Autobiographical Reflection: Revised Edition with Glossary 9780826219305

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Introduction to the Revised Edition
Introduction
1. University of Vienna
2. High School
3. Max Weber
4. Comparative Knowledge
5. Stefan George and Karl Kraus
6. The Pure Theory of Law: Neo-Kantian Methodology
7. Political Stimuli
8. Concerning My Dissertation
9. Concerning Oxford in 1921 or 1922
10. American Influence
11. Concerning the Year in France
12. Return to Vienna
13. Anschluss and Emigration
14. Concerning Ideology, Personal Politics, and Publications
15. Concerning Emigration in 1938
16. Life in America: From Harvard to LSU
17. From Political Ideas to Symbols of Experience
18. Alfred Schütz and the Theory of Consciousness
19. Order and Disorder
20. The Background of Order and History
21. Teaching Career
22. Why Philosophize? To Recapture Reality!
23. Philosophy of History
24. Range, Constancy, Eclipse, and Equivalenceof Truth
25. Consciousness, Divine Presence, and the Mystic Philosopher
26. Revolution, the Open Society, and Institutions
27. Eschatology and Philosophy: The Practice of Dying
Glossary of Terms Used in Eric Voegelin’s Writings Compiled by Eugene Webb
Index
About the Authors
Back Cover

Citation preview

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REFLECTIONS REVISED EDITION WITH GLOSSARY

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other books in the eric voegelin institute series in political philosophy Beginning the Quest: Law and Politics in the Early Work of Eric Voegelin, by Barry Cooper How World Politics Is Made: François Mitterand and the Reunification of Germany, by Tilo Schabert Worldview and Mind: Religious Thought and Psychological Development, by Eugene Webb

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Rethinking Rights: Historical, Political, and Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Bruce P. Frohnen and Kenneth L. Grasso The Philosopher and the Storyteller: Eric Voegelin and Twentieth-Century Literature, by Charles R. Embry The Constitutionalism of American States, edited by George E. Connor and Christopher W. Hammons Voegelin Recollected: Conversations on a Life, edited by Barry Cooper and Jodi Bruhn The American Way of Peace: An Interpretation, by Jan Prybyla Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934-1964, edited by Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper New Political Religions, or an Analysis of Modern Terrorism, by Barry Cooper Art and Intellect in the Philosophy of Étienne Gilson, by Francesca Aran Murphy Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, 1944-1984, edited by Charles R. Embry Voegelin, Schelling, and the Philosophy of Historical Existence, by Jerry Day Transcendence and History: The Search for Ultimacy from Ancient Societies to Postmodernity, by Glenn Hughes Eros, Wisdom, and Silence: Plato’s Erotic Dialogues, by James M. Rhodes The Narrow Path of Freedom and Other Essays, by Eugene Davidson Hans Jonas: The Integrity of Thinking, by David J. Levy A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding, by Ellis Sandoz Augustine and Politics as Longing in the World, by John von Heyking Lonergan and the Philosophy of Historical Existence, by Thomas J. McPartland Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology, by Glenn A. Moots Voegelinian Readings of Modern Literature, edited by Charles R. Embry

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eric voegelin institute series in political philosophy: studies in religion and politics Etty Hillesum and the Flow of Presence: A Voegelinian Analysis, by Meins G. S. Coetsier Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, by Albert Camus; translated with an introduction by Ronald D. Srigley Eric Voegelin and the Problem of Christian Political Order, by Jeffrey C. Herndon Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America, by Ellis Sandoz Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics, by Elizabeth Campbell Corey Jesus and the Gospel Movement: Not Afraid to Be Partners, by William

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Thompson-Uberuaga The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought, by Stephen A. McKnight

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AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REFLECTIONS REVISED EDITION WITH GLOSSARY

ERIC VOEGELIN

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ELLIS SANDOZ

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university of missouri press columbia and london

Copyright © 2011 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 5

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Cataloging-in-Publication data available from the Library of Congress isbn 978-0-8262-1930-5 ! ™ This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard ! for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, z39.48, 1984.

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Typeface: Trump Mediaeval Publication of this book has been assisted by a contribution from the Eric Voegelin Institute, which gratefully acknowledges the generous support provided for the series by the Earhart Foundation and the Sidney Richards Moore Memorial Fund.

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Contents

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

Introduction to the Revised Edition Introduction

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University of Vienna High School Max Weber Comparative Knowledge Stefan George and Karl Kraus The Pure Theory of Law: Neo-Kantian Methodology Political Stimuli Concerning My Dissertation Concerning Oxford in 1921 or 1922 American Influence Concerning the Year in France Return to Vienna Anschluss and Emigration Concerning Ideology, Personal Politics, and Publications Concerning Emigration in 1938 Life in America: From Harvard to LSU From Political Ideas to Symbols of Experience Alfred Schütz and the Theory of Consciousness Order and Disorder The Background of Order and History Teaching Career Why Philosophize? To Recapture Reality! Philosophy of History Range, Constancy, Eclipse, and Equivalence of Truth

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Consciousness, Divine Presence, and the Mystic Philosopher 26. Revolution, the Open Society, and Institutions 27. Eschatology and Philosophy: The Practice of Dying 25.

Glossary of Terms Used in Eric Voegelin’s Writings Compiled by Eugene Webb Index

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Introduction to the Revised Edition

This revised edition of Eric Voegelin’s Autobiographical Reflections consists of the original text, slightly revised and expanded, together with the introduction from the 1989 edition and some additional annotation, a glossary of terms used in Voegelin’s writings that lists, defines, and illustrates from the author’s writings many of the key terms employed, and an expanded index of the volume that includes names, subjects, ideas, and writings. Together, they make the volume an indispensable help for any serious study of Eric Voegelin’s oeuvre. A history of the publication of Autobiographical Reflections appears in the introduction from the 1989 edition, and with each appearance, there have been appropriate updates to information included. Without attempting comprehensive annotation, I have sought to give useful pointers in this volume to some of the places in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin where matters discussed conversationally here are given more technical and fuller attention by Voegelin. While the Autobiographical Reflections is a compelling account in its own right, the pointers help fill in details— especially in publications completed after this text, which dates from 1973. A similar approach was taken in the final preparation of the glossary, compiled by Eugene Webb from several sources and supplemented by the editor. While making no pretense of being a complete vocabulary of Voegelin’s technical terminology— himself an accomplished polyglot operating in more than a dozen languages, Voegelin’s vocabulary is sometimes regarded as a stumbling block to comprehension. It is hoped that new readers especially will find that both of these documents improve intelligibility as they read this important work, a valuable introduction 1

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to Voegelin’s thought, and move on to other writings contained in Voegelin’s Collected Works, and that scholars already familiar with Voegelin’s works will find new sources of insight into the bases of his views. Readers who turn to the Collected Works will find within every volume a scholarly introduction by its editor or editors, providing insights into the materials brought to publication in it and commentaries on them.1 Additionally there is a general introduction to the eight volumes comprising History of Political Ideas (CW, vols. 19–26), contained in its first volume. Taken together these various introductions might themselves constitute, if gathered, a substantial volume of technical analysis and commentary on the work of Eric Voegelin from the first of his publications in 1921 until the posthumous In Search of Order.2 Immediately evident in those publications is the magnificent scope and depth of the work of Voegelin as a great scholar. What seldom appears in all this, however, is much evidence of Voegelin as teacher—and he was a superb teacher—the principal exception being the few pages found herein in chapter 21. We attempted to fill the hiatus a bit at the twentieth-anniversary international meeting of the Eric Voegelin Society in Chicago, devoting to the subject a well-received roundtable on the program of the 2004 American Political Science Association.3 But since Voegelin earned his living as a teacher during a long career, and in all of his work quite intentionally sought to teach and persuade, as well as to discover and inform, perhaps a few comments in this place on his pedagogy and persona as a teacher will be of interest. To speak autobiographically, I first encountered Voegelin as an unsuspecting undergraduate at Louisiana State University when I enrolled in his principal course, the survey in political theory for juniors and seniors, and then stayed on to write a master’s 1. Hereinafter abbreviated as CW. Titles of all volumes of CW are given on the verso of the pretitle pages at the beginning of each volume of the edition, i.e., overleaf of the first printed page in each book, or sometimes on the second recto page. 2. Vol. 5 of Order and History (1987) and republished in CW, vol. 18 (2000). 3. “Eric Voegelin as Master Teacher,” Eric Voegelin Society, Panel 5. Comments and papers are posted on the Web site of the Eric Voegelin Institute, http:// ericvoegelin.org.

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introduction to the revised edition

thesis under his direction. Fifteen years after that first class (and after nearly three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, plus two years studying at Heidelberg), I went on to complete the Dr. oec. publ. with him at Munich. I can say from this experience that both in Louisiana and in Germany, Dr. Voegelin was a formidable and compelling figure in the classroom, whether lecturing or in seminars. The lectures were arresting because of the force and clarity with which complex material was communicated extemporaneously from brief notes and outlines, never read. Every class meeting seemed to have its own special moments, and often there was a sense of adventure attendant upon an intellectual voyage into uncharted waters. There was nothing ordinary about Voegelin’s classes, and because of this he attracted students and auditors from across campus and from the general public as well. The seminars for his M.A. students (there was no doctoral program then) were held in his home in the evening in Baton Rouge, amid clouds of cigar smoke, with the lady of the house (Lissy Voegelin) listening from the wings and elegantly serving tea and cakes when the breaks came. I remember one of these that was devoted to Book Lambda of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, which for a semester we worked through sentence by sentence during the first half of each meeting, Voegelin checking the translation against the Greek original to correct, refine, and elucidate the text. Student papers then were presented on a variety of other assigned subjects and discussed during the second half of each weekly session. A similar procedure was followed in Munich in the first seminar I took there, in closely reading Plato’s Protagoras and discussing it line by line. In the process he discovered he had erred on an interpretive point in his own analysis as given in The World of the Polis and said he would have to revise it for the next reprinting of the book.4 At the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität in Munich the seminars were larger and more formal, and they typically were held in the Institute for Political Science that Voegelin came there to establish when he took up a professorship in 1958. To summarize: Voegelin commanded the attention and respect of students, and he presented himself as someone who knew his 4. Vol. 2 of Order and History (1957), CW, vol. 15, chap. 2, §3.

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business. He based on a solid conviction that classical Greek philosophy is the foundation of political science: The lecture materials were presented from this coherent starting point. Devotion to truth and a desire to communicate it to students illumined every lecture and discussion, with the exploration of questions constantly reflecting the tension toward the divine ground of reality as the decisive context for exploring the human condition and political issues. A sense of openness to the horizon of reality, and refusal to truncate reality or go along with reductionist constructs of any kind whatever, encouraged students to engage resourcefully in the examination of complicated materials as partners in the discussion—rather than as mere spectators absorbing indifferent information. This, in turn, encouraged students sympathetically to involve their own common sense, intellectual, and faith experiences in understanding demanding material in personal reflective consciousness, implicitly somewhat on the pattern of the Socratic “Look and see if this is not the case”—i.e., by validating the analytical discourse through personal understanding and questioning. To some degree, therefore, Voegelin and his classes were in effect doing science as he taught, whether in lecture or in seminar— and everybody knew this was what we were doing: The students and class were participants in a persuasive inquiry, in something appreciated as a search for truth, and for truth that mattered. I think this palpable sense of participation in the worthy activity of inquiry was perhaps the chief source, along with his lively sense of humor, of Voegelin’s popularity and attraction as a teacher and lecturer wherever he went. Understood in this way, and as suggested earlier, it becomes clear that teaching lies quite close to the center of much of Voegelin’s work, whether published or communicated in lectures far and wide. As he remarked in a talk to the Fletcher School at Tufts University in 1972: “The foundation of [the Political Science Institute in Munich] offered [me] the opportunity to establish political science, from the outset, on the level of contemporary science. One could avoid the conventional ballast of descriptive institutionalism, historical positivism, as well as of the various leftist and rightist ideological opinions . . . [I]t was possible to build a curriculum that had at its center the courses and seminars in

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classical politics and Anglo-American politics with the stresses on Locke and the Federalist Papers.”5 Voegelin’s teaching method plainly communicated the meditative grounding of his thought. God was not a dirty word, and he often stressed to his secular-minded audiences (especially to the more ideological Munich students) that science is controlled by experience and reason—and you can’t go “back of revelation” and pretend it (i.e., apperceptive pneumatic experience) never happened. The experiential grounding of faith was more readily in place in America, especially in Louisiana, where he taught for sixteen years.6 In effect, he was always telling the “saving tale of immortality” in a variety of ways—out of a conviction that [5], (5) the experience of transcendence is essential to man’s existence as human, as he repeatedly emphasizes in his published work. This was not argued “religiously” nor blandly assumed but buttressed Lines: 34 to scientifically on the basis of the critically ascertained facts of his——— tory as integral to the various subject matters under discussion. A * 16.0pt Pg professor is expected to profess something, and that something is ——— dispassionately ascertained truth, as far as he knows it—Voegelin Short Page thought and from time to time said. This is the hallmark of “intelPgEnds: TEX lectual integrity” in Max Weber’s sense, the very core of scientific objectivity. [5], (5) He effectively used chalkboard diagrams in lecture; and there was generally an engaging undertone of playful levity, which was Socratic in spirit: We are dealing with important matters, he would occasionally remark, but what we are doing with them here may not be very important. Yet his purposes obviously were serious within the limits of the occasions. Office hours were meticulously observed, but students were reluctant to stay longer than absolutely necessary to find out whatever they had come to ask about. There was a somewhat facetious sense that, in taking up 5. William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss, eds., The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers, 1939–1985 (2004), CW, 33:348. 6. Cf. Barry Cooper, Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), esp. chaps. 1 and 2; also Charles R. Embry, ed., Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, 1944–1984, foreword by Champlin B. Heilman (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004).

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this professor’s time with idle questions, they might be impeding the progress of civilization itself. While gentle with undergraduates as a rule, and typically a fairly generous grader, Voegelin was a scourge to slothful ignoramuses wherever he encountered them. He commented: “I have always had to explain to the students at the beginning of my seminars all my life: There is no such thing as a right to be stupid; there is no such thing as a right to be illiterate; there is no such thing as a right to be incompetent.”7 He was devastating in debate. And heaven help you in public discussions, if you were a faculty member and didn’t know what you were talking about. The impression of Voegelin on a slightly earlier generation at LSU is given by William C. Havard, who attended his classes beginning as a sophomore and eventually became chairman of the Department of Government. He wrote: As a teacher Voegelin never engages in pyrotechnics; his effect is based solely on the impressive breadth and depth of his learning and on the analytical powers of his mind. If one should stand just beyond the limits of the point at which his actual words could be understood, his lectures probably would sound monotonous because both the flow of the sentences and the lack of inflection make for an evenness that could be deadly in one whose ideas are less exciting than Voegelin’s. Having sat through his classes and seminars as an undergraduate, graduate student, and later as a junior colleague, I was always surprised when I heard colleagues in the profession speak disparagingly of his “arrogance” or his “rigidity.” I have always found him exceptionally considerate with students, patient with their problems of understanding, and in some ways a rather soft touch in the matter of grades. In supervising research he is an exacting critic, as one might expect; but he is also generous with both his time and his ideas. He has a pixyish sense of humor that comes through somewhat unexpectedly in the light of his German accent.8

For Voegelin’s teaching in Munich the chief document, happily, is his “introduction to political science” there published from the 7. CW, 33:419. 8. William C. Havard, “The Changing Pattern of Voegelin’s Conceptions of History and Consciousness,” Southern Review n.s. 7 (I971): 59; quoted from Ellis Sandoz, The Voegelinion Revolution. A Biographical Introduction, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Pubs., 2000), 75.

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taped lectures as Hitler and the Germans.9 Here is a verbatim transcript of a series of lectures delivered by Voegelin in summer semester 1964, and it clearly is an introduction to political science like no other. It is not to my purposes here to venture either an analysis or a summary of these lectures, since the book is readily available to any interested reader. But one can concur with the editors’ assertion that this was “without a doubt, the most spectacular course in the Arts Faculty of Munich University.” The reason is easily ascertainable: “For most of his students, [it] became what one of them in retrospect described as ‘the high point of their German education, for they had met no one else who had told them the truth more bluntly.’ ”10 The chief reason for the effectiveness of these lectures is their meditative dimension, as the volume editors recount, and meditative in the specific sense of enacting a recollection (or anamnesis) of partly obliterated, partly rejected biographical and historical experiences that aimed at suppressing them. The method of the lectures is anamnetic in the sense of overcoming an oblivion of “the origins, the beginnings, and the grounds of order in the present existence of man.” In the lectures, that anamnetic effort takes various forms: the recall of philosophical or revelational insights, the confrontation of essential forgetfulness (witting or unwitting), and the lifting up of the mass of newly ascertained historical materials to theoretical relevance. And the very interaction between principles and the data of disorder also and correlatively deepens the anamnetic meditation itself.11

The editors rightly conclude that “Voegelin’s status as a teacher of political philosophy may be seen as founded on his own life of bearing witness.12 Ellis Sandoz

9. CW, vol. 31 (1999), trans. and ed. Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell; available in paperback. 10. Ibid., 1–2, quoting Manfred Henningsen one of Voegelin’s assistants at the time, subsequently a professor of political science at the University of Hawaii in Manoa. 11. Ibid., 29, internal quotation from Voegelin, “Consciousness and Order,” the foreword to Anamnesis (CW, vol. 6). Published in and quoted from Logos: Philosophical Issues in Christian Perspective 4 (1983): 22. 12. Ibid., 34; cf. Sandoz, Voegelinian Revolution, 47–70.

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In consideratione creaturarum non est vana et peritura curiositas exercenda; sed gradus ad immortalia et semper manentia faciendus. In the study of creature one should not exercise a vain and perishing curiosity, but ascend toward what is immortal and everlasting. Saint Augustine, De Vera Religione

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Introduction

[15], (15) Eric Voegelin’s Autobiographical Reflections allows Voegelin himself to survey and interpret in brief compass the vast work of his lifetime down to 1973 when the Reflections were dictated Lines: 110 t and transcribed. They provide the best possible introduction to ——— the person and thought of a man who was a remarkable scholar 2.6384pt and arguably the greatest philosopher of our time. Here Voegelin ——— explains Voegelin, in an autobiographical account calculated to Normal Pag elucidate his other writings and set them in the overall horizon of * PgEnds: Pag his thought. Authoritative, incisive, elegant, and profound as they are, the Reflections both disclose the motivations of Voegelin’s remarkable scholarly work in various stages of development from [15], (15) the 1920s onward and reveal at least something of the affable, witty, courageous, tenacious, tough, deeply principled, and learned man behind the work familiar to those who knew him well. Publication of the Autobiographical Reflections of Eric Voegelin is a major intellectual event. An elaborate introduction to a book this brief and accessible would be out of place. But a few words summarizing the facts of Voegelin’s life and the origins of the Reflections as a document will perhaps be pertinent and helpful to the reader. Erich Hermann Wilhelm Voegelin was born in Cologne, Germany, on January 3, 1901, and died in Stanford, California, on January 19, 1985. He was the son of Otto Stefan and Elisabeth Ruehl Voegelin, and his father was a civil engineer. The Voegelins lived in Cologne and in Königswinter in the Rhineland until 1910, when they moved to Vienna. There Eric attended school and the University of Vienna, ultimately becoming an associate professor 15

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of political science in the Faculty of Law. He was promptly fired by the Nazis after the Anschluss in 1938 because of his opposition to Hitler (given expression especially in four books published between 1933 and 1938), and he narrowly escaped arrest by the Gestapo as he fled to Switzerland. Shortly thereafter, he emigrated with his wife (the former Luise Betty “Lissy” Onken [September 3, 1906–October 8, 1996], whom he married on July 30, 1932) to the United States. After a year tutoring in the government department at Harvard and commuting during the second semester to teach at Bennington College in Vermont, Voegelin taught summer school at Northwestern in Evanston, Illinois. The Voegelins then took a short vacation in Wisconsin before moving to the University of Alabama in the fall of 1939, where they remained for two and one-half years. In January 1942, Voegelin joined the faculty of the Department of Government of Louisiana State University. He remained in Baton Rouge until January 1958 and was selected one of the first three Boyd Professors at LSU, writing and publishing during sixteen years in Louisiana the books in English that made his reputation: The New Science of Politics (1952), from the Walgreen Lectures of the previous year; and the first three volumes of Order and History: volume one, Israel and Revelation; volume two, The World of the Polis; and volume three, Plato and Aristotle (1956, 1957).1 He and Lissy became American citizens in 1944 and retained their citizenship thereafter. Voegelin accepted an appointment in 1958, however, as professor of political science at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, establishing the new Institute for Political Science there. During this period his principal publication was Anamnesis (1966),2 which directly presented the philosophy of consciousness underlying the work in English. After a decade, the Voegelins returned permanently to the United States in 1969. For a five-year period ending in 1974, Voegelin held an appointment at Stanford University as Henry Salvatori Distinguished Scholar in the Hoover Institution on War, Revolu1. Available from University of Missouri Press in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vols. 14–16. N.B.: All volumes in the present edition are hereinafter cited merely as CW. The New Science of Politics is reprinted as part of CW, vol. 5. 2. English trans. 1978, available University of Missouri Press 1990; revised trans. CW, vol. 6.

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tion, and Peace. It was during this time that the present Autobiographical Reflections was produced. At the end of the period, the fourth volume of Order and History finally was published—after a seventeen-year hiatus—entitled The Ecumenic Age (1974).3 After retirement, the Voegelins continued to live in Stanford, where Eric and Lissy are buried. They had no children. In addition to the books mentioned, some one hundred articles and essays were published during Professor Voegelin’s lifetime; and voluminous materials were left unpublished in manuscript, including much of a four-thousand-page study entitled “The History of Political Ideas”: parts of this work were absorbed into Order and History, and eleven chapters were drawn together, edited by John H. Hallowell, and published under the title From Enlightenment to Revolution (1975).4 The fifth volume of Order and History also was published posthumously, under the title In Search of Order (1987),5 as the capstone of Voegelin’s revolutionary philosophy of politics, history, and consciousness. That and in what sense Voegelin’s work may be understood to be revolutionary is argued in my The Voegelinian Revolution: A Biographical Introduction,6 and the raison d’être of the Autobiographical Reflections lies in work done in preparing that study. For Voegelin in 1973 was far from concerned with writing an autobiography or a memoir—beyond what he already had done with the anamnestic experiments conducted in 1943 but only published in 1966 in Anamnesis. These fascinating sketches of recollections covered experiences from his boyhood that he found formative for his consciousness as a human being, beginning at fourteen months with his very first recollection and coming down to about age ten. In 1972 and 1973, he was hard at work completing The Ecumenic Age, which came out a year later. My own work required greater detail about his biography than was readily available, so I began conducting tape-recorded interviews on subjects of importance to my study of his thought. These ranged over many subjects, and matters finally came to a head during the summer 3. CW, vol. 17. 4. Eight volumes comprising The History of Political Ideas were published posthumously in the Collected Works (CW, vols. 19–26). 5. Reprinted as CW, vol. 18. 6. LSU Press, 1981; 2nd ed., Transaction Publishers, 2000.

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of 1973 while I was visiting Stanford for the purpose of gathering information and began trying to put together a chronological and thematic account of Voegelin’s intellectual development. After several false starts, we hit on the procedure of holding a series of interviews, conducted on the basis of my queries, which would be responded to in an oral narrative dictated by Voegelin. To be sure the transcription could be made accurately, his secretary was present to take down everything in shorthand. All of this was done in the few days between June 26 and July 7 (we celebrated July 4, of course), in Voegelin’s study at his residence on Sonoma Terrace— amid clouds of cigar smoke from the eighteen or so King Edward cigars he consumed each day, the fierce and frequent barking of the two pet Pekinese dogs that, despite Mrs. Voegelin’s best efforts to keep them quiet, repulsed dangers on every side, the hum and clatter of the lawn mower, roar of the vacuum cleaner, and frequent jangle of the telephone. (These atmospherics have been purged from the text, but since I again listened to the twentyseven hours of recordings in first preparing the manuscript for publication, they were vivid in my memory as I wrote and were most definitely part of the “experience” now just thirty-one years ago.) The transcription then was read and corrected by Voegelin and retyped in due course to form the revised document that I subsequently named the Autobiographical Memoir of Eric Voegelin and quoted in extenso in my book. It was later retitled for separate publication in 1989. What Eric Voegelin’s autobiography might have looked like had he sat down purposely to write one solely on his own volition we cannot know. My inquiries elicited the responses we have here. The questions asked and answered were ones, apart from basic information of a factual kind, that seemed most pressing for a full and precise understanding of material I had studied by and with Voegelin since my undergraduate days in his theory survey at LSU in 1950. Whatever the complexities of the subject matter, Voegelin’s great gift as a teacher was his capacity to expound it simply, lucidly, and tellingly in living speech. This talent I luckily turned to advantage in my interviews with him that became, in effect, a private seminar running for two or three hours each morning for nearly a fortnight. What began as a rather pro forma exercise that (I sensed) was conceived partly as a means of putting 18

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an end to persistent questioning and of getting rid of a questioner who was bidding to become a troublesome distraction from “the work,” took on unexpected life. Voegelin warmed to the subject. He then proceeded to conduct, under prodding and somewhat unwillingly at first, then in resignation, and finally with a relish reserved for “the work” itself, what gradually turned into a further anamnestic search of the reality of Eric Voegelin whose story rises in its best moments into the meditative discourse of high philosophy. Even cold on the page, the result is a triumph in which all can rejoice. Finally, it now seems to me that the Autobiographical Reflections is the best place for anyone unacquainted with Voegelin’s writings to begin their study. The principal value of doing so is that it has the merit of exploring in simple straightforward language the multiple contexts in the biography of a concrete human being who happened to be inclined to reflectively understand the highly stratified reality of which all of us are inevitably participant as human beings. I would stress the concreteness of the life and thought of a particular human being with the name and identity of Eric Voegelin. The vagueness of exploring abstract contexts and abstract questions about them in the usual hypothetical ways is thereby remedied by the fact that one is here dealing with the recollections of a man who could make sense out of his own personal and intellectual pilgrimage from prevalent positivism and lethal National Socialism into the open existence of philosophizing—with the help (among other sources) of the classics, Christian scholastics and mystics, and ancient prophets of Israel and New Testament Apostles. A salient part of Voegelin’s pilgrimage was his palpable search and progressive discovery—and its enormous range— of where to find help and succor amid the turmoil of institutional collapse, intellectual debauchery, and personal corruption. How he did is the substance of this little book. Such a recounting happens also, I think, to be an optimal way of understanding the supposed “relevance” of the life of the mind and spirit to the maturation of the human personality. It carries its own authentication as a first-person-singular account that is factual, honest, intelligent, humorous, and intricate. And along the way one begins to recognize that the problems and assorted 19

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origins of these problems compose a mosaic of the “contexts” in which each of us, to greater or lesser degree, still largely find ourselves living and to a substantial degree ensnared. So in effect you get something of the kind of result you get with reading Augustine’s Confessions or Plato’s Apology. Voegelin sought to philosophize in order to regain the compass of reality in a world dominated by second realities, not to mention virtual realities, as an urgent matter of life and death for himself and others—as he once remarked.7 In this little book one glimpses something of the actual ways Voegelin did that—not merely as an intellectual puzzle to be solved or a sometimes dangerous game played, but through a life lived. That is why I especially like it. And it doesn’t hurt that he told it to me, sitting across the table from him as he spoke, one person to another. Readers will perhaps be interested in Voegelin’s concise summation as given about a decade after the present text was dictated, entitled “Autobiographical Statement at Age Eighty-Two.”8 Additionally, a number of reviews of the original book were published.9 All of these generally agreed that the “present book serves as an excellent introduction to [Voegelin’s] work, as it provides an historical and biographical context that not only sheds light on the author’s motivations but also identifies the sources and outlines development of many of his most central ideas regarding politics, history, the nature of consciousness, and the divine presence.”10 Dissatisfaction, however, was expressed “that Voegelin’s observations on thinkers with whom he disagrees are often exasperating and sometimes so silly as to make one shudder.”11 Another more laudatory reviewer faulted the editor for not writing a longer introduction, not supplying more annotation, and not providing an index for the first edition.12 These deficiencies have at least partly been remedied in the present edition, and an index was compiled for publication of the paperback ver7. Stated in the preface to Israel and Revelation [1956], penultimate paragraph, CW, vol. 14. 8. In CW, 33:432–56. 9. For a listing see Geoffrey L. Price and Eberhard Freiherr von Lochner, eds., Eric Voegelin: International Bibliography, 1921–2000 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2000), 200–201. 10. Jeff Mitscherling, in History of European Ideas 12, no. 5 (1990): 705. 11. Ibid. 12. Maben Walter Poirier, in Modern Age 34, no. 3 (spring 1992): 262.

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sion by LSU Press in 1996. Ian Crowther found much to commend but especially the tracing of the experiences that supply the key to understanding the modern “egophanic revolt.” He concluded that, while we may not have seen the last of the ideologues’ “second realities,” we may now at long last be able “with the help of Voegelin and his interpreters . . . [to] see through them.”13 Thomas D’Evelyn wrote that the impression left on the reader [by Autobiographical Reflections] is one of charm and supple understanding. In his attacks on the antiintellectualism and anti-Americanism of leftist thinkers, Voegelin can sound like Allan Bloom. There is a big difference. The author of The Closing of the American Mind will be remembered most for the fierceness and brilliance of his attack. Voegelin will be remembered for his . . . recovery, of “the great discovery of the Classic philosophers”—that “man is not a ‘mortal,’ but a being engaged in a movement toward immortality.” . . . Contemplating his complete works, one sees not a huge, scaly, glittering triumphal arch, but a rainbow.14

Lastly, mention may be made of Paul G. Kuntz’s arresting review-essay that extracts four new “decalogues” from the book— Theological Commandments, Moral Commandments, Philosophic Commandments, and Scholarly Commandments, he calls them—and he concludes with a flourish by writing: the volume, slight in size, conveys the impression of a giant of great normative power. The best way I have found to say this is to say that Voegelin was a Moses, and to present his tablets of the law. In an academic life characterized best as drifting as it is pulled this way and that by vociferous pressure groups, Voegelin is the one with the clearest grasp of why we should accept four kinds of imperatives.15

A word now about mechanics: After section 11 the incisions and headings are mine; all notes and insertions in brackets are by the editor; minor emendations in syntax are made silently, as in copyediting; words dropped from the text inadvertently but audible on the tape have been restored when they clarify meaning; any words italicized for emphasis are by the editor. Since the obvious 13. Ian Crowther, “The Order of Reality,” Salisbury Review 10 (March 1992): 43. 14. Thomas D’Evelyn, in “World-Class Historian Finds Order beyond Disorder,” Christian Science Monitor 81 (November 6, 1989), 13. 15. Paul G. Kuntz, in Intercollegiate Review 26, no. 1 (Fall 1990): 50.

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provenance of this manuscript was that of a background working paper for a study written by someone else, Voegelin did not take the meticulous care in making emendations that he would have taken with a manuscript of his own that he would see through to final publication. With great caution, I have tried to fill this gap. Ellis Sandoz

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1 University of Vienna

I attended the University of Vienna, in the Faculty of Law, from 1919 to the completion of my doctorate in 1922. The atmosphere of the university at the time was determined by the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian empire at the end of the First World War. By its composition, the university was still the university of the capital of the empire and reflected in its scholarship and the personal attitude of the professors this cosmopolitan atmosphere. At the time when I was a student, and throughout the 1920s, or rather until the effects of National Socialism made themselves felt in the early thirties, Vienna still had an enormous intellectual horizon and was leading in science internationally in a number of fields. First, there was Hans Kelsen’s Theory of Pure Law, represented by Kelsen himself and the growing number of younger men whom he had educated, especially Alfred von Verdross and Adolf Merkl. Second, there was the Austrian School of Marginal Utility. Eugen Bohm-Bawerk ¨ had already died, but Leopold von Wieser was still the grand old man who gave the principal course in economic theory. Among the younger economists there was Ludwig von Mises, famous because of his development of money theory. Joseph A. Schumpeter was in Graz at the time, but his work of course was studied. Among the further intellectual and spiritual components that would impress themselves on a young man at the time was the school of theoretical physics going back to Ernst Mach and represented at the time by Moritz Schlick. An important intellectual force in this circle was Ludwig Wittgenstein, less by his presence than by his work. There further must be mentioned the Austrian Institut für Geschichtsforschung, represented by Alfons Dopsch, who by that time had attained international 31

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fame through his work on the history of Carolingian economics. Among the younger men, there was the rising force of Otto Brunner, who later became famous by his theories of medieval feudalism.1 A further glory of the University of Vienna at the time was the history of art, represented by Max Dvoˇrák and Josef Strzigowski. Dvoˇrák had already died by the time I came to the university, but Strzigowski was active. I had courses with him in the history of Renaissance art; and what especially was attractive about him was his interest in Near Eastern art, of which his twovolume work about Armenia is a great document. At the same time there was flourishing in Vienna the Institut für Urgeschichte. More on the fringe so far as I am concerned were such famous institutions as the Institute for Byzantine Music under Egon Wellesz, with whom I later got acquainted. After the National Socialist takeover, Egon Wellesz went to Oxford. A further inevitable massive influence was represented by the psychologists. I took courses under Hermann Swoboda, who was very much addicted to the theory of rhythms of Ernst Kries; and he, in turn, was a close friend of Sigmund Freud. Into the psychology of Swoboda entered as a background his early friendship with Otto Weininger. The works of Otto Weininger were read by everybody at the time. The most important influence in psychology, of course, was given through the presence of Freud. I did not belong to the circle of Freud and never met him, but I knew quite a few of the younger men who had been trained by him. The most important at the time whom I knew was Heinz Hartmann, who later came to New York; Robert Waelder, who later established himself in Philadelphia; and Kries, who later went to Australia. Now about the composition of the Law School. The great intellectual figures by whom the students were attracted at the time were Hans Kelsen, the lawyer and maker of the Austrian constitution, and Othmar Spann, the economist and sociologist who had developed a theory of universalism and had carried out a structural analysis of a people’s economy, going in its content far beyond the subject matter dealt with by the more restricted marginal utility theorists. The third figure who attracted students in masses was Carl Gruenberg, a stalwart of Social Democracy. In 1. Especially as published in Land und Herrschaft, 4th ed. (1959).

