation of this seminal document helps illuminate these aspects of Camus' work. His freestanding English edition exposes readers to an important part of Camus' thought that is often overlooked by those concerned primarily with the book's literary value and supersedes the extant McBride translation by retaining a greater degree of literalness. Srigley has fully annotated Christian Metaphysics to include nearly all of Camus' original citations and has tracked down many poorly identified sources. When Camus cites an ancient primary source, whether in French translation or in the original language, Srigley substitutes a standard English translation in the interest of making his edition accessible to a wider range of readers. His introduction places the text in the context of Camus' better-known later work, explicating its relationship to those mature writings and exploring how its themes were reworked in subsequent books. Arguing that Camus was one of the great critics of modernity through his attempt to disentangle the Greeks from the Christians, Srigley clearly demonstrates the place of Christian Metaphysics in Camus' oeuvre. As the only stand-alone English version of this important work-and a long-overdue critical edition-his fluent translation is an essential benchmark in our understanding of Camus and his place in modern thought. |
| voegelin political religions: Christianity and Political Philosophy Frederick D. Wilhelmsen, 2013-10-15 |
| voegelin political religions: Eric Voegelin Michael P. Federici, 2002 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. |
| voegelin political religions: New Political Religions, or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism Barry Cooper, 2004-07-07 In New Political Religions, or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism, Barry Cooper applies the insights of Eric Voegelin to the phenomenon of modern terrorism. Cooper points out that the chief omission from most contemporary studies of terrorism is an analysis of the “spiritual motivation” that is central to the actions of terrorists today. When spiritual elements are discussed in conventional literature, they are grouped under the opaque term religion. A more conceptually adequate approach is provided by Voegelin’s political science and, in particular, by his Schellingian term pneumopathology—a disease of the spirit. While terrorism has been used throughout the ages as a weapon in political struggles, there is an essential difference between groups who use these tactics for more of less rational political goals and those seeking more apocalyptic ends. Cooper argues that today's terrorists have a spiritual perversity that causes them to place greater significance on killing than on exploiting political grievances. He supports his assertion with an analysis of two groups that share the characteristics of a pneumopathological consciousness—Aum Shinrikyo, the terrorist organization that poisoned thousands of Tokyo subway riders in 1995, and Al-Qaeda, the group behind the infamous 9/11 killings. Cooper applies the Voegelinian terms first reality (a commonsense goal regarding legitimate political grievances) and second reality (a fantastic objective sought by those whose rationality has been obscured) to show the major divide between political and apocalyptic terrorist groups. Osama Bin Laden's second reality was the imaginary goal that the 9/11 attack was supposed to achieve, and the commonsense reality was what truly happened (the deaths of nearly 3,000 people and the United States's subsequent military response). Cooper shows how such spiritual perversity enables a human being, imagining himself empowered by God, to go on a campaign of mass destruction. Cooper concludes with a chapter on the uniqueness of terrorist networks, their limitations, and the means by which they can be dealt with. In the ongoing conversations among specialists in terrorist studies, as well as the ordinary discourse of citizens in western democracies wishing to understand the world around them, this book will add a distinctive voice. |
| voegelin political religions: Anamnesis Eric Voegelin, 1990 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. |
| voegelin political religions: The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon's Thought Stephen A. McKnight, 2006 Presents close analysis of eight of Francis Bacon's texts in order to investigate the relation of his religious views to his instauration. Attempts to correct the persistent misconception of Bacon as a secular modern who dismissed religion in order to promote the human advancement of knowledge--Provided by publisher. |
| voegelin political religions: Totalitarianism and Political Religions Volume III , |
| voegelin political religions: Augustine and Politics John Doody, Kevin L. Hughes, Kim Paffenroth, 2005-01-01 The study of Augustine's political teachings has suffered from a history of misreadings, both ancient and modern. It is only in recent years that the traditional lines of 'Augustinian pessimism' have been opened to question. Scholars have begun to explore the broader lines of Augustine's political thought in his letters and sermons, and thus have been able to place his classic text, The City of God, in its proper context. The essays in this volume take stock of these recent developments and revisit old assumptions about the significance of Augustine of Hippo for political thought. They do so from many different perspectives, examining the anthropological and theological underpinnings of Augustine's thought, his critique of politics, his development of his own political thought, and some of the later manifestations or uses of his thought in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and today. This new vision is at once more bracing, more hopeful, and more diverse than earlier readings could have allowed. |
