Eric Voegelin Today: Voegelin’s Political Thought in the 21st Century

224 Pages·2019·1.103 MB·English

by  Scott Robinson, Lee Trepanier, and David N. Whitney

Eric Voegelin Today
Political Theory for Today
SeriesEditor:RichardAvramenko,UniversityofWisconsin,Madison
PoliticalTheoryforTodayseekstobringthehistoryofpoliticalthoughtoutofthejargon-
filledworldoftheacademyintotheeverydayworldofsocialandpoliticallife.Theseries
brings the wisdom of texts and the tradition of political philosophy to bear on salient
issuesofourtime,especiallyissuespertainingtohumanfreedomandresponsibility,the
relationship between individuals and the state, the moral implications of public policy,
healthandhumanflourishing,publicandprivatevirtues,andmore.Greatthinkersofthe
pasthavethoughtdeeplyaboutthehumanconditionandtheirsituations—booksinPoliti-
calTheoryforTodaybuildonthatinsight.
TitlesPublished
Traditionv.Rationalism:Voegelin,Oakeshott,Hayek,andOthers,editedbyGene
CallahanandLeeTrepanier
DemocracyandItsEnemies:TheAmericanStrugglefortheEnlightenment,byPaulN.
Goldstene
Plato’sMythoi:ThePoliticalSoul’sDramaBeyond,byDonaldH.Roy
EricVoegelinToday:Voegelin’sPoliticalThoughtinthe21stCentury,editedbyScott
Robinson,LeeTrepanier,DavidN.Whitney
Eric Voegelin Today
Voegelin’s Political
Thought in the 21st Century
Edited by Scott Robinson,
Lee Trepanier,
and David N. Whitney
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Contents
Introduction:VoegelinToday 1
ScottRobinson
PartI:TheIdeologicalNatureofLiberalismToday
1 RethinkingEricVoegelin’sInterpretationofLiberalismandIts
History 11
DavidD.Corey
2 TheNecessityofMoralCommunicationinaPluralisticPolitical
Environment 31
ScottRobinson
3 DefendersofDemocracy:FreedomandResponsibilityin
AmericaToday 53
ScottRobinson
4 TheOriginsofScientism:Revisited 75
DavidN.Whitney
5 Voegelin,Rawls,andthePersistenceofLiberalCivilTheology 91
GrantHavers
PartII:GeopoliticsToday
6 TheComparativePoliticsofEricVoegelin 117
LeeTrepanier
7 TheDreamoftheCaliphateandtheLossofReality:An
ApplicationofEricVoegelin’s“TheOriginsofTotalitarianism”
and“InSearchoftheGround” 141
ScottPhilipSegrest
v
vi Contents
8 TheFiveWaysofWorld-Empire 173
ChristopherS.Morrissey
9 EricVoegelin’s1944“PoliticalTheoryandthePatternof
GeneralHistory”:AnAccountfromtheBiographyofa
PhilosophizingConsciousness 191
NathanHarter
Index 209
AbouttheAuthors 215
Introduction
Voegelin Today
Scott Robinson
The goal of this volume is to demonstrate the relevance of Eric Voegelin’s
worksfromthe1950sandearly1960stothepoliticalatmosphereoftheearly
twenty-firstcentury.Thecontributorstothisvolumearguethatthisrelevance
shouldbetakenseriously;thethesisiscollectivelyproducedthatVoegelin’s
writings from this time are particularly adept at diagnosing and offering
therapeutic insights into ideologically charged political circumstances. We
believe that today’s political environment may be described as especially
ideologically charged. Despite Voegelin’s adeptness in this area, the prob-
lemswhichheunderstoodvery well continueto plaguehumanity today.For
this reason, we hope that this volume will, in some modest measure, help
thosewhowishtounderstandtheideologicallyhostileatmospherewhichhas
characterizedWesterncivilizationforsometimenow.
The twelve-year stretch spanning from the publication of The New Sci-
ence of Politics (1952) to the delivery of the lectures which would be pub-
lished as Hitler and the Germans (1964) marked a period in Voegelin’s
careerinwhichhegrappledwiththeradicalideologicalmovementsoftwen-
tieth-centuryEurope,Nazism,andCommunism.Voegelin’sanalysescontin-
ue to represent a uniquely powerful diagnosis of the spiritual maladies of a
century hallmarked by genocidal death camps, on one hand, and amazing
technologicalprogress,ontheother.Throughouthisvoluminousworksfrom
this time, Voegelin repeatedly argues that the true problem with modernity
lay in the closure of the soul to the classical and Christian ideals of higher
and objective truths, placing the ground of truth instead on the desires pur-
suedbyindividualsinour immanent experience. The product of thisclosure
has been the frequent manifestation of revolutionary movements that aspire
1
2 Introduction
to fulfill their ideological proclivities, eventually revealing that they will
pursue their ideological goals at any toll to truth or to human lives. Certain
particularmeasuresaretakenbytheseideologicalgroups,becausetheyshare
thebasicgoalofalteringthehumanexperience.Voegelin’sabilitytocharac-
terize and categorize the spiritual deficiencies of modern political ideas
which indulge in this desire to alter reality is unsurpassed in the political
commentaryofthetwentiethcenturyandremainsapplicabletotheideasand
ideologues of today. A few words of introduction to Voegelin’s biography
andtothecriticalphilosophicalideasthathepresentedduringthistimespan
will be useful to those who are trying to understand Voegelin’s political
philosophy or the political environment of the early twenty-first century.
Indeed,anyoneseekingknowledgeaboutthelattermaylearnmuchfromthe
former.
In1952,Voegelinwasanaccomplishedscholar,andafacultymemberof
LouisianaStateUniversity’sDepartmentofPoliticalScience.Hehadalready
experienced,witnessed,andwrittenmuch.BorninGermanyin1901,hewas
educatedattheUniversityofVienna(aclassmateofHayek),andtaughtthere
until the German annexation in 1938. He was subsequently fired for his
political views and fled Gestapo soldiers by fleeing overnight into Switzer-
land and eventually to the United States. He joined the faculty at LSU in
1942andremaineduntil1958,whenhefilledMaxWeber’sformerchair(left
vacantsincehisdeathin1920)attheUniversityofMunich.ThreeofVoege-
lin’s most powerful critiques of the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth
centuryappearedfirstinlectureformduringthistimespan:TheNewScience
of Politics (1952), Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (1960), and Hitler and
the Germans (1964). Though these works are cited throughout this volume,
we have scrutinized a number of lesser-known essays and lectures in which
Voegelin expanded on his theories of modernity as presented in the above
works.TheseessaysandlecturesarecompiledintheCollectedWorksofEric
Voegelin Volumes 10 and 11. This approach has allowed us to better apply
Voegelin’sthoughttoissueswhicharemoredeeplydevelopedintheseother
worksandofsomeimportancetoday,suchasliberalismandscientism.
Voegelin’s work from this era contains two consistent themes that are
readily applicable to the 21st century and evident throughout this volume.
Thefirstthemethatappearsregularlyinthisvolumeistheclosureofthesoul
of the modern ideologue to the life of reason. Voegelin deals with this issue
atnumerousplaceswithintheessays reviewedin thisvolume. “In Search of
theGround”(CollectedWorks,Volume11)explainsthebasicfeaturesofthe
lifeofreason.ThereasonablelifeisoneguidedbyLogos or Nous-reason in
the classical sense. This life consists in contemplating about the nature of
existing things and of acting in accordance with those contemplations and
within the limits circumscribed by the nature of things. Voegelin wrote of
this reason as “an experienced reality of a transcendent nature which one