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the wake of the upheaval through the breakup of the empire and the establishment of the republic in 1918 came the ascendancy of the Social Democratic party, and in the first election in which I ever participated I voted for it; an important figure had become the chief ideologist of the Social Democrats, Max Adler. More on the periphery, so far as I was concerned, were a number of excellent lawyers—for instance, Strisower in international law; Schey, who had conducted the reform of the civil code; and Hupka in civil procedure. I had registered as a student for the curriculum that would lead to the Doctor rerum politicarum. My decision to take these courses leading to the doctorate in political science were partly economic, partly matters of principle. So far as economics are concerned, I was very poor, and a doctorate that would be finished in three years had a definite appeal. The law doctorate would have required four years. The matter of principle was a vague but strong impulse even at that time that I would embark on a career in science. The doctorate of law had the temptation that ultimately one could land, if one did not become an independent lawyer, in a civil service position; and I did not want to become a civil servant. The choice of political science was furthermore determined by the attraction of the faculty, which included such famous men as Kelsen and Spann. An alternative, seriously considered by my father, who was a civil engineer, and myself at the time, was to go into physics and mathematics. But politics had the stronger pull. Still, after I had finished the doctorate in political science, I enrolled in the Philosophical Faculty in mathematics courses, especially with Philipp Furtwaengler in Funktionentheorie. But these studies turned out to be no more than desultory, because I simply could not become enthusiastic about mathematical problems. During these three years I began to form personal relationships with students of my own age, some of them not more than one or two years older and, by virtue of that slight age difference, coming back from military service, which had given them a maturity that people such as I (who had escaped military service by my youth) found attractive. The occasions on which these relationships were formed were the courses we heard in common, and especially the seminars. Three of these seminars were of major importance for the later cohesion among the group of 33

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young men about which I have to talk. I mention first the seminar with Othmar Spann, not because it was the most important under this aspect but because here I got acquainted with some people who later dropped out of my life. The general climate of the Spann group and of the young people attracted by Spann was Romanticism and German Idealism with a strong touch of nationalism. Some of these people later got involved in National Socialism or in even more radical national movements opposed to National Socialism. At the time when the Hitler problem became virulent in Austria, contacts with these people faded and were not resumed later. Still, I have to mention this phase, because to Spann and the work in his seminar, especially his private seminar, which I attended through several years, I owe my acquaintance with the Classic philosophers (Plato and Aristotle) and with the German idealistic systems of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, G. W. F. Hegel, and F. W. J. von Schelling. More important for my later life, apparently because it met with my own inclinations, were the seminars of Kelsen and Mises. Through the Kelsen seminar, and again especially the private seminar, were formed the connections with its older members, particularly Verdross in international law and Merkl in administrative law. Among the people closer to my own age group were Alfred Schütz, who later became professor of sociology at the New School for Social Research in New York; Emanuel Winternitz, who, after we were all thrown out by Hitler, became the curator of the collection of musical instruments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Felix Kaufmann, the legal philosopher who became professor at the New School for Social Research; and Fritz Schreier, who, when he came to America, entered the independent business of marketing and advertising. Third comes the private seminar of Ludwig von Mises, which I attended for many years, until the end of my stay in Austria, and where I formed connections with Friedrich August von Hayek, Oscar Morgenstern, Fritz Machlup, and Gottfried von Haberler. From these groupings, determined by the institutions of the seminars and the personal friendships and relations between these people and others, there crystallized in the end an institution which, with ironical overtones, was called the Geistkreis [Spiritual or Intellectual Circle]. It was a group of younger people who met regularly every month, one of them giving a lecture on a 34

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subject of his choice and the others tearing him to pieces. Since it was a civilized community, it was a rule that the man in whose house we met would not be the one to deliver the lecture, because the lady of the house was permitted to attend (otherwise women were not admitted), and it would not be courteous to tear a gentleman to pieces in the presence of his wife. To this group, which gradually expanded with sometimes somebody dropping out, belonged on and off most of the people just enumerated, especially Alfred Schütz, Emanuel Winternitz, Haberler, Herbert Fuerth, Johannes Wilde the art historian, Robert Waelder the psychoanalyst, Felix Kaufmann, Friedrich von Engel-Janosi the historian, and Georg Schiff. An important characteristic of the group was that we were all held together by our intellectual interests in the pursuit of this or that science, but that at the same time a good number of the members were not simply attached to the university but were engaged in various business activities. A man like Alfred Schütz, for instance, was the secretary of a bankers’ organization and later entered a banking business. He continued his banking activities when he came to New York and had the fantastic energy of pursuing both his business successfully and of becoming the author of the studies that now have become famous through his collected works. Emanuel Winternitz was a practicing lawyer connected especially with Bausparkassen. He used a good deal of his income as a successful lawyer to make extended trips to Italy in order to indulge his interest in art history. That was the basis on which he later established himself in America, leading ultimately to his position in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His great success is the organization of that marvelous permanent exhibition of musical instruments that has attracted the attention of the visitors to the museum since 1972. The economists were affected by the shrinking of the University of Vienna under the conditions of the republic. One university could not accommodate as many first-rate economists as emerged in these years, and the names of Hayek, Haberler, Morgenstern, and Machlup have become famous in England and America. They intended to leave Vienna even before Hitler. Machlup was one of the last to leave, because he was an independent industrialist. Engel-Janosi, besides being an excellent historian, was the owner of a parquetry factory; but I must say that the successful conduct 35

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of his business was largely due to the eminent business intelligence of his wife, Carlette. A further difficulty arose through the fact that, beginning with the establishment of the republic, anti-Semitism became an ineluctable factor in the University of Vienna. At the time I entered the university as a student, a considerable number of the full professors were Jews, reflecting the liberal policy of the monarchy. But after 1918 and establishment of the republic, no more Jews were appointed full professors, so that the younger people who were Jews had no chance of ever rising beyond the level of Privatdozent. That limitation was in part responsible for the necessity of excellent men like Felix Kaufmann and Alfred Schütz to pursue their business occupations. Schütz, [36], (6) as I have mentioned, was a banker; Felix Kaufmann was a director of the Anglo-Persian Oil Corporation. Many of these young people, through the advent of Hitler, the fact of being thrown out of Lines: 37 their positions, and the necessity to flee, were thrown into their ——— business careers. The friendships formed in these years held up. * 257.86 The members of this Geistkreis were physically dispersed, but the ——— personal relationships have remained intact. Normal P * PgEnds: P [36], (6)

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2 High School

The development of my studies in the university requires some reflection on the background acquired in high school. I went to a Real-Gymnasium, which meant that I had eight years of Latin, six years of English, and, as an optional subject, two years in Italian. Besides, my parents took care that I had some elementary tuition in French. The school was further characterized during the war years of 1914 to 1918 by the drafting of a number of the regular teachers for military service, so that certain courses were supplied by persons exempt from military service who came from outside the regular teaching personnel. These happened to be the most influential for us teenagers. Especially should be mentioned the English teacher Otto Erwin Kraus, who so far as I know had been a journalist in England before returning at the beginning of the war to Austria and entering the teaching service. He was a knowledgeable intellectual who was especially interested in psychoanalysis in the variety of Alfred Adler. One of the high points of my high school education was the study of Hamlet, during a semester, as interpreted by Alfred Adler’s psychology of Geltung. One of the regular teachers was Philip Freud, an excellent physicist and mathematician, who taught us so well that in the last year of high school (eighth grade), a friend of mine, Robert Maier, and I were quite able to become interested in the Theory of Relativity, which had just become famous; and Albert Einstein’s presentation of his theory of 1917, which had just come out, is still one of my most valuable possessions. We studied it and at first could not understand it, but then we discovered that our difficulty was caused by the simplicity of the theory. We understood it perfectly well but could not believe that something so simple could arouse such 37

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a furor as a difficult new theory. The mathematical apparatus, of course, was entirely at our disposition. When we encountered these seeming difficulties of understanding, we consulted with Freud, our physics teacher, and found out about our problems and received further information. I remember especially from such a session with Freud his bringing to our attention that, according to the new theory of atoms, when you take a saw and cut through a piece of wood, you separate atomic structures. How it is possible to separate atomic structures by a handsaw was for him the greatest puzzle in the structure of physical reality. Freud had seen the problem of reduction and the autonomy of the various strata in the reality of being. [38], (8) The stratification of reality led to an incident in another connection. One of the very good people who came from the outside during these years was a chemist from the Polytechnik in Vienna, Lines: 51 Strebinger. I was called up for an oral test after I had been absent ——— from a lecture in which the question of the composition of citric 0.0pt P acid had been discussed. I had learned the matter at home and ——— knew all about citric acid, but I could not answer the question of Normal P how one obtains it, because I thought there was some complicated * PgEnds: P chemical process involved. Then I was thundered down as an egregious jackass, because I did not know that citric acid is obtained by squeezing lemons. I got a bad grade that semester. [38], (8) Another man from the Polytechnik who was of importance was Kopatschek, the mathematician. In mathematics, after we reached the prescribed level of differential calculus, we went further with enthusiasm into the theory of matrices and some hints at group theory. This wide range of interest represented by very good teachers will explain my receptiveness when I came to the university. But before I came to the university, in the vacation between the Abiturium and the beginning of my university studies in the fall, I studied the Kapital of Marx, induced of course by the current interest in the Russian Revolution. Being a complete innocent in such matters, I was of course convinced by what I read, and I must say that from August 1919 to about December of that year I was a Marxist. By Christmas the matter had worn off, because in the meanwhile I had attended courses in both economic theory and the history of economic theory and knew what was wrong with Marx. Marxism was never a problem for me after that. 38

3 Max Weber

This problem of throwing out an ideology because it is scientifically untenable remained a constant in these years. Very important for the formation of my attitude in science was my early acquaintance with the work of Max Weber, whose volumes on the Sociology of Religion, as well as Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, came out in these years and were of course devoured by us students. The lasting influence of Max Weber can be concentrated in the following points. First, the essays of Max Weber on Marxism going back to 1904–1905 completed my rejection of Marxism as untenable in science, which had been prepared by the courses in economics and in the history of economic theory that I had taken earlier. Second, Weber’s later lectures on Wissenschaft und Politik made it clear that ideologies are so-called “values” that have to be premised when one acts but are not themselves scientific propositions. The question became acute through Weber’s distinction of Gesinnungsethik and Verantwortungsethik—ethics of intention and ethics of responsibility, as they are usually rendered in English. Weber was on the side of the ethics of responsibility—i.e., of taking responsibility for the consequences of one’s action, so that if one, for instance, establishes a government that expropriates the expropriators, he is responsible for the misery that he causes for the people expropriated. No excuse for the evil consequences of moralistic action could be found in the morality or nobility of one’s intentions. A moralistic end does not justify immorality of action. This fundamental insight of Max Weber, even though he did not analyze its implications fully, remained a firm possession. Ideologies are not science, and ideals are no substitute for ethics. 39

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As I later found out, the distinctions of Max Weber were closely connected with the neo-Kantian methodology of the historical sciences developed by the so-called Southwest German School of Heinrich Rickert and Wilhelm Windelband. In Weber’s context, it became clear that social science, if it wanted to be a science, had to be value-free. That meant for Weber that the sociologist had to explore relations of cause and effect in the social process. The values that he would use to select these materials were premises and not accessible to scientific treatment; value judgments thus had to be excluded from science. That left him with the difficulty that the premises of selection of materials for science, as well as the premises for an ethics of responsibility, had to remain in the shadow. Weber could not analyze these areas. The external symptom of this gap in his theory is the fact that in his sociology of religion, wide as it ranged, there was no treatment of early Christianity or of Classic philosophy. That is to say, the analysis of experiences that would have supplied the criteria for existential order and responsible action remained outside his field of consideration. If Weber nevertheless did not derail into some sort of relativism or anarchism, that is because, even without the conduct of such analysis, he was a staunch ethical character and in fact (as the biography by his nephew, Eduard Baumgarten, has brought out) a mystic. So he knew what was right without knowing the reasons for it. But of course, so far as science is concerned, that is a very precarious position, because students after all want to know the reasons why they should conduct themselves in a certain manner; and when the reasons—that is, the rational order of existence—are excluded from consideration, emotions are liable to carry you away into all sorts of ideological and idealistic adventures in which the ends become more fascinating than the means. Here is the gap in Weber’s work constituting the great problem with which I have dealt during the fifty years since I got acquainted with his ideas. But, third, before going into that matter, I should stress that one important further influence of Max Weber was the range of his comparative knowledge. So far as I am concerned, Weber established once and for all that one cannot be a successful scholar in the field of social and political science unless one knows what one is talking about. And that means acquiring the comparative 40

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civilizational knowledge not only of modern civilization but also of medieval and ancient civilization, and not only of Western civilization but also of Near Eastern and Far Eastern civilizations. That also means keeping that knowledge up to date through contact with the specialist sciences in the various fields. Anybody who does not do that has no claim to call himself an empiricist and certainly is defective in his competence as a scholar in this field.

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4 Comparative Knowledge

To continue the problem of comparative knowledge, Max Weber of course was not the first to set this example. The founder of sociology, Auguste Comte, also insisted on having this broad range of knowledge, and this range has remained ineluctable for the great social scientists ever since. The matter has been obscured by recent restrictive definitions of sociology, so that thinkers like Comte are today classified as philosophers of history or historical sociologists. Such classifications, however, do not abolish the structure of reality. The necessary empirical range of knowledge is still the basis of all serious science in these matters. As a matter of fact, it was already clear in the early twenties, when I started into the field as a student, that comparative historical knowledge was a requirement. The model of Max Weber in this respect was fortified by Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, a work that should not be considered only under the aspect of its dubious classification of civilizations and of the dubious organic analogies, but above all as the work of a man who acquired the historical knowledge that made possible the comparative study of civilizations. The background for Spengler’s work was of course the great History of Antiquity by Eduard Meyer, whose work in the following decades was also the basis for the work of Arnold J. Toynbee. If one looks at Toynbee’s text, especially that concerning ancient civilizations, one will find Meyer is the most frequently quoted authority. It was my good luck when I was a student for a semester in Berlin in 1922–23 to be able to take a course with Eduard Meyer in Greek history. He was a very impressive personality. He would walk in, a tall figure slightly stooped by age with a great shock of 42

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hair, step up to the lectern, fold his arms on it, close his eyes, and then talk for the full hour without interruption, in impeccable language, never making a grammatical or stylistic mistake and never getting tangled up in a sentence. When the bell sounded, he would conclude the lecture, open his eyes, and walk out. What was particularly impressive about Eduard Meyer was his treatment of historical situations from the point of view of the person engaged in the action. I still remember his masterful characterization of Themistocles on the eve of the Battle of Salamis, weighing the possibilities that could lead to victory. I like to believe that Meyer’s technique of understanding a historical situation through the self-understanding of the persons involved has entered my [43], (13) own work as a permanent factor. This range of knowledge represented by Eduard Meyer should be supplemented by the memory of a man of less weight in the critLines: 90 to ical detail but of a similar range and comparative vision—Alfred ——— Weber. I had the good fortune to spend a semester in Heidelberg * 192.8600 in the year 1929, when he delivered his course in the sociology ——— of culture for the first time. Again, it was brought home to me Normal Pag that a scholar, if he wants to talk about social structures in their * PgEnds: Pag historical context, must have comparative knowledge and be as much at home in the genesis of Babylonian civilization as in the genesis of Western civilization in the time of the Merovingians [43], (13) and Carolingians.

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5 Stefan George and Karl Kraus

The range of knowledge for comparative purposes was more than a formal principle. As these various recollections indicate, I actually acquired a considerable amount of knowledge for such comparative purposes through the study of the works of Max Weber, later of Alfred Weber, Eduard Meyer, Spengler, and Toynbee. This acquisition of knowledge was very importantly favored in those years by the influence of the so-called Stefan-George-Kreis. Stefan George is today chiefly remembered as the great German poet in the period of Symbolism, and as such he undoubtedly also had an influence on me. Through him I became aware of Symbolist lyrics and began to study with some attention such French poets as Stéphane Mallarmé and later Paul Valéry. The importance of George, however, at that time lay chiefly in his influence on a considerable number of his adherents and his immediate friends and pupils who became scholars in their own right and determined the climate of the German universities for the intellectually more alert younger generation. Of the men whose works I absorbed intensely at the time, and whose volumes in first editions are still part of my library, I mention Friedrich Gundolf, especially his Goethe, History of Caesar’s Fame, and Shakespeare und der Deutsche Geist; as well as Max Kommerell’s Jean-Paul and his volume on the German Classic and Romantic literature, Der Dichter als Führer; Ernst Bertram’s Nietzsche; Wilhelm Stein’s Rafael; and Ernst Kantorowicz’s Kaiser Friedrich II. Then, of course, there is the work of the classical scholars belonging to the circle of Stefan George, extending over the twenties, beginning with the work of Heinrich Friedemann (who was killed in World War I) on Plato, which was continued by Paul Friedländer’s 44

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and Kurt Hildebrandt’s work on Plato that became fundamental for my own studies, which were continued in their spirit. A further influence of the first magnitude began to develop rather early in the twenties, became very intense after my return from America and France in 1927, and lasted until the death of Karl Kraus in 1937. Kraus was the great publicist who published Die Fackel [The Torch], which appeared at irregular intervals and, as well as his other literary work, was read by everybody among the younger people whom I knew. It was the intellectual and moraliste background that gave all of us a critical understanding of politics and especially of the function of the press in the disintegration of German and Austrian society, preparing the way for National Socialism. The fundamental position of Karl Kraus was that of the great artist of language who would defend the standards of language against its corruption in the current literature and especially through the journalists. His work, like that of Stefan George, must be understood in the context of the fantastic destruction of the German language during the imperial period of Germany after 1870. We have no precisely comparable phenomenon in England, France, or, for that matter, in America at the time. Regaining language was a matter of deliberate effort on the part of the younger generation. The influence on my schooling by the style of the Stefan-George-Kreis can still be discerned by anybody who cares to pay attention to such matters in my first books, in Über die Form des amerikanischen Geistes and especially in Die Rassenidee in der Geistesgeschichte von Ray bis Carus.1 Regaining language meant recovering the subject matter to be expressed by language, and that meant getting out of what today one would call the false consciousness of the petty bourgeois (including under this head positivists and Marxists), whose literary representatives dominated the scene. Hence, this concern with language was part of the resistance against ideologies, which destroy language inasmuch as the ideological thinker has lost contact with reality and develops symbols for expressing not reality but his state of alienation from it. To penetrate this phony language and restore reality through 1. Translated as On the Form of the American Mind and The History of the Race Idea from Ray to Carus, CW, vols. 1 and 3, respectively.

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the restoration of language was the work of Karl Kraus as much as of Stefan George and his friends at the time. Particularly influential in the work of Karl Kraus was his great drama of the First World War, Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, with its superb sensitivity to the melody and vocabulary of phoniness in politics, war patriotism, denigration of enemies, and ochlocratic name-calling. Kraus’s critical work, with its first climax in Die Letzten Tage der Menschheit, was continued throughout the 1920s in his criticism of the literary and journalistic language of the Weimar Republic in Austria and Germany. It increased in importance with the gradual emergence of National Socialism to dominance on the public scene. The second of his great works dealing with the major catastrophes of the twentieth century was his Dritte Walpurgisnacht, treating the phenomenon of Hitler and National Socialism. A restrained version of this work was published in the last year of his life in Die Fackel. The restraint was due to his fear that the full exposition of the swinish catastrophe could hurt people who were potential victims of the man in power. The complete and unrestrained text of the Dritte Walpurgisnacht was published only after the war by the Kösel-Verlag in Munich as volume 1 of the Werke, which run into sixteen volumes. I should say that a serious study of National Socialism is impossible without recourse to the Dritte Walpurgisnacht and to the years of criticism in Die Fackel, because here the intellectual morass that must be understood as the background against which a Hitler could rise to power becomes visible. The phenomenon of Hitler is not exhausted by his person. His success must be understood in the context of an intellectually or morally ruined society in which personalities who otherwise would be grotesque, marginal figures can come to public power because they superbly represent the people who admire them. This internal destruction of a society was not finished with the Allied victory over the German armies in World War II but still goes on. I should say that the contemporary destruction of German intellectual life, and especially the destruction of the universities, is the aftermath of the destruction that brought Hitler to power and of the destruction worked under his regime. There is yet no end in sight so far as the disintegration of society is concerned, and consequences that may surprise are possible. The study of this 46

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period by Karl Kraus, and especially his astute analysis of the dirty detail (that part of it that Hannah Arendt has called the “banality of evil”), is still of the greatest importance because the parallel phenomena are to be found in our Western society, though fortunately not yet with the destructive effect that led to the German catastrophe.

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6 The Pure Theory of Law Neo-Kantian Methodology

[48], (18) I shall now go into the question of my more immediate studies as a student in the university and my veering toward Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law. I cannot say with precision why Hans Kelsen was for me a more strongly attractive teacher than Othmar Spann. Spann’s range was without a doubt much larger, both philosophically and historically, than the range of Kelsen’s work. What attracted me, so far as I recollect, was the precision of analytical work that is peculiar to a great lawyer. The success of the Pure Theory of Law, and its continuing importance in the philosophy of law, lets one sometimes forget that Kelsen was a practical lawyer who drafted the Austrian constitution of 1920 and became a member of the Verfassungsgerichtshof. His commentary on the constitution he drafted shows his juridical acumen to its greatest advantage. What I learned from Kelsen, I should say, is the conscientious and responsible analysis of texts as it was practiced in his own multivolume work and in the discussions in his seminar. His work was inseparable, of course, from the Pure Theory of Law itself, which furnished a logical analysis of a legal system. This analysis of the system, culminating in Kelsen’s conception of the Grundnorm (basic norm), still stands today. It has been improved in numerous details, as for instance by Merkl’s elaboration of the Delegationszusammenhang as well as by the expansion of the system by Verdross beyond the constitutional Grundnorm to the fundamental norm of international law. There have been further refinements through the studies of the younger men like Felix Kaufmann, Fritz Schreier, and Emanuel Winternitz, but on 48

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the whole Kelsen’s analysis was complete and could be improved only in this or that detail. This fact explains why there has been no great further development of the Pure Theory of Law. It was the splendid achievement of a brilliant analyst, and it was so good that it hardly could be improved upon. What Kelsen did in this respect still stands as the core of any analytical theory of law. I later used this core, with some improvements of my own, in the courses in jurisprudence that I gave in the School of Law at LSU.1 I should like to stress that there never has been a difference of opinion between Kelsen and myself regarding the fundamental validity of the Pure Theory of Law. My differences with Kelsen’s theory began to evolve gradually. That I was not a simple adherent can be gathered from the fact that I made my own Ph.D. with both Spann and Kelsen as doctor-fathers, a feat greatly admired by the younger people at the time because the universalism of Spann and the neo-Kantianism of Kelsen were considered to be incompatible. The differences evolved from ideological components in the Pure Theory of Law, which are superimposed on the logic of the legal system proper but do not affect its validity. They can be removed while leaving the core of the theory intact. This superimposed ideology was the neoKantian methodology, which determined the field of a science by the method used in its exploration—in this case, by the logic of the legal system. Since in the conventional terminology of the time the field that Kelsen represented as a professor was Staatslehre (political theory), and since neo-Kantian methodology circumscribed by its method the logic of the legal system, Staatslehre had to become Rechtslehre (theory of law), and everything that went beyond Rechtslehre could then no longer be a part of Staatslehre. That, of course, was an untenable position. At the time, I did not have a full understanding of the rather primitive semantic games involved in such misconstructions, but at least I sensed them. It was obviously impossible to deal with the problems of the Staat, and of politics in general, while omitting everything except the logic of legal norms. Hence, my difference from Kelsen developed through my interest in the materials of a political science that 1. Voegelin’s LSU law lectures are published in CW, vol. 27, The Nature of the Law and Related Legal Writings.

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had been excluded from Staatslehre understood as Rechtslehre. In 1924 I published my first essay, of rather dubious scientific quality, entitled “Reine Rechtslehre und Staatslehre,”2 in which I confronted the reine Rechtslehre with the materials dealt with by German Staatslehre of the early nineteenth century. Already at that time I conceived the task of the future political scientist to be that of reconstructing the full range of political science after its restriction to the core of the Normlogik. That requires a few remarks about the problems of neoKantianism as it presented itself to me as a student in the 1920s. There were several neo-Kantian schools. The one that was dominant in the person of Kelsen was the so-called Marburger Schule of Hermann Cohen. Cohen, in his interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, concentrated on the constitution of science by the categories of time, space, and substance—science meaning Newtonian physics as understood by Kant. This pattern of constituting a science through the categories applied to a body of materials was the model for the construction of the Pure Theory of Law. Everything that would not fit into the categories of Normlogik could no longer be considered science. There were, however, other neo-Kantian schools, above all the so-called Southwest German School represented by Wilhelm Windelband and Heinrich Rickert, who dealt with the constitution of the subject matter of historical sciences by “values.” That branch of methodology goes back to the 1870s, when Albrecht Ritschl, the Protestant theologian, distinguished for the first time between Tatsachenwissenschaften (sciences of facts) and Wertwissenschaften (sciences of values). The terms chosen betray the origin of the problem in the early dominance of the natural sciences as the model of science. Against their prestige, poor fellows like theologians, historians, and incipient social scientists had to establish that their fields were sciences, after all, too. That is how “values” were invented. In Rickert’s conception, values were certain cultural forces about whose reality nobody could have any reasonable doubt, such as state, art, and religion; the materials selected and related to these values would be 2. English translation in CW, vol. 7, chap. 2—as the author’s second publication.

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the subject matter of the science of art, religion, and the state. This technique of reconstituting the historical and social sciences by the so-called wertbeziehende Methode (i.e., by reference to a value) suffered from the grave defect that values are highly complex symbols, dependent for their meaning on the established “culture” of Western liberal society. It was very well to assume the Staat to be a value that determined the selection of materials, but this selection would run into all sorts of difficulties because the model of the Staat was the Western nation-state, and it would be difficult to bring the Greek polis under this head and still more difficult to bring an Egyptian empire under it. Moreover, values had to be accepted. And what did one do if somebody did not [51], (21) accept them, like for instance certain ideologists who wanted to establish a science by relating materials not to the value of the state but to the value of its withering away? The apocalyptic, Lines: 134 t metastatic dreams of, for instance, Marxist ideology, going back to ——— Fichte’s Johannine conception of the withering away of the state, * 260.0pt P simply did not fit into the constitution of a political science under ——— the value of the “state.” Normal Pag * PgEnds: Pag [51], (21)

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7 Political Stimuli

When I became aware of such problems, I had not yet even an inkling of their magnitude. I shall turn now to the gradual enlargement of the horizon that permitted me to discern their nature. The stimuli for going deeper into the matter were provided by political events. Obviously, when you live in a time dominated by the recent Communist revolution in Russia, Marxism (and behind Marxism the work of Marx) becomes a matter of some importance for a political scientist. I began to get interested in the problem of ideologies. The second great stimulus was, of course, provided by the rise of Fascism and National Socialism. I studied the movements as they developed, and in one instance, the National Socialist case, I went into the questions of biological theory that were implied in the National Socialist race conception. My two books Rasse and Staat and Die Rassenidee in der Geistesgeschichte, both published in 1933,1 are the result of my preoccupation with biological theory. This interest in biology, as well as a certain amount of technical knowledge about genetics, went back to my studies in 1924–25 in New York, when a number of my friends were young biologists like Kurt Stern, who worked on drosophyla genetics in the laboratory of Thomas Hunt Morgan at Columbia University. The numerous evenings spent in the company of these young people, my frequent visits to the laboratory, and the familiarity I acquired with the development of mutations were an invaluable basis for understanding the problems of biology involved in the race question. The result of my studies, of course, was not quite compatible with National Socialism, and the second one of 1. CW, vols. 2 and 3, in English translation.

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the books mentioned, Die Rassenidee in der Geistesgeschichte, which presented the genesis of the idea from its beginnings in the eighteenth century, was withdrawn from circulation by the publisher and the remainder of the edition was destroyed. That is the reason why this book, which I consider one of my better efforts, has remained practically unknown, though it would be of considerable help in the contemporary, rather dilettantic, debates between evolutionists and anti-evolutionists. Biological theory has remained one of my permanent interests, just as physics has so remained from my initial start on its problems in my last years of high school. A further broad range of materials that had hitherto escaped [53], (23) my notice was again imposed by a political stimulus. After 1933, Austrian resistance to National Socialism led to the civil war situation of 1934 and to the establishment of the so-called authoritarLines: 148 t ian state. Since the conception of the authoritarian constitution ——— was closely related to the ideas of the Quadragesimo anno [1931], * 153.8600 as well as of earlier papal encyclicals on social questions, I had ——— to go into these materials; and I could not get very deeply into Normal Pag them without acquiring some understanding of their background * PgEnds: Pag in Thomistic philosophy. In the years 1933–1936, my interests in neo-Thomism began to develop. I read the works of A. D. Sertillanges, Jacques Maritain, Étienne Gilson, and then got even [53], (23) more fascinated by the not-so Thomistic but rather Augustinian Jesuits like Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac. To this study, extending over many years, I owe my knowledge of medieval philosophy and its problems.

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8 Concerning My Dissertation

Its subject matter was Wechselwirkung und Gezweiung. Wech[54], (24) selwirkung was the key term of Georg Simmel’s sociology, which formed the basis for the further development of the Beziehungslehre in German social science. Gezweiung was the favorite term Lines: 15 in the sociology of Othmar Spann. The difference was the ontolog——— ical one of constructing social reality out of relations between au* 178.09 tonomous individuals or of assuming a preexistent spiritual bond ——— between human beings that would be realized in their personal Normal P relations. My concern was with the difference between Simmel’s * PgEnds: P individualistic and Spann’s universalistic construction of society. The dissertation was never published, and I am afraid I hardly remember now the details.1 [54], (24)

1. Published in English translation as Interaction and Spiritual Community: A Methodological Investigation, in CW, 32:19–140.

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9 Concerning Oxford in 1921 or 1922

I was lucky enough, through connections, to get a fellowship for a [55], (25) summer school in Oxford. The official purpose of the fellowship was to learn English, and I remember an excellent young Englishman by the name of Alexander who did his best to correct my Lines: 164 t mispronunciations. The comparatively primitive level on which ——— my English still functioned at the time may be gathered from an * 180.8pt P experience one evening when I strolled around Oxford. On some ——— square I found a public speaker who harangued a sparse audience. Normal Pag I understood him to advertise some kind of cheese, and it took * PgEnds: Pag me some time to realize that he was rather propagating Jesus. The great impression of these months was a number of lectures by [55], (25) Gilbert Murray. The impression was overwhelming: it was my first introduction to the style of distinguished English scholarship at its best.

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10 American Influence

I have already referred to my year in New York, in which one important influence came through the younger men surrounding Thomas Hunt Morgan. This year in New York was possible because at that time the Rockefeller Foundation extended research fellowships to European students under the title of the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Fellowships. I was one of the first recipients, so far as I know the first from Austria, and I had this fellowship for three years. The first year I spent in New York at Columbia University. In the second year I went for one semester to Harvard and the second semester to Wisconsin. The third year I spent in Paris. These two years in America brought the great break in my intellectual development. My interests, though far-ranging, were still provincial, inasmuch as the location in Central Europe was not favorable to an understanding of the larger world beyond Continental Europe. At Columbia University I took courses with Franklin Henry Giddings the sociologist, John Dewey, Irwin Edman, John Wesley the economist, and Arthur Whittier Macmahon in public administration, and I was overwhelmed by a new world of which hitherto I had hardly suspected the existence. The most important influence came from the library. During the year in New York, I started working through the history of English philosophy and its expansion into American thought. My studies were strongly motivated and helped by Dewey and Edman. I discovered English and American common sense philosophy. More immediately, the impact came through Dewey’s recent book, Human Nature and Conduct, which was based on the English common sense tradition. From there, I worked back to Thomas Reid and Sir William 56

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Hamilton. This English and Scottish conception of common sense as a human attitude that incorporates a philosopher’s attitude toward life without the philosopher’s technical apparatus, and inversely the understanding of Classic and Stoic philosophy as the technical, analytical elaboration of the common sense attitude, has remained a lasting influence in my understanding both of common sense and Classic philosophy. It was during this time that I got the first inkling of what the continued tradition of Classic philosophy on the common-sense level, without necessarily the technical apparatus of an Aristotle, could mean for the intellectual climate and the cohesion of a society. Precisely this tradition of common sense I now recognized to be the factor that was signally absent from the German social scene and not so well developed in France as it was in England and America. In retrospect, I would say that the absence of political institutions rooted in an intact common sense tradition is a fundamental defect of the German political structure that still has not been overcome. When I look at the contemporary German scene, with its frenetic debate between positivists, neoMarxists, and neo-Hegelians, it is the same scene that I observed when I was a student in the 1920s in the Weimar Republic; the intellectual level, however, has become abnormally mediocre. The great figures engaged pro and con in the analysis of philosophical problems in the 1920s—men like Max Scheler, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Alfred Weber, Karl Mannheim—have disappeared from the scene and have not been replaced by men of comparable stature and competence. During my year in New York, I began to sense that American society had a philosophical background far superior in range and existential substance, though not always in articulation, to anything that I found represented in the methodological environment in which I had grown up. During the year at Columbia, when I took the courses of Giddings and Dewey and read their work, I became aware of the categories of social substance in the English-speaking world. John Dewey’s category was likemindedness, which I found was the term used by the King James Bible to translate the New Testament term homonoia. That was the first time I became aware of the problem of homonoia, about which I knew extremely little at the time, because my knowledge of Classic philosophy was still quite 57

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insufficient and my knowledge of Christian problems practically nonexistent. Only later, when I had learned Greek and was able to read the texts in the original, did I become aware of the fundamental function of such categories for determining what the substance of society really is. Giddings’s term was the consciousness of kind. Although I did not know very much about the background of these problems, I remember becoming aware that Giddings was intending the same problem as John Dewey but preferred a terminology that would not make visible the connection of the problem with Classic and Christian traditions. It was his attempt to transform the homonoia, in the sense of a community of the spirit, into something innocuous like a community of kind in a biological sense. This year at Columbia was supplemented by the second year in which the strongest impression at Harvard was the newly arrived Alfred North Whitehead. Of course, I could understand only a very small portion of what Whitehead said in his lectures, and I had to work myself into the cultural and historical background of his book that came out at the time, The Adventures of Ideas. But it brought to my attention that there was such a background into which I had to work myself more intensely if I wanted to understand Anglo-Saxon civilization. The occasion for expanding my knowledge offered itself in the second semester of the year 1925–26, when I went to Wisconsin. I had become aware of the work of John R. Commons at Columbia, because during that year his Human Nature and Property was published. Thomas Reed Powell, who at that time was still at Columbia (the next year he went to Harvard), had commented upon Commons’s work. In Wisconsin I got into what I considered at the time, with my still limited knowledge, to be the real, authentic America. It was represented by John R. Commons, who took on for me the shape of a Lincolnesque figure, strongly connected with economic and political problems both on the state and national level, and with particular accent on the labor problem. In that environment in Wisconsin, with a man like Selig Perlman as the historian of labor and the young people who worked with Commons and Perlman as fellow students, I acquired my first enlarged knowledge of the importance of the U.S. Supreme Court and its opinions as the

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source of political culture in America. This experience of Wisconsin became a strong factor in my later career. When I came permanently to America in 1938, I wanted to go into the teaching of American government as the core for understanding American political culture; and since as a newly arrived foreigner I would not be admitted to teach American government at an Eastern university, I went to the South, where reservations in this respect were somewhat less strong. This account of my American experience would be incomplete without mentioning the strong influence of George Santayana. I never met him, but I got acquainted with his work in New York, partly through the suggestion of Irwin Edman. I studied his work with care and still have in my library the books that I bought that year in New York. To me, Santayana was a revelation concerning philosophy, comparable to the revelation I received at the same time through common sense philosophy. Here was a man with a vast background of philosophical knowledge, sensitive to the problems of the spirit without accepting a dogma, and not interested at all in neo-Kantian methodology. Gradually I found out about Lucretian materialism as a motivating experience in his thought, and this was of considerable importance for my understanding later, in Paris, the French poet Paul Valéry and his Lucretian motivation. Santayana and Valéry have remained for me the two great representatives of an almost mystical skepticism that in fact is not materialism at all. The emotional impact of this discovery was so strong and lasting that in the 1960s, when I had an opportunity to travel in southern France, I went to see the Cimetière Marin in Cette where Valéry is buried overlooking the Mediterranean. The results of these two years in America precipitated my book Über die Form des amerikanischen Geistes.1 The various chapters correspond to the several areas of literature and history that I had worked through. The chapter on “Time and Existence” reflects my studies in the English philosophy of consciousness and its comparison with the German theory of consciousness represented by Edmund Husserl. The chapter on George Santayana gives my 1. English translation in CW, vol. 1.