| voegelin political religions: The Idol of Our Age Daniel J. Mahoney, 2018-12-04 This book is a learned essay at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. It is first and foremost a diagnosis and critique of the secular religion of our time, humanitarianism, or the “religion of humanity.” It argues that the humanitarian impulse to regard modern man as the measure of all things has begun to corrupt Christianity itself, reducing it to an inordinate concern for “social justice,” radical political change, and an increasingly fanatical egalitarianism. Christianity thus loses its transcendental reference points at the same time that it undermines balanced political judgment. Humanitarians, secular or religious, confuse peace with pacifism, equitable social arrangements with socialism, and moral judgment with utopianism and sentimentality. With a foreword by the distinguished political philosopher Pierre Manent, Mahoney’s book follows Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in affirming that Christianity is in no way reducible to a “humanitarian moral message.” In a pungent if respectful analysis, it demonstrates that Pope Francis has increasingly confused the Gospel with left-wing humanitarianism and egalitarianism that owes little to classical or Christian wisdom. It takes its bearings from a series of thinkers (Orestes Brownson, Aurel Kolnai, Vladimir Soloviev, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) who have been instructive critics of the “religion of humanity.” These thinkers were men of peace who rejected ideological pacifism and never confused Christianity with unthinking sentimentality. The book ends by affirming the power of reason, informed by revealed faith, to provide a humanizing alternative to utopian illusions and nihilistic despair. |
| voegelin political religions: The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin: Modernity without restraint: the political religions: the new science of politics: and science, politics, and gnosticism Eric Voegelin, 1989 |
| voegelin political religions: Religion, Politics and Law Barend Christoffel Labuschagne, Reinhard W. Sonnenschmidt, 2009 Exploring the pre-political en pre-legal spiritual infrastructure from which modern, liberal democracies in the West live, but cannot guarantee, this book inquires the relations between religion, politics and law from a philosophical perspective, discussing historical, systematical and practical issues. |
| voegelin political religions: Totalitarianism and Political Religions, Volume 1 Hans Maier, 2004-10-14 We are used to distinguishing the despotic regimes of the 20th century - communism, fascism, National Socialism, Maoism - very precisely according to place and time, origins and influences. But what should we call that which they have in common? On this question, there has been and is still a passionate debate. This book documents the first international conference on this theme, a conference that took place in September of 1994 at the University of Munich. The book shows how new models for understanding political history arose from the experience of modern despotic regimes. Here, the most important concepts - totalitarianism and political religions - are discussed and tested in terms of their usefulness. |
| voegelin political religions: Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being David Walsh, 2015-12-15 Readers expecting a traditional philosophical work will be surprised and delighted by David Walsh’s Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being, his highly original reflection on the transcendental nature of the person. A specialist in political theory, Walsh breaks new ground in this volume, arguing, as he says in the introduction, “that the person is transcendence, not only as an aspiration, but as his or her very reality. Nothing is higher. That is what Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being strives to acknowledge.” The analysis of the person is the foundation for thinking about political community and human dignity and rights. Walsh establishes his notion of the person in the first four chapters. He begins with the question as to whether science can in any sense talk about persons. He then examines the person’s core activities, free choice and knowledge, and reassesses the claims of the natural sciences. He considers the ground of the person and of interpersonal relationships, including our relationship with God. The final three chapters explore the unfolding of the person, imaginatively in art, in the personal “time” of history, and in the “space” of politics. Politics of the Person as the Politics of Being is a new way of philosophizing that is neither subjective nor objective but derived from the persons who can consider such perspectives. The book will interest students and scholars in contemporary political philosophy, philosophy of religion, and any groups interested in the person, personalism, and metaphysics. |
| voegelin political religions: Order and History Eric Voegelin, Dante Germino, 1999-12-01 This third volume of 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 and Aristotle 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 symbolsin its deeds and institutionswhich 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. Dante Germino's powerful introduction to this edition of Plato and Aristotle eloquently directs the reader into Voegelin's search through the thought of Plato foremost and Aristotle secondarily and toward a full understanding of their relevance to the modern world. This masterpiece, Germino argues, provides a welcome antidote to the spirit of an era Voegelin once called the Gnostic age. |
| voegelin political religions: Political Religion: the Death of God Linda Raeder, 2017-04-04 Political Religion and the Death of God explores the views of philosopher Eric Voegelin regarding the metaphysical rebellion against the God of the Bible that rose to militant fervor in the nineteenth century and impelled the modern ideological movements that followed in its wake. |
| voegelin political religions: Constitutional Morality and the Rise of Quasi-Law Bruce P. Frohnen, George W. Carey, 2016-06-13 Americans are ruled by an unwritten constitution consisting of executive orders, signing statements, and other quasi-laws designed to reform society, Bruce Frohnen and George Carey argue. Consequently, the Constitution no longer means what it says to the people it is supposed to govern and the government no longer acts according to the rule of law. |
