_Autobiographical Reflections_ is a window into the mind of a man whose reassessment of the nature of history and thought has overturned traditional approaches to, and appraisals of, the Western intellectual tradition. Here we encounter the motivations for Voegelin's work, the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness, his key intellectual breakthroughs, his theory of history, and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age. Included in this revised volume is a glossary of terms used (...) in Voegelin’s writings. The glossary lists, defines, and illustrates from the author’s writings many of the key terms employed, paying particular attention to the Greek terms. Together, the glossary and enlarged index systematically include names, subjects, ideas, writings, and terms, making this volume an indispensable help for any serious study of Eric Voegelin’s oeuvre. (shrink)

The thirty-fourth volume of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin consists of Voegelin's Autobiographical Reflections, reprinted from the 1989 edition with additional annotations; a glossary of terms used in Voegelin's writings, illustrated ...

This book explores Dostoevsky as a political thinker from his religious and philosophical foundation to nineteenth-century European politics and how themes that he had examined are still relevant for us today.

_Autobiographical Reflections_ is a window into the mind of a man whose reassessment of the nature of history and thought has overturned traditional approaches to, and appraisals of, the Western intellectual tradition. Here we encounter the motivations for Voegelin's work, the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness, his key intellectual breakthroughs, his theory of history, and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age. Included in this revised volume is a glossary of terms used (...) in Voegelin’s writings. The glossary lists, defines, and illustrates from the author’s writings many of the key terms employed, paying particular attention to the Greek terms. Together, the glossary and enlarged index systematically include names, subjects, ideas, writings, and terms, making this volume an indispensable help for any serious study of Eric Voegelin’s oeuvre. (shrink)

"The Liberty for which Patriot Patrick Henry was willing to die was more than a rhetorical flourish. The American Patriots and Founders based their ideas about Liberty upon almost 200 years of experience on their own as well as the heritage of English Common Law and even back to the natural order of Thomas Aquinas, not to mention the philosophy of Aristotle and the Biblical Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. In over 50-years of scholarship Ellis Sandoz has researched, documented (...) and contemplated the governance of man throughout the ages. The erudition brought to bear in this compact tome reflects a depth and breadth of learning that illuminates the subject with dazzling insight. Yet, he always reminds us that principles of Liberty are readily comprehensible to the common man. Sandoz worries that the present day adherence to political correctness limits our response to obviously murderous terroristic movements. He attacks academia for ignoring the spiritual nature of existence and events. He even chastens "social dogoodism" when it is provided instead of, rather than as a reflection of, spiritual nourishment. The book revolves around the motivation and context of the American Founding and drives home its relevance to contemporary living. The Founders fought against tyranny that attempted to control their physical and spiritual lives. Unjust governance was deemed to be without authority. Aristocrats and commoners ultimately must answer to the Final Authority. These concepts are reflected in the Declaration of Independence: "all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights -- that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Sandoz is not only a scholar, but a grandfather; his words will engender Liberty for future generations."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

A fascinating collection of studies, _The Politics of Truth and Other Untimely Essays_ explores the historical and theoretical underpinnings of personal liberty and free government and provides a trenchant analysis of the crisis of civic consciousness endangering both of them today. The book addresses a range of issues in contemporary political philosophy and constitutional theory. These are seen to be all the more urgent in importance because of the surging aspirations for liberty in the wake of the collapse of the (...) Soviet empire and the post-Cold War anomaly of crisis, malaise, and disarray in free government itself in America and in other bastions of modern democracy. While each essay can stand alone, there is an underlying thematic unity to the collection. The fundamental problem considered throughout is whether and to what extent the fall of communism may mark an epoch in world history. These questions are applied to the East Central European nations struggling to achieve free government and personal liberty. The elements required to identify the preconditions of liberty are addressed and specific attention is given to the terms of institutionalization in the American founding. Several essays focus on American political thought, with emphasis on the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Two elements, in particular, are treated: the jurisprudential and common law background to the American political tradition and the centrality of religion within the unfolding of the American political experiment. Sandoz explores the uncommon alliance of philosophers, statesmen, and evangelists during the nation's founding. This alliance, nurturing communities of persons bound together by their faith and a mutual regard for one another, played a vital role in the establishment of the system of freedom under law. Sandoz sees the tension between religion and natural law as a constant in the human struggle for freedom. That the preservation of liberty under law is no easy task is acknowledged and addressed as it can be seen in the American founding, in the post-communist struggle of East Central Europe, and in the deepening contemporary crisis of American society. Anyone interested in the "politics" of "truth" will appreciate this volume. (shrink)