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summary of the work and philosophical personality of Santayana as I understood it at the time. A further chapter on “Puritan Mysticism” is the result of my studies on Jonathan Edwards— even in retrospect I must say it is a good essay. The next chapter on “Anglo-American Analytical Theory of Law,” about fifty pages, reflects my study of this area that in English and American civilization is the counterpart to the “norm logic” of Kelsen in the Continental European theory of law. And the last chapter on “John R. Commons” reflects my understanding of the work and personality of John R. Commons as well as the fervent admiration that I had for him. This literary work in which I assembled the results of the two American years does not, however, give a full understanding of the importance these years had in my life. The great event was the fact of being thrown into a world for which the great neo-Kantian methodological debates, which I considered the most important things intellectually, were of no importance. Instead, there was the background of the great political foundation of 1776 and 1789, and of the unfolding of this founding act through a political and legal culture primarily represented by the lawyers’ guild and the Supreme Court. There was the strong background of Christianity and Classical culture that was so signally fading out, if not missing, in the methodological debates in which I had grown up as a student. In brief, there was a world in which this other world in which I had grown up was intellectually, morally, and spiritually irrelevant. That there should be such a plurality of worlds had a devastating effect on me. The experience broke for good (at least I hope it did) my Central European or generally European provincialism without letting me fall into an American provincialism. I gained an understanding in these years of the plurality of human possibilities realized in various civilizations, as an immediate experience, an expérience vécue, which hitherto had been accessible to me only through the comparative study of civilizations as I found them in Max Weber, in Spengler, and later in Toynbee. The immediate effect was that upon my return to Europe certain phenomena that were of the greatest importance in the intellectual and ideological context of Central Europe, for instance the work of Martin Heidegger, whose famous Sein und Zeit I read in 1928, no longer had any effect on me. It just ran off, because I had been 60

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immunized against this whole context of philosophizing through my time in America and especially in Wisconsin. The priorities and relations of importance between various theories had been fundamentally changed—and, so far as I can see, changed for the better.

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11 Concerning the Year in France

After the two years in America, the Rockefeller Foundation was kind enough to extend the Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship for another year to continue my studies in France. I accepted the opportunity with the idea of enlarging my horizon by living in France for a year and finding out firsthand what points in French culture were relevant for a political scientist. The field for studies was wide open. I attended courses in the law school, especially with a French economist named Albert Aftalion, and I attended the lectures of the famous Léon Brunschvicg, the Pascal scholar. In the beginning my studies were somewhat hampered because I had a reading knowledge of French but not a really good knowledge of a more complicated vocabulary. I remember reading the Trois Contes by Gustave Flaubert, which was quite an ordeal because Flaubert’s vocabulary is enormous, and I had to use a dictionary in practically every sentence. But reading authors who have a large vocabulary is the only way of building up a knowledge of a language. At the time, there was an irresistible attraction in Paris—that is, the flood of Russian refugees. I happened to get acquainted with quite a few of them and understood the necessity of learning Russian in order to have access to the political materials. So I started on it with Konstantin V. Mochulski and G. Lozinski as teachers. The work with these two excellent philologists continued practically through the whole year, and I got far enough to be able to read Dostoevsky. Unfortunately, I have forgotten most of what I learned because in the practice of my work I had later too little occasion to deal with Russian sources. But the main area of studies, of course, was French literature and 62

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philosophy. Good guides for introducing myself to the problems of these fields were the works of Albert Thibaudet on Mallarmé and Valéry, and of René Lalou on the history of French literature in general and on the history of the novel in particular. I acquired in this year in Paris a practically complete set of the important French prose literature from La Princesse de Clèves by Madame de La Fayette to the work of Marcel Proust, whose last volumes of A la Recherche du temps perdu were coming out at the time. Marcel Proust, like Flaubert, was an inestimable source for enriching my French vocabulary. René Lalou’s De Descartes à Proust was of fundamental importance for my understanding of the continuity of French intellectual history. Here I found the French history of consciousness that runs parallel to the history of consciousness in English and American philosophy from the eighteenth century to the present. Through both Thibaudet and Lalou my attention was directed especially to Mallarmé and Valéry. At this time I assembled my almost complete collection of the works of Paul Valéry, several of them in first editions that now have become valuable. I had occasion to see Valéry when he gave an after-dinner talk at some meeting connected with the League of Nations. What interested me most about him at the time, besides the fact that he was a great artist, was his Lucretian philosophy, which I understood as a parallel phenomenon to the Lucretianism of George Santayana. The poem with which I fell in love particularly was the “Cimetière Marin.” The opportunity of spending a year in Paris of course was also used, so far as means permitted, to see the surroundings. I remember my first great impression of Chartres and a trip in summer to the remnants of the monasteries in Normandy. In the background, of course, were my studies in the French theory of law, especially of Léon Duguit. At that time I got my first acquaintance with the French problem of solidarité. Curiously enough, I was not yet attracted to the work of Henri Bergson, though I was already familiar with his Matière et Mémoire and his Essai sur les données immediates de la conscience. My real interest in Bergson only grew with the publication of his Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion in 1932. A special area of interest became the French mémoires literature. I remember reading 63

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with fascination the memoirs of the Cardinal de Retz, which gave me an introduction to the politics of the seventeenth century. Perhaps because of their size the memoirs of Saint-Simon interested me somewhat less. The Retz memoirs were to me especially important because they described one of the great conspiracies that were characteristic of the seventeenth century. I studied the parallel cases of the Wallenstein conspiracy, of the conspiracy of the Fiesco in Genoa, and of the conspiracy of the Spaniards in Venice. One of the mémoires I read at the time were those of the duc de La Rochefoucauld, which gave me the transition to the philosophy of the moralistes. In addition to La Rochefoucauld, I read the marquise de Vauvenargues and found out about the line of influence that goes from the French moralistes to Nietzsche. I was again in Paris in 1934 for several weeks. At this time I was interested in the French sixteenth century and especially in the work of Jean Bodin. I collected materials for a comprehensive study of Bodin’s work and in fact wrote it later to form part of the History of Political Ideas, but it has never been published.1 At that time, I worked through the catalogue of the Bibliotheque Nationale on French publications on the history and politics of the sixteenth century. So far as I remember, I had every single item in the catalogue in hand at least once, and on this occasion I became aware of the enormous influence that the Mongol invasions and the events of the fifteenth century, especially the temporary victory of Tamerlane over Bayazid I, had as a model of the political process in the sixteenth century. Practically every author of importance dealt with these events, which were completely outside the normal experience of politics in the West and introduced an inexplicable rise to power, which affected the very existence of Western civilization, as a factor into world history. This experience of the Turkish Ottoman threat and its temporary interruption through the victory of Tamerlane were observed by the humanists and entered into the conception in Machiavelli’s Prince of the man who can rise to power by his own virtue. Some of the voluminous materials gathered at the time I published in an article on “Das Timurbild der Humanisten” in 1937, which I later had reprinted in my Anamnesis of 1966.2 The influence 1. For this text see CW, vol. 23, chap. 6. 2. English translation in CW, vol. 6.

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of these events on Machiavelli, and especially on his fictitious biography of Castruccio Castracani, I published in my article on Machiavelli’s background in the Review of Politics in 1951. But considerable piles of materials and the connection with the work of Bodin have never been published.3 In the same year, 1934, I spent some weeks in London exploring the resources of the Warburg Institute, which had already moved there from Hamburg. This was my first contact with alchemy, astrology, and the complicated gnostic symbolism of the Renaissance. The materials collected on that occasion were incorporated in a chapter on “Astrological Politics” for my History of Political Ideas, which, as I said, has not been published.4 This first acquaintance was the basis for my further interest in astrology and alchemy that developed much later and helped me to gain some understanding of certain continuities in Western intellectual history from the Middle Ages through the Renaissance into the present.

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12 Return to Vienna

After my return from the three years under the Rockefeller Fellowship, I began to concentrate on writing publications that would lead to my habilitation and ultimately to a professorship. The first thing I finished was the book that was published under the title Über die Form des amerikanischen Geistes, which came out in 1928. Then I looked for further occupation. I began to develop a system of Staatslehre and actually wrote sections dealing with the theory of law and the theory of power.1 Then there should have been a third part on political ideas, but when I came to that third part I discovered that I knew nothing whatsoever about political ideas and had to give up the project of a Staatslehre. I began to concentrate on acquiring knowledge of specific ideas for the purpose of analyzing the problem of the so-called ideas with the concrete materials in hand. The results of this work were my studies on the race question. The National Socialist movement obviously was in political ascendancy; and though one could not yet foresee that it would come to power, the debate about races, the Jewish problem, etc., went on all the time. The material suggested itself for treatment, resulting in my two volumes on the race question. Into these volumes I also incorporated my recently acquired and now elaborated knowledge of biological theory. On that occasion I found out that a political theory, especially when it was to be applicable to the analysis of ideologies, had to be based on Classic and Christian philosophy. As the first chapter of my volume on Rasse and Staat shows, I adopted at the time the philosophical anthropology of 1. English translation in CW, vol. 32, chaps. 4 and 5.

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Max Scheler, as expressed in his recent publication Die Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos. It proved sufficient for the purpose of analyzing the race problem; its defects were of no importance to the issue at hand, though I discovered them later when I started on my original work on Classic philosophy. While working on the race problem, I became convinced that I had to be able to read the Classic authors, that is, Plato and Aristotle, if I wanted to become a competent political scientist. I started to learn Greek with the help of a man about my age, Hermann Bodek, a minor member of the Stefan-George-Kreis and an excellent classics philologist. Bodek introduced me to the secrets of Greek grammar and to the reading of complicated philosophical texts. I remember that in the course of the six months in which I took lessons from him I made my first translations of the poems of Parmenides. The acquisition of that knowledge was of course fundamental for my later work, not only so far as my knowledge of Greek philosophy was concerned, but for understanding fundamentally that one cannot deal with materials unless one can read them. That sounds trivial, but as I later found out it is a truth not only neglected but hotly contested by a good number of persons who are employed by our colleges and who, with the greatest of ease, talk about Plato and Aristotle, or Thomas and Augustine, or Dante and Cervantes, or Rabelais or Goethe, without being able to read a line of the authors on whom they pontificate. The years in Austria, beginning with 1933, were emotionally packed by the political events of the time. I had become a Privatdozent in 1929, and I received the title of associate professor in 1936, but neither of these dignities was connected with any material support. During these years I was an assistant for constitutional and administrative law at the Law Faculty, first to Kelsen and later to Merkl. That gave a very modest income. I remember it started at one hundred schillings a month. At the time I left in 1938 it was two hundred fifty schillings, which was about $50. Even if you quadruple the sum in view of the dollar’s devaluation, it was not more than $250 per month, on which I had to pay taxes. Everything else necessary for living I had to gain through freelance writing, teaching, and so forth. One might say I have always been an independent entrepreneur. The situation in Vienna tightened through the events of the 67

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civil war in 1934. On that occasion, the disastrous disintegration of Central European society through the ideologists became obvious. There was an Austrian government that firmly resisted any advance of National Socialism but was endangered in its effectiveness by the opposition, because the Social Democratic party, due to its Marxist ideology, did not want to admit that a small country like the Austrian Republic had to accommodate itself to the political pressures of the time. The Austrian veering toward Mussolini as a protection against the worse evil of Hitler apparently was beyond the comprehension of ardent Marxists, who could do nothing but yell “Fascism.” As a matter of fact, as a student in the 1920s I had been, though not a member of the organized party, by inclination a Social Democrat, like most of my friends. And in the election of 1920 I voted for the Social Democratic party. When the internal tensions began to grow in developing an Austrian nationalism that would resist National Socialism as well as Communism, the split in the population increased, but I did not participate in it because in the critical three years 1924 to 1927 I was not in Austria. I still remember that the great clash with the “Brand of the Justizpalast” in 1927 occurred just when I set out from Paris, with some of my American friends, for a trip to Normandy. Only when I returned to Austria in the fall of 1927 did I again become interested in Austrian politics. For two reasons I veered more in the direction of the Christian Socialist government. In the first place, the Christian Socialist politicians represented the traditions of European culture, whereas the Marxists at least overtly did not. I say at least overtly, because in fact even the ardent Marxists were living in the Austrian tradition, which was eminently democratic and habit-forming. But inevitably Marxist ideology caused difficulties, when the party program had an explicit passage saying that the Social Democratic party would abide by democratic procedures until it had gained the majority of votes. Once the majority had been gained, the socialist revolution would start: no return to the nefariousness of a capitalist democracy would be permitted but would rather be resisted by force. What struck me most at the time was the stupidity of ideologists as represented by the leaders of the Social Democratic party. While I agreed with them regarding 68

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economic and social politics, the silliness of their apocalyptic dream in face of the impending Hitlerian apocalypse was simply too much to stomach. My attitude toward the Social Democracy at the time can be identified with the position taken by Karl Kraus. Ideological intellectuals who survived the disaster have not yet forgiven Kraus for being too intelligent to sympathize with their foolishness. Of course, they have not forgiven me, either. The result of these years of tension after 1933 was my study on Die Autoritäre Staat, published in 1936.2 It was my first major attempt to penetrate the role of ideologies, left and right, in the contemporary situation and to understand that an authoritarian state that would keep radical ideologists in check was the best [69], (39) possible defense of democracy. My theoretical attitude in these matters at the time was not very different from the attitude later expressed by Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, in the Lines: 272 t Terminiello case of 1949 (after he got acquainted with European ——— radical ideologies as a member of the Nuremburg court), in the * 249.8600 formula that democracy is “not a suicide pact.” ——— Normal Pag * PgEnds: Pag [69], (39)

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13 Anschluss and Emigration

A profound emotional shock came in the critical moments of the destruction of Austria. I would have left Vienna long before 1938 if I had not assumed that Austria was safe in its defense against National Socialism. On the basis of my historically founded political knowledge, I considered it impossible that the Western democracies would permit the annexation of Austria by Hitler, because the event obviously would be the first of a series that would culminate in a world war. The German occupation of Austria would create a strategic situation that made the conquest of Czechoslovakia possible; and the conquest of Czechoslovakia would consolidate a Central European position that made a war with the Western powers potentially victorious. It came as a great surprise to me that the Western powers did nothing. From a friend who was at the time working in Rome and had friends in the Italian foreign ministry, I learned that on the night of the invasion Mussolini was engaged in frantic telephone conversations with the English government pleading for common action, which, however, was rejected. I remember that the events caused in me a state of unlimited fury. In the wake of the Austrian occupation by Hitler, I even for a moment contemplated joining the National Socialists, because those rotten swine who called themselves democrats—meaning the Western democracies—certainly deserved to be conquered and destroyed if they were capable of such criminal idiocy. But the character development of the past would not permit this extreme step. Reason got the better after several hours of such fury, and I prepared my emigration. That was necessary, because I had never made any secret of my anti–National Socialist attitude, and of course I was immediately fired from my position at the university. 70

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Preparing to emigrate brought the usual odd details that are connected with such an enterprise. Above all, I had to acquire some money outside Austria, because the export of money was prohibited. I had a Swiss friend who was a journalist in Vienna, reporting for Swiss newspapers, with whom I arranged to pay his income in Austria while he left the equivalent value in Swiss francs with his lawyer in Zurich. The money accumulated and became the basis for living a number of months in Zurich before I could get my immigration visa from the American consulate. The emigration plan almost miscarried. Though I was politically an entirely unimportant figure, and the important ones had to be caught first, my turn came at last. Just when we had nearly finished our preparations and my passport was with the police in order to get the exit visa, the Gestapo appeared at my apartment to confiscate the passport. Fortunately, I was not at home, and my wife [Lissy Onken Voegelin] was delighted to tell them that the passport was with the police for the purpose of getting the exit visa, which satisfied the Gestapo. We were able, through friends, to get the passport, including the exit visa, from the police before the Gestapo got it—that all in one day. On the same day, in the evening, with two bags, I caught a train to Zurich, trembling on the way that the Gestapo after all would find out about me and arrest me at the border. But apparently even the Gestapo was not as efficient as my wife and I in these matters, and I got through unarrested. My wife stayed with her parents, with a Gestapo guard in front of the apartment waiting for me to show up again. My wife knew that I had escaped when the Gestapo guard was withdrawn, and about twenty minutes later my telegram arrived from Zurich telling her that I had arrived there. But that was only the beginning of odd events. In Zurich, I had to wait for a nonquota immigration visa extended to scholars who had been offered a job in the United States. My friends at Harvard—Haberler, Schumpeter, and, in a very decisive function as head of the Department of Government, Arthur Holcombe— had provided a part-time instructorship. But I had not yet received the official letter, and I had to wait for that in order to get the American visa. In waiting for the visa, I had dealings with the American vice-consul in Zurich, a very nice Harvard boy who had grave suspicions about me. He explained that, since I was 71

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neither a Communist nor a Catholic nor a Jew, I therefore had no reason whatsoever not to be in favor of National Socialism and to be a National Socialist myself. Hence, if I was in flight the only reason must be some criminal record, and he did not want to give me a visa before the matter of my criminality was cleared up. Fortunately, in due course Holcombe’s letter arrived, advising me of my appointment as a part-time instructor, and with his signature on the letter the Harvard boy in the consulate was convinced that I was in the fold, so I got my visa. I am telling this incident not in order to be critical of this particular vice-consul, who was as innocent of political problems, and especially human problems, as such people happen to be. Let me [72], (42) tell, therefore, a similar incident that occurred more than twenty years later, in the 1960s. The occasion was a meeting in Salzburg where Ernst Bloch, the Marxist philosopher, and I were invited Lines: 29 to lecture. Our wives were there, too. At a dinner party the ladies ——— got into conversation, and Mrs. Bloch inquired cautiously why we * 179.86 happened to have come to America, too, because after all we were ——— not Jews; and she asked whether I had been a Communist. My Normal P wife explained that I had not been a Communist either. Where* PgEnds: P upon Mrs. Bloch asked her, “Well then, why couldn’t he stay in Austria?” That anybody could be anti–National Socialist without being motivated by an ideological counterposition or because he [72], (42) was a Jew is indeed, so far as my experience goes, inconceivable to most people whom I know in the academic world.

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14 Concerning Ideology, Personal Politics, and Publications

[73], (43) As the anecdotes just related show, my personal attitude in politics, and especially with regard to National Socialism, is frequently misunderstood, because entirely too many people who express themselves in public cannot understand that resistance to National Socialism can have other reasons than partisan motives. My reasons for hating National Socialism from the time I first got acquainted with it in the 1920s can be reduced to very elementary reactions. There was in the first place the influence of Max Weber. One of the virtues that he demanded of a scholar was “intellektuelle Rechtschaffenheit,” which can be translated as intellectual honesty. I cannot see any reason why anybody should work in the social sciences, and generally in the sciences of man, unless he honestly wants to explore the structure of reality. Ideologies, whether positivist, or Marxist, or National Socialist, indulge in constructions that are intellectually not tenable. That raises the question of why people who otherwise are not quite stupid, and who have the secondary virtues of being quite honest in their daily affairs, indulge in intellectual dishonesty as soon as they touch science. That ideology is a phenomenon of intellectual dishonesty is beyond a doubt, because the various ideologies after all have been submitted to criticism, and anybody who is willing to read the literature knows that they are not tenable, and why. If one adheres to them nevertheless, the prima facie assumption must be that he is intellectually dishonest. The overt phenomenon of intellectual dishonesty then raises the question of why a man will indulge in it. That is a general problem that in my 73

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later years required complicated research to ascertain the nature, causes, and persistence of states of alienation. More immediately, on the overt level that imposed itself, it caused my opposition to any ideologies—Marxist, Fascist, National Socialist, what you will—because they were incompatible with science in the rational sense of critical analysis. I again refer back to Max Weber as the great thinker who brought that problem to my attention; and I still maintain today that nobody who is an ideologist can be a competent social scientist. As a consequence, partisan problems are of secondary importance; they come under the head of ideologists fighting each other. That, however, is not an entirely new phenomenon. I had to note the same problem in my studies on the intellectual battles in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. There I summarized the problem in the formula that there are intellectual situations where everybody is so wrong that it is enough to maintain the opposite in order to be at least partially right. The exploration of these structures helps to understand the meaning of “public opinion,” but these structures certainly have nothing to do with science. Because of this attitude I have been called every conceivable name by partisans of this or that ideology. I have in my files documents labeling me a Communist, a Fascist, a National Socialist, an old liberal, a new liberal, a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Platonist, a neo-Augustinian, a Thomist, and of course a Hegelian— not to forget that I was supposedly strongly influenced by Huey Long. This list I consider of some importance, because the various characterizations of course always name the pet bête noire of the respective critic and give, therefore, a very good picture of the intellectual destruction and corruption that characterize the contemporary academic world. Understandably, I have never answered such criticisms; critics of this type can become objects of inquiry, but they cannot be partners in a discussion. A further reason for my hatred of National Socialism and other ideologies is quite a primitive one. I have an aversion to killing people for the fun of it. What the fun is, I did not quite understand at the time, but in the intervening years the ample exploration of revolutionary consciousness has cast some light on this matter. The fun consists in gaining a pseudo-identity through 74

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asserting one’s power, optimally by killing somebody—a pseudoidentity that serves as a substitute for the human self that has been lost. Some of these problems I touched upon in my study on the “Eclipse of Reality,” published in 1970.1 A good example of the type of self that has to kill other people in order to regain in an Ersatzform what it has lost is the famous Louis Antoine Leon Saint-Juste, who says that Brutus either has to kill other people or kill himself. The matter has been explored by Albert Camus, and the murderous equanimity of the intellectuals who have lost their self and try to regain it by becoming pimps for this or that murderous totalitarian power is excellently exemplified by Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Humanisme et Terreur (1947). I have no sympathy whatsoever with such characters and have never hesitated to characterize them as murderous swine. The third motif that I can ascertain in my hatred against ideologies is that of a man who likes to keep his language clean. If anything is characteristic of ideologies and ideological thinkers, it is the destruction of language, sometimes on the level of intellectual jargon of a high level of complication, sometimes on a vulgarian level. From my personal experience with various ideologists of a Hegelian or Marxist type, I have the impression that a good number of men of considerable intellectual energy who otherwise would be Marxists prefer to be Hegelians because Hegel is so much more complicated. This is a difference not of any profound conviction but of what I would compare to the taste of a man who prefers chess to pinochle. Hegel is more complicated, and one can easily spend a lifetime exploring the possibilities of interpreting reality from this or that corner of the Hegelian system, without of course ever touching on the premises that are wrong—and perhaps without ever finding out that there are premises that are wrong. In conversations with Hegelians, I have quite regularly found that as soon as one touches on Hegelian premises the Hegelian refuses to enter into the argument and assures you that you cannot understand Hegel unless you accept his premises. That, of course, is perfectly true—but if the premises are wrong, everything that follows from them is wrong, too, and a good ideologist therefore has to prevent their discussion. In the case of Hegel, that is comparatively 1. Expanded version published in CW, vol. 28, chap. 3.

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easy, because Hegel was a first-rate thinker and knew the history of philosophy. Hence, if one wants to attack Hegel’s premises one has to know their background in Plotinus and the neo-Platonic mysticism of the seventeenth century. Since very few people who pontificate about Hegel have any knowledge of philosophy comparable to his, the premises can easily be kept in the dark, and sometimes need not even be kept in the dark because they are, anyway, in the darkness of the ignorance of those who talk about him. In the Marxian case, the falseness of the premises is more obvious. When Marx writes about Hegel he distorts him so badly that his honest editors cannot help being aware of the fact and expressing themselves cautiously on their findings. The editors of the Frühschriften of Karl Marx (Kröner, 1955), especially Siegfried Landshut, say regarding Marx’s study of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law: “Marx, if one may express oneself in this manner, by misunderstanding Hegel as it were deliberately, conceives all concepts of Hegel which are meant as predicates of the idea as statements about facts” (pp. xxv–xxvi). In my uncivilized manner as a man who does not like to murder people for the purpose of supplying intellectuals with fun, I flatly state that Marx was consciously an intellectual swindler for the purpose of maintaining an ideology that would permit him to support violent action against human beings with a show of moral indignation. I stated the problem explicitly in my inaugural lecture in Munich in 1958, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism,2 and explored on that occasion the mental disturbance that lies behind such action. Marx, however, conducted his arguments on a very high intellectual level, and the surprise (with repercussions in the daily press) caused by my flat statement that he was engaged in an intellectual swindle can easily be explained in the same way as the darkness that surrounds the premises of Hegel. The Marxian swindle concerns the flat refusal to enter into the etiological argument of Aristotle—that is, on the problem that man does not exist out of himself but out of the divine ground of all reality. Again, as distinguished from our 2. Eric Voegelin, Wissenschaft, Politik, und Gnosis (Munich: Kösel Verlag, 1959); Science, Politics and Gnosticism: Two Essays, trans. William J. Fitzpatrick (Washington: Henry Regnery Pubs., 1967; rpr. with intro. by Ellis Sandoz, 1997; rpr. ed. Ellis Sandoz, Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute Books, 2004). Reprinted in CW, vol. 5.

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contemporaries who pontificate on Marx, Marx himself had a very good philosophical education. He knew that the problem of etiology in human existence was the central problem of a philosophy of man; and if he wanted to destroy man’s humanity by making him a “socialist man,” he had to refuse to enter into the etiological problem. On this point he was, one must admit, considerably more honest than Hegel, who never quoted the arguments into which he refused to enter. But the effect is the same as in the case of Hegel, because contemporary critics, of course, know about Aristotle and the etiological argument just as much as they know about Hegel’s neo-Platonic background—which is to say, exactly nothing. The general deculturation of the academic and intellectual world in Western civilization furnishes the background for the social dominance of opinions that would have been laughed out of court in the late Middle Ages or the Renaissance. When we advance beyond Marx to the ideological epigones of the late nineteenth and of the twentieth century, we are already far below the intellectual level that formed the background even of Marx. And here comes in my particular hatred of ideologists because they vulgarize the intellectual debate and give to public discussion the distinctly ochlocratic coloring that today has reached the point of considering as fascist or authoritarian even a reference to the facts of political and intellectual history that must be known if one wants to discuss the problems that come up in political debate. The radical condemnation of historical and philosophical knowledge must be recognized as an important factor in the social environment, because it is dominated by persons who cannot even be called intellectual crooks because their level of consciousness is much too low to be aware of their objective crookedness, but who must rather be characterized as functional illiterates with a strong desire for personal aggrandizement. These observations then bring us down to the level of National Socialism. It is extremely difficult to engage in a critical discussion of National Socialist ideas, as I found out when I gave my semester course on “Hitler and the Germans” in 1964 in Munich,3 because in National Socialist and related documents we are still further below the level on which rational argument is possible 3. For English translation see CW, vol. 31.

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than in the case of Hegel and Marx. In order to deal with rhetoric of this type, one must first develop a philosophy of language, going into the problems of symbolization on the basis of the philosophers’ experience of humanity and of the perversion of such symbols on the vulgarian level by people who are utterly unable to read a philosopher’s work. A person on this level—which I characterize as the vulgarian and, so far as it becomes socially relevant, as the ochlocratic level—again, is not admissible to the position of a partner in discussion but can only be an object of scientific research. These vulgarian and ochlocratic problems must not be taken lightly; one cannot simply not take notice of them. They are serious problems of life and death because the vulgarians create and dominate the intellectual climate in which the rise to power of figures like Hitler is possible. I would say, therefore, that in the German case the destroyers of the German language on the literary and journalistic level, characterized and analyzed over more than thirty years by Karl Kraus in the volumes of Die Fackel, were the true criminals who were guilty of the National Socialist atrocities, which were possible only when the social environment had been so destroyed by the vulgarians that a person who was truly representative of this vulgarian spirit could rise to power. These motivations were perfectly clear to me at the time, but clarity about their direction did not mean clarity about the implications in detail. The intellectual apparatus for dealing with the highly complex phenomena of intellectual deformation, perversion, crookedness, and vulgarization did not yet exist, and studies to create this apparatus were required. Into this context belong the studies that I published under the title Die politischen Religionen in 1938.4 When I spoke of the politischen Religionen, I conformed to the usage of a literature that interpreted ideological movements as a variety of religions. Representative for this literature was Louis Rougier’s successful volume on Les Mystiques politiques. The interpretation is not all wrong, but I would no longer use the term religions because it is too vague and already deforms the real problem of experiences by mixing them with the further problem of dogma or doctrine. Moreover, in Die politischen Religionen I still pooled together such phenomena as the spiritual 4. English translation included in CW, vol. 5, which also contains The New Science of Politics and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism.

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movement of Ikhnaton, the medieval theories of spiritual and temporal power, apocalypses, the Leviathan of Hobbes, and certain National Socialist symbolisms. A more adequate treatment would have required far-reaching differentiations between these various phenomena. The book was just coming from the printer in March of 1938, when the National Socialist occupation of Austria occurred. The publishing house of Berman-Fischer was an inevitable target of the occupation forces, and the whole edition was confiscated at the publisher and never reached the public. Later I learned that a few copies had gone into commerce; apparently various National Socialist agencies received copies from the Gestapo, and these began circulating after World War II. The volume on Der autoritäre Staat, published in 1936 in Vienna, was on the whole a piece of forced labor.5 I had been habilitated as a Privatdozent for sociology and wanted to expand my venia legendi to political science. For that purpose I had to write a new book of an undoubtedly political science nature and, if possible, on a subject related to Austrian politics. Material was there aplenty, because the 1930s were the period of the general resistance against National Socialism, of the civil war of 1934, the murder of Engelbert Dollfuss, and ultimately the creation of a corporate constitution. The new authoritarian constitution and its background were a suitable subject for treatment because at that time nobody else paid any attention to these matters. The book is somewhat heterogeneous. In the first part, I dealt with the symbols “total” and “authoritarian.” Again, I should like to stress that at the time nobody else dealt with problems of this nature, and no intellectual apparatus for treating these topical terms had been created. I developed on that occasion the distinction between topoi and concepts. This distinction is basic for an adequate treatment of language problems in politics. Conventionally, whatever pops up as a language symbol in politics is simply accepted as such and enters the vague realm of political ideas. The first step in getting some rational order into this vague mass is to be clear about what constitutes theory (this question had already motivated my study of classical political philosophy) and in what way the concepts of theory differ from other language symbols, 5. English translation in CW, vol. 4.

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which do not express the order of existence, but various disorders and deformations of concepts only half understood by illiterates on the vulgarian level. To this class of political symbols, which are definitely not theoretical concepts, belong such symbols as “total” and “authoritarian.” My interpretation of the Austrian authoritarian state derived considerable help from Maurice Hauriou’s institutionalism. Moreover, I had already been branching out into various areas of the history of philosophy, and I was able to recognize in the assumption of a collective entity that would justify the treatment of its members as subordinate beings who had to conform to the ideas of whoever represented the collective entity parallels to the Averroeist conception of the intellectus unus of which the mind of human beings is no more than a spark. I am not sure I was quite conscious of the importance of this finding. Certainly I already understood that the transfer of the conception of an intellectus unus to a world-immanent entity called nation, or race, and its representatives was lethal to man’s humanity. And I certainly was aware of the very serious split in the interpretation of Aristotle’s psychology that took place in the Middle Ages between Averroës and Thomas, my preference being on the side of Thomas rather than of the Averroizing thinkers. A small bit of the materials that I worked through at that time was later published in my study on “Siger de Brabant” in 1944.6 The reaction to this find of mine had a funny side effect. Since Averroës happened to be an Arab, and Arabs are Semites, and Semites in the end are Jews, certain thinkers close to the National Socialist regime like Carl Schmitt seriously doubted that the National Socialist collectivism had anything to do with such dirty Semitic origins. An important element in this first part was also my first clear understanding of Rousseau’s variety of collectivism. At the time I did not go very far in the analysis, only a few pages, but it is the problem that later was worked out splendidly by J. L. Talmon in his Origins of Totalitarian Democracy [1952]. The second part of the book gave a survey of Austrian problems of constitution making, in the historical perspective since 1848. It was the occasion for me to learn something about the 6. Original, uncut version reprinted in CW, vol. 20.