| voegelin political religions: Hitler's Theology Rainer Bucher, 2011-09 A systematic reconstruction and critique of Hitler's use and abuse of theological concepts, and demonstration of their fundamental importance for the rise of National Socialism. |
| voegelin political religions: Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America Ellis Sandoz, 2013-07-23 As debates rage over the place of faith in our national life, Tocqueville’s nineteenth-century crediting of religion for shaping America is largely overlooked today. Now, in Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America, Ellis Sandoz reveals the major role that Protestant Christianity played in the formation and early period of the American republic. Sandoz traces the rise of republican government from key sources in Protestant civilization, paying particular attention to the influence of the Bible on the Founders and the blossoming of the American mind in the eighteenth century. Sandoz analyzes the religious debt of the emergent American community and its elevation of the individual person as unique in the eyes of the Creator. He shows that the true distinction of American republicanism lies in its grounding of human dignity in spiritual individualism and an understanding of man’s capacity for self-government under providential guidance. Along the way, he addresses such topics as the neglected question of the education of the Founders for their unique endeavor, common law constitutionalism, the place of Latin and Greek classics in the Founders’ thought, and the texture of religious experience from the Great Awakening to the Declaration of Independence To establish a unifying theoretical perspective for his study, Sandoz considers the philosophical underpinnings of religion and the contribution that Eric Voegelin made to our understanding of religious experience. He contributes fresh studies of the character of Voegelin’s thought: its relationship to Christianity; his debate with Leo Strauss over reason, revelation, and the meaning of philosophy; and the theory of Gnosticism as basic to radical modernity. He also provides a powerful account of the spirit of Voegelin’s later writings, contrasting the political scientist with the meditative spiritualist and offering new insight into volume 5 of Order and History. Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America concludes with timely reflections on the epoch now unfolding in the shadow of Islamic jihadism. Bringing a wide range of materials into a single volume, it confronts current academic concerns with religion while offering new insight into the construction of the American polity—and the heart of Americanism as we know it today. |
| voegelin political religions: Theology and World Politics Vassilios Paipais, 2020-03-02 Situated within the wider post-secular turn in politics and international relations, this volume focuses not on religion per se, but rather explicitly on theology. Contributions to this collection highlight the political theological foundations of international theory and world politics, recasting theology and politics as symbiotic discourses with all the risks, promises and open questions this relation may involve. The overarching claim the book makes is that all politics has theology embedded in it, both in the genealogical sense of carrying ineradicable traces of rival theological traditions, and also in the more ontological sense of being enacted by alternative configurations of the theologico-political. The book is unique in bringing together a diverse group of scholars, spanning knowledge areas as varied as IR, political theory, philosophy, theology, and history to investigate the complex interconnections between theology and world politics. It will be of interest to students and scholars of political theory, international relations, intellectual history, and political theology. |
| voegelin political religions: Totalitarianism and Political Religions Hans Maier, 2004 This book shows how new models by which to understand political history arose from the experience of modern despotic regimes. Here, the totalitarianism and political religions - are discussed and tested in terms of their usefulness. |
| voegelin political religions: The Legitimacy of the Modern Age Hans Blumenberg, 1985 |
| voegelin political religions: The Eric Voegelin Reader Eric Voegelin, 2017-09-20 Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was one of the most original philosophers of our time, working throughout his life to account for the endemic political violence of the twentieth century, in an effort variously referred to as a philosophy of politics, history, or consciousness. Drawing from the University of Missouri Press's thirty-four-volume edition of his collected works, Charles Embry and Glenn Hughes have assembled a selection of Voegelin's representative writings, satisfying the need for a single volume that can serve as a general introduction to his philosophy. The selection demonstrates the range and creativity of Voegelin's thought, including writings that show his thinking as it developed historically in his long search for order in human society. |
| voegelin political religions: Hitler and the Germans Eric Voegelin, 1999 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. |
| voegelin political religions: Totalitarianism and Political Religions, Volume II Hans Maier, Michael Schäfer, 2007-12-24 Totalitarianism and Political Religions, Volume II, available for the first time in English translation, features contributions from leading scholars of political extremism, sociology and modern history. Based upon a seminal conference on political religions, edited by eminent Professor Hans Maier, the book seeks to define the term and explore its application to the interpretation of a wide variety of totalitarian movements in Europe in the twentieth century. |
| voegelin political religions: The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin: Modernity without restraint: the political religions; The new science of politics; and Science, politics, and gnosticism Eric Voegelin, 1989 |
