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Abstract
Beginning with the question of the logic and aporias of modern representation – from the genesis of sovereignty to democratic constitutions – the essay discusses the theoretical structure of representation according to Eric Voegelin and the latter’s critique of Carl Schmitt. In this regard, the necessary relationship with the idea implicit in representation and the relevance of the reference to Plato are brought into focus. On this basis, some reasons for the crisis of modern democracy are spelt out. The task that comes to us from Voegelin, beyond his political proposal, is to think about the order of society in a way that is different from the state-form, in such a way that it does not contradict the structure of representation as an experience of transcendence.
Abstract
The article deals with Eric Voegelin’s analysis of the symbolic dimension of politics and history. It focuses at first on the analysis of the relationship between religion, politics and totalitarianism in the essay on „political religions“ and outlines some aspects of the context in which this essay was written. Some characteristics of Voegelin’s methodological reflections on the idea of a „new science“ of politics are then presented and it is then shown how the attempt to understand the relationship between ideas and symbols opens a new horizon of research, in which the relationship between symbol and representation, and that between symbol, history and being, around which the monumental, and unfinished work Order and History moves, are the main axes.
Abstract
Between 1959 and 1970, Voegelin wrote four different versions of an essay entitled „Historiogenesis“. During the same period, he was working on the fourth volume of Order and History, which was published, after much delay, only in 1975 under the title The Ecumenic Age. The introductory chapter to this volume is entitled „Historiogenesis“ and is the final version of the series of essays mentioned above. Why Voegelin took so long to bring out the fourth volume, much of which had already been completed, is clear from his own words in the introduction to The Ecumenic Age. There he speaks of a „break“ that this volume represents with the program he had originally developed for Order and History. The reasons for this break are many, but one seems to be Voegelin’s „discovery“ of historiogenetic symbolism. This study will analyze the four versions of Historiogenesis in more detail, identify their differences, and – building on this – attempt to clarify what influence „Historiogenesis“ had on the „break“ with the original program of Order and History and the continuation of this work in The Ecumenic Age.
Abstract
The following article reconstructs the development of Eric Voegelin’s early work. The analysis begins with Voegelin’s work on a Theory of the State in the early 1930s, continues with the treatise on Political Religions from 1938, and extends to the publication of the New Science of Politics in 1952. The project of a theory of the state as a science of the spirit is considered, as is the role of political myth and the emergence of a systematic philosophy of history. The contribution is intended to clarify the lines of connection between Voegelin’s early works and thus also to show how Voegelin’s thought developed step by step in the direction that we know today primarily through his major works.
Abstract
A main topic of Eric Voegelin’s thinking – and as well a personal matter of himself as an intellectual figure – is the demand for intellectual sincerity. Sincerity consists of continuously examining one’s own presuppositions and considering neither tradition nor faith to be the sole grounds for true knowledge. Considering Voegelin himself as an example, we can understand the difficulties associated with the subjective claim to sincerity when it is made in a situation in which the goal of science is not the activity of research itself but the choice of a fixed theory and its language, so that all science ends up in dogmatism. The critical researcher himself may appear as a dogmatist in such a situation, i.e. as a defender of this or that sharply defined set of beliefs. How can intellectual sincerity be realized in such a situation? The claim or appeal to sincerity is obviously not sufficient, as Voegelin himself is clearly conscious. According to him, intellectual sincerity is enabled by a certain type of self-relation in which the historical constitution of the thinking self as a human self is recognized. But this act of recognition has nothing to do with the choice of some ‚picture of man‘. It consists in the ongoing activity of a rightly understood historical research dedicated to past articulations of personal self-relations.
Abstract
The article examines Voegelin’s concepts of existential and elementary representation starting from the formulations present in the first chapter of the New Science of Politics. The analysis highlights the theoretical origin of these two concepts in The Authoritarian State where Voegelin discusses the constitutional structure of Austria after World War II. The link between representative institutions and developing nations, as emerges from the analysis of some thinkers who experienced personally the dissolution of the Empire and looked critically at the birth of national states, allows Voegelin to provide tools for thinking about politics and representation beyond the nation-state.
Abstract
This essay analyzes the fundamental concept of creaturality from the perspective of Eric Voegelin which forms the basis of the Judeo-Christian vision indicating humanity’s awareness of being an active part of God’s plan in history. As Voegelin stated repeatedly, when awareness is diverted from the transcendent to the immanent dimension, both creaturality and the political order decay.
Abstract
The present article argues for an “equivalence of experience and symbolization” between Hegel and Voegelin’s reflection on the nature of history. Considering Voegelin’s rather harsh treatment of Hegel, this might come as a surprise. Nonetheless, the article will try to argue that both thinkers saw history as a dynamic process, constituted by the mutual grounding of its components – the res gestae and the historia rerum gestarum. The article also provides an analysis of some core concepts elaborated by the two philosophers, Hegel’s true infinity and Voegelin’s in between. While conceived by their authors for different philosophical purposes, this study suggests that they are also applicable to the authors views on the metaphysics of history.