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background of constitutional problems in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the continuity of solutions found at the time with the problems of the Austrian Republic after 1918. In the third part, dealing with the new constitution, I gave an extensive analysis of Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law and its connection with a specifically Austrian theory of politics. The analysis runs about fifty pages. That was the section that got me into trouble with Kelsen, because here I obviously rejected, not the Pure Theory of Law, but its claim to be a substitute for a theory of politics. I had to stress the inadequacy of a theory of law for understanding political problems and the destructive consequences of the claim that one should, or could, not deal scientifically with political [81], (51) problems. My relationship with Kelsen was never the same after that, and years later, in America, after The New Science of Politics came out in 1952, he wrote an elaborate book-length critique Lines: 341 t crushing me thoroughly. However, Kelsen’s critique, which he ——— was kind enough to let me see in manuscript, was never published, * 154.0000 perhaps because I conveyed to him directly through a letter in cau——— tious form, and through common friends more outspokenly, that Normal Pag his understanding of the historical and philosophical problems * PgEnds: Pag involved in the matter was inadequate and a publication would damage his prestige rather than mine. Since Der autoritäre Staat came out in 1936, and its sale was stopped in 1938 when the Nazis [81], (51) occupied Austria, it did not receive much attention at the time. Nor did it later, because during the Russian conquest of Vienna one of the bombs fell, of all places, on the Springer publishing house, and the whole edition was burned in the cellar.

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15 Concerning Emigration in 1938

As I explained previously, I barely escaped from Austria. The Gestapo was about to confiscate my passport, and that would have meant the end of any possibility of emigration short of a secret border crossing. But the Gestapo’s attention also had its funny side. For instance, in the general survey of university personnel, a Gestapo officer came to our home and searched around my desk, drawers, and bookcases in order to see what I did. He was a young man in his mid-twenties, and when we got friendly he told me that he was originally a lawyer from Hamburg. First he inspected my desk for incriminating material. At the time, since I had been fired and had nothing to do but prepare for my emigration, I had complete leisure for the exploration of complicated problems. I was working at the time on questions of empire, and my desk was piled high with treatises on Byzantium, several of them in French and English. So he thumbed through this Byzantine empire literature; and after a while he remarked that he was in charge of inspecting all of the professors in the Law School, and that my desk was the first he had seen that looked like the desk of a scholar. The atmosphere became more relaxed. He had to take with him some incriminating evidence concerning my political interests. I had of course standing on my shelves the principal sources of a political nature: Hitler’s Mein Kampf; Kurt von Schuschnigg’s book, Dreimal Österreich; Mussolini’s Dottrina del Fascismo; and Marx’s Communist Manifesto. So he took away Schuschnigg and Marx. I protested that this would give an unfair impression of my political interests, which were strictly impartial, and suggested that he take along Hitler’s Mein Kampf. But he refused, and that is how I kept my copy of a very early edition. But by 82

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that time we had already become more friendly. Because he also had to take with him some of my own books, such as Über die Form des amerikanischen Geistes and those on the race question, I suggested that it would not be nice to take the good hardcover copies, and he could take as well the volumes of page proofs. He was agreeable and was satisfied with the page proofs, so I could keep the hardcover editions, which I still have. When he came in, my wife, who is a very orderly lady, wanted to take his coat, which he had thrown over a chair, and hang it in a closet. Whereupon he yelled, “Don’t touch it! There is my revolver in it.” But what had to be considered due process of law under the [83], (53) now-valid statutes was on the whole observed, and while I was apparently a target of some interest my wife was not. Besides, when I left she could stay with her parents, who were National Lines: 355 t Socialists and had a huge picture of Hitler in their living room. Of ——— course, as soon as I had left on the evening of the day when the 10.86002 Gestapo man wanted to confiscate my passport, the next morning ——— he came back in order to ask where the passport and I were. Then Normal Pag a guard was put in front of the house of my parents-in-law, where * PgEnds: Pag my wife was staying. But after I arrived in Zurich and sent a telegram, the guard disappeared, and twenty minutes later my telegram arrived. He obviously knew that I had left for good. A [83], (53) week later, my wife joined me in Zurich. Of course we had to leave almost everything behind, but it was possible to get some of the furniture out and, most important, the library. Certain items, however, had to be left. Again the details are more or less funny. For instance, I had to leave behind my stamp collection, which I had accumulated as a boy, this being an object of value. Books apparently were not. I know from other people that in spite of rather strict enforcement one could get a lot of things through. I know for instance of a young lady who was an artist and who had acquired a few original prints by Dürer. In order to export objects of art, one had to get a permit, so she put the Dürer prints in among her own work. The official who examined her portfolio looked through these prints one after another, and when he came to this or that Dürer print he said, “Well, well! You have made quite some progress as an artist,” and left it at that.

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16 Life in America From Harvard to LSU

[84], (54) When I came to America in 1938, I had a part-time instructorship at Harvard. It had been secured through the offices especially of W. Y. (Bill) Elliot, Gottfried von Haberler, and Joseph von Schumpeter, with Arthur Holcombe, who was then chairman of the department, consenting to my appointment. This appointment, however, was strictly limited, and I still remember my first conversation with Holcombe. When I presented myself to him at Harvard, he told me with dry precision that Harvard was pleased to give me this opportunity for a year and that with the end of the year the opportunity was ended. The importance of the appointment was, in the first place, that by its means I could get the previously mentioned nonquota visa. Otherwise, I would have had to wait an indeterminate time until my turn came for an ordinary immigration visa. Second, of course, the start at Harvard was of the greatest value as a good address from which to look for a job elsewhere. During my first semester at Harvard I immediately commenced looking for a job. To that purpose, I wrote more than forty extensive letters to various universities and personalities making my desire for a job known over the country. The first immediate result was an appointment as instructor at Bennington College in Vermont for the spring term of 1939 [which involved commuting back and forth from Cambridge]. Bennington presented an entirely new experience to me, which at the time I could absorb only partially because my background knowledge of American society was still rather defective. Still, I understood that I did not want to stay in spite of a very tempting 84

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offer of an assistant professorship with a salary of $5,000 for the next year. My reason for rejecting the offer and looking for something else was the environment on the East Coast. In Bennington specifically I noticed the very strong leftist element, with a few outspoken Communists among the faculty and still more among the students. This environment was no more to my taste than the National Socialist environment that I just had left. More generally, I noticed that the institutions on the East Coast were overrun by refugees from Central Europe, and if I stayed in the East inevitably my status would be that of a member of the refugee group. That was not exactly to my taste either, because I had firmly decided that once I had been thrown out of Austria by the National Socialists I wanted to make the break complete and from now on be an American. This aim, however, I could hardly achieve if I was stigmatized as a member of a refugee group. Moreover, I wanted to become a political scientist. For that purpose I had to familiarize myself with American government through teaching it; and it was impossible for a foreigner to find a teaching position in American government at any of the major Eastern institutions. So I accepted an offer from the University of Alabama. There I would come into an environment definitely free of refugees, so that adjustment and introduction to American society would at least not be externally handicapped from the beginning. Besides, I got my chance there to teach American government, and the department under the chairmanship of Roscoe Martin was more than sufficient to keep me busy for some time to come acquiring new knowledge concerning American institutions. The situation was poorly paid: I believe $2,500 for the year, roughly half of what Bennington had offered. But the general effect of adjusting myself to the new environment was indeed achieved thanks to the truly gracious reception by southerners who somewhat condescendingly enjoyed protecting an innocent from Europe. I especially want to remember Mildred Martin, the wife of the chairman, who formed a perfect friendship with my wife and helped us considerably in giving us all sorts of advice that prevented us from hurting feelings through untoward remarks. During my two and one-half years as an assistant professor at Alabama I worked myself into American government, the Constitution, and even a certain amount of public administration. At 85

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the same time, I had to give a course on the history of political ideas. Since by then I was a member of the Southern Political Science Association and attended their meetings, some of my new colleagues became aware of my activities, and Professor Robert J. Harris, who at that time was chairman of the department at Louisiana State University, brought me to Louisiana [in 1942] as associate professor. I accepted gladly, because it improved our financial situation ever so slightly and certainly was also an improvement in environment. That was still the time of the group who had organized the first Southern Review. There were, when I arrived, Robert B. Heilman and Cleanth Brooks in the Department of English, and Robert Penn Warren was still there for a year before he went to Minnesota. I also remember at least one occasion when I met Katherine Anne Porter at a party. This environment outside the Department of Government was of inestimable value, because I now had access to the interesting movement of literary criticism and gained the friendship of men who were authorities in English literature and language. I especially want to mention the help extended by Robert B. Heilman, who introduced me to certain secrets of the American history of literature and who was kind enough to help me with my difficulties in acquiring an idiomatic English style. I still remember as most important one occasion when he went through a manuscript of mine, of about twenty pages, and marked off every single idiomatic mistake, so that I had a good list of the mistakes that I had to improve generally. Heilman’s analysis, I must say, was the turning point in my understanding of English and helped me gradually to acquire a moderate mastery of the language.1 The friendship with Brooks and Heilman, furthermore, helped me to acquire some knowledge of the stratification in American English by social groups. When you come as a foreigner to America, you are of course swamped by the language that all sorts of 1. Cf. Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, 1944– 1984, ed. Charles R. Embry (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004). For additional details of Voegelin’s escape from Austria and arrival in America see Barry Cooper, Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), chap. 1. For Voegelin’s sixteen years at LSU see Monika Puhl, Eric Voegelin in Baton Rouge, Periagoge series (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2004).

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people speak around you, some of them speaking correct English, some of them local idioms, some of them a vulgarian vocabulary with all sorts of mistakes. If you do your best to adapt yourself to your environment without having any critical knowledge of what level that environment belongs to, you can easily end up at the bottom of the vulgarian scale. Heilman and Brooks were of course very much aware of such social stratification of language and helped me confirm my suspicions with regard to language I heard in the environment. The nature of the problem can be gathered from a conversation with Cleanth Brooks. Once, when crossing the campus, I met him deep in sorrow and thought, and I asked him what worried him. He told me he had to prepare a chapter on typical mistakes for a textbook on English style that he was re-editing with Robert Penn Warren, and that it was quite a chore to find typical mistakes. I was a bit surprised and innocently told him, “Well, it is very simple to find typical mistakes. Just take any education textbook and you will find half a dozen on every page.” He then explained to me that he could not use this method because educationists were far below the level of average literacy, and their mistakes could not be considered typical for an average English-speaking person. Instead, he was using sociology textbooks and sometimes had to read twenty pages of that stuff before running into a really good example. But even so, he had to worry because social scientists could not be considered to write typical English either but were below the average, though not as far below as educationists. This is the type of stratification of which I had gradually to become aware in order to achieve a moderately tolerable English, free of ideological jargon and free of the idiosyncracies of the vulgarian levels in the academic community. The center of my activities was of course in the Department of Government. I had to teach two sections of American government, so I achieved my goal of teaching American government for sixteen and, including the Alabama years, for twenty years. Of considerable help in my development of the understanding of American institutions was Robert J. Harris, who became a close friend. He was a first-rate connoisseur of the Supreme Court decisions and could explain to me a good number of things that otherwise would have escaped me for a long time. To the conversations 87

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with him I owe especially an understanding of the enormous importance of procedural law in the decisions of the Supreme Court. Besides American government, I had to teach courses in comparative government, at one time, even diplomatic history, and generally, throughout the years, as my main course, the “History of Political Ideas.”

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17 From Political Ideas to Symbols of Experience

[89], (59) This brings me to the problem of the history of ideas. At Harvard I had met Fritz Morstein-Marx, who at that time was editor of a textbook series for McGraw-Hill. He was kind enough to enlist me for a textbook of moderate size—I believe 200 to 250 pages were envisaged—for this series. That is how I got beyond teaching the history of political ideas into writing one. I started on the materials, using first, as a model of what had to be included or excluded, the History of Political Theory [1937] by George H. Sabine, which at the time was the standard work. But as I began working more deeply into the materials, I discovered that the treatment hitherto accorded to them was inadequate and my own knowledge of the materials quite insufficient to deal with them more adequately. I actually had to work through the literature from the Greek beginnings to the present. That is what I did over the years. This procedure, however, burst the enterprise of a small textbook for the Morstein-Marx series. I could not deliver on time, because I was still busy acquiring knowledge of sources, and the more knowledge I acquired the fatter the manuscript grew. But that was not all. In the course of the work it became obvious that the limitation imposed on a history of ideas, the convention of having it begin with the Greek Classic philosophers and end up with some contemporary ideologies, was untenable. About some of these problems I had already found out while I was in Alabama. There I discovered that one could not very well write about the Middle Ages and their politics without knowing a good deal more about the origins of Christianity than I knew at the time, and 89

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that one could not properly understand the Christian beginnings without going into the Jewish background. So it was in Alabama that I began to study Hebrew with the local rabbi, who was also teaching Hebrew at the university. The beginnings were hard, but gradually I acquired a sufficient knowledge of grammar and vocabulary to be able to check translations and finally to make my own translations on the basis of the texts. Through these studies on the Israelite background the pattern of a history of political ideas beginning with Greek philosophy had already exploded. Even worse, however, I got acquainted with the splendid achievements in the exploration of the ancient Near Eastern civilizations conducted by members of the University of Chicago Oriental Institute. The background thus had expanded to the ancient Near Eastern empires from whom Israel emerged, the Israelites were the background for the Christians, and the Christians were the background for the ideas of the Middle Ages. The pattern of a unilinear development of political ideas, from a supposed constitutionalism of Plato and Aristotle, through a dubious constitutionalism of the Middle Ages, into the splendid constitutionalism of the modern period, broke down. The pattern, then, cracked along other lines. I had written my History of Political Ideas up well into the nineteenth century. Large chapters on Schelling, Bakunin, Marx, and Nietzsche were finished. While working on the chapter on Schelling, it dawned on me that the conception of a history of ideas was an ideological deformation of reality. There were no ideas unless there were symbols of immediate experiences. Moreover, one could not handle under the title of “ideas” an Egyptian coronation ritual, or the recitation of the enuma Elish on occasion of Sumerian New Year festivals. I was not yet in a position really to understand where the concept of ideas had come from and what it meant. Only very much later did I discover that the origin is probably to be found in the Stoic koinai ennoiai. These common, or self-evident, opinions were the starting point of criticism in chapter one of John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding [1690]— he protested against them in order to return to the experiences that engendered ideas. These various occasions for becoming aware of the theoretical inadequacy of my conventional preconceptions about a history of 90

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ideas did not arise all at once and did not find immediate solutions. I would characterize the five years between 1945 and 1950 as a period of indecision, if not paralysis, in handling the problems that I saw but could not intellectually penetrate to my satisfaction. The work did not stop. I had to go on exploring sources, and the horizon grew even larger during the war, because China had become fashionable and the department decided that I, with my linguistic facility, would be elected to teach Chinese government. That threw me into the study of Chinese history; and because it was a bit difficult to talk about contemporary Chinese ideas without understanding their classical background, I started learning Chinese and learned enough to understand the symbols of the Classics, especially of Confucius and Lao-tse. This knowledge helped considerably in understanding Chinese thought. It is still helpful today, because I can recognize in the revolutionary operas propagated by Madame Mao Tse-tung the pattern of the ballet libretti of the Chou period, with the slight difference that the Chou authors celebrated the victory of the Chou Dynasty, whereas the modern revolutionary operas celebrate the victory of the revolutionary armies. Still, on the whole it was a period of theoretical paralysis with mounting problems for which I saw no immediate solutions. A breakthrough occurred on occasion of the Walgreen Lectures that I delivered in Chicago in 1951. Here I was forced, in comparatively brief form, to formulate some of the ideas that had begun to crystallize. I concentrated on the problem of representation and the relation of representation to social and personal existence in truth. It was obvious that a Soviet government, for instance, was not in power by virtue of representative elections in the Western sense and nevertheless was the representative of the Russian people—but by virtue of what? This question I called at the time the problem of existential representation. This existential representation I found to be always the core of effective government, independent of the formal procedures by which the existentially representative government achieved its position. In a comparatively primitive society where the mass of the people is incapable of rational debate and of forming political parties who select issues, a government will rest on traditional or revolutionary forces without benefit of elections. That the govern91

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ment is tolerated is the result of its fulfilling more or less adequately the fundamental purposes for which any government is established—the securing of domestic peace, the defense of the realm, the administration of justice, and taking care of the welfare of the people. If these functions are fulfilled moderately well, the procedures by which the government comes into power are of secondary importance. This existential representation, then, I found empirically supplemented in historically existing societies by a claim to “transcendental” representation, as I called it at the time. By “transcendental representation” I meant the symbolization of the governmental function as representative of divine order in the cosmos. That is the fundamental symbolism, going back to the ancient Near Eastern empires where the king was the representative of the people before the god and of the god before the people. Nothing has changed in this fundamental structure of governmental order, not even in the modern ideological empires. The only difference is that the god whom the government represents has been replaced by an ideology of history that now the government represents in its revolutionary capacity. The difference just mentioned had to be expressed in theoretical categories. For several years I had been aware, through my studies in the history of Christianity and the Middle Ages, of various sectarian movements not too clearly described with regard to their attitudes and beliefs. During the 1940s and 1950s, I became gradually aware that besides Classic philosophy and revelatory Christianity, as represented by the main church, there existed symbolizations of fundamental creeds that were classified as gnostic by experts in the field. So far as I remember, I became aware of the problem of Gnosticism and its application to modern ideological phenomena for the first time through the introduction of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Prometheus, published in 1937. Ever since the 1930s a considerable literature on Gnosticism had been growing, and incidental remarks concerning modern parallelisms were to be found here and there. I discovered that the continuity of Gnosticism from antiquity into the modern period was a matter of common knowledge among the better scholars of the eighteenth and the early nineteenth century. I should like to mention the great work by Ferdinand Christian Baur on Die christliche Gnosis: oder, die christliche Religionsphilosophie in ihrer geschichtlichen 92

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Entwicklung of 1835. Baur unfolded the history of Gnosticism from the original Gnosis of antiquity, through the Middle Ages, right into the philosophy of religion of Jakob Böhme, Schelling, Schleiermacher, and Hegel. I want to stress that Gnosticism, as well as its history from antiquity to the present, is the subject of a vastly developed science, and that the idea of interpreting contemporary phenomena as gnostic is not as original as it may look to the ignoramuses who have criticized me for it. Generally I should like to remark that if I had discovered for myself all the historical and philosophical problems for which I am criticized by intellectuals, I would be without a doubt the greatest philosopher in the history of mankind. Before publishing anything on the applicability of gnostic categories to modern ideologies, I consulted with our contemporary authorities on Gnosticism, especially with Henri Charles Puech in Paris and Gilles Quispel in Utrecht. Puech considered it a matter of course that modern ideologies are gnostic speculations; and Quispel brought the Gnosticism of Jung, in which he was especially interested, to my attention. Since my first applications of Gnosticism to modern phenomena in The New Science of Politics and in 1959 in my study on Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, I have had to revise my position. The application of the category of Gnosticism to modern ideologies, of course, stands. In a more complete analysis, however, there are other factors to be considered in addition. One of these factors is the metastatic apocalypse deriving directly from the Israelite prophets, via Paul, and forming a permanent strand in Christian sectarian movements right up to the Renaissance. An excellent exposition of this continuity is found in Norman Cohn’s The Pursuit of the Millennium [1957]. I found, furthermore, that neither the apocalyptic nor the gnostic strand completely accounts for the process of immanentization. This factor has independent origins in the revival of neo-Platonism in Florence in the late fifteenth century. The attempt to regain an understanding of cosmic order through a revival of neo-Platonism miscarried; a revival of the divine order in the cosmos in the ancient sense would have required a revival of the pagan gods, and that did not work. What was left of the intracosmic divine order that the neo-Platonists tried to revive was an immanent order of 93

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reality—an immanentism that had to become secularist when, as today, following the pagan gods, the Christian God has been thrown out, too. Hence, the experiences that result in immanentist constructions had to be explored. As historical phenomena, they are not unknown. Perhaps the most important one is the removal of the amor Dei from the Augustinian structure of the soul by Hobbes, and the reduction of its ordering force to the amor sui. This reduction to the amor sui then became dominant in the eighteenth century through the psychology of the amour-de-soi developed by the French moralistes. Although there is no doubt about the phenomenon as such, its interpretation is difficult because the conventional philosophical terminology has accepted the premises of the new reductionist position—that the position is reductionist does not come to analytical and critical attention. Only in recent years have I developed the concept of the egophanic revolt,1 in order to designate the concentration on the epiphany of the ego as the fundamental experience that eclipses the epiphany of God in the structure of Classic and Christian consciousness. I had already used the term apocalypse of man to cover this problem in The New Science of Politics. On that occasion I wanted to stress the discovery of human possibilities that characterizes the modern period. No doubt this discovery was made, but stressing the discovery alone would not take into account its reductionist context. The discovery of man had to be paid for by the death of God, as this phenomenon was called by Hegel and Nietzsche. The term egophanic revolt, distinguishing this experience of the exuberant ego from the experience of the theophanic constitution of humanity, is the best I can do terminologically at present. The term metastatic apocalypse will require a little explanation. I had to develop the term on occasion of the study of the Israelite prophets. In the prophecy of Isaiah we run into the oddity that Isaiah counseled the King of Judah not to rely on the fortifications of Jerusalem and the strength of his army but on his faith in Yahweh. If the king would have true faith, God would do the rest by producing an epidemic or a panic among the enemy, and the danger to the city would dissolve. The king had common 1. Cf. Ecumenic Age, chap. 5, §2, “The Egophanic Revolt” [CW, vol. 17].

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sense enough not to follow the advice of the prophet but rather to rely on fortifications and military equipment. Still, there was the prophet’s assumption that through an act of faith the structure of reality could be effectively changed. In studying this problem and trying to understand it, my first idea, of course, was that the prophet indulged in magic, or at least believed in magic. That would not have been surprising, because in the history of Israel it had been the function of prophets, for instance, to guide the hand of the king in shooting a bow against the enemy as a magical operation that would result in victory. What happened in the case of Isaiah would have been what in modern psychology, by Nietzsche or Freud, would be called a [95], (65) sublimation of the more primitive physical magic. Still, I felt uneasy about it, and I consulted about the matter especially with Gerhard von Rad in Heidelberg, who was horrified at the idea that Lines: 426 t a grandiose spiritual prophet like Isaiah should be a magician. I ——— was so impressed by his attitude that I made a concession. I did not * 127.8600 use the term magic for the practice advised by Isaiah but coined ——— a new term to characterize the peculiar sublimated magic belief Normal Pag in a transfiguration of reality through an act of faith. And this * PgEnds: Pag kind of faith I called metastatic faith—the belief in a metastasis of reality through an act of faith. I am not so sure that today I would make this concession, because this kind of faith is indeed [95], (65) magic, though one has to distinguish this “sublimated” variety from a more primitive magical operation. If one would really draw a hard line of difference between magic and metastatic faith, I am afraid the factor they have in common—the attempt to produce a desired result by means outside of the cause-effect relations in nature—would be smudged.

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18 Alfred Schütz and the Theory of Consciousness

[96], (66) An important development in my understanding of the problems that worried me throughout the 1940s and well into the writing of Order and History was marked by my correspondence with Alfred Schütz on the problems of consciousness. They were not published until 1966 as the first part of my volume on Anamnesis. The correspondence with Schütz was precipitated by reading Edmund Husserl’s Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften. Husserl’s study interested me greatly because of its magnificent sweep of history from Descartes to his own work. It also irritated me considerably because of the somewhat naïve arrogance of a philosopher who believed that his method of phenomenology had at last opened what he called the apodictic horizon of philosophy and that from now on everybody who wanted to be a solid philosopher had to be a follower of Husserl. This arrogance reminded me a bit too strongly of various other final philosophies like those of Hegel or Marx and also of the conviction of National Socialists that theirs was the ultimate truth. I was especially disgusted by Husserl’s language presumption in speaking of himself as the functionary of the spirit, because such language reminded me of recent experiences with functionaries of another sort. In continuation of my earlier analysis of consciousness in Über die Form des amerikanischen Geistes, I now went into an elaborative criticism of Husserl’s conception of consciousness, the decisive point being that his model of consciousness was the sense perception of objects in the external world. While one could agree to the sophistication of analysis that he brought to bear on 96

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this model of perception, it seemed to me ridiculous to pretend that there was nothing to consciousness but the consciousness of objects of the external world. By that time, in 1942, I already knew enough about Classic, Patristic, and Scholastic philosophy to be aware that the philosophers who had founded philosophy on an analysis of consciousness were analyzing a few phenomena of consciousness besides the perception of objects in the external world. I went, therefore, into the question of what really were the experiences that form a man’s consciousness; and I did that by an anamnesis, a recollection of decisive experiences of my childhood. As a matter of fact, I wrote twenty brief sketches, each giving such an early experience, so that they added up to something like an intellectual autobiography up to the age of ten. The phenomena described were definitely phenomena of consciousness because they described my consciousness of various areas of reality as a child. And these experiences had very little to do with objects of sense perception. For instance, one of the experiences that had stuck firmly enough to be recollected forty years later was the story of the Monk of Heisterbach. Heisterbach was the ruin of a medieval monastery in the neighborhood of Königswinter where we frequently went for a Sunday excursion. The Monk of Heisterbach was a mythical monk who got lost, only to return after a thousand years and discover that these thousand years had passed for him like a single day. Such time concentrations and shortening, though obviously not problems of sense perception, constitute very relevant parts at least of my consciousness, even if they don’t of Husserl’s. In this manner, I went through such experiences as the anxieties and fascinations aroused by standing on the border of the known world with Hans Christian Andersen in one of his fairy tales and looking north into a mysterious horizon of infinity, or experiences of festival movements in the life of man that I felt when I watched passing steamers on the Rhine with their night parties, and so forth. These types of experience constitute consciousness; and this is the real consciousness a man has, unless somebody wants to insist that my childhood was entirely different from that of any other child in the history of mankind. These experiences of participation in various areas of reality constitute the horizon of existence in the world. The stress lies on experiences of reality in the plural, being 97

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open to all of them and keeping them in balance. This is what I understood as the philosopher’s attitude, and this is the attitude I found in the open existence of all great philosophers who by that time had come to my attention. To restore this openness of reality appeared to me to be the principal task of philosophy. The analysis of experiences required a technical vocabulary. Fortunately I did not have to develop it from scratch but gradually to learn it from other philosophers who had gone through the same process and already found the terms by which they could signify the analytical steps in the exploration of their experiences. The center of consciousness I found to be the experience of participation, meaning thereby the reality of being in contact with reality outside myself. This awareness of participation as the central problem was fortified by the analysis of myth conducted by the members of the Chicago Oriental Institute under the category of consubstantiality, developed by Henri and Henriette A. Frankfort and probably taken over from Lucien Levy-Bruhl. If man were not consubstantial with the reality that he experiences, he could not experience it. Among the philosophers, I found important confirmation from the radical empiricism of William James. James’s study on the question “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” (1904) struck me at the time, and still strikes me, as one of the most important philosophical documents of the twentieth century. In developing his concept of pure experience, James put his finger on the reality of the consciousness of participation, inasmuch as what he calls pure experience is the something that can be put into the context either of the subject’s stream of consciousness or of objects in the external world. This fundamental insight of James identifies the something that lies between the subject and object of participation as the experience. Later I found that the same type of analysis had been conducted on a much vaster scale by Plato, resulting in his concept of the metaxy—the In-Between. The experience is neither in the subject nor in the world of objects but In-Between, and that means In-Between the poles of man and of the reality that he experiences. The In-Between character of experience becomes of particular importance for the understanding of response to the movements of divine presence. For the experience of such movements is precisely not located in man’s stream of consciousness—man 98

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understood in the immanentist sense—but in the In-Between of the divine and the human. The experience is the reality of both divine and human presence, and only after it has happened can it be allocated either to man’s consciousness or to the context of divinity under the name of revelation. A good number of problems that plague the history of philosophy now became clear as hypostases of the poles of a pure experience in the sense of William James, or of the metaxy experiences in the sense of Plato. By hypostases I mean the fallacious assumption that the poles of the participatory experience are self-contained entities that form a mysterious contact on occasion of an experience. A mystery, to be sure, is there, but even a mystery can be clearly expressed by stressing the participatory reality of the experience as the site of consciousness and understanding the poles of the experience as its poles and not as self-contained entities. The problem of reality experienced thus becomes the problem of a flow of participatory reality in which reality becomes luminous to itself in the case of human consciousness. The term consciousness, therefore, could no longer mean to me a human consciousness that is conscious of a reality outside man’s consciousness, but had to mean the InBetween reality of the participatory pure experience that then analytically can be characterized through such terms as the poles of the experiential tension, and the reality of the experiential tension in the metaxy. The term luminosity of consciousness, which I am increasingly using, tries to stress this In-Between character of the experience as against the immanentizing language of a human consciousness, which, as a subject, is opposed to an object of experience. This understanding of the In-Between character of consciousness, as well as of its luminosity—which is the luminosity not of a subjective consciousness but of the reality that enters into the experience from both sides—results furthermore in a better understanding of the problem of symbols: Symbols are the language phenomena engendered by the process of participatory experience. The language symbols expressing an experience are not inventions of an immanentist human consciousness but are engendered in the process of participation itself. Language, therefore, participates in the metaxy character of consciousness. A symbol is neither a human conventional sign signifying a reality outside 99

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consciousness nor is it, as in certain theological constructions, a word of God conveniently transmitted in the language that the recipient can understand; rather, it is engendered by the divinehuman encounter and participates, therefore, as much in divine as in human reality. This seems to me, for the moment at least, the best formulation of the problem that plagues various symbolist philosophers—the problem that symbols do not simply signify a divine reality beyond consciousness but are somehow the divine reality in its presence itself. But I am afraid I have not yet completely worked out the details of this participatory philosophy of symbolism.

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19 Order and Disorder

Frequently questions are raised concerning the meaning of order and disorder in my analysis. The reality of order is not my discovery. I am speaking of the order in reality discovered by mankind as far back as we have any written records, and now even further back as we become familiar with the symbols in monuments discovered by archaeologists as far back as the Paleolithicum. By order is meant the structure of reality as experienced as well as the attunement of man to an order that is not of his making— i.e., the cosmic order. These insights into the structure and into the problem of adjustment or attunement, as I said, are present in literary documents as far back as the Egyptian third millennium b.c. To the same Egyptian millennium b.c. go back the literary expressions of experience of disorder, as in the development of radical skepticism regarding cosmic order when the daily experience was that of murderous disorder in the streets—as for instance in the famous Dialogue of a Suicide with His Soul, which I analyzed in my study on “Immortality: Experience and Symbol.”1 In such experiences of social and cosmic disorder, order is reduced to one’s own person and is perhaps not to be found even there; these experiences produce certain extreme states of alienation in which death may appear as the release from a prison or as convalescence from the mortal disease of life. Practically nothing has changed in these fundamental symbolisms of alienation since the third millennium b.c. The categorization of these experiences of disorder, however, occurred fairly late. The concept of alienation (allotriosis), so far 1. First published in 1967; reprinted in CW, vol. 12, chap. 3.

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as I know, was first created by the Stoics and later extensively used by Plotinus. In the Stoic psychopathology, allotriosis means a state of withdrawal from one’s own self as constituted by the tension toward the divine ground of existence. Since the divine ground of existence is in Classic as well as in Stoic philosophy the logos or the source of order in this world, the withdrawal from one’s self as constituted by this ordering force is a withdrawal from reason in existence. The result will then be the use of reason, which man has after all, for the purpose of justifying existence in the state of alienation. This far even the Stoics had advanced the psychopathology of alienation. The Stoic categories can be applied to modern ideological phenomena in which the state of alienation, rather than the state of existence in tension toward the divine ground, is used as the experiential basis for an understanding of reality. The systems of thinkers like Hegel are systematizations of a state of alienation; inevitably they must arrive at the death of God, not because God is dead but because divine reason has been rejected in the egophanic revolt. One cannot revolt against God without revolting against reason and vice versa. These interpretations of reality on the basis of a deformed existence that is no longer open to the reality of the ground, and has therefore to remove the experience of the ground from any consideration of reality, result in typical phenomena. The most important such phenomenon is of course the construction of systems. The system is a distinctly modern phenomenon, though its modernity has been obscured by a climate of opinion in which the system as the mode of philosophical thinking is taken so thoroughly for granted that the reality of nonsystematic philosophizing has been eclipsed. One speaks flatly, without thinking, of a Platonic or Aristotelian system, or of a Thomasic system, in spite of the fact that these thinkers would have raised their hands in horror at the idea that their empirical exploration of reality could ever result in a system. If anything was ever clear to a thinker like Plato, who knew to distinguish between the experiences of being and of not-being and acknowledged them both, it was that for better or for worse reality was not a system. If therefore one constructs a system, inevitably one has to falsify reality. One of the important objects of inquiry concerning modern politics would have to be an inventory of the 102

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phenomena of systematic falsification, because they are a highly important factor of disorder in the contemporary situation. But the resistance to such inquiries is of course formidable, because precisely the persons who should engage in them are, as a group, the ones who would first have to discard their own systematic thought as a falsification of reality. And that, of course, they are not inclined to do. Still, the pressure of expanding historical knowledge, both with regard to political history and to the history of intellectual and spiritual phenomena, is increasing so strongly that one can reasonably predict (barring major social catastrophes that would bring a totalitarian systematizing sect to power) that the days of the systematizers and their disordering falsification of reality are numbered.

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20 The Background of Order and History

My History of Political Ideas started from the conventional assumptions that there are ideas, that they have a history, and that a history of political ideas would have to work its way from classical politics up to the present. Under these assumptions, I humbly worked through the sources, and eventually a manuscript of several thousand pages was in existence.1 Still, the various misgivings that had arisen in the course of the work now crystallized into my understanding that a history of political ideas was a senseless undertaking, incompatible with the present state of science. Ideas turned out to be a secondary conceptual development, beginning with the Stoics, intensified in the high Middle Ages, and radically unfolding since the eighteenth century. Ideas transform symbols, which express experiences, into concepts—which are assumed to refer to a reality other than the reality experienced. And this reality other than the reality experienced does not exist. Hence, ideas are liable to deform the truth of the experiences and their symbolization. The points at which misgivings had to arise are obvious. In the first place, there is no continuity between the so-called ideas of the Greek philosophers from the seventh to the fourth century b.c. and the contents of Israelite prophetic and New Testament revelatory writings. These two symbolizations touch different areas of experience and are not historically connected. Moreover, the further one traces back the conventional origin of ideas, the more it becomes clear that such symbolisms as myth and revelation can by no stretch of the imagination be classified as “ideas.” 1. The History of Political Ideas is now published in CW, vols. 19–26.