_Published Essays, 1966-1985_ includes some of the most trenchant and compelling of Eric Voegelin's work and is an indispensable companion to his Anamnesis and to the fourth and fifth volumes of _Order and History,_ which were prepared for publication during the same period, the last two decades of the author's life. These essays are quintessential Voegelin. Voegelin was an essayist at heart, and the pieces gathered here bear on almost every aspect of his philosophy. They range in subject matter and (...) tone from a scalding critique of the German intellectual establishment during the Hitler period and a satire upon contemporary vulgarian culture to magisterial analyses of immortality, reason, and consciousness. The essays also embrace Voegelin's elaboration of the theory of equivalent experiences and symbolizations over human history and his meditation upon the lure of extremes in the rebellion of magic against reason in various modernist attacks on culture. The scope of Voegelin's work is magnified by the collection's final essay, a touching and profound deathbed reflection on God. Running through all the material is Voegelin's conviction that the truly scientific or philosophical life is ordered through an Anselmian _fides quaerens intellectum,_ a faith in search of understanding. Thus, the assertion that "all men by nature desire to know," which opens Aristotle's _Metaphysics,_ is rightly completed by the words the divine Ground of being. It is the search of the Ground by a mystic philosopher-consciously indebted to such great contemplatives as Plato, Anselm, of Canterbury, jean Bodin, and Henri Bergson-that distinguishes Voegelin's own pilgrimage through time in partnership with God. Nowhere does this come more powerfully and luminously clear than in the pages of _Published Essays, 1966-1985._. (shrink)

The period covered by the material published in this volume marks the transition in Eric Voegelin's career from Louisiana to Munich. After twenty years in the United States, in 1958 Voegelin accepted an invitation to fill the political science chair at Ludwig Maximilian University, a position left vacant throughout the Nazi period and last occupied by the famous Max Weber, who had died in 1920. The themes most prominent in the fourteen items reprinted here reflect the concerns of a transition, (...) not only in a scholar's career, and in the momentous shifts in world politics taking place around him, but also in the development of his understanding of the stratification of reality and the attendant demands for a science of human affairs adequate to the challenges posed by the persistent crisis of the West in its latest configurations and by contemporary philosophy. Several of the items herein originated as talks to a specific organization on problems facing German democratization and the development of a market economy amid the ruins of a fragmented culture and infrastructure in a society without historically evolved institutional supports for a satisfactory social and political order. Accordingly, pragmatic matters occupy a central place in a number of these pieces, especially the overriding question of how Germany could move from an illiberal and ideological political order into a modern liberal democratic one. Those accustomed to the theoretical profundity of Voegelin's writings may find welcome relief in the down-to-earth, commonsensical drift of this material addressed, often, to laymen and businessmen. But, of course, the philosophical subject matter lurks everywhere. It finds full expression in several instances as the controlling context of even the least pretentious presentations. One of the attractions of these essays is what the author brings forward as serviceable elementary guideposts under adverse conditions of intellectual disarray, social decay, and turmoil. (shrink)

_Published Essays, 1940-1952,_ includes some of Eric Voegelin's most provocative and interesting essays. Containing his first publications after he fled Vienna and settled in the United States following Hitler's annexation of Austria, this volume provides eyewitness commentary on the rise of National Socialism from the first days of World War II onward. A major study entitled "Growth of the Race Idea" presents a masterful summary of the two volumes on that subject Voegelin first published in 1933. A related essay of (...) wide interest is entitled "Nietzsche, the Crisis, and the War." Another facet of Voegelin's thought incorporated within this volume of the _Essays_ is his extraordinary analysis of the diplomatic correspondence conducted between the Western powers, the papacy, and the Great Khans, whose breathtaking expansion of the Mongol Empire for a time threatened to extinguish Western civilization itself and resulted in a two-century domination of Russia. Another major study is "The Origins of Scientism," an illuminating analysis of the grounds of much of modern philosophy and of all modern political ideologies. There are also surveys of the state of political theory in the late forties, penetrating studies of utopian thought with essays on Thomas More and Goethe, and a concluding essay that explores the intricacies of "Gnostic Politics"—a familiar theme from Voegelin's contemporaneous _New Science of Politics._ This volume of published essays shows Eric Voegelin at his most accessible best. (shrink)