| voegelin political religions: What is Christian Democracy? Carlo Invernizzi Accetti, 2019-10-03 Christian Democratic actors and thinkers have been at the forefront of many of the twentieth century's key political battles - from the construction of the international human rights regime, through the process of European integration and the creation of postwar welfare regimes, to Latin American development policies during the Cold War. Yet their core ideas remain largely unknown, especially in the English-speaking world. Combining conceptual and historical approaches, Carlo Invernizzi Accetti traces the development of this ideology in the thought and writings of some of its key intellectual and political exponents, from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. In so doing he sheds light on a number of important contemporary issues, from the question of the appropriate place of religion in presumptively 'secular' liberal-democratic regimes, to the normative resources available for building a political response to the recent rise of far-right populism. |
| voegelin political religions: God at War Mark Juergensmeyer, 2020 Based on the author's thirty years of fieldwork interviewing activists involved in religious-related terrorist movements around the world, this book explains why desperate social conflict and personal fears lead to extremes of both religion and war, and why invariably God is thought to be engaged in battle. Virtually every religious tradition leaves behind it a bloody trail of stories, legends, and images of war, and most wars call upon the divine for blessings in battle. This book probes the remarkably similar alternative realities that are created in the human imagination by both religious ideas and images of war in response to crises both personal and social. |
| voegelin political religions: The Shipwrecked Mind Mark Lilla, 2016-09-06 We don’t understand the reactionary mind. As a result, argues Mark Lilla in this timely book, the ideas and passions that shape today’s political dramas are unintelligible to us. The reactionary is anything but a conservative. He is as radical and modern a figure as the revolutionary, someone shipwrecked in the rapidly changing present, and suffering from nostalgia for an idealized past and an apocalyptic fear that history is rushing toward catastrophe. And like the revolutionary his political engagements are motivated by highly developed ideas. Lilla begins with three twentieth-century philosophers—Franz Rosenzweig, Eric Voegelin, and Leo Strauss—who attributed the problems of modern society to a break in the history of ideas and promoted a return to earlier modes of thought. He then examines the enduring power of grand historical narratives of betrayal to shape political outlooks since the French Revolution, and shows how these narratives are employed in the writings of Europe’s right-wing cultural pessimists and Maoist neocommunists, American theoconservatives fantasizing about the harmony of medieval Catholic society and radical Islamists seeking to restore a vanished Muslim caliphate. The revolutionary spirit that inspired political movements across the world for two centuries may have died out. But the spirit of reaction that rose to meet it has survived and is proving just as formidable a historical force. We live in an age when the tragicomic nostalgia of Don Quixote for a lost golden age has been transformed into a potent and sometimes deadly weapon. Mark Lilla helps us to understand why. |
| voegelin political religions: Roman Catholic Political Philosophy James V. Schall, 2006-08-01 In Roman Catholic Political Philosophy author James V. Schall tries to demonstrate that Roman Catholicism and political philosophy---revelation and reason--are not contradictory. It is his contention that political philosophy, the primary focus of the book, asks certain questions about human purpose and destiny that it cannot, by itself, answer. Revelation is the natural complement to these important questions about God, human being, and the world. Schall manages to avoid polemicism or triumphalism as he shows that revelation and political thought contribute to a fuller understanding of each other. |
| voegelin political religions: Political Religion Beyond Totalitarianism J. Augusteijn, P. Dassen, M. Janse, 2013-01-29 The success of fascist and communist regimes has long been explained by their ability to turn political ideology into a type of religion. These innovative essays explore the notion that all forms of modern mass-politics, including democracies, need a form of sacralization to function. |
| voegelin political religions: Politics, Order and History Glenn Hughes, Stephen McKnight, Geoffrey Price, 2001-03-01 This volume brings together critical review papers, many specially commissioned, on key themes and questions in the work of the political scientist, philosopher and religious thinker Eric Voegelin (1901-1985). Areas covered include: (1) Political science: 'Political Religions': manifestations in Nazi Germany and in contemporary European and North American nationalism; (2) International relations: the 'Cold War' in critical perspective; (3) Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle in the reading of Eric Voegelin: contemporary assessments; (4) Sociology: Correspondence of Voegelin and Alfred Schütz; (5) New Testament studies and Christology: questions and developments for Voegelin's interpretations; (6) Old Testament studies: questions and developments from Voegelin's Israel and Revelation; (7) Historical sociology: Revelation and order in axial-age societies; (8) Philosophy of history: Voegelin and Toynbee in contrast; (9) Literary studies: Voegelin in contrast with contemporary literary theory; critical readings of Milton, Greek tragedy. |
Eric Voegelin: A Primer - VoegelinView
Jun 25, 2018 · Federici’s book on Voegelin offers one of the best introductions ever written to any figure, while Dr. McAllister’s explore the absolute depths of Voegelin’s most complicated …
A Review of Art, Culture, Politics, Science, and Divine Ground
Apr 13, 2025 · VoegelinView is the arts & humanities journal of the Eric Voegelin Society, featuring essays, reviews, poems, and interviews on culture and politics.