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One must acknowledge a plurality of symbolisms. A Hesiodian theogony, for instance, is simply not a philosophy in the Aristotelian sense, even though the structure of reality expressed by myth and philosophy is the same—a sameness of structure already recognized by Aristotle. Problems were arising that I tried to express through such concepts as “compact,” or “primary experience of the cosmos,” and the “differentiations” that lead to the truth of existence in the Hellenic Classic, the Israelite, and the early Christian sense. In order to characterize the decisive transition from compact to differentiated truth in the history of consciousness, I used, at the time, the term leap in being, taking the term leap from Kierkegaard’s Sprung. The focus of my interest thus moved from ideas to the experiences of reality that engendered a variety of symbols for their articulation. That is not to say that the problem of ideas now simply disappeared. Of course it was very much present, but I only gradually found out what it was. An important point, for instance, which grew in clarity over the years, was the understanding that the transformation of original experiences-symbolizations into doctrines entailed a deformation of existence, if the contact with the reality as experienced was lost and the use of the language symbols engendered by the original experiences degenerated into a more or less empty game. Some of the most obvious things about this deformation I discovered rather late, only in the 1950s and 1960s. I had not been clearly aware, for instance, that the term metaphysics is not a Greek term but an Arabic deformation of the Greek title of Aristotle’s meta ta physica; that it had been taken over from the Arabs by Thomas and used for the first time in a Western language in the introduction to his Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics; and that ever since there existed an odd science that was called metaphysics. Hence, the not-quite unjustified criticism of such doctrinal metaphysics by the thinkers of the Enlightenment and early positivism did not touch the problems of Classic philosophy at all. Classic philosophy was not too well known at the time; and it is still little known today, because the cliché metaphysics has become the magic word by which one can cast a shadow on all philosophical analysis in the Classic sense. I had to give up “ideas” as objects of a history and establish the experience of reality—personal, social, historical, cosmic—as the 105

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reality to be explored historically. These experiences, however, one could explore only by exploring their articulation through symbols. The identification of the subject matter and, with the subject matter, of the method to be used in its exploration led to the principle that lies at the basis of all my later work: the reality of experience is self-interpretive. The men who have the experiences express them through symbols, and symbols are the key to understanding the experiences expressed. There is no sense in pretending that the Egyptian priests, for instance, who wrote the Theology of Memphis or the Mesopotamian priests who developed the Sumerian King-List were not able to articulate experiences clearly because they had other problems than a Voltaire, or a Comte, or a Hegel. What is experienced and symbolized as reality, in an advancing process of differentiation, is the substance of history. My work on the History of Political Ideas had not been done in vain, because it had familiarized me with the historical sources. But now the reorganization of the materials under the aspect of experience and symbolization became necessary. Hence, I gave up the project of a History of Political Ideas and started my own work on Order and History.2 At the time, it seemed to me that Order and History had to begin with the Mesopotamian and Egyptian empires and their cosmological symbolization of personal and social order. Against this background of cosmological, imperial symbolism occurred the breakthrough of Israelite revelation. Not in continuity with the pneumatic prophets but independently, there occurred the outburst of noetic thinking in the Greek philosophers. The study of the Near Eastern and Israelite experiences down to the period of Christ filled the first volume of Order and History, and the evolution of the corresponding Greek experiences from the cosmological origins to the noetic differentiation filled volumes 2 and 3. According to the original plan, these volumes were to have been followed by studies on empire, medieval imperialism and spiritualism, and the modern development. That plan, however, proved unrealizable. Considerable parts of it were in fact written, but the work broke down on the question of volume. I always ran into the problem that, in order to arrive 2. Order and History consists of vols. 14–18 of the present edition.

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at theoretical formulations, I had first to present the materials on which the theoretical formulations were based as an analytical result. If I went through with the program, the sequel to the first three volumes would have been not another three volumes as planned but perhaps six or seven volumes more. The general public was unfamiliar with the sources that led to certain theoretical insights, so the theoretical insights could not be presented without the sources. I decided, therefore, to make a number of special studies on certain problems of early Christianity; the mytho-speculative form of historiogenesis; the transition from historiogenetic speculation to historiography; the problem of the ecumene as developed by Herodotus, Polybius, and the Chinese historians; certain modern theoretical problems, such as the sorcery involved in Hegel’s construction of his system; and so forth. It seemed to make better sense to publish two volumes with these special studies, arriving more quickly at the theoretical results, than to fill numerous volumes with discussions of sources, especially since over the years what I had seen in the 1940s and 1950s as a problem had also been seen by others, and the historical exploration of such problems as Gnosticism, the Dead Sea scrolls, the Nag Hammadi finds, the prehistory of Pseudo-Dionysius, the revival of neo-Platonism in the Renaissance and its influences on subsequent intellectual Western developments up to Hegel, had made enormous progress, so that now I could refer to the studies of the sources conducted by a great number of scholars—sources that had not been accessible to the public in the 1940s and 1950s when I first developed the conception of Order and History. I want to stress the development just mentioned, because it could not be foreseen at the time I started my work. We are living today in a period of progress in the historical and philosophical sciences that hardly has a parallel in the history of mankind. As a matter of fact, a number of the theoretical assumptions from which I started when I began to write Order and History have become obsolete through this rapid development of the historical sciences, especially in the fields of prehistory and archeology. When I wrote the first volume of Order and History, my horizon was still limited by the Near Eastern empires. I identified the cosmological symbolism that I found there with the imperial 107

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symbolism of Mesopotamia and Egypt. On the basis of the new expansion of our prehistoric and archeological knowledge, I can now say that practically all of the symbols that appear in the ancient Near East have a prehistory reaching through the Neolithicum back into the Paleolithicum, for a period of some twenty thousand years before the Near Eastern empires. There has arisen the new problem of disengaging the general problem of cosmological symbolism from its specific, imperial variation; the cosmological symbolisms on the tribal level, back to the Stone Age, must be analyzed; and then the differentia specifica, introduced by the foundation of empires, as for instance in Egypt, must be distinguished. I have collected the materials for this purpose; and I hope to publish my findings sometime in the future.3 Another great advance in science that had been in the making for many decades has more recently found its decisive support through the recalibration of radiocarbon dates, beginning in 1966. The conception of a unilinear history, which had already been quite shaky in view of the chronologically parallel developments in the Near East, China, India, and Hellas, now definitely breaks down when the temple cultures in Malta, for instance, can be dated substantial periods of time before the Pyramid Age in Egypt. Independent neolithic civilizations precede in time the imperial civilizations in the Mesopotamian and Egyptian areas. Findings of this nature are accumulating in such quantities that one can say definitely even now that the older conception of a unilinear history, which still dominates the vulgarian level in the form of epigonal constructions in the wake of Condorcet, Comte, Hegel, and Marx, is definitely obsolete. The history of mankind has become diversified, because the differentiating developments were so widely dispersed. The field can be characterized as pluralistic. The progress, or general advance, of an imaginary abstract “mankind” has dissolved into the manifold of differentiating acts occurring at various points in time and independently in concrete human beings and societies. The possibility of civilizational advance through cultural diffusion has not been excluded by these new aspects of history, but the problem must be pushed back to a much earlier period. As 3. Alas, a hope not fulfilled.

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Carl Hentze once said to me in a conversation, if the history of articulate expression of experiences goes back for fifty thousand years, anything can have happened in that time; what can be found by way of cultural parallels in the so-called historical period after 3000 b.c. must be seen against the vast background of human social contacts in such time spans. To give an example: We have by now an excellent literature on Polynesian cultures, their art, and their myth. What is sometimes not realized is the fact that the Polynesians did not spring from the earth on the Polynesian islands but migrated there from the Asiatic mainland. This migration hardly began before the eighth century b.c. Hence, before that time the tribal developments that today we call Polynesian [109], (79) and other tribal developments that resulted in the rise of Chinese civilization belonged to the same area of culture. It is not surprising, therefore—as again Hentze observes—that there are highly Lines: 504 t interesting parallels between ornaments of Polynesian origin and ——— ornaments on the vases of the Shang Dynasty. 0.0pt PgV The splendid advance of science in our time should not, how——— ever, induce rash expectations regarding the death of ideologies Normal Pag and their social effectiveness. The discrepancies between science * PgEnds: Pag and ideology are of long standing. As a matter of fact, certain ideological tenets were developed in flat contradiction to ordinary historical facts well known at the time and especially to [109], (79) the ideological thinkers. When Marx and Engels, for instance, begin their Communist Manifesto with the proposition that all social history hitherto has been the history of class struggle, they are talking impertinent nonsense, because there were, after all, other struggles in history, well known to Marx and Engels from their high school days, such as the Persian Wars, the conquests of Alexander, the Peloponnesian War, the Punic Wars, and the expansion of the Roman empire, which had definitely nothing to do with class struggles. If ideologists can make such propagandistic nonsense statements and get away with them for more than a century, one should not expect the expansion of our historical knowledge through science to make a dent in the corrupt existence of the ideological epigone in our own time. These last remarks, however, should not be understood as expressing a profound pessimism. That happens to be an eighteenth-century mood and is today somewhat anachronistic. 109

21 Teaching Career

In addition to the actual work in science in which I try to participate as far as my powers permit, I have for fifty years functioned as a teacher. My teaching experience started in high school. Since we were poor, I had to get some minimum pocket money by way of tutoring other high school students who were the children of more affluent parents but did not match their material affluence with intelligence and industriousness. This kind of work continued until I finished high school. When I started work at the university, I had the good luck of getting a job as a volunteer assistant in the Handelsvereinigung-Ost, an Austrian-Ukrainian enterprise that had grown out of the occupation of the Ukraine by the Central European powers during World War I. One of the students whom I had tutored was the son of the secretary general of the Chamber of Commerce in Vienna, who saw to it that I got this job, which, though very low paying, enabled me to continue my studies. Very soon after I got acquainted with the professors at the university in seminars, there opened up the possibility of a teaching position, with a very, very small salary, at the Volkshochschule Wien-Volksheim. This institution was an adult education project sponsored by the Socialist government of the city of Vienna, where the students were the intellectually more alert and industrious radicals from the workers’ environment. I must stress the “intellectually more alert,” because the less-alert stratum of workers entering the political process was of course taken care of by the trade-union training courses. The Volkshochschule was something like a university for workers as well as lower-middleclass young people. In this environment I learned to discuss and debate. At the time 110

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I accepted the job, I had already gone far beyond my three months of Marxism in the summer of 1919, and now I was facing these rather radical Socialists, most of them probably outright Communists. Since the subjects I had to teach were political science and the history of ideas, wild debates immediately ensued in which I could not give in or I would have lost my authority. During these years a permanent good relationship developed between the young radicals and myself, and I continued this kind of work after I came back from America and France in 1927, until I was removed by the National Socialists in 1938. Though the conflict between the young Marxists and my first attempts at being a scientifically oriented scholar was always strongly articulate, the personal relations were the best. After the lecture and seminar hours in the evening, after nine o’clock, the group always got together and continued the discussions in one of the numerous coffeehouses in the neighborhood. I still remember a scene in the 1930s when, after a wild debate resulting in disagreement, one of these young fellows, not so very much younger than I was myself, with tears in his eyes told me, “And when we come to power we have to kill you.” This little incident is perhaps the occasion for another story that characterizes the Austrian social climate. After the Social Democratic uprising in 1934, certain Social Democratic leaders were arrested and put in jail for a short while, not for very long. But one of them, the famous Max Adler, their chief ideologist, was not arrested. That was a horrible blow to his self-esteem, because now the government had attested what everybody knew—that he was politically an entirely unimportant figure. Friends of Max Adler, who after all was a colleague of mine in the Law Faculty, asked me on occasion whether I could not do something through my equally good relations with the other side to get him arrested for a little while, so that he would not be so terribly sad and downhearted. I actually talked with one of my colleagues, who was a high government official and was at the same time teaching administrative law at the university, and asked whether the government could not arrest Adler for at least the forty-eight hours permitted under the habeas corpus provisions before they had to release him. We talked about the matter; he was very obliging and courteous. He said that he understood Adler’s situation perfectly well, and since 111

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he was also a colleague of his in the same faculty he would like to do what he could to accommodate him, but he was afraid no one could do anything. If Adler were arrested, the government would make itself ridiculous, because everybody knew that Max Adler was unimportant. He really could not oblige him. My good relations with these young radicals lasted well into the Nazi period. They became even more intense in the 1930s because everybody knew that if I was not a Communist, I was still less a National Socialist. When the blow of the occupation fell, I was able to help some of these radicals with letters of recommendation for their flight to safer areas, like Sweden. At the University of Vienna, however, where I began to teach as a Privatdozent in 1929, relations with the students were fraught with tensions because these students came from middle-class homes, they were not workers, and the intellectually more active ones were to a considerable degree affected by the German nationalism rampant in that middle class, as well as by anti-Semitism. There were no open conflicts, but relations were not warm. In 1938, when the National Socialist occupation came, I observed that quite a number of the students whom the day before I had had in my seminar on administrative procedure donned the black uniform of the SS. For a real experience with Central European students, as distinguished from young worker-radicals, I can speak only for the years of my professorship in Munich from 1958 to 1969. Because I had been called to Munich to organize a hitherto nonexistent Institute of Political Science, I had to acquire first of all a couple of assistants who would help in building up a library and taking care of the quite considerable number of students who flocked into the lecture courses and the seminars. From these beginnings, with a number of completely empty rooms that had to be filled with library shelves and books on the shelves, there developed the institute that lasted until I left in 1969. Gradually a body of students grew who themselves became an educative force for other students attracted to political science. The results of these eleven years must be described as a considerable success. In the first place, there was the institute as a physical establishment, with a first-rate library—a collection that covered new developments in the historical sciences, not only in German but above all 112

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in English and French. Special attention was given to the various areas that are basic for the understanding of Western culture—that is, to Classic philosophy, Judaism, and Christianity; the sections on modern history and modern political ideas had to be brought up to date as quickly as possible; and new developments in prehistory, in the ancient Near East, China, India, and Africa, as well as new archeological discoveries, had to be taken care of. The library became famous and was extensively used by young scholars from other fields because it was the best all-around library for developments in the contemporary sciences of man and society. The young people also did well, and we began publishing monographs representing the work of the institute. The most important of these series is the Schriftenreihe zur Politik und Geschichte, published by the List Verlag in Munich, now running over ten volumes. Of the areas and problems covered, I mention the work by Peter Weber-Schaefer on the Chinese ecumene, by Peter J. Opitz on Lao-tse, and by Peter von Sivers on the political theories of Ibn-Khaldun. There were further studies dealing mostly with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western intellectual history, and monographs by Manfred Henningsen on Toynbee’s A Study of History, by Michael Naumann on Karl Kraus, by Eckard Kolberg on LaSalle, by Hedda Herwig on Freud and Jung, by Tilo Schabert on the symbolisms of nature and revolution in the French eighteenth century, and by Dagmar Herwig on Robert Musil. To these years also belongs the work by Professor Ellis Sandoz on Dostoevsky, whose book first came out as a Ph.D. dissertation in Munich.1 During the ten years, the first-comers in the institute grew older and became independent. Three of them—Peter J. Opitz, Manfred Henningsen, and Jürgen Gebhardt—became the highly active editors of a paperback Geschichte des politischen Denkens, of which some eleven volumes have come out by now. Peter Opitz has also become the editor of a volume of collected essays on Chinese revolution from the middle of the nineteenth century to the Communist movement. Others who entered the institute later from other fields have also produced interesting new studies. I should like to mention Klaus Vondung and his 1. Political Apocalypse: A Study of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, 2nd ed. (1971; Wilmington, Del.: Intercollegiate Studies Institute Books, 2000).

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book on Magie und Manipulation. The older ones among the younger people who started working with me are now themselves in professional positions, or near them, and the aggregate of the group and its work has become a distinct force on the German intellectual scene—though I cannot say that this particular group and its force are loved by the ideologists, left or right. I am frequently asked about my experiences regarding the difference between European and American students. There are marked differences but not of such a nature that I should say that one type is preferable to the other. They have their peculiarities. With the Germans, I found a very high degree of background knowledge that facilitated their progress to independent work in science. The people whom I admitted to my seminars, and especially the ones who became assistants and conducted their own seminars, had a knowledge of at least one Classical language and of course were able to read German, French, and English fluently. Some of them had additional knowledge of languages in their particular field. The Islamists, for instance, had under the regulations of the university to have a good knowledge of Arabic and Turkish; the students dealing with Far Eastern affairs had to know Chinese and Japanese in addition to the Western languages. That made for a group of highly educated, intellectually alert young people who certainly helped each other in the sharp contest of competitive debate of problems. One of their favorite games, of course, was to catch me out on some technical mistake, but unfortunately I could offer them the pleasure only rarely. The American students belonged to widely different types. In Louisiana there was a considerable cultural background provided by the Catholic parochial schools. I had students in my courses who knew Latin and who took courses in Thomist philosophy with the Catholic chaplain at Louisiana State University. That of course helped. The average students, I should say, did not have the background knowledge one would expect of European students, but they had instead something that the European, especially the German, students usually lack—a tradition of common-sense culture. In the South especially, the problem of ideological corruption among young people was negligible. The students were open-minded and had little contact with ideological sectarian movements. My experiences in the East were less favorable. The 114

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ideological corruption of the East Coast has affected the student mind profoundly, and occasionally these students betray the behavioral characteristics of totalitarian aggressiveness. A great number of students simply will not tolerate information that is not in agreement with their ideological prejudices. I frequently had difficulties with students of this type. Still, on the whole, even the so-called radical students, short of the hard-core militants, can be handled by swamping them with mountains of information. They still have enough common sense to be aware that their own ideas must bear some relation to the reality surrounding them; and when it is brought home to them that their picture of reality is badly distorted, they do not become easy converts but at least they begin to have second thoughts. I cannot say the same of radical students in Germany, who simply start shouting and rioting if any serious attempt is made to bring into discussion facts that are incompatible with their preconceptions. During the years in Louisiana, my wife and I acquired our American citizenship. There was an amusing detail. The Department of Justice, in charge of immigration procedures, had issued a little book that formulated the principal questions that could be asked and the answers one had to give. I noticed that the Department of Justice, in spite of Roosevelt and the war, was still quite conservative—the American form of government was a republic; if you said it was a democracy you were wrong. I believe these questionnaire leaflets have by now been changed. So far as my faculty position in Louisiana is concerned, I advanced from associate professor to full professor with tenure, and ultimately I became one of the first Boyd Professors, together with T. Harry Williams, when the university introduced these professorships in order to pay higher salaries to some scholars whose services they wanted to retain. Still, when in the second half of the 1950s I was offered the professorship in Munich, I did not refuse. There were several reasons. In the first place, I could organize my own institute and train young scholars who would continue the work that I had initiated. Second, at the time the salary in Munich was higher than the salary in Louisiana. Third, old friends like Alois Dempf, the historian and philosopher, had been highly instrumental in getting me to Munich, and I certainly had no objections to entering this very congenial intellectual and 115

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spiritual environment. Besides, the spirit of American democracy would be a good thing to have in Germany. Under this last aspect, the beginnings were a bit difficult, because German students were not accustomed to speak up freely as American students do. Even those who became assistants had to be pushed very energetically into an attitude of personal independence that differed starkly from the very subordinate position in which assistants are kept in numerous cases by the old-style German professor. Not the least point of attraction the institute had for me was the group of young people who so signally differed in the behavior that I inculcated in them from the type of behavior preferred in other institutes in Munich. On the whole, however, I believe that the idea of injecting an element of international consciousness, and of democratic attitudes, into German political science has not been much of a success beyond the immediate circle of young people that I could train personally. As I later analyzed the situation in my lecture on the German university,2 the damage of National Socialism has been enormous. What one might call the universitarian upper stratum was simply killed off, partly through actual murder, so that the type of professors whom I met in 1929 in Heidelberg simply disappeared without leaving a younger generation trained by them. However, the universitarian middle and lower class survived in force; they now determine the general climate of the German universities, and that climate is mediocre and limited. The after-effects of National Socialism make themselves felt in the contemporary destruction of the German university through an invasion of the rabble from below to which the university personnel cannot offer any effective resistance because the authority of the great scholars in the universities disappeared with the scholars themselves. The general prospects, therefore, I consider very dubious. When I say the prospects are dubious, I mean that in fact the active operation of the universities, especially in the fields of the social sciences and the humanities, has been widely destroyed through the famous democratization, especially through the participatory democracy, which means in fact that nobody is permitted to do his work in peace. In a case like Berlin, for instance, 2. First published in 1966; English trans., 1985; reprinted in CW, vol. 12, as chap. 1; cf. also Hitler and the Germans, CW, vol. 31.

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leftist students simply do not permit anybody who is not a Marxist to open his mouth; and I hear that a similar situation exists in places like Marburg. Munich was fortunately preserved from the worst effects, partly because my institute there was a stronghold of nonideological science. I should like to stress this point because people sometimes underrate the effect a professor can have, not by throwing his weight around but by educating in his courses and seminars two or three annual classes of students who then become an effective propaganda force against ideologists among the other students. That of course will wear off if an energetic attitude is not maintained, or if it is made ineffective by rapidly increasing the staff, so that the institute becomes dominated by mediocre people who cannot properly resist radical students in debate.

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22 Why Philosophize? To Recapture Reality!

[118], (88 The motivations of my work, which culminates in a philosophy of history, are simple. They arise from the political situation. Anybody with an informed and reflective mind who lives in the twentieth century since the end of the First World War, as I did, finds himself hemmed in, if not oppressed, from all sides by a flood of ideological language—meaning thereby language symbols that pretend to be concepts but in fact are unanalyzed topoi or topics. Moreover, anybody who is exposed to this dominant climate of opinion has to cope with the problem that language is a social phenomenon. He cannot deal with the users of ideological language as partners in a discussion, but he has to make them the object of investigation. There is no community of language with the representatives of the dominant ideologies. Hence, the community of language that he himself wants to use in order to criticize the users of ideological language must first be discovered and, if necessary, established. The peculiar situation just characterized is not the fate of the philosopher for the first time in history. More than once in history, language has been degraded and corrupted to such a degree that it no longer can be used for expressing the truth of existence. This was the situation, for instance, of Sir Francis Bacon when he wrote his Novum Organum. Bacon classified the unanalyzed topics current in his time as “idols”: the idols of the cave, the idols of the marketplace, the idols of pseudo-theoretical speculation. In resistance to the dominance of idols—i.e., of language symbols that have lost their contact with reality—one has to rediscover 118

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the experiences of reality as well as the language that will adequately express them. The situation today is not very different. One has only to remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s chapter on “Idols of the Marketplace” in Cancer Ward [chapter 31] in order to recognize the continuity of the problem. Solzhenitsyn had to fall back on Bacon and his conception of idols in order to defend the reality of Reason in his own existence against the impact of Communist dogma. I like to refer to the case of Solzhenitsyn because his awareness of the problem, as well as his competence as a philosopher in his reference to Bacon, is certainly a model that would, if followed, fundamentally change the intellectual climate of our universities and colleges. In relation to the dominant climate of the social sciences, the philosopher in America finds himself very much in the situation of Solzhenitsyn in relation to the Soviet Writer’s Union—the important difference, of course, being that our Soviet Writer’s Union cannot enlist governmental power for the purpose of suppressing scholars. Hence, there are always enclaves in the West in which science can continue, and even flourish, in spite of the intellectual terrorism of institutions such as the mass media, university departments, foundations, and commercial publishing houses. A situation comparable to the present one occurred at the time when Plato started his work. In the conventional interpretation of Plato, it is practically forgotten that the central Platonic concepts are dichotomic. The term philosophy does not stand alone but gains its meaning from its opposition to the predominant philodoxy. Problems of justice are not developed in the abstract but in opposition to wrong conceptions of justice, which in fact reflect the injustice current in the environment. The character of the Philosopher himself gains its specific meaning through its opposition to that of the Sophist, who engages in misconstructions of reality for the purpose of gaining social ascendance and material profits. This is the situation in which the philosopher has to find the men of his own kind in a community that comprehends both the present and the past. Although there is always a dominant climate of ideological opinion, there is also present, even in our society, a large community of scholars who have not lost contact with reality and of thinkers who try to regain the contact that they are 119

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in danger of losing. One of the typical phenomena of the twentieth century is the event of spiritually energetic people breaking out of the dominant intellectual group in order to find the reality that has been lost. Famous cases have been, for England, the breakout of George Orwell from his intellectual surroundings; in France, the breakout of Albert Camus from the Parisian intellectual environment; in Germany, the gigantic work of Thomas Mann in his effort to break out of the ideologies of the Wilhelminean period and the Weimar Republic, culminating in his great philosophy of history in the introduction to the Joseph novels. The most important means of regaining contact with reality is the recourse to thinkers of the past who had not yet lost reality, or who were engaged in the effort of regaining it. The question of where to start is frequently one of biographical accident. A man like Camus had recourse to the myth that was biographically closest to him through his education and upbringing in North Africa. A similar recourse to myth, as well as to Israelite revelation, is found in the work of Thomas Mann. In this last case, one can also discern where contemporary support for the effort originates, as in the relation between Thomas Mann and Karl Kerényi. Generally speaking, the reservoirs of reality in our society are to be found in the sciences that deal with intact experiences and symbolizations of reality, even if the sciences themselves have been badly damaged by the influence of the ideological climate. So far as my own experience is concerned, such areas are Classic philosophy and the works of students of Classic philosophy, such as Paul Friedländer, Werner Jäger, E. R. Dodds, or Bruno Snell. Another such area is Patristic and Scholastic philosophy, as well as the works of contemporary representatives such as Étienne Gilson and Henri de Lubac. A third area is the history of the ancient Near East. I have pointed to the influence I received from the Chicago Oriental Institute and from the vast advance of the study of ancient history during the last thirty years. A further area is comparative religion; I have mentioned the influences I received from students of Gnosticism, and generally of early comparative religion, like Mircea Eliade, Puech, and Quispel. More recently, there has been the study of early symbolisms, extending back to the Paleolithicum. On occasion I have remarked on the odd social phenomenon 120

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that our universities are sprinkled with scholars for whom the exploration of Stone Age symbolisms, neolithic civilizations, ancient civilizations, or the Classic Chinese or Hindu civilization, is the means of regaining a spiritual ground that they do not find on the dominant level of our universities and churches. The social problem just adumbrated is still far too little explored, but for its importance I can testify from my personal experience. As a student I was surrounded by the intellectual climate of neoKantian methodology. In the circle of the Pure Theory of Law in Vienna, a philosopher was a person who based his methodology on Kant; a historian was a person who read any books written before Kant. Hence, my interest in Classic philosophy, which was already marked at that time, was interpreted by my colleagues as historical interest and as an attempt to escape from the true philosophy represented by the neo-Kantian thinkers. This problem of reconstructing a society that includes as its members the great thinkers of the past inevitably brings to mind Machiavelli’s famous letter in which he describes to his friend Francesco Vettori [December 10, 1513] the course of his days in lowly occupations in the dubious rural society of San Casciano, then how, when evening comes, he dons festival garb, goes to his study, and joins the company of the ancients for urbane intercourse and conversation. Recapturing reality in opposition to its contemporary deformation requires a considerable amount of work. One has to reconstruct the fundamental categories of existence, experience, consciousness, and reality. One has at the same time to explore the technique and structure of the deformations that clutter up the daily routine; and one has to develop the concepts by which existential deformation and its symbolic expression can be categorized. This work, then, must be conducted not only in opposition to the deformed ideologies but also to deformations of reality by thinkers who ought to be its preservers, such as theologians. In the concrete effort to find one’s way through a maze of corrupt language toward reality and its adequate linguistic expression, certain rules emerge that are not always to the liking of our contemporary intellectuals. The methodologically first, and perhaps most important, rule of my work is to go back to the experiences that engender symbols. No language symbol today 121

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can be simply accepted as a bona fide symbol, because corruption has proceeded so far that everything is suspect. In the course of this effort, I found that I had to explore the meaning of philosophy as a symbol created by the Classic philosophers, its meaning to be determined on the basis of the text. Such changes of meaning as this symbol has suffered in the course of time then have to be determined with care by relating them to the original meaning, because only on the basis of such comparative studies can one judge whether the change of meaning is justified (because it takes into account aspects of reality that were not included in the original meaning) or whether the change of meaning is unjustified (because elements of reality have been excluded in order to construct a new, defective concept). This rule of analytical inquiry frequently arouses the opposition of intellectuals, as I have experienced in discussions, because they insist on the right to give to words whatever meanings they want. The existence of a standard based on the historical fact that words do not lie around in a language, but are created by thinkers for the expression of experiences when they have them, is fervently rejected. They prefer what I call the Humpty-Dumpty philosophy of language: Determining the meanings of words is an exercise of the intellectual’s power that must not be submitted to criticism. Considerable help in understanding the processes of deformation has come to me from the observation of these processes by the great Austrian novelists, especially Albert Paris Gütersloh, Robert Musil, and Heimito von Doderer. They coined the term second reality in order to signify the image of reality created by human beings when they exist in a state of alienation. The principal characteristic of this state of alienation, which is supported by the imaginative construction of second realities in opposition to the reality of experience, is what Doderer has called the “refusal to apperceive” (Apperzeptionsverweigerung). The concept appears in his novel Die Dämonen, and I always enjoy the fact that he developed it while discussing certain sexual aberrations. The concept of Apperzeptionsverweigerung is formally developed in the introductory remarks to the chapter on “Die dicken Damen”—fat ladies—who are preferred by one of his heroes. The refusal to apperceive has become for me the central concept for the understanding of ideological aberrations and deformations. 122

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It appears in a variety of phenomena, of which the historically most interesting is the formal interdict on questioning demanded by Comte and Marx. If anybody should question their ideological doctrine by raising the question of the divine ground of reality, he will be informed by Comte that he should not ask idle questions (“questions oiseuses”), and by Marx that he should shut up and become a “socialist man”: (“Denke nicht, frage mich nicht,” Don’t think, don’t ask me). This attitude of not permitting questions regarding their premises—questions that would immediately explode the system— is the general tactic employed by ideologists in discussion. In numerous conversations with Hegelians, for instance, I have always come to the point where I had to question the premises of alienated existence that lie at the basis of Hegel’s speculation. Whenever this question comes up, I am informed by the respective Hegelian that I don’t understand Hegel and that one can understand Hegel only if one accepts his premises without questioning them. If the interdict on questions is understood as the central tactic of all ideological debate, one has gained at least one important criterion for diagnosing an ideology: The purpose of the diagnosis is to determine which part of reality has been excluded in order to make the construction of a fake system possible. The realities excluded can vary widely, but the one item that always has to be excluded is the experience of man’s tension toward the divine ground of his existence. Once the consciousness of existential tension is recognized as the critical experience that an ideologist must exclude if he wants to make his own state of alienation compulsory for everybody, the problem of consciousness of this tension moves into the center of philosophical thought. The understanding of both Classic and Christian philosophy, as well as of ideological deformations of existence, presupposes the understanding of consciousness in the fullness of its dimensions. The characteristic of what may be called the “modern conception of consciousness” is the construction of consciousness by the model of sense perceptions of objects in external reality. This restriction of the model of consciousness to objects of external reality becomes the more or less hidden trick in the construction of systems in the nineteenth century. Even in the core of Hegel one can observe, in his Phenomenology, 123

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that he begins with sense perception and from this basis develops all higher structures of consciousness. The case is remarkable because Hegel was one of the greatest connoisseurs of the history of philosophy; he knew, of course, that the primary experiences of consciousness as they appear in the work of the Classic philosophers are not concerned with sense perceptions but with the experience of structures (as, for instance, mathematical structures) and the experience of the turning toward the divine ground of existence motivated by the pull exerted by this ground. I have not the slightest doubt that a man with Hegel’s historical knowledge deliberately ignored the immediate experiences of consciousness and replaced them with the highly abstract, and historically very late, models of perception of objects in the external world, in order to put over a system that expressed his state of alienation. I do not know of any passage in Hegel where he reflects on his technique of intellectual fraud, but the technique has become explicit in the work of Marx, in the Paris Manuscripts of 1844. If the experience of objects in the external world is absolutized as the structure of consciousness at large, all spiritual and intellectual phenomena connected with experiences of divine reality are automatically eclipsed. However, since they cannot be totally excluded—because after all they are the history of humanity— they must be deformed into propositions about a transcendental reality. This propositional deformation of the philosophers’ and prophets’ symbols is one of the important phenomena in the history of mankind. It is already highly developed in Scholastic philosophy, further hardened in the transition to modern metaphysics in Descartes, and then continued as a sort of secondary orthodoxy by the ideological thinkers. That propositional metaphysics is a deformation of philosophy, consistently continued in doctrinal ideology, I consider one of my more important findings. Once this problem is recognized, the question arises of why human beings engage in games of propositional metaphysics, as well as in the successor orthodoxies of propositional ideologies. What is the experiential motive of the great modern dogmatomachies from the sixteenth century onward, now going on for more than four hundred years without a return to the predogmatic reality of experienced insight? This question leads to the problem of alienation—i.e., the state 124

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of existence that expresses itself in the deformation of symbols into doctrines. The problem is, of course, not new. The deformations began in Classic antiquity as soon as the myth of the polis became an empty shell through the destruction by the empires of the society that had engendered the symbolism. With the Stoics and their observation of existential disorder in the wake of imperial conquest begins the understanding of alienation, expressing itself in the creation of the term allotriosis. The Stoics, being well-trained philosophers themselves, understood the phenomenon of alienation quite well. If philosophical existence is existence in awareness of man’s humanity as constituted by his tension toward the divine ground, and if this awareness is in the practice of existence realized by the Platonic periagoge— the turning toward the ground—then alienation is the turning away from the ground toward a self that is imagined to be human without being constituted by its relation to the divine presence. The turning toward the divine ground—the Classic epistrophe— is therefore to be supplemented in the description of states of human existence by the Stoic conception of apostrophe—the turning away from the ground. Turning toward, and turning away from, the ground become the fundamental categories descriptive of the states of order and disorder in human existence. These fundamental observations of the Stoics concerning the structure of existence tie in with the previously mentioned modern observations on the refusal to apperceive. Turning away means to refuse to apperceive the experience of the divine ground as constitutive of man’s reality. This willful turning away from the fundamental experience of reality was diagnosed by the Stoics as a disease of the mind. The science of existential deformation through turning away from the ground, and thereby withdrawing from one’s own self, became the core of psychopathology and remained the core well into the Renaissance. The issue has come to the fore again in the twentieth century, because the mass phenomena of spiritual and intellectual disorientation in our time have attracted attention again to the fundamental act of apostrophe. After finding the causes of disorder in a variety of secondary symptoms, like an undisciplined indulgence of the passions, one discovers now again, in existential psychology, that behind the secondary symptoms lies the fundamental 125

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problem of the apostrophe—the withdrawal of man from his own humanity. The phenomenon of the rediscovery just described is not peculiar to the modern period. We can observe it in the Classic Greek period, when the observation of social pathology, couched by Thucydides in the medical terms of the Hippocratic school, became the basis for the discovery of existential order by Plato and Aristotle. In a very similar manner today, having gone through two centuries of severe distortion of existence, the phenomenon is beginning to be understood as pathological; and as it is being discovered as pathological, the question of sane, well-ordered existence again attracts attention.

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23 Philosophy of History

These various developments affect the problems of a philosophy of history. Philosophy of history as a topic does not go further back than the eighteenth century. From its beginning in the eighteenth century, it became associated with the constructions of an imaginary history made for the purpose of interpreting the constructor and his personal state of alienation as the climax of all preceding history. Until quite recently, philosophy of history has been definitely associated with the misconstruction of history from a position of alienation, whether it be in the case of Condorcet, Comte, Hegel, or Marx. This rigid construction of history as a huge falsification of reality from the position of an alienated existence is dissolving in the twentieth century. Once the deformation of existence, which leads to the construction of ideological systems, is recognized as such, the categories of undeformed human existence become the criteria by which deformed existence and systems must be judged. Hence, the ideological systems themselves become historical phenomena in a process that reflects, among other things, the human tension between order and disorder of existence. There are periods of order, followed by periods of disintegration, followed by the misconstruction of reality by disoriented human beings. Against such disintegration, disorientation, and misconception there arise the countermovements in which the fullness of reality is restored to consciousness. In the light of this conception of order and disorder, one can interpret certain aspects of the so-called modernity as an expression of deformed existence in the same sense in which Thucydides, in his History of the Peloponnesian War, described the course of the war and its prehistory as a social kinesis—a feverish movement 127

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of disintegration and disorder. This does not mean, however, that at the time of such movements, be it the period under survey by Thucydides or the modern kinesis since the eighteenth century, feverish disorder alone dominates the scene. Although “modernity” in the pejorative sense is undeniably a characteristic of the modern period, there goes on, at the same time, the resistance to disorder, as well as the efforts to regain the reality lost or distorted. However one wishes to construct the concept of modernity, it will have to cover both the destruction of reality committed by alienated human beings (the ideological thinkers) for the purpose of their own aggrandizement, and the countermovement of philosophers and scholars, which in our time culminates in the splendid advance of the historical sciences, revealing as grotesque the ideological constructions that still dominate the scene. One can find today, on the one hand, a massive revisionist movement among American historians who rewrite the history of the Cold War with a Marxist bias and, on the other hand, the characterization of such activities as “para-Marxist buffoonery” by a scholar like Raymond Aron. If the concepts of order and disorder of existence are applied to the ever-increasing amount of historical materials, certain structural lines of meaning begin to emerge—always with the reservation, of course, that they may have to be revised in the light of advancing historical knowledge. One of the important results that will be incorporated in the forthcoming volume 4 of Order and History is the description of the Ecumenic Age.1 By Ecumenic Age is meant a period in the history of mankind extending roughly from the time of Zoroaster and the beginnings of the Achemenide conquest to the end of the Roman empire. This is the period in which the cosmological understanding of reality was definitely replaced by a new understanding of reality, centered in the differentiation of the truth of existence through Hellenic philosophy and the Christian revelatory experiences. Geographically, the Ecumenic Age extends from the Persian, and in its wake the Greek and Roman, developments in the West to the parallel development of ecumenic consciousness in the Far Eastern civilizations, especially in China. One of the aspects of this age has been caught 1. Published in 1974 as The Ecumenic Age, CW, vol. 17.

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in the concept of the Axis-time, the period in which, around 500 b.c., Heraclitus, the Buddha, and Confucius were contemporaries. Another aspect of this Ecumenic Age is the phenomenon which has given it its name—i.e., the imperial expansions through the Persians, Alexander, the Romans, the Maurya dynasty in India, and the Ch’in and Han dynasties in China. By about 200 b.c. we are no longer in a world of tribal societies or of small city states, but in the world of the ecumenic empires extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I have spoken of an ecumenic consciousness, meaning thereby that the actors and contemporaries of the imperial events interpreted them as a discovery and conquest of what they called the ecumene, as did Herodotus, or Polybius, or in China the first historians Ssu-ma T’an and Ssu-ma Ch’ien. The symbol ecumene becomes the idée-force of this period; and ecumenic conquest in the sense of domination over contemporarily living mankind has remained a fundamental force of history ever since, even if in practice the realization of such ecumenic—which now would have to become global domination—has never been achieved. The Ecumenic Age, therefore, has to be characterized by three of its more spectacular phenomena: (1) the spiritual outbursts on which Karl Jaspers concentrated; (2) the imperial concupiscential outbursts that have always attracted the attention of historians; and (3) the beginnings of historiography, in which the disorder created by the destructive expansion of empire is weighed against the order established, and the order established is measured by the newly differentiated understanding of existential order. This triadic structure of spiritual outburst, empire, and historiography characterizes a period in the history of mankind. In my opinion it has to supersede other constructions of history, even nonideological constructions, such as for instance Toynbee’s earlier assumption of civilizations as the ultimate units of historical study. Civilizations can hardly be maintained as ultimate units in the face of the multicivilizational empires created by the Persians, the Greeks under Alexander, and the Romans, and of their disintegration into ethnic subunits when the impetus of imperial expansion had run into various obstacles. Moreover, in order to arrive at the concept of civilization as the ultimate unit, Toynbee had to construct civilizational units in retrospect from the 129

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imperial establishments that he considered their last phase before a disintegrating interregnum. As a matter of fact, the “civilizations” that culminate in “ecumenic empires” did not exist before imperial expansion. There certainly is something like a continuity of Chinese history, say from the Classic Chou period into the Han and post-Han empire, but the Chinese civilization emerging from the imperial ordeal is definitely not the aggregate of tribal societies that entered into it in the eighth century b.c., and the society that emerged as a Graeco-Roman society from Greek and Roman imperial expansion is definitely not the Athens of Plato nor the Rome of the early republic. Civilizational societies are not ultimate units of history but products of highly unpleasant and murderous historical processes. I do not consider it permissible to project the civilizational societies that emerge from empires and retain the differentiation of ecumenic consciousness (even if in pragmatic politics they had to restrict their ambitions) back into the societies that entered into the process. One can speak, therefore, of the Ecumenic Age as a period in the history of mankind from which new societies emerged in which other factors than the momentum of imperial conquest became effective. When a Roman empire breaks up into a Byzantine empire, a Western Latin empire into a new expanding Islamic empire in the Near East and North Africa, there is no sense in pretending that Graeco-Roman civilization is still going on. What has arisen are new social units based on new migratory movements, cultural receptions, and expansions, which take over the form of empire created in the ecumenic period and now absorb for their justification doctrinalized spiritual outbursts as their political theologies. Ecumenic empires and their turmoil are followed by orthodox empires—whether in a Confucian China or a Hinduist India, in an Islamic empire, in an Eastern Greek Orthodox or a Western Latin Orthodox empire. These new imperial civilizations, which as civilizational societies are by no means identical with the societies ruled by the ecumenic empires, have lasted on the whole until the new wave of turmoil and disruption in the so-called modern period. None of these observations on discernible structures in the history of mankind, however, must now be converted in their turn into a doctrine. Orthodox empires are exposed to disintegration 130

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when major phenomena like the Western rediscovery of pagan antiquity, and at the same time the expansion of the natural sciences, open man’s consciousness to areas of reality that had been obscured by the imperially established orthodoxies. The modern period in this sense is therefore a disruption of imperial orthodoxy by a new awareness of reality. This new awareness, however, can in its turn—as it did—degenerate into an orthodoxy, this time of the progressivist ideological kind, because the new consciousness of reality has taken over from the orthodox imperial period the deformation of symbols into doctrine. The modern deformation can be characterized as an orthodoxy of alienation that excludes the most important area of reality—man’s relation to the divine ground—from consciousness. This new restriction of reality, of course, will last no more than the restrictions that characterized the orthodox imperial period, because the pressure of reality cannot be resisted forever. However, the exclusion of existential order from public consciousness, in some instances through governmental power, is not the only factor that will disintegrate contemporary ideological ascendancies. We are beset by the same problem as the founders of both the earlier ecumenic and the later orthodox empires—the fact that there is such a thing as the ethnic and cultural diversification of mankind. The empire, for instance, that we call Roman was of course not Roman. It had a core of imperial expansion in the Republic of Rome, but this republic had to transcend its own borders even in order to organize the Italian tribal societies into a confederation, and even more so when it conquered other peoples who definitely did not belong to the cultural-ethnic units of Italy, which caused their resistance. The dissolution of the Roman empire followed roughly ethnic-cultural lines. The ethnic-cultural diversity of mankind is still an important factor in spite of the assiduous work of social and cultural destruction perpetrated by empires in the course of their expansion and self-preservation. It is unimaginable that, for instance, a Soviet empire can permanently maintain itself in its present form against the ethnic cultures of the non-Russian people who make up more than fifty percent of its population. We have similar problems on a minor scale in the United States, where the ethnic immigration that constitutes the American people has so far not been fully absorbed into a unitary 131

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civilization and where the increasing cultural self-awareness of various ethnic groups, which may take a century to become fully effective, will considerably transform American society. In the most obvious case, that of the famous Europe that does not exist, we have the problem of a considerable number of very marked and self-conscious ethnic cultures that emerged from the Christian orthodox empire in the West but have so far not yet merged into a new civilizational unit comparable to the Christian dominant establishment from which they broke out. The end of things, thus, has not come, and what a philosopher can contribute today to the understanding of an ongoing process is the understanding of the factors that make for integration and disintegration of the type just indicated.

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24 Range, Constancy, Eclipse, and Equivalence of Truth

One of the fundamental problems in every philosophy of history turned out to be the constancy of reality experienced throughout the process of compactness and transition to differentiation. The reality experienced by so-called primitives is not different from that experienced by moderns. What happens between, say, the Neolithicum and the Modern Age are the events of differentiation. The thinker who first became aware of this problem and stated its structure was Aristotle in the first two books of Metaphysics. He understood that his philosophical analysis of reality analyzed the same reality that was experienced by the earlier “theologizing” thinkers who expressed their experience through myth. Specifically, he refers to Hesiod and Homer. When the earlier thinkers express their experience of the origin of being through the myth of Ouranos and Gaia, they are in search of the same divine ground of being of which he himself is in search and which he recognizes as the Nous. The philomythos is to him something like a philosophos. In his late years he became increasingly fond of myth as a source of wisdom, since it may sometimes be more comprehensive than the structures in reality differentiated by the philosopher. He understood the relations between experiences and symbolizations on the various levels of compactness and differentiation that I have brought under the concept of equivalence. By equivalence is meant the recognizable identity of the reality experienced and symbolized on various levels of differentiation.1 1. Cf. “Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization in History [1970],” reprinted in CW, vol. 12, chap. 5.

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The most important consequence of this insight is the understanding of certain processes in history. When a new differentiation occurs, the area of reality newly articulated will be understood as an area of particular importance; and the overrating of its importance amidst the joy of discovery may lead to the neglect of other areas of reality that were contained in the earlier compact experience but now are neglected. The most important such event of neglect has occurred in the modern age in the wake of the newly differentiated natural sciences. The model of the reason that is operative in the cognition of the external world has become so much the model of reason that the existentially fundamental aspects of reason in the Classic sense, as the constituent of man’s humanity, were neglected and had gradually to be rediscovered in the twentieth century under the title of “existentialism,” which obscures rather than clarifies the structure of reason in existence. The difficulties in this rediscovery of existential order forced Jaspers to abandon the language of existence that he favored in his earlier work and return to the language of reason (Vernunft) when he became aware of the derailments of existentialism, especially in the case of Sartre. This is not the only such example, however. One of the great cases of neglect, and of eclipses of reality, occurred in the wake of Christianity. The pneumatic differentiation that we owe to Christ and Paul became, under the title of revelation, the center of Christian thought. Since revelation—i.e., the differentiation of pneumatic consciousness—had to be something entirely new, constituting an epoch in history, the presence of the pneumatic stratum in its compact form in earlier human thought was neglected and even denied. Christian doctrine assumed that man’s reason is natural and, as such, a source of knowledge; in addition to this natural reason there has come into the world the new supernatural source of knowledge—revelation. That the Greek thinkers were highly conscious of having received a revelation when they discovered the Nous as the ground of being was simply ignored. Even today, the theophanic core of Classic philosophy is practically unknown, thanks to its eclipse by the Christian doctrine of natural reason. Hence, there is a remarkable dearth of investigations into the parallel phenomena of the Greek philosophers’ and the Israelite-Christian revelation, even though the fact that the word prophet is taken from the language of the 134

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Greek poets—who knew themselves to be the prophets of the gods in the same sense in which Israelite prophets were the speakers (nabi) of the gods—should have aroused some interest. Once the presence of revelation on various levels of compactness is recognized, one can of course develop a terminology for speaking of the parallel phenomena in adequate terms. One can speak of theophanic events and theophanic experiences in both the noetic and the pneumatic contexts of Greek philosophy and of Israelite and Christian revelation. And once the parallel is recognized, one can further explore the differences between the noetic theophany of a Plato and the pneumatic theophany of a Paul. Such exploration would help considerably in understanding the structure of the philosopher’s experience, but it would also force the analyst to determine what exactly is the content of Christian pneumatic differentiation that goes beyond the noetic differentiations of Plato and Aristotle. This task never has been undertaken; the problem is obscured by the language of natural reason and revelation. To be sure, the question is not quite outside the horizon of Christian thinkers. A better mind like Thomas Aquinas was very much aware of the problem. He knew that if Christ was to be the head of all mankind, He had to be more than the head of the members of a Christian church. Hence, Thomas formulated clearly that Christ indeed was the head of all men from the creation of the world to its end. He was, one might say, a true humanist who knew that Christ had come to every man, not only to Christians, or perhaps only to theologians. Thomas’s insight of course raises problems that, so far as I know, no Christian thinker has ever dared to touch: How can Christ be concretely the head, say, of the Babylonians or of the Greeks of the city-state period, and how does the pneumatic presence of His Logos express itself in the experiences and symbolizations of Babylonians or Egyptians? Here is a vast open field for the philosopher of history who is seriously interested in the historical sources. In a semiconscious way, the problem is of course present in the pursuit of studies in the fields of ancient history, the history of symbols, the history of myth, and comparative religion, because our interest in all these materials is motivated by our concern with the divine presence in these earlier symbols. Still, 135

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the historical explorers of these materials will hardly dare confess to the motive of their inquiry and state it clearly as a concern with the process of differentiation that culminates, in the Ecumenic Age, in the epochal differentiations of consciousness through philosophy, Christ, and the Apostles.

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25 Consciousness, Divine Presence, and the Mystic Philosopher

[137], (107) A study of this critical period of the Ecumenic Age will have to face the fact that what happened is the location of the process of differentiation in the mind of man. Once consciousness or, in the Greek terminology, the psyche of man is understood as the site of the process, the symbolization of divine presence must shift from the intracosmic gods to the psyche of man as the site of divine presence, with the most radical expression of the experience in the Christian symbol of Incarnation. When consciousness becomes luminous for itself as the site of divine-human cooperation in the historical process of differentiation, the end of all things has by no means come, as some of the contemporaries of this great event believed. The Second Coming that would abolish the structure of this world has not happened, although it was expected by Paul and the early Christians in the near future. Instead, something entirely different happened. The symbols that expressed the experiences of the psyche, of its consciousness, of its noetic and pneumatic structure, were recognized as symbolizations of truth emerging in the process of history, which in one part is a process in this world, while in another part it is a theophanic process. Symbols at large move into the position of a secondary realization of insight; beyond this secondary insight there arises an understanding of man’s tension toward the divine ground that cannot be adequately expressed by any symbolization of truth in this world. This further articulation of a stratum of experience beyond the symbolization of noetic and pneumatic divine presence is what, after Pseudo-Dionysius, 137

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came to be called mysticism. This stratum, of course, is present also before it becomes articulate in the neo-Platonically influenced Christian thinkers of the fifth century. Even Plato has a clear knowledge of relations to a divine reality that lies beyond the revelation expressed by his symbols of a Demiurge, or of the Nous as the third god following Kronos and Zeus in history. Mysticism, understood as the awareness of a stratum in reality that lies structurally beyond the reality of historical theophanies, even of the theophany in Christ, can be discerned in inchoate form through history as far back as we have literary records. The striking parallels between Western and Hindu mysticism, for instance, have been studied by Rudolf Otto in his Mysticism East and West [1932]. Mysticism has become of considerable importance in Western history ever since the Middle Ages, when the limits of doctrinal expression of truth became visible, especially through the work of Thomas Aquinas. In the generation after Aquinas begins the split of theologizing between the nominalism of William of Ockham and the mysticism of Meister Eckhart. Nominalist and mystical faith have remained ever since two important strands in Western intellectual history. The nominalism of a dogma that has separated from experience, and therefore can no longer be controlled by recourse to experience, has become the publicly dominant form of the West because it was, beginning with the eighteenth century, adopted as the intellectual form of ideologizing. In this situation, when the various doctrinal verities begin to fight one another, mysticism becomes again and again the concern of philosophers. In the sixteenth century, when there were eight religious civil wars in France, Jean Bodin recognized that the struggle between the various theological truths on the battlefield could be appeased only by understanding the secondary importance of doctrinal truth in relation to mystical insight. He wanted his sovereign, the king of France, to be, if not a mystic, at least advised by a mystic like himself in order to stand above the dogmatomachy. My careful study of the work of Bodin in the early thirties gave me my first full understanding of the function of mysticism in a time of social disorder. I still remember Bodin’s Lettre à Jean Bautru as one of the most important documents

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to affect my own thought.1 In the twentieth century, when the dogmatomachy is no longer that of theological but of ideological sects, a similar understanding of the problem has again been reached by Henri Bergson in his Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion. I doubt that Bergson has the same stature as a mystic as Bodin, but these two French spiritualists are for me the representative figures for the understanding of order in times of spiritual disorder.

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1. See CW, vol. 23, chap. 6, §4, “The Letter to Jean Bautru.”

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26 Revolution, the Open Society, and Institutions

[140], (11 Regarding the institutional realization of existential order, American society seems to have certain advantages over other national societies in the Western world. But I must first of all admit that in that matter I am biased because, after all, I had to run for my life from the political environment in Central Europe, and I was received with kindness in America. That of course created prejudice. Still, I hope that the following observations will not be colored too much by it. There is first to be considered the problem of the Western revolution. Oswald Spengler observed that the revolutions that occurred before 1789—meaning the English and the American revolutions—were of a conservative type, retaining the cultural structure of Western civilization. With the French Revolution, in his opinion, begins a movement of destruction of Western culture. These formulations are somewhat abstract, but they can be elaborated by more concrete observations. Obviously a revolution like the American is distinguished from a French or Russian, or from a German National Socialist revolution, by the fact that it was able to create successfully an open society, with a minimum of violence required for its imposition. Of the major revolutions it is, one might say, the only one that has been truly successful. A good deal of animosity against America is to be found among French and German intellectuals because of this success: Such a revolution should not be successful because the intellectuals want to make a revolution of their own in the tradition of the French destruction of cultural order. The animosity of the French 140

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revolutionary revolt in the name of Reason, and of a Supreme Being, against the Christian order, not too pleasantly represented in eighteenth-century France by the Church and its clergy, has no real parallel in America. We have in this country a society based on a revolutionary tradition that is not animated by the justintimated anti-Christian animosity. However, waves of European influence also reach America; our intellectuals are strongly influenced by the European, especially the French, type of intellectualism and, more recently, by German Hegelianism and Marxism, as well as by its Russian variations. These influences are in conflict with the American tradition. A good deal of the contemporary spiritual turmoil, the famous “divided society,” is due to an absorption of the French-German type of incomplete revolution in opposition to the successful American revolution. That a large sector of American intellectuals is antiAmerican must be acknowledged, even if they would deny it; it is the same anti-Americanism that is to be found among European intellectuals.1 This anti-Americanism, setting aside certain hard-core fringe movements, however, is definitely not a serious Communism—if for no other reason than because, so far as I know, the most ardent “liberal” intellectuals, short of a few scholars, are not literate enough to read thinkers of the stature of Hegel or Marx. What we have is not a Communist, or even a Marxist, movement but a para-Marxist grotesque that always breaks down in practice because the problems envisaged by Marx lie far beyond the horizon of its understanding. Still, even in this vulgarian form the movements are a disturbing factor in society to such an extent that the language of “polarization” has become quite popular. Considering the structure of American society, I very much doubt that such a polarization has occurred. What really has happened is an inconsiderate, and partly illiterate, intellectual movement that inadvertently has polarized itself out of the American social reality and now has to pay the price of defeat for its pragmatic inadvertency. Under one aspect this American polarization out of reality has certain similarities with the parallel European intellectual 1. Cf. Jean-François Revel, Anti-Americanism, trans. Diarmid Cammell (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003.)

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developments. The famous year 1968, with its riot in Paris, revealed if anything the nonexistence of a revolutionary situation. Raymond Aron saw quite rightly what the problem is when he gave his analysis of the events the title La Révolution introuvable—making himself quite unpopular by this analysis. That movements of this kind, polarizing themselves out of reality, could arise at all and create considerable public noise was possible only because American society is beset by a number of social problems that require solutions too long delayed. There is the obvious problem of the black population and its status. Under the American historical conditions of immigration and slavery with racially and ethnically identifiable groups, the inevitable status of lower classes receives an unpleasant tinge because the lower classes are, at the same time, recognizable as ethnic or racial groups. Then there is, or rather was, the problem of the Vietnam War. Whether it was necessary in the national interest to engage in that war is very much open to question; but once it was started it had to be carried through to some sort of conclusion, because one cannot simply end a war by walking out of it. Moreover, the conditions of a war against a totalitarian power faced the American government with problems, which it had also to face in the war against Hitler, but which in the Vietnam War were aggravated by the remoteness of the events from the daily experience of the American people. The principal problem to which I refer is the fact that war against a totalitarian power, with the ruling group of totalitarian sectarians firm in its faith and willing to sacrifice the people to the bitter end for its domination, can only end with the horrors of physical destruction—that we know from the Hitler case. The same problem arose in Vietnam. The North Vietnamese government did not hesitate for a moment to have the Vietnamese people exposed to the destruction of war; and from the American side, especially through the television reports, the destruction was brought home to the American people as a destruction worked by the American army. That a war has two parties, and that the destruction was caused by the other party, who happened to be the military victim of the destruction, was simply not raised into consciousness. The bombing of German cities into vast fields of rubble, as well as the mass killings of the civilian population,

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as for instance in the bombardment of Hamburg where it was estimated that in one night there were more than forty thousand casualties, was taken with equanimity. Comparable destruction on a minor scale in an underdeveloped country aroused horror. That these horrors were caused by ideological sectarians and not by the American government was disregarded. On this occasion the enormous power of the mass media under the control of the intellectual establishment became manifest. For the historian it is a fact of first importance for the understanding of certain trends in American society that it was possible to convert the military defeat of the Communists in the Tet offensive of 1968 into an American defeat through the propaganda of the mass media. Similar transformations occurred on occasion of the famous invasion of Cambodia. The fact that Cambodia had been invaded by a Communist army from North Vietnam, and that a military expedition against an invasion is not in its turn an invasion, did not deter the intellectuals from falsifying the facts into an atrocious American aggression. Similar minor transformations by the intellectuals occurred in the case of the famous bombings of the dikes in North Vietnam, or in the transformation, through deliberate lies, of the bombing of military targets in Hanoi into a carpetbombing against the civilian population. The examples just enumerated indicate to the historian a serious problem in the intellectual sector of American society—i.e., willful divorce from reality and violent aggressiveness in the pursuit of utopian dreams. Since this intellectual disease is not confined to journalists and television reporters but has penetrated deeply into the academic world, and through the academic world into the education of the younger generation, one must recognize in these trends a danger to democratic government which, after all, has to rely on contact with reality in the population at large. Nothing lasts forever, and the present “polarization” will pass away, too. For the time being, however, the rational conduct of politics by the American government is seriously impaired because governmental action in conflict with the utopian fantasies of the moment has become practically impossible. How far this restriction of the American range of action, because of intellectuals who have lost contact with reality, will pose a danger to the

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country, only the future can show. Certainly we are confronted today with a massive social force of aggressive intellectual dishonesty that penetrates the academic world, as well as other sectors of society, that will beg for correction in one form or another if the situation should ever become really critical.

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27 Eschatology and Philosophy The Practice of Dying

[145], (115) Once certain structures of reality become differentiated and are raised to articulate consciousness, they develop a life of their own in history. One of the important insights gained by philosophers, as well as by the prophets of Israel and by the early Christians, is the movement in reality toward a state beyond its present structure. So far as the individual human being is concerned, this movement obviously can be consummated only through his personal death. The great discovery of the Classic philosophers was that man is not a “mortal,” but a being engaged in a movement toward immortality. The athanatizein—the activity of immortalizing— as the substance of the philosopher’s existence is a central experience in both Plato and Aristotle. In the same manner, the great experience and insight of Paul was the movement of reality beyond its present structure of death into the imperishable state that will succeed it through the grace of God—i.e., into the state of aphtharsia or imperishing. This movement toward a state of being beyond the present structure injects a further tension into existential order inasmuch as life has to be conducted in such a manner that it will lead toward the state of imperishability. Not everybody, however, is willing to attune his life to this movement. Quite a few dream of a shortcut to perfection right in this life. The dream of reality transfigured into imperishable perfection in this world, therefore, becomes a constant in history as soon as the problem has been differentiated. Already the Jewish apocalyptic thinkers expected the misery of the successive empires of which they were the victims soon to be superseded by a divine 145

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intervention that would produce the state of glory and the end of empire. Even Paul expects a Second Coming in the time of the living and revises the dream only under the impact of the experience of believers in Christ dying before the Second Coming. Metastatic expectation of a new world succeeding the old one in the time of the presently living has become a permanent factor of disturbance in social and political reality. The movement had been suppressed by the main church with more or less success; at least the apocalyptic expectations were pushed into sectarian fringe movements. But beginning with the Reformation these fringe movements moved more and more into the center of the stage; and the replacement of Christian by secularist expectations has not changed the structure of the problem. In the modern period, an important new factor entered the situation when the expectation of divine intervention was replaced by the demand for direct human action that will produce the new world. Marx, for instance, expected the transformation of man into superman from the blood intoxication of a violent revolution. When the expected transformation through blood intoxication did not occur in 1848, he settled for a transitional period that he called the dictatorship of the proletariat. But at least Marx still knew that external actions alone, like the appropriation of the means of industrial production by the government, did not produce the desired transformation. On the upper level of Marxist thinkers this point is still clear. The establishment of a Communist government is an external event that is supposed, in due course, to produce the expected transfiguration into superhuman perfection. Marx knew perfectly well that the establishment of a Communist government meant in itself no more than the aggravation of the evils of a capitalistic system to their highest potential. On the vulgarian level of the later Marxist sectarians, and especially of contemporary utopians, the understanding of this problem has disappeared and been replaced by something like a magic of action. The eschatological state of perfection will be reached through direct violence. The experience of a movement in reality beyond its structure has been transformed into the magic vulgarity of aggressive destruction of social order. Still, though this experience is exposed to the vulgarian transformations just indicated, the experience is real. Otherwise it 146

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could not have this permanently motivating effect that is visible even in the deformations. Hence, every philosophy of history must take cognizance of the fact that the process of history is not immanent but moves in the In-Between of this-worldly and other-worldly reality. Moreover, this In-Between character of the process is experienced, not as a structure in infinite time, but as a movement that will eschatologically end in a state beyond the In-Between and beyond time. No philosophy of history can be considered to be seriously dealing with the problems of history unless it acknowledges the fundamental eschatological character of the process. The understanding of the eschatological movement requires a revision of the deformations that the concepts of Classic philosophy have suffered at the hands of interpreters who want the nature of man to be a fixed entity. The Classic philosophers were quite aware of the problems of eschatology, as I have just indicated. They knew that they were engaged in the practice of dying, and that the practice of dying meant the practice of immortalizing. The expansion of this experience into an understanding of history makes it, of course, impossible to erect concepts like the nature of man into constants in reality. This, however—and there lies the difficulty of understanding the problem—does not mean that the nature of man can be transfigured within history. In the process of history, man’s nature does no more than become luminous for its eschatological destiny. The process of its becoming luminous, however, though it adds to the understanding of human nature and its problems, does not transmute human nature in the hereand-now of spatio-temporal existence. The consciousness of the eschatological expectation is an ordering factor in existence; and it makes possible the understanding of man’s existence as that of the viator in the Christian sense—the wanderer, the pilgrim toward eschatological perfection—but this pilgrimage still is a pilgrim’s progress in this world. This eschatological tension of man’s humanity, in its dimensions of person, society, and history, is more than a matter of theoretical insight for the philosopher; it is a practical question. As I have said, Plato and Aristotle were very much aware that the action of philosophizing is a process of immortalizing in this world. This action does not come to its end with Plato and Aristotle; 147

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it continues, though, in every concrete situation the philosopher has to cope with, the problems he encounters in his own position concretely. If the Classic philosophers had to cope with the difficulties created by a dying myth and an active Sophistic aggressiveness, the philosopher in the twentieth century has to struggle with the “climate of opinion,” as Whitehead called this phenomenon. Moreover, in his concrete work he has to absorb the enormous advances of the sciences, both natural and historical, and to relate them to the understanding of existence. That is a considerable labor, considering the mountains of historical materials that have become known in our time. A new picture of history is developing. The conceptual penetration of the sources is the task of the philosopher today; the results of his analysis must be communicated to the general public and, if he happens to be a professor in a university, to the students. These chores—of keeping up with the problems, of analyzing the sources, and of communicating the results—are concrete actions through which the philosopher participates in the eschatological movement of history and conforms to the Platonic-Aristotelian practice of dying.

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Glossary of Terms Used in Eric Voegelin’s Writings

[First Page] [149], (1) Adiaphora. Essentially indifferent matters. Adikon, adikia. The unjust, injustice. Ad litterarum studia. For the study of letters. Agathon. The Good. In Plato, the good as such. Used by Voegelin to refer to the transcendent pole of the tension of existence. Agnoein. To be ignorant. Agnoia. Ignorance. Aition, aitia. Cause, causes. Sometimes used by Voegelin to refer to the ground of order. Akribeia. Precision, exactness. Aletheia. Truth, that which is “unhidden” or “uncovered.” In Voegelin, especially “lived” truth, existential truth, the experienced manifestness of “existential consciousness” (q.v.). Equivalent to episteme (q.v.). Alle bisherige Geschichte. “All of history until now” (Marx). This glossary was compiled by Eugene Webb for inclusion in this volume of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. It is based on Webb’s earlier glossary as given in his Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981), 277–89. It has been augmented and refined by contributions from M. J. Hanak, William McClain, Jack D. Eliot Jr., Frederick Wagner, and the editor. These abbreviations are used, in addition to CW for Collected Works: HPI for History of Political Ideas, first published in CW, vols. 19–26; NSP for New Science of Politics; OH 1–5 for Order and History; SPG for Science, Politics, and Gnosticism; AR for Autobiographical Reflections—the last four published in various editions in addition to CW. Note that the terms included here as well as a great many others in this edition are referenced in the indexes to individual volumes and in the cumulative indexes provided by Linda Webster—our able indexer throughout—in vol. 26 of The History of Political Ideas and herein for the balance of the Collected Works.—E.S.