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Voegelin research centers have been founded in universities in the United States and Europe. His works have been translated into languages ranging from Portuguese to Japanese and a Chinese …
The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin - VoegelinView
The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Volume 1 On The Form of the American Mind Volume 2 Race and State Volume 3 The History of the Race Idea: From Ray to Carus Volume 4 The Authoritarian …
About Us - VoegelinView
VOEGELINVIEW is the online arts and humanities journal of the Eric Voegelin Society. We publish essays, reviews, interviews, poems, and occasional works of creative fiction dealing with the …
The Legacy of Voegelin and Strauss - VoegelinView
Nov 23, 2013 · The Timely Legacy of Voegelin and Strauss-pt 1--Voegelin and Strauss do not revolt against modernity, but instead try to awaken modernity to cognitive self-illumination. For this …
Process and the Derailing of Reality: Voegelin, Process and the New ...
Nov 4, 2019 · As Alessandra Gerolin illuminates in her essay “The Influence of Alfred North Whitehead on Eric Voegelin,” the concept of the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” endured …
Getting to Know the Older Eric Voegelin - VoegelinView
Dec 31, 2023 · Voegelin published in 1966 in Anamnesis, the first major treatise of his theory of consciousness. In the following years he steadily enlarged and deepened his understanding of …
Eric Voegelin and Hannah Arendt on the Nature of Totalitarian …
Aug 8, 2023 · Voegelin criticizes Arendt’s institutional approach. According to the philosopher, social and economic situations provoke changes and, consequently, people’s reactions to these …
Voegelin on Gnosticism, Modernity, and the Balance of …
Mar 12, 2020 · Voegelin uses the term “gnosticism” in an unconventional and very broad sense. It is his term for certain disorders of the spirit arising from “pneumapathological” or imbalanced …
Eric Voegelin: A Primer - VoegelinView
Jun 25, 2018 · Federici’s book on Voegelin offers one of the best introductions ever written to any figure, while Dr. McAllister’s explore the absolute depths of Voegelin’s most complicated …
A Review of Art, Culture, Politics, Science, and Divine Ground
Apr 13, 2025 · VoegelinView is the arts & humanities journal of the Eric Voegelin Society, featuring essays, reviews, poems, and interviews on culture and politics.
Eric Voegelin Biographical Sketch - VoegelinView
Voegelin research centers have been founded in universities in the United States and Europe. His works have been translated into languages ranging from Portuguese to Japanese and a …
The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin - VoegelinView
The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Volume 1 On The Form of the American Mind Volume 2 Race and State Volume 3 The History of the Race Idea: From Ray to Carus Volume 4 The …
About Us - VoegelinView
VOEGELINVIEW is the online arts and humanities journal of the Eric Voegelin Society. We publish essays, reviews, interviews, poems, and occasional works of creative fiction dealing …
The Legacy of Voegelin and Strauss - VoegelinView
Nov 23, 2013 · The Timely Legacy of Voegelin and Strauss-pt 1--Voegelin and Strauss do not revolt against modernity, but instead try to awaken modernity to cognitive self-illumination. For …
Process and the Derailing of Reality: Voegelin, Process and the …
Nov 4, 2019 · As Alessandra Gerolin illuminates in her essay “The Influence of Alfred North Whitehead on Eric Voegelin,” the concept of the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness” endured …
Getting to Know the Older Eric Voegelin - VoegelinView
Dec 31, 2023 · Voegelin published in 1966 in Anamnesis, the first major treatise of his theory of consciousness. In the following years he steadily enlarged and deepened his understanding of …
Eric Voegelin and Hannah Arendt on the Nature of Totalitarian …
Aug 8, 2023 · Voegelin criticizes Arendt’s institutional approach. According to the philosopher, social and economic situations provoke changes and, consequently, people’s reactions to …
Voegelin on Gnosticism, Modernity, and the Balance of …
Mar 12, 2020 · Voegelin uses the term “gnosticism” in an unconventional and very broad sense. It is his term for certain disorders of the spirit arising from “pneumapathological” or imbalanced …