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Allotriosis. Self-alienation, estrangement from the actuality of one’s experience of human existence. Autobiographical Reflections (76): “In the Stoic psychopathology, allotriosis means a state of withdrawal from one’s own self as constituted by the tension toward the divine ground of existence.” Alogos. Speechless, lacking wisdom. Amathes, pl. amatheis. Ignorant. Amathia. Ignorance, folly, rudeness, boorishness. Term used by Plato in the Laws to refer to voluntary ignorance motivated by aversion to truth (consequently a stronger term than “folly” in English), an unwillingness to be drawn into the consideration of the transcendent. Amator sapientiae. Lover of wisdom (=philosophos, philosopher). Amicitia. Friendship. Used by Aquinas to refer to the possibility of mutual love between God and human beings. Amor Dei. Love of God (Augustine); openness of the soul toward transcendence. Amor sui. Love of the egoistically conceived self; closedness of the soul against transcendence. Analogia entis. See Analogy of being Analogy of being (analogia entis). The term in medieval theology for the idea that God is not one particular entity among others but radically transcendent Being Itself (Aquinas’s Ipsum Esse Subsistens), in which all particular entities or existents exist by “participation” (q.v.). Implies that the only adequate language for transcendent reality (q.v.) is analogical and that the relative adequacy of such language is grounded in the inherently analogical character of all participated being. Anamnesis. Remembrance, or recollection. In Plato’s Meno, the idea that whatever one learns in this life is recalled from the memory of what was known in a former life. In Voegelin’s interpretation, a symbol for the recognition that the explication of experience is the bringing into consciousness of what had previously been implicitly present to awareness, but not been explicitly conscious. Ananke. Constraint, necessity, fate, destiny. Andreia. Manliness, courage. Anima mundi. World soul. Latin term for Plato’s animate cosmos in the Timaeus. One of the hypostases of Plotinus. 150

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Anima rationalis et intellectiva. A soul capable of understanding and of critically reflective judgment. Anoia. Folly, oblivion. Discussed in In Search of Order (OH, vol. 5) as forgetfulness of one’s partnership in the community of being and, consequently, transformation of participation (q.v.) in existence into a self-assertive claim to separate existence. Cf. egophanic revolt (q.v.). Anthropeioi nomoi. Human laws. Anthropina, ta. Human affairs. Anthropogony. The origin of the human species (especially as described in myths). Apeiron. What is unlimited, indefinite, unbounded, the boundless or depth. In Anaximander, the “unlimited” source of all particular things. Because it transcends all limits, the apeiron is in principle indefinable. Voegelin uses it (especially in The Ecumenic Age [OH, vol. 4]) to refer to the pole of the metaxy (q.v.) standing opposite the One, or the Beyond (q.v.). Aphtharsia. Imperishability. The characteristic of the gods as symbols of the perfection of being. An aspect of the transcendent pole of the tension (q.v.) of existence or metaxy (q.v.). Apodictic. Expressing necessary truth or absolute certainty. Apolaustikos (bios). Life devoted to enjoyment. Aporein. To experience profound uncertainty, to feel at a loss how to proceed. Aporia. An insoluble contradiction or impasse for thought. Apostrophe. “Turning away” from the divine ground (Stoics), an act that Voegelin considered equivalent to “the withdrawal of man from his own humanity” (Autobiographical Reflections, 101). Apperception. Leibniz’s term for the introspective or reflective apprehension by the mind of its own inner states. Contrasts with “perception,” which is awareness of something external. Used by Voegelin to refer to reflective self-awareness. Arche. Beginning, principle, absolute origin and beginning. Especially the ultimate and indemonstrable principle, or ultimate, underlying substance. Arete. Excellence, goodness, virtue. Ariston. The best thing. Aspernatio rationis. Contemptuous rejection of reason. 151

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Athanatizein. To immortalize, the process of immortalizing. See Immortalizing; Aphtharsia; Exodus Balance of consciousness. Voegelin’s term for the precarious awareness of the conditions of existence in the metaxy (q.v.), easily lost when the experience of being drawn to the transcendent pole becomes sufficiently vivid to tempt one to seek escape from the metaxy and from the existential tension (q.v.) that characterizes it. Beginning and beyond. As another way of speaking about what he called “myth” as distinguished from “revelation,” Voegelin used “beginning” to refer to the “primary experience of the cosmos” (q.v.), which historically found expression in creation myths, while “beyond” (q.v.) refers to what is known through a revelatory awakening to the pull (see helkein) of transcendence (q.v.). See also Beyond, the Berith. Covenant (Hebrew Bible). Between, the. See Metaxy Beyond, the. Translation of the Greek epekeina. That which is ultimate and is itself indefinable because it surpasses all categories of understanding. The proportionate goal of the fundamental tension of existence. See also Parousia; Beginning and beyond Bios theoretikos. The life of reason, the contemplative life (Aristotle). Caritas. In Christianity, the love of God for human beings and of human beings for God or for fellow human beings when this is an expression of the love of God. Latin translation of the Greek agape. Cf. amicitia (q.v.). See also Fides formata Causa materialis, efficiens, formalis, finalis. Material, efficient, formal, and final cause, the four types of causality discussed by Aristotle in the Metaphysics. Chiliasm. Millenarianism; in Christian speculation, the belief that Christ will rule bodily on earth for a thousand years; in Gnostic political speculation, the belief that some sort of radical change will take place in human nature and human behavior that will make a radically different political world possible. 152

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(Cf. New Science of Politics, chap. 4, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, both included in CW, vol. 5.) Closed existence. Voegelin’s term (following Henri Bergson) for the mode of existence in which there are internal impediments to a free flow of truth into consciousness and to the pull of the transcendent. Contrasts with open existence (q.v.). Cognitio fidei (or amoris, or spei). Knowledge through or by faith (or love, or hope). A more analytically fundamental and compact experience (q.v.) or cognitive mode, according to Voegelin, than reason. An important element in the preanalytic cognitive matrix from which reason (cognitio rationis, rational cognition) develops. See also Fides formata Common sense. According to Voegelin’s interpretation of representatives of the late-eighteenth-century school of thought that goes by the name of Common Sense philosophy (particularly Thomas Reid), a compact form of rationality made up of good habits of judgment and conduct deriving historically from noetic experience but lacking a differentiated knowledge of noesis (q.v.). See Nous Compact (experience, mode of cognition, consciousness, etc.). Voegelin’s term for experience having distinguishable features not yet noticed as distinct. Contrasts with differentiated consciousness (see Differentiation of consciousness). Complex of consciousness-reality-language. Term Voegelin introduced in In Search of Order for the paradoxical structure of reality that is known through “the paradox of intentionality and luminosity, of thing-ness and It-ness” and that is therefore constituted of “language and truth, together with consciousness and reality.” Thus, “language participates in the paradox of a quest that lets reality become luminous for its truth by pursuing truth as a thing intended” (OH, 5:17). Concrete. Constituting a real instance, not abstract. Thus, writing of the process of history Voegelin says (CW, 12:132), “We have immediate knowledge of the process only in its presence. A man whom we can name concretely—a Heraclitus, Plato, Plotinus, or Saint Augustine—experiences the process in its mode of presence. . . . [and] we share with Aristotle the belief in the premise that a truth concerning the reality of man found by one man concretely does, indeed, apply to every man.” 153

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Condicio humana (or conditio humana). The human condition. Coniuratio. Conspiracy. Consciousness. Autobiographical Reflections, 73: “The term consciousness . . . could no longer mean to me a human consciousness that is conscious of a reality outside man’s consciousness, but had to mean the In-Between reality of the participatory pure experience that then analytically can be characterized through such terms as the poles of the experiential tension, and the reality of the experiential tension in the metaxy.” See also Between; Existential consciousness; Intentional consciousness; Intentionality; Luminosity; Pure experience; Reflective distance; Tension Consubstantial. Composed of the same substance, or underlying reality (q.v.). See Consubstantiality Consubstantiality. Term adopted by Voegelin from John A. Wilson (The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man) for the sensed underlying unity of reality and the common participation of all levels of being in the tension of existence toward transcendent (q.v.) perfection. Contemptus mundi. Contempt of the world (and of its values). Conversio. Conversion. Latin equivalent to Greek epistrophe (q.v.). See also Periagoge Cosmion. A little world. Cosmological myth. Myth that expresses the “primary experience of the cosmos” (q.v.). Cosmos. In Voegelin’s usage, the whole of ordered reality including animate and inanimate nature and the gods. (Not to be confused with the modern conception of “cosmos” as the astrophysical universe). Encompasses all of reality, including the full range of the tension of existence toward the transcendent (q.v.). Noetic differentiation (q.v.) and pneumatic differentiation (q.v.) are “differentiations of consciousness” (q.v.) that separate this cosmos into the immanent “world” (q.v.) and the transcendent divine “ground” (q.v.). See also Primary experience of the cosmos Daimonios aner. Spiritual man, a person sensitive to the pull (see helkein) of transcendence (q.v.). Deculturation. Voegelin’s term for the loss or decline of culture, 154

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when culture is interpreted as a process in which soul and character are formed through experiences of transcendence and of the virtues (such as faith, love, hope, reason) essential to “open existence” (q.v.). Equivalent to “deformation” (q.v.), but with greater emphasis on the social aspects of the process of decline. De-divinization of the world. The interpretation of the world as empty of the divine, or lacking the dimension of transcendence (q.v.). Contrasts with “primary experience of the cosmos” (q.v.). Deformation. Voegelin’s term for the destruction of the order of the soul, which should be “formed” by (i.e., should receive its vital principle from) the love of transcendent perfection inherent in the fundamental tension of existence. Despotikos. Inclined to the exercise of despotic power. Dialectic. Constructive exchange of thoughts. The characteristic mode of inquiry of genuine noetic philosophy (q.v.). Characterized by critical reflectiveness and openness. The movement of thought or discussion within the metaxy (q.v.) that recognizes the limits inherent to existence in the metaxy. Dianoetic. Having to do with rational thought. Dianoia in Aristotle, meaning thought or understanding broadly, or discursive thinking or reasoning more narrowly. Differentiation of consciousness. Voegelin’s phrase for the process by which the discernible features of a previously “compact” (q.v.) field of experience are noticed as distinct and given expression. May have either noetic or pneumatic (q.v.) emphases. Refers especially to the development of a sense of the distinction between the transcendent (q.v.) and immanent (q.v.)—e.g., between truth as such and particular truths, the good as such and particular goods, the transcendent divine ground and the world of immanence. The transcendent pole that is differentiated serves as a point of orientation that rightly orders or structures consciousness. Dikaion, pl. ta dikaia. Right, pl. rights. Dikaiosyne (or dikaiosune). Justice or righteousness, either political or considered as a quality of a person. Dike. Justice, order, law, right. Disputatio. Debate. Divina scripta. Holy writings. Also referred to as sacrae litterae. 155

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Divine, the. General term for the dimension of radical transcendence, perfection of being. See also God; Reality, divine Dogmatomachy. Voegelin’s term for conflict over opinions; motivated by philodoxy (q.v.). Doxa. Opinion. In Parmenides, the realm of particular phenomena as compared with true being. In Plato, knowledge of the sensory world compared with knowledge of ideas; an inferior grade of knowledge as compared with episteme (q.v.). Voegelin uses the term particularly to refer to externalizing conceptions or opinions. Doxic thinking. In Voegelin’s use, thinking that tends to focus on doxa (q.v.) and to confuse the interpretive model with the reality (q.v.) it symbolically represents. Doxography. A descriptive (not analytical) account of opinions. Dynamis. Aristotle: validity, strength, power, force, faculty, capacity, potentiality; the opposite of energeia (q.v.). Eclipse. Voegelin’s term for the willed, perverse closure of consciousness against reality (q.v.), especially the reality of metaxy (q.v.) existence. Eclipse is a state that may become habitual and unconscious, but never entirely free from the pressure of reality and the anxiety produced by the attempt to evade it. Equivalent to “closed existence” (q.v.). Ecumene. See Ekumene Ecumenic age. Voegelin’s term for the “period in the history of mankind which roughly extends from the rise of the Persian to the fall of the Roman empire” (OH, vol. 4, chap. 2, ab init.); characterized by ordering of the ekumene (q.v.) through imperial conquest or power. Ecumenicity. Voegelin’s term for the tendency of an imperial order (one that embraces a number of particular societies) to seek to attain genuine “universality” (q.v.) by extending its political domination throughout the ekumene (q.v.), considered as the full range of territory available for such domination. Egological. Husserl’s term for that which pertains to the ego or to egology, i.e., the study of the ego considered as pure consciousness, all other aspects of the thinking individual being “bracketed,” i.e., placed outside consideration, in accord with phenomenological method. 156

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Egophanic revolt. Defiant self-assertion claiming independence from a transcendent ground. Described by Voegelin in Autobiographical Reflections, 67–68: “the concentration on the epiphany of the ego as the fundamental experience that eclipses the epiphany of God in the structure of Classic and Christian consciousness,” denial of “the theophanic constitution of humanity.” Egophany. Manifestation of separate selfhood (apart from the divine ground); contrasts with theophany (q.v.). See also Egophanic revolt Egregium et admirandum humanum spectaculum. An uncommon and prodigious spectacle of the state of human affairs. Eidos. Form, shape, figure, kind, nature, class, essence. Eidos kai morphe. Idea (or species) and form (or shape). Eikon. Image, likeness. Eikos mythos. Likely or probable tale. In Plato, a myth that serves as an analogy for what ultimately lies beyond human comprehension, as in the cosmogonic myth of the Timaeus, the analogy of the soul to a chariot in the Phaedrus, and the story of judgment after death in the Gorgias and the Republic. See also Mystery; Myth Einai. To be. Equated by Parmenides with noein (q.v.), to think. Ekpyrosis. Conflagration. Ekumene (ecumene, oikumene). The “world” conceived as a realm that might potentially be organized through power. In antiquity, the Greek or the Roman world, a universal community. Elpis. Hope. See also Cognitio fidei (or amoris, or spei) Energeia. Aristotle: activity, active exercise, actuality; the opposite of dynamis (q.v.) Eneinai. To be present in, to inhere. Entelechy. Aristotle: fully formed, completed realization as contrasted with potential existence. Enthousiasmos. Enthusiasm, frenetic inspiration; literally, the state of being “in a god,” divinely possessed. Epekeina. The Beyond (q.v.), the transcendent (q.v.) pole of the metaxy (q.v.). See also Transcendence Epigeos (or epigeios). Terrestrial, earthly. Episteme. Theoretical knowledge, as compared with doxa. In 157

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Voegelin, knowledge that is the explication of genuine philosophical experience; especially experiential knowledge of existence as ordered by the love of the transcendent perfection of being. Equivalent to theoria (q.v.). Episteme politike. Political wisdom, science of politics. Epistrophe. A turning toward. Used by Voegelin to refer to a turning toward the divine ground after having previously been lost or gone astray through self-alienation or allotriosis (q.v.). Equivalent to Latin conversio or German Hinwendung. Cf. also periagoge (q.v.). Equivalence of symbols. In Voegelin, the principle that two symbolisms are equivalent, despite differences of individual form, if they refer recognizably to the same structures of reality (q.v.) and experience; applied by Voegelin especially to the recognizable identity of the reality experienced and symbolized on various levels of differentiation of consciousness. Eristic. From the Greek eris, strife. In Plato, contentious reasoning, characteristic of philodoxy (q.v.). Speculative thought that attempts mastery over one of the poles of the tension of existence, i.e., over the apeiron (q.v.) or the nous (q.v.) or the Beyond (q.v.). The opposite of dialectic (q.v.) Eros. Desire, love, longing. Voegelin’s use of the term, based on Plato’s, does not refer (in the manner made popular by Freud) to specifically sexual desire, but to desire as such and especially to desire for the summum bonum (q.v.) implicit in all particular desires for limited goods. As such it is virtually equivalent in Voegelin’s usage to the “tension of existence.” Figures as part of the triad eros, dike, thanatos, i.e., love, justice, death (Cf. OH, vol. 3, chap. 1, §1.2). See also Existential consciousness Eros tyrannos. Lust for power (libido dominandi); in Voegelin’s commentary “the satanic double of the Socratic Eros [citing Plato, Rep. 573b, d]. . . . The desire which turns the soul toward the Good and the desire which succumbs to the fascination of Evil are intimately related” (OH, vol. 3, chap. 3, §5.3). Ersatz. Artificial, a substitute for the real thing. Eschatology. Speculation about the end of the world or about what might lie beyond existence as we presently know it. Eschaton. The final end. In Christian use, refers either to (1) the 158

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terminating of the temporal world, or to (2) radical transcendence (q.v.), what is beyond the world as presently known. Euboulia. Wise judgment in private and public affairs. Eudaimonia. Happiness (the reference to “good daimon” implies that happiness must involve a right relation to transcendence). Euergesia. Beneficient deeds. Euergetikos. Beneficient. Eunomia. Well-orderedness. Good social order. In Voegelin’s use, specifically existence ordered morally and cognitively by the tension of existence toward the pole of the transcendent perfection of being. Eusynesia. Quick-wittedness. Euthyoria. In Aristotle: a potentially infinite (i.e., indefinite) series. In ordinary Greek use: straight course or direction. Eutyches. Fortunate. Existential consciousness. In Voegelin’s use, the reflective selfawareness of human existence in the metaxy (q.v.), i.e., the tension between poles of immanence and transcendence, finitude and infinity, imperfection and perfection, and so on. Closely related to reflective distance (q.v.) and balance of consciousness (q.v.). See also Truth of existence Existential tension. See Existential consciousness Exodus. In Voegelin, the process of transcendence (q.v.). According to Voegelin, “exodus from reality” (which would be escape from the tension of existence) is impossible; what is possible, and is in fact the universal calling of humanity, is “exodus within reality,” i.e., open existence (q.v.) in the metaxy (q.v.) oriented toward its transcendent (q.v.) pole. Experience. In Voegelin, a “luminous perspective within the process of reality.” Voegelin generally follows Aristotle’s conception of experience (Metaphysics a 1) as more than sense data, but less than art or “science” in the sense of episteme (q.v.). See also Pure experience; Transcendence, experiences of Experiences of transcendence. See Transcendence, experiences of Faith. Fundamental trust that reality (q.v.) has a meaningful structure, grounded in transcendence (q.v.), and leads toward some form of ultimate fulfillment. See also Fides formata; Metastatic faith; Pistis 159

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Felix. Happy (Latin). Fides formata. “Formed faith,” i.e., faith with its vital principle (i.e., love). Aquinas’s term for the adequate orientation of the soul toward God, not only through correct teachings about Him but also through participation in divine love experienced within the soul. According to Aquinas, it is love (caritas, q.v.) that is the soul or vital principle of faith. A more developed faith than fides informis (q.v.), which, lacking love as its vital principle, is incomplete. Cf. CW, 19:35–36. See also Form Fides informis. “Unformed faith,” i.e., faith lacking its vital principle, which is caritas. Aquinas’s term for a proper but rudimentary orientation toward God through doctrine; a lower level of faith than fides formata (q.v.). Fides quaerens intellectum. “Faith seeking reason” (Saint Anselm of Canterbury). Central to Voegelin’s conception of philosophizing per se: “I am very much aware that my inquiry into the history of experience and symbolization generalizes the Anselmian fides quaerens intellectum so as to include every fides, not only the Christian, in the quest for understanding by reason” (CW, 12:294). Form (Latin forma, Greek morphe). In Plato eidos, idea, or phusis (nature); for Voegelin’s exegesis see OH, vol. 3, chap. 3, §§4.3, 5.1–3. In Aristotle and Aquinas, the dynamic principle that orders the structure of a being; thus the “soul” is defined as “the form of a body capable of life,” and love is identified as the “form” of faith. Fortuna. Fortune, chance. See also Tyche Fruitio Dei. Rejoicing in God. Gnoseological. Having to do with gnosis (q.v.). Gnosis. Knowledge. Originally a general term in Greek for knowledge of various sorts. Later, especially with the gnostic movement of the Christian era, a purported direct, immediate apprehension or vision of truth without the need for critical reflection; the special quality of a spiritual and cognitive elite. According to Voegelin, the claim to gnosis may take intellectual, emotional, and volitional forms. See also Gnosticism Gnosticism. As Voegelin uses the term, a type of thinking that claims absolute cognitive mastery of reality (q.v.). Relying as it 160

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does on a claim to gnosis in the sense of immediate apprehension or vision of truth without the need for critical reflection, Gnosticism considers its knowledge not subject to criticism. In Voegelin’s analysis, Gnosticism may take a transcendentalizing form (as in the case of the gnostic movement of late antiquity) or immanentizing forms (as in the case of Marxism, Comte’s positivism, and other modern movements that seek radical intramundane fulfillment of human beings and society). Cf. NSP, chap. 4, and SPG. See also Parousia; Parousiasm God. In Voegelin’s use, a symbol (in mythopoeic form) arising from discernment of the transcendent pole of the tension of existence; not to be misconstrued as a conceptual term referring to a divine entity. Gregarius miles. Common soldier, enlisted man. Ground. That upon which something is based in the most fundamental way. In the sense of the “divine ground,” Voegelin uses it to refer to the supreme, indefinable, transcendent reality that may be considered either as the source or origin (arche, q.v.) of both the world and the metaxy (q.v.) or as “the Beyond” (q.v.) that forms existence by drawing it into participation (q.v.). Habitus. Habit, acquired disposition. See Hexis Hedone. Lust, sensual pleasure. Heimarmene. Fate, destiny. Helkein. To draw, drag, pull. In Voegelin, the tension of existence when it is experienced as the power of attraction exercised by the transcendent. Correlative to zetein or zetesis (q.v.). For a comparative analysis of the noetic and pneumatic experiences see CW, 12:189–99. Hexis. Permanent condition, habit, characteristic. Hiera anagraphe. Holy history, historia sacra as opposed to historia pagana, secular, pagan history. Historici mundiales. Secular historians. Historiogenesis. Term coined by Voegelin for the type of symbolism developed in speculation on the origin and cause of society. Along with the other symbolisms of origin collectively (designated by the standard terms, anthropogony, cosmogony, and theogony), it is considered by Voegelin to be the mythic 161

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equivalent of a noetic quest for the ground of being. Cf. OH, vol. 4 [CW, vol. 17], chap. 1. Historiography. The writing of history. Historiomachy. Voegelin’s term for competing claims to prestigious status made by one society or cultural or religious group against another on the basis of its purported antiquity. Homoion. Something similar, a resemblance. Homo mensura. Human being [man] as the measure of things. Homonoia. Like-mindedness, concord. In Aristotle, friendship based on likeness in participation in nous (q.v.); not the sharing of opinions or positions, but sharing in nous as the dynamic movement elicited by the attraction of transcendent perfection. In Christian thought, the participation of Christians in the nous of Christ. Alexander the Great used the term homonoia to refer to the idea of peace among the subjects of his ecumenic empire (as discussed by Voegelin in The Ecumenic Age [OH, vol. 4; CW, vol. 17]). See also Ecumene Homo novus. New human being [man] (expected to be the product of metastasis [q.v.], fundamental transformation, or revolution). Hora. Vision (q.v.) in Plato. In Voegelin’s words, CW, 12:362: “The Vision [opsis, hora] is man’s participatory experience of ‘seeing’ the paradox of a reality [“It-reality” (q.v.)] which depends for its existence, formative order, and luminosity on the presence of ‘the god’ who, as distinguished from the Olympian gods, is a nonpresent Beyond [q.v.] of the being things in which he is present.” See Opsis; Parousia Horizon. In Voegelin’s use, a phenomenological term for the experience of the limitedness of consciousness; symbol of the boundary between the known world and that which remains beyond it and is consequently mysterious. Human nature. That which is constant in the fundamental being of humanity, especially all of those qualities that are inherent to metaxy (q.v.), existence, and horizon (q.v.). As defined by Voegelin in Anamnesis: “At its core human nature . . . is the openness of the questioning knowledge and the knowing question about the ground.” See also Representative humanity Hybris. Overbearing arrogance, pride. See Superbia vitae Hyle. The materials, matter. Hyperouranion. Literally, “beyond the heavens.” Plato’s term in 162

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the Phaedrus for the world of ultimate reality beyond the realm of the gods. Hypostasis. Literally, a “standing under,” support, substance, substructure, hence a real being, an individual entity, a thing. Used by Voegelin especially to refer to the false attribution of individual entitative status to something to which it is inappropriate, especially the fallacious assumption that the poles of the experience of existential tension (q.v.) in the metaxy (q.v.) are self-contained entities that come into contact on the occasion of an experience. (Not to be confused with the different Christian use of the term in the doctrine of the Trinity, where it does not involve attribution of individual entitative status.) See also Hypostatizing; Substance Hypostatizing. Voegelin’s term for the process by which features of the metaxy (q.v.), e.g., the transcendent or immanent poles of the tension of existence, are falsely conceived as though they were individual entities. Idiotes. In Heraclitus, one who lives in a private, imaginary world (“closed existence”) instead of the shared, common (xynon, q.v.) world known through logos (q.v.). In Aristotle it means “common man” (cf. Voegelin, OH, vol. 3 [CW, vol. 16], chap. 9, §4). In more general Greek use, it simply means an individual. Imago Dei. The image of God. Voegelin writes: “Through spirit man actualizes his potential to partake of the divine. He rises thereby to the imago Dei which it is his destiny to be” (CW, 12:7). Immanence. The state of being “immanent” (q.v.). Immanent. Present within limited, mundane reality. The opposite of “transcendent” (q.v.). Literally, “dwelling in.” Immanentism. The doctrine that God (q.v.) or spirit (q.v.) is exhaustively contained within, rather than transcending, the world. Contrasts with both (1) the dualistic idea that God or spirit transcends the world in such a way that He or it has no presence in the world at all, and (2) the idea that it can be present within the world while at the same time also transcending it. See also Metaxy; Participation Immanentization, immanentizing. Movement toward “immanentism” (q.v.). 163

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Immortalizing. (From the Greek athanatizein, in Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 10.7, 1122b33.) The process of transcendence considered as oriented toward the mode of existence (i.e., “immortality”) of the gods or of the divine “ground” (q.v.). See also Aphtharsia; Exodus Imperator. Supreme commander, hence “emperor.” Imperium. Supreme command, sovereignty; hence “empire.” See also Translatio imperii In-Between. See Metaxy Indelible present. Term coined by Voegelin in “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme” (CW, 12:346) to refer to “the consciousness of divine presence as . . . formative appeal” in the present experience of a person who is aware of that appeal as calling for a response. Index. Term coined by Voegelin (used primarily in “Eternal Being in Time” and “What Is Political Reality?” in Anamnesis, CW, vol. 6) for the language symbols used in the exegesis of existence in the metaxy (q. v.). Such symbols speak in terms of objects but do not refer to independently existing things. They are neither names, concepts, nor definitions. Rather they indicate poles of the tension of existence. For example, to say that “man participates in being” is to use “man” and “being” not as the names of entities but as pointers with which to explicate the tension of existence. Intended to counter the tendency toward hypostatizing (q.v.) of such symbols. In novo esse constituuntur ex nihilo. “To be constituted anew out of nothingness.” Insolentia. Insolence. See also Hybris; Superbia vitae Intellectus. Understanding, intellect. See also Nous Intentional consciousness. Consciousness oriented toward cognitive objects, esp. of the external world. Contrasts in Voegelin’s use with “existential consciousness” (q.v.). See also Intentionality Intentionality. The property of consciousness whereby it is oriented toward cognitive objects. The “intentional object” is not necessarily an actual entity; it is whatever consciousness is conscious of. Intuition. Direct and immediate apprehension (without need for interpretation and critically reflective judgment) of anything 164

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internal or external to the knowing subject. Gnosticism, as Voeglin uses the term, is characterized by intuitionist cognitive claims. See also Noesis; Nous; Reason Ipsum Esse. Being Itself. In Aquinas, a term for God considered as unlimited, ontologically necessary Being (not “a Being”), as compared with finite, contingent beings, which are dependent for their existence on the creative act of God. Ira Dei. Wrath of God. It-reality. Term coined by Voegelin to refer to the whole of reality (q.v.), which includes both the objective and subjective poles of consciousness, with dimensions of both intentionality (q.v.) and luminosity (q.v.), immanence (q.v.) and transcendence (q.v.), and which comprehends the “cosmic” partners in being, i.e., God and the world, man and society. Voegelin writes, in CW, 12:362: “Reality is experienced as an anonymous ‘It’ in which such events as the divine-human encounter occur. The experience of the ‘It’ is a problem much neglected in philosophy.” Also: In Search of Order, OH, vol. 5 [CW, vol. 18], 44: “The Beyond [q.v.] is not a thing beyond the things, but the experienced presence, the Parousia [q.v.], of the formative It-reality in all things.” Cf. Voegelin in an earlier formulation, OH, vol. 4 [CW, vol. 17], 408): “There is a process of the Whole of which the In-Between [q.v.] reality with its process of history is no more than a part, though the very important part in which the process of the Whole becomes luminous for the eschatological movement beyond its own structure. . . . Things do not happen in the astrophysical universe; the universe, together with all things founded in it, happens in God.” Thus, It-reality means God, as in the following reflections on Gen. 1:2 in OH, vol. 5 [CW, vol. 18], 34: “The It-reality . . . is symbolized as the strong movement of a spiritual consciousness, imposing form on a formless and nonforming countermovement, as the tension between a pneumatic, formative force (ruach; in later Greek translation pneuma [q.v.]) and an at least passively resistant counterforce. Moreover, the tension in the It is definitely not the tension of a human consciousness in its struggle with reality for its truth; it is recognized as a nonhuman process, to be symbolized as divine; and yet it has to convey an aura of analogy with the human process because man experiences his own acts, such as the quest 165

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for truth, as acts of participation in the process of the It. When the authors of Genesis 1 put down the first words of their text they were conscious of beginning an act of participation in the mysterious Beginning of the It.” Kalokagathia. Virtue defined in terms of beauty and goodness, the quality of gentlemanliness. Kalon. The beautiful. Kanon kai metron. Standard and measure. Kata physin. According to (their) nature. Kath homoioteta. Bearing resemblance to. Kinei (kinein, kineitai). Moves, to move, is moved. Kinesis. Movement, motion. In Thucydides, a movement of disintegration and disorder. Kineton. Something liable to alteration, movable. Koinon. That which is shared in common. See also Xynon Koinonia politike. Political community. Kosmokrator. Ruler of the cosmos. Kosmos. Cosmos (q.v.), universe, not in the astrophysical sense but in the sense of the whole of reality (q.v.), spiritual as well as material. Kritike. The art of discerning, right judgment. Kyriotate episteme kai architektonike. The supreme and master science. Libido dominandi. Pleasure in dominating, will to power. Locus classicus. Classic passage. Logos. Reason, rational capacity, definition, intelligible structure, an analytical account (as compared with a myth). A central feature of theoria (q.v.) or episteme (q.v.). Luminosity. Term used by Voegelin in his later work to refer to the participatory identity and non-identity of knower and known, thought and being. Identified in In Search of Order as one of the three structural aspects of consciousness, along with intentionality (q.v.) and reflective distance (q.v.). Contrasts with intentionality as the (non-intentional) awareness immanent within intentional operations (the subjective awareness with which one performs them) rather than the (intentional) 166

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awareness bearing upon the objects of those operations. Autobiographical Reflections, 73–74: “the luminosity not of a subjective consciousness but of the reality that enters into the experience from both sides,” i.e., both poles of the experience of metaxy (q.v.) experience. Mache athanatos. Everlasting or undying struggle (Plato Laws 10; cf. Voegelin’s discussion in CW, 12:364–66). Malista auto. Itself to the highest degree. Mankind. See Representative humanity Mantike (as in techne mantike). Having to do with divination, the art of prophecy. Meditation. The inward practice by which one develops awareness of the dimensions of consciousness (intentionality [q.v.] and luminosity [q.v.]), reflective distance (q.v.), and consciousness of existential tension (q.v.) and its poles of immanence (q.v.) and transcendence (q.v.). Described by Voegelin in “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme: A Meditation” (CW, 12:371–72) as “a philosopher’s effort to explore the structures of existential consciousness” and “[a] noetic movement through the metaxy of existential consciousness . . . to find the balance of truth between the intentionalist desire to know reality as an object, and the mystery of a reality in which such a desire to know its own truth occurs.” Me physika all’ anthropina dikaia. “Not natural but human justice.” Metalepsis. Participation (q.v.), especially, for Voegelin, divinehuman participation. Metaphysics. Traditionally (from Aristotle’s treatise, Metaphysica), the study of the fundamental structural features of being (i.e., form, matter, the four causes [see causa materialis, efficiens, formalis, finalis], etc.). Criticized by Voegelin as the manipulation of noetic symbols (q.v.) as if they were propositions referring to “intentional objects.” Metastasis. Change, transformation, revolution. Term introduced by Voegelin, in Israel and Revelation (OH, 1:452), to signify “the change in the constitution of being envisaged by the [Israelite] prophets.” Subsequently used to refer to all unrealistically expected transformations of human beings, society, or the 167

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structure of existence. The fundamental form of such utopian expectation is that escape from the tension of existence will be possible through movement out of the metaxy (q.v.) toward identity or union with one of its poles. Metastatic faith. Having to do with the expectation of a quasimagical transformation of reality (q.v.) and the human condition. Faith that expects such a transformation to be caused by an act of divine intervention. Also Metastatic apocalypse: the radical transformation that would be produced by such faith. Metaxy. Literally, “between.” Plato’s symbol representing the experience of human existence as “between” lower and upper poles: man and the divine, imperfection and perfection, ignorance and knowledge, the world and the Beyond (q.v.). Equivalent to the symbol of “participation (q.v.) in being.” Likened in Autobiographical Reflections, 72, to William James’s “pure experience”: “James put his finger on the reality of the consciousness of participation, inasmuch as what he calls pure experience is the something that can be put into the context either of the subject’s stream of consciousness or of objects in the external world. This fundamental insight of James identifies the something that lies between the subject and object of participation as the experience. Later I found that the same type of analysis had been conducted on a much vaster scale by Plato, resulting in his concept of the metaxy—the In-Between.” Methexis. Participation (q.v.). Metis. Wisdom, counsel, skill, craft. Millenarianism. See Chiliasm Miseria humanae conditionis. The misery of the human condition. Modus deficiens. Deficient mode. Morbus animi. Mentally diseased (Cicero). Morphe. See Eidos; Form Motus amoris. Movement of love, the motivation of conversio or epistrophe (q.v.). Mystery (mysterium). In philosophical and theological use (e.g., in Gabriel Marcel and Saint Thomas Aquinas) a term for what cannot be known as an object of “intentional consciousness” (q.v.) because the knower’s subjectivity is inherently involved within it. Mystery is knowable only through participation (q.v.) and by 168

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way of analogical symbols or myth (q.v.). See also Analogy of being Myth (mythos). Story, tale, fable. Originally any speech or account, not necessarily fictitious. In Plato’s philosophical use, an account in story form, as opposed to logos, a conceptual, analytic account. Eikos mythos (q.v.), a likely or probable story, i.e., an analogically illuminating account in the form of a story. Mytho-speculation. Voegelin’s term for speculation (especially regarding ultimate origins and ends) in the medium of myth. A combination of mythopoesis (myth-making) and noesis (q.v.), intermediate between the compactness of cosmological myth and noetic differentiation. Mythos synkeitai ek thaumasion. “Myth consists of marvels.” Nefanda crudelitas. Abominable cruelty. Noein. To think, to know, to cognize, apprehend by the mind, to see so as to remark or discern (distinguished from merely seeing). See Noesis Noesis. The activity of nous (q.v.); in Voegelin’s analysis, the process by which episteme (q.v.) is developed as reflective understanding involving critical self-awareness on the part of the inquirer based on the understanding of the nature of inquiry as such. Noesis in this sense brings, not knowledge of a previously unknown reality (q.v.), but differentiated insight into hitherto compactly experienced reality. See also Noetic differentiation Noetic. See Dianoetic; Noesis; Nous Noetic differentiation. Voegelin’s term for the process by which one moves from compact (q.v.) consciousness (which tends to express itself in mythic symbols) to a more differentiated, conceptually articulated awareness of the inquiring consciousness and its structure, including both its reflective character and its orientation toward the transcendent pole of the tension of inquiry, i.e., toward Truth as such. Historically, the birth of philosophy in classical Greece through “the adequate articulation and symbolization of the questioning consciousness” (CW, 12:269). See also Reflective distance Noetic symbols. Symbols that express the insights of noesis (q.v.) about the structure of participatory reality (q.v.). Noetic vs. pneumatic. See Nous; Noetic differentiation; Pneuma; 169

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Pneumatic differentiation; also related to Voegelin’s distinction between intentionality (q.v.) and luminosity (q.v.); reason vs. revelation Noeton. That which is known, the object of thought. Nomikon dikaion. Conventional right, as opposed to physikon dikaion, natural right. Nomikon, pl. ta nomika. Conventional matter, pl. conventional matters. Nomos. Law, statute, measure. Nosos, nosema. Sickness, disease, madness. Nous. Usually translated as “mind,” “intelligence,” “reason,” or “rational intuition,” but involves more of what is connoted in English by “heart” (an intuitive sense of the directional tension of inquiry) than these words usually convey in English. In Voegelin’s use, based primarily on Plato and Aristotle, the capacity to seek episteme (q.v.) under the guidance of attraction toward the transcendent. Cf. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 6.6, 1140b31–1141a9 and Posterior Analytics 2.19, 100b5–14; also Voegelin’s commentary in SPG, §2.1. See Dianoetic; Reason Nous echon. Endowed with mind. See Nous; Zoon; nous echon Nulla fortunae varietatis habita ratione. “For no reason given by the fickleness of fortune.” Ochlocracy. Mob rule, from ochlos. Oikoumene. See Ekumene On. Sing. neutral present participle of einai to be; pl. ta onta, existing things. Opaque. As in “opaque symbol”: a symbol that has become literalized so that it has lost its original meaning. Contrasts with transparent (q.v.) symbol. Open existence, openness. In Voegelin, the mode of existence in which consciousness is consistently and unreservedly oriented toward truth and toward the transcendent pole of the tension of existence. Contrasts with “closed existence” (q.v.). Opsis. Vision (q.v.). Platonic term interpreted by Voegelin as referring to the revelatory aspect of the mutual participation of the divine and human in each other; what it reveals, according to Voegelin, is the fundamental order and direction of the process 170

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of reality (q.v.). See Hora; Vision; cf. Voegelin’s summary in CW, 12:362–65. Order. Defined by Voegelin in Autobiographical Reflections, 75: “By order is meant the structure of reality as experienced as well as the attunement of man to an order that is not of his making— i.e., the cosmic order.” Oregesthai. To grasp at, yearn for. Orekton. What is desired, desire, object of desire. Organon. Instrument, implement, tool. Ousia. Essence. Aristotle’s term for “being” or “entity.” According to Voegelin, Aristotle’s term expressed the “things” of the “cosmos” (q.v.), which included both immanent and transcendent dimensions; should not be translated as “substance,” a term in later, immanentistically conceived metaphysics. In Christian use, on the other hand (in the Greek doctrine of the Trinity), ousia refers to the one existential “I am” at the heart of each of the three divine hypostases (in that context, what can be affirmed as the three forms of the knowable reality of God along the different lines of questioning that lead to the affirmation of God’s reality as Father, Son, and Spirit). Pagani. Literally “country dwellers”; hence, worshippers of fertility deities, pagans, heathens. Pan, to. The Whole, the Cosmos (q.v.). Literally, “the all.” Paraclete. In Christian use, the Holy Spirit. Literally, “advocate.” Parainesis. Advice, counsel; hortatory composition. Parousia. Literally, in Greek, “presence,” and used in that sense by Voegelin, as when he writes in In Search of Order (OH, 5:31 [1987 ed.]): “Above all, the Beyond is understood not to be a thing among things, but is experienced only in its formative presence, in its Parousia.” Also traditionally used in Christian eschatological discourse to refer to the Second Coming of Christ. Parousiasm. In Martin Heidegger and modern Gnosticism (q.v.) broadly: “The mentality that expects deliverance from the evils of the time through the advent, the coming in all its fullness, of being construed as immanent. . . . The aim of parousiastic gnosticism is to destroy the order of being, which is experienced as defective and unjust, and through man’s creative power to 171

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replace it with a perfect and just order.” Voegelin in SPG, end of part 1, §2, “Science, Politics, and Gnosticism,” and beginning of §3, “The Murder of God,” in CW, 5:276–79. Participation. (Greek metalepsis, methexis, mimesis.) Refers to sharing the qualities of a supreme exemplar, in which they are present in their perfection. In “participation in being,” being is an analogical term with various degrees of applicability; it describes existence in the metaxy (q.v.) as taking place between higher and lower degrees of reality (q.v.). See also transcendentia, under Transcendentals Pathos. Experience, experiential complex, event, passion, what happens to a person, what is undergone. Not to be confused with the popular use of the word in English to refer to “pitiableness.” Patrikon. Paternal. Patrios doxa. Faith according to the teaching of the fathers or forebears. Peiras, pl. ta peirata. Limit, boundary. Cf. apeiron (q.v.). Peitho. Persuasion. In Voegelin (following Plato), the persuasive communication of (or invitation to) truth, especially the truth of existential order. Penia. Penury, poverty; discussed in Plato’s Symposium as lack of plenitude of being. Percipere. To perceive, observe, to become aware of through the senses. Periagoge. Turning around, conversion. Plato’s term for the cognitive and moral reorientation toward the True and the Good as such. Cf. Voegelin OH, vol. 3, chap. 3, §4.7. See also Conversio; Epistrophe Peripatetic. Literally “walking around”; used to refer to Aristotelian philosophy (because Aristotle and his pupils were known for walking during discussions). Peri tes physeos. About the nature of things. Phenomena. Those things that appear, that are observable. Plural of “phenomenon.” Voegelin speaks of the natural sciences as sciences of phenomena, i.e., as having to do with physical objects and their relations to one another (force, motion, attraction, etc.). Pheugein ten agnoian. “To flee from ignorance.” 172

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Philia. Love, especially in the sense of friendship. Also used by Voegelin to refer to noetic love of God. Philia politike. The bonds of affection (or friendship) that unite a group; the central virtue of political community. Philodoxy. Voegelin’s term (based on Plato’s philodoxos, or “lover of opinion,” esp. meaning the sophist) for a quasi-cognitive activity that stops short of the pursuit of genuine understanding of reality. Also contrasts with philosophy (q.v.), or genuine love of wisdom, in that philodoxy conceives of truth in immanentist rather than transcendental terms and tends to claim a perfect correspondence between ultimate reality and the ideas or interpretive models used to represent it. Another point of contrast is that whereas philosophy is inherently oriented toward further inquiry through openness to the Question (q.v.), philodoxy is the expression of a desire to put an end to questioning and thereby to escape from the “tension” (q.v.) of existence. In this respect, philodoxy is a principal manifestation of “closed existence” (q.v.). Philomythos. Lover of myth. Aristotle’s term for one who thinks in the medium of myth and whom he describes as, in a sense, a philosopher (see Philosophy) insofar as the philomythos seeks genuine understanding through the medium of analogical images and stories. Cf. Aristotle Metaphysics 982b18–20: “the lover of myths is in a sense a lover of wisdom,” as given in Voegelin OH, vol. 3, chap. 7. Philosophia perennis. Perennial philosophy. Philosophia peri t’anthropina. Philosophy regarding human affairs. Philosophos. “Lover of wisdom,” philosopher. See also Philosophy; Philomythos Philosophy. The love of wisdom in the sense of transcendental (q.v.) truth. As Voegelin (following Plato) conceives it, philosophy is characterized by the realization that one does not actually possess transcendental truth but is oriented toward it through love. Contrasts with philodoxy (q.v.). Voegelin also spoke of philosophy as the process of interpreting experiences of transcendence (q.v.). Phronema. Self-will, but also spirit, mind, purpose, thought. Phronesis. Intention, purpose; practical wisdom, prudence. In 173

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Aristotle, the understanding that guides ethical virtue. Plato had given the concept a more contemplative emphasis, sometimes treating it as virtually equivalent to nous (q.v.). For Aristotle’s meaning as one of the “existential virtues,” see Voegelin, Anamnesis [CW, vol. 6], 153–56. See Phronimos Phronimos or Uphronimos. Knower and exemplar of right or prudent action (phronesis), a sensible, sagacious human being. Voegelin states, in CW, 6:156: “The synetos, the man of good judgment, knows how to assess action correctly [according to Aristotle], but he does not thereby become a phronimos, who acts correctly and effectively. Since synesis does indeed place objective distance between knowledge and action, which is precisely what distinguishes it from phronesis, the latter must be understood ontologically. The virtue that Aristotle calls phronesis, or political science, is an existential virtue; it is the movement of being, in which the divine order or the cosmos attains its truth in the human realm.” See Phronesis; Spoudaios Physei dikaion. Right by nature. Physikon. Natural right, as opposed to to nomikon, conventional right. Pistis. Faith. See Fides formata Pleonexia. A disposition to take more than one’s share. Greediness. Pleroma. Fullness. Used especially to refer to the “fullness” of incarnate divinity in Christ (as in Col. 2:9). Cf. Voegelin OH, vol. 4, chap. 7, §1.4: “In Paul’s myth, God emerges victorious, because his protagonist is man. He is the creature in whom God can incarnate himself with the fullness (pleroma) of his divinity, transfiguring man into the God-man (Col. 2:9). The whole creation that is groaning can be redeemed, because at one point, in man, the sonship of God is possible (Rom. 8:22–23).” Plethos. Multitude, mass, mob. Pneuma. Wind, air, breath, spirit. Hebrew ruach; Latin spiritus. In Voegelin’s use, the presence of the transcendent pole of the tension of existence as a force ordering the soul from within. Correlates with the symbol helkein (q.v.), which refers to the felt force of pneuma. Pneumapathology or pneumopathology. Spiritual disease (Schelling). 174

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Pneumatic differentiation. Voegelin’s term for the awakening of the soul both by and to the experience of the pull (helkein, q.v.) in the tension of existence toward the pole of transcendent perfection; the emergent realization of the absolutely transcendent character of that pole. Historically, the realization among both the ancient Israelites and early Christians of the absolute distinction between the radically transcendent God and the created realm or world. Poietike. The process of making something; production. Polis. The Greek city-state. State or society characterized by a sense of community. Thus, Voegelin, quoting Aristotle: “ ‘the polis is an association of like people [koinonia ton homoion]’ striving for the best life, and not an association of just any human beings.” OH, vol. 3, §5. Politeia. Commonwealth, republic; constitution; civil polity; the relation of the citizen to the state. Ariste politeia, the best constitution. Politike episteme. Political science, the understanding of how to live in society. Polymythoteros. With a higher number of legends; richer in legends; more partial to legends, myths. Polypragmosyne. Meddling; officious interference. Poros. Wealth, resource. Opposite of penia (q.v.). Pothos. Desire, yearning, longing (for mundane fulfillments). Defined by Voegelin as “a powerful desire to reach out indefinitely toward the unknown and unheard of” and used especially in reference to Alexander the Great’s unlimited ambition. Present, indelible. See Indelible present Primary experience of the cosmos. Voegelin’s term for what is felt and known about reality prior to philosophical or spiritual reflection that differentiates it into a “world” and a “beyond.” For this reason it is experienced as “a cosmos full of gods,” a whole saturated with divine presence. Princeps. In republican Roman use, a leading Roman citizen; in imperial times, a title of the emperor. Proton kinoun. First cause, prime mover. Pseude plasmata. False constructs. Pseudos. A lie. Psyche. Breath, vital principle, soul, “the sensorium of transcen175

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dence.” In Voegelin’s use, a comprehensive term for the process in which the pull toward the transcendent pole of the tension of existence is sensed and responded to; includes varying degrees of consciousness. Voegelin also spoke of how Greek thinkers developed it as a symbol that involved a level of “depth” below consciousness (see “Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization in History,” in CW, 12:124–25). Pure experience. Concept of William James cited by Voegelin as analogous to Plato’s metaxy (q.v.). Question, the. Voegelin’s term for the tension of existence in its aspect as a questioning unrest seeking, not simply particular truth, but still more the transcendent pole of truth as such: “not just any question but the quest concerning the mysterious ground of all being” (OH, vol. 4, chap. 7, §5 [p. 320 in 1974 ed.]). Expresses itself in mythopoeic as well as noetic acts and “shares by its varying modes the advance of experience from compactness to differentiation. The meaning of the Question can be ascertained, therefore, only by tracing the modes from the setting in the primary experience of the cosmos, through transitional forms, to their setting in the context of noetic and pneumatic differentiations” (ibid., 317). Ratio. Reason. Defined by Voegelin in “What Is Political Reality?” (Anamnesis, CW, 6:352) as the directional factor in the tension (q.v.) of consciousness “as the quest for the ground” (q.v.), which orders it and thereby gives it structure as open inquiry. In this sense, ratio is the existential response of nous (q.v.) to the Question (q.v.). Cf. “Reason: The Classic Experience,” in CW, vol. 12, chap. 10; also, CW, 28:88–91. Realissimum. The “most real.” Term for God or the divine ground considered as supreme reality. See also Reality, divine Reality. In Voegelin’s thought, reality, at its deepest level, is not to be understood as a “thing” or a “fact,” but as a process structured, through the tension between the poles of “world” (q.v.) and “Beyond” (q.v.), as a pull toward the perfect fullness and luminosity of being that is symbolized in the language of myth by the realm of the divine or the gods. See also Reality, divine; Reality, existent and nonexistent 176

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Reality, divine. A symbol (drawing on the mythic language of “the gods”) for the ultimate source or ground of all that is. Considered in this sense, it is the divine ground (q.v.) that is ultimately real, while all created reality may be described as a “myth” (q.v.)—a myth not in the sense that it is false but in the sense that its truth is an analogical imaging forth of the eminent reality of the ground. Cf. Voegelin, “The Beginning and the Beyond: A Meditation on Truth” (CW, 28:173): “Divine reality is being revealed to man in two fundamental modes of experience: in the experience of divine creativity in the cosmos; and in the experience of divine ordering presence in the soul.” Reality, existent and nonexistent. Voegelin sometimes describes the ground (q.v.) as “non-existent reality,” reserving the term existence for spatio-temporally conditioned phenomena (q.v.). See Glenn Hughes, Mystery and Myth in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 48–49. Reason. For Voegelin, not a merely calculative function (as in modern “rationalism”) but the expression in thinking of the love of the ground (q.v.) of being or divine reality (q.v.), the human capacity or “faculty” that becomes active through “the adequate articulation and symbolization of the questioning consciousness” (CW, 12:269). Cf. ten meanings of reason, CW 28:88. See also Noetic differentiation; Nous; Ratio Reflection. Consideration of experience by way of mediating interpretive models. Contrasts with immediacy of experience. Reflective distance. Voegelin’s term for the realization of the difference between the experience of existence as an event of conscious “participation” (q.v.) in being and the expression of this event in language symbols. This is an essential ingredient, according to Voegelin, in the “balance of consciousness” (q.v.) and involves the conception of truth not as information, but as growth of luminosity in the process of reality (q.v.). Contrasts with “doxic” thinking (q.v.) and with claims to intuitive Gnosis (q.v.). Reflective symbols. Symbols—such as “tension” (q.v.) of participatory consciousness and its experiential “poles” in the metaxy (q.v.), “intentionality and luminosity”(q.v.)—that express the insights achieved by “reflective distance” (q.v.) regarding the structural features of consciousness. 177

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Religio vera ipsa, id est purgatae mentis in Deum recta conversio. “The genuinely true religion, that is, a correct turning toward God by a purified mind.” Quoted in Bodin’s Letter to Jean Bautru, in Voegelin, HPI, vol. 5 [CW, vol. 23], chap. 6, p. 188. Representation. In the “elemental” sense: the institutions that make organization and leadership possible in a society. In the “conventional” sense: representative democratic government. In the “existential” sense: societies as they are concretely ordered for purposive action grounded in truth. In the “transcendental” sense: the symbolism by which a society interprets its order as deriving from and expressing the order of the cosmos (q.v.) or of the Beyond (q.v.). Cf. NSP, chap. 1, in CW, vol. 5. Representative humanity. Term used to refer to the modeling of well-developed humanity by one in whom some advance in the realization of human possibility has taken place; the existential basis for the development of the idea of “mankind.” Cf. Voegelin, “Configurations of History” (CW, 12:111): “Every new insight begins with a single person, who receives it, one might say, as a representative of the whole of humanity. As a matter of fact, the very idea that there is a humanity, that there is a mankind, and that one can generalize about man, appears only when certain revelatory insights occur.” Res gestae. Heroic deeds, exploits. Res publica. Commonwealth. Revelation. A “spiritual outburst,” a radically new insight that discloses the possibility of more adequate participation in being. The differentiation (q.v.) of pneumatic (q.v.) consciousness through revelatory experience. See Noetic vs. pneumatic Sacrae litterae. Sacred writings. Also referred to as divina scripta. Saeculum. An age of history. Saros. Babylonian cycle of 3,600 years. Saving tale. A story that has the power, as narrative symbol, to evoke an existential transformation enabling more adequate participation (q.v.) in being and to free one from the power of other stories that pull one toward less adequate existence. (For Voegelin’s discussion of this concept, see CW, 12:182–83, 186, 336–38.) See also Exodus; Immortalizing Scientism. The reductionist attitude that all reality (q.v.) should 178

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be knowable by the methods of the natural sciences (especially mathematical, quantitative method). Cf. NSP, introduction, and CW, vol. 10, chap. 7, “The Origins of Scientism.” Scotosis. Darkening, turning toward darkness; the obscuring of sectors of reality (q.v.). Voluntary ignorance. Term coined by Bernard Lonergan and used by Voegelin for the attitude seeking eclipse (q.v.) of reality. Scriptura sancta, sacra. Sacred scripture. Search. See Zetema; Zetesis Second reality. Voegelin’s term (drawn from Robert Musil’s The Man without Qualities) for a fictitious world imagined as true by a self-alienated person using it to mask and thereby “eclipse” (q.v.) genuine reality. See also Scotosis Secularization. The process by which the cosmos (q.v.), which had once been seen as having a dimension of transcendence, comes to be interpreted as lacking any relation to transcendence. Referred to by Voegelin (OH, 4:196) as “a polite word for deculturation” (q.v.). Sophia. Wisdom. Sophistes. Sophistic quibbler. Sophos. Wise, clever, skillful. Sophrosyne. Moderation, temperance, discretion, virtue of right understanding, as differentiated from the lesser quality, synesis or eusynesia (quick-wittedness, shrewdness). Soteria. Salvation, deliverance to safety. Soteriology. The theology of “salvation.” See also Saving tale Spirit. Defined by Voegelin in “The German University and the Order of German Society” (CW, 12:7): “By spirit we understand the openness of man to the divine ground of his existence: by estrangement from the spirit, the closure and the revolt against the ground.” See also Pneuma Spoudaios (aner). Aristotle’s term for the mature rational and ethical person, the fully developed human being capable of intelligent thought and responsible decision and action. See also Phronimos Stoa (poikile). Literally, “painted porch or colonnade,” a building in Athens after which the Stoic school of philosophy was named. 179

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Stromateis. Miscellanea (The title of a collection of various writings by Clement of Alexandria.) Sub specie mortis. Under the aspect of death. Substance. From Latin substantia: “standing under.” In Voegelin’s use, the underlying reality of anything. Refers to essential reality as compared with appearances, and in this sense it contrasts with phenomena (q.v.). Not to be confused with the use of the term in traditional metaphysics, where it refers to an independently existing entity, or hypostasis (q.v.). Summodeism. The subsuming of lesser gods and their powers and functions under a highest god. Summum bonum. The “highest good.” Equivalent Latin term for the agathon (q.v.) in Plato, Blessedness or Beatitude in Christianity; the “divine measure,” or “transcendent perfection.” Superbia vitae. Overbearing pride, existential arrogance; the archsin as in “the pride of life” in 1 John 2:16. See also Hybris Symbolism (primary and secondary). In Voegelin’s use, “primary symbolism” expresses genuine philosophical and spiritual experience, and correct interpretation of it requires a parallel experience on the part of the interpreter. “Secondary symbolism” replaces primary when the original symbol is separated from its engendering experience and is used to refer to some experience (either actual or purported) differing from the original. Tale, the saving. See Saving tale Tale, the time of the. The imaginative, analogical representation in myth of that which is beyond time, especially what Voegelin calls “The Beginning.” See “The Beginning and the Beyond: A Meditation on Truth” (CW, 28:175). Taxis. Order, arrangement. Techne. Art, technical skill, craft. Techne metretike. The art of measuring. Cf. Voegelin, OH, vol. 2 [CW, vol. 15], chap. 11, §3; OH, vol. 3 [CW, vol. 16], chap. 3, §6. Techne politike. The art of politics, political skill. Telos. End, purpose goal, completion. The objective or completion of a process of development. In Aristotle, the purpose or “final cause” of a process. Tension. A condition of tending toward a goal. Voegelin uses the term especially to refer to what he calls “tension of exis180

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tence,” the fundamental experience of longing for transcendental fulfillment, the Beyond (q.v.), the summum bonum (q.v.). Voegelin thought that when the fundamental tension of existence becomes conscious, so that one realizes its unrestricted character and its directional tendency, one can begin to understand and appropriate one’s existence as structured by that tension, with the result that one’s historical existence ceases to be a movement bounded by particular mundane goals and becomes a movement directed beyond the world—a movement that Voegelin also refers to as an exodus (q.v.). Tes geneseos pateres. Ancestors of becoming. Tetragrammaton. The word of four Hebrew letters YHWH (Yod He Vaw He) used for the unpronounceable name of God (Yahweh) in the Hebrew Bible and in Aquinas as most appropriate “for the purpose of signifying the singular, incommunicable substance of God.” Cf. Voegelin, OH, vol. 1 [CW, vol. 14], chap. 12, §3. Thanatos. Death. Also Freud’s term for the desire for death or “death drive.” As a force in the soul of Socrates see OH, vol. 3 [CW, vol. 16], chap. 1, §1.1. Thaumasia. Marvels, wonders. Thaumaston. The wonderful, marvelous. Thaumazein. To wonder; an aspect of what Voegelin calls the “tension of existence.” The experience from which Aristotle said philosophy begins. Correlates with “the Question” (q.v.). Theios nomos. Divine law. See Nomos Theiotatos. The most divine. Theogony. An account of the origin and descent of the gods. Theophany. A manifestation of the divine. Theophilos. A lover of God. Theoria. In Plato and Aristotle, contemplative wisdom; equivalent to episteme (q.v.). Described in The New Science of Politics as that type of rational construction and communication among mature individuals who are capable of imaginative reenactment of the experiences of which theory is an explication. Thingness. Voegelin’s term for what characterizes thing-reality (q.v.). Thing-reality. Reality insofar as it is conceived as an object for intending consciousness, as distinguished from It-reality (q.v.). 181

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Voegelin writes, in Anamnesis [CW, vol. 6], 374: “Although we are compelled to speak in terms of objects because of the intentionality of consciousness, the linguistic terms used do not have the character of concepts or definitions referring to things.” And in OH, vol. 5 [CW, vol. 18], 32: “there emerges the complex of consciousness-reality-language as a something that receives its character as a unit through the pervasive presence of another something, called the paradox of intentionality and luminosity, of thing-ness and It-ness.” See also Intentional consciousness; Intentionality; Participation Third god, the. In Plato’s Laws the nous (q.v.), considered as the divine source of order, manifest after the ages of Kronos (the first god) and Zeus (the second god). Thnetos. Mortal. Timios. Held in honor, valued. To pan. See Pan, to Topoi. Topics (Aristotle). Tou eidenai oregontai. “They desire to know.” Transcendence. Literally, “going beyond”—e.g., going beyond the boundaries of categories (as in the medieval scholastic “transcendentals” [q.v.]), going beyond the horizon of present knowledge by asking further questions, or going beyond one’s present mode of existence through a new openness to the pull of the Beyond (q.v.). See also Transcendent; Transcendence, experiences of Transcendence, experiences of. In Voegelin’s thought, experiences of reaching (or being drawn) beyond one’s present horizon of knowledge or spiritual and ethical orientation. Voegelin would sometimes illustrate the meaning of this phrase (and the fact that he did not mean something esoteric by it) by calling his interlocutor’s attention to his or her ordinary experience of being moved in questioning by a genuine desire for truth. See also Apperception; Transcendence; Transcendent; Transcendentals Transcendent. From the Latin transcendere: to go beyond, surpass. General term for that which extends or lies beyond some set of limits; may be relative (beyond some particular limits) or absolute (beyond all possible limits). The opposite of immanent (q.v.). See also Beyond; Ground; Summum bonum; Transcendentals 182

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Transcendental. General term for that which is transcendent (q.v.). Also used in Kantian discourse to refer to the a priori conditions that make some form of experience possible in principle. See also Beyond Transcendentals. In medieval usage, the term for attributes that cannot be circumscribed by the boundaries of Aristotelian categories; the medieval transcendentia or “transcendentals” are: ens (being), unum (one), bonum (good), verum (true), res (thing), and aliquid (something). Transcendentia. See Transcendentals Translatio imperii. Transfer of sovereignty, transmission of sovereignty qua imperial power, or supreme command. Transparent. As in “transparent symbol,” a phrase Voegelin used to refer to the ability of a symbol to evoke in its hearer an experientially grounded sense of what it refers to; the opposite of opaque, i.e., the inability of a symbol to thus communicate. Truth of existence. Voegelin’s term for transcendentally oriented conscious existence; involves the experience of: (1) finiteness and creatureliness; (2) dissatisfaction with imperfection; (3) the luminosity or manifestness of such experience in consciousness; (4) the self-transcending tendency of consciousness seeking fullness of truth, especially in the form of more adequate participation in being. Defined by Voegelin in “On Debate and Existence” (CW, 12:49) as “the awareness of the fundamental structure of existence together with the willingness to accept it as the condicio humana [q.v.].” Cf. Voegelin (OH, 3:363 [1957 ed.; CW, vol. 16, chap. 10, §2]): “Truth is not a body of propositions about a world-immanent object” but “the worldtranscendent summum bonum [q.v.] experienced as an orienting force in the soul.” See also Untruth of existence Tua res agitur. “It has to do with you.” Horace, Epistles 1.18:83– 84: “Nam tua res agitur, paries cum proximus ardet, et neglecta solent incendia sumere vires” (It is your own safety that is at stake, when your neighbor’s wall is in flames, and fires neglected tend to gather strength). Tyche. Luck, chance. Ukase. A Russian imperial decree, an edict having the force of law. 183

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Ultor peccatorum. Avenger, punisher of sins or sinners. Universality, universal. Voegelin’s term for the experience of the pull (helkein [q.v.]) of the transcendent pole in the tension of existence as the source of existential order for all human beings. Also refers to the order so constituted. See also Representative humanity Untruth of existence. The opposite of truth of existence (q.v.). Defined by Voegelin in “On Debate and Existence” (CW, 12:49) as “a revolt against the condicio humana [q.v.] and the attempt to overlay its reality by the construction of a Second Reality [q.v.].” Uphronimos. See Phronimos Variae de religionibus sententiae. “Various pronouncements about religions.” Cf. Jean Bodin’s letter to Jean Bautru of 1563 in HPI, vol. 5 [CW, vol. 23], 188–90. Via dolorosa. The path of sorrow; the route of Jesus bearing his cross. Viator. Wayfarer. In Christian symbolism, the pilgrim moving toward eschatological perfection. Vision. In Voegelin’s use, drawing on Plato’s terms hora (q.v.) and opsis (q.v.), a “reflective symbol” (q.v.) that refers to the mystery (q.v.) of reality (q.v.) developing luminosity (q.v.) in the emerging “truth of existence” (q.v.) in such a way that the poles of subject and object, human and divine are experienced as intimately bound together—but not fused into identity, as in Hegel. Voegelin writes in “Quod Deus Dicitur,” CW, 12:381: “What makes the Hegelinan insight . . . still unsatisfactory is the tendency to raise the paradoxic structure, as revealed in the reflective dimension of consciousness, into an ultimate solution of the problem of divinity. This hypostatization [q.v.] of reflective consciousness obscures the fact that the noetic movement itself, the divine-human encounter, is still an active process in tension toward the symbols of faith. The [Hegelian] hypostatization of the reflective symbols leads to the deformative construction of the process of thought into the finished thought of conceptual science.” In “The Beginning and the Beyond” Voegelin writes, CW, 28:229: “The opsis, vision, is Plato’s technical term for the experiential process in which the order of reality is seen, 184

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becomes reflectively known, and finds its appropriate language symbols. The ‘vision’ in this comprehensive sense, which includes the noetic vision, appears in the key-passages of Timaeus 47 as the opsis of the order in the cosmos, and in Republic 507– 509, as the opsis of the Agathon [q.v.] that creates the order in the soul of man.” Vitae nimia cupiditas. “Excessive desire to live.” World. In Voegelin’s use, not a quantity of territory but civilized existence, a substantive order involving the experience of universality (q.v.). Contrasts in this respect with ekumene (or oikoumene) (q.v.), which in Voegelin’s interpretation is a territorial term. According to Voegelin, the symbol “world” developed historically when the cosmos (q.v.) of the “primary experience of the cosmos” (q.v.) separated in the “differentiated consciousness of existence” into its immanent (symbolized by “world”) and transcendent (symbolized by “God”) components. Xynon, or to koinon. Common, what can be known as shared reality. Cf. Voegelin, OH, vol. 2 [CW, vol. 15], chap. 6, §2.3, and chap. 9, §3. Zetein. To seek. See Zetema; Zetesis Zetema. That which is sought; inquiry. In Voegelin’s use (following Plato), an existential inquiry, the participatory process of conceptual illumination of the soul; a search for truth, both cognitive and existential. Cf. Voegelin, OH, vol. 3 [CW, vol. 16], chap. 3, §4.1. Zetesis. Search, seeking. In Voegelin’s use, that aspect of the dynamics of the tension of existence in which the tension is experienced as a seeking or striving toward the transcendent pole of the tension. Correlative to helkein (q.v.). Zoa. Living beings. Zoon noetikon, politikon, historikon. Intellectual, political, historical living being. See Voegelin, “Reason: The Classic Experience,” in CW, 12:265–91; apropos Aristotle, Politics I.1.10–11, Voegelin writes in OH, vol. 3 [CW, vol. 16], chap. 9, §1: “Man is not a gregarious animal (agelaion zoon); he is a politikon zoon, 185

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and that means that the end, the telos, of the [human] community lies in the realm of conscious, deliberate recognition of good and evil, of right and wrong. For, ‘it is the characteristic of man, as distinguished from other living beings, that he alone has a sense of good and bad and right and wrong.’ ” Zoon noun echon. Living and rational being; Aristotle’s characterization of man “as the living being that possesses Nous.” Voegelin in CW, 12:267.

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[First Page] Adiaphora, 149 Adikon, adikia, 149 Adler, Alfred, 37 Adler, Max, 33, 111–12 Ad litterarum studia, 149 Adventures of Ideas (Whitehead), 58 Aftalion, Albert, 62 Agathon, 149, 180, 185 Agnoein, 149 Agnoia, 149 Aition, aitia, 149 Akribeia, 149 A la Recherche du temps perdu (Proust), 63 Alchemy, 65 Aletheia, 149. See also Episteme Alexander the Great, 129, 162, 175 Alienation: definition of, 125; and deformation, 124–25, 131; and philosophy of history, 127; and second reality, 122; and Stoics, 101–2, 125 Alle bisherige Geschichte, 149 Allotriosis, 101–2, 125, 150 Alogos, 150 Amathes, amatheis, 150 Amathia, 150 Amator sapientiae, 150 Amicitia, 150. See also Caritas Amor Dei, 94, 150 Amor sui, 94, 150 Amour-de-soi, 94 Analogia entis, 150

Analogy of being, 150. See also Mystery (mysterium) Anamnesis, 150 Anamnesis (Voegelin): and consciousness, 97; contents of, 64; on human nature, 162; on index, 164; Monk of Heisterbach in, 97; on ratio, 176; on Thing-reality, 182; and Voegelin’s teaching style, 7; writing and publication of, 16, 17 Ananke, 150 Anaximander, 151 Andersen, Hans Christian, 97 Andreia, 150 Anima mundi, 150 Anima rationalis et intellectiva, 151 Anoia, 151 Anselm of Canterbury, Saint, 160 Anthropeioi nomoi, 151 Anthropina, ta, 151 Anthropogony, 151 Anti-Americanism, 14 Anti-Semitism, 36, 112 Apeiron, 151. See also Peiras, ta peirata Aphtharsia, 145, 147, 151. See also Immortalizing Apocalypse of man, 94 Apocalypticism, 145–46 Apodictic, 151 Apolaustikos (bios), 151 Apology (Plato), 20 Aporein, 151 Aporia, 151

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index Apostrophe, 125–26, 151 Apperception, 151 Apperzeptionsverweigerung, 122–23 Aquinas, Thomas. See Thomas Aquinas Arche, 151 Arendt, Hannah, 47 Arete, 151 Ariste politeia, 175 Ariston, 151 Aristotle, 105, 133; on athanatizein, 145, 147, 164; on bios theoretikos, 152; on causality, 152; on dianoia, 155; on energeia, 157; on entelechy, 157; etiological argument of, 76, 77; on euthyoria, 159; on existential order, 126; on experience, 159; on form, 160; on homonoia, 162; on human nature, 185–86; on idiotes, 163; on metaphysics, 167; and meta ta physica, 105; on myth, 173; and noetic differentiation, 135; on Nous, 133, 170; on ousia, 171; peripatetic associated with, 172; on philomythos, 133, 173; on phronesis, 174; on polis, 175; on spoudaios (aner), 179; on synetos, 174; on telos, 180; on thaumazein, 181; on theoria, 181; Voegelin’s study of, 34, 67; Voegelin’s teaching of, 3 —Work: Metaphysics, 3, 105, 133 Aron, Raymond, 128, 142 Aspernatio rationis, 151 Astrology, 65 Athanatizein, 152. See also Aphtharsia; Exodus; Immortalizing Augustine, Saint, 11, 20, 94, 150 Austria: Christian Socialist party in, 68; civil war in, 53, 67–68, 79; constitution making in, 80–81; German occupation of, 70, 79; Kelsen’s drafting of constitution (1920) in, 48; Social Democratic party in, 32–33, 68–69, 111–12; Voegelin’s emigration from, 16, 70–72, 82–83 Austrian Institut für Geschichtsforschung, 31 Austrian School of Marginal Utility, 31

Authoritarian State (Voegelin): on ideologies, 69; overview of, 79–81; publication of, 69, 79, 81 Autobiographical Reflections (Voegelin): on allotriosis, 150; on apostrophe, 151; on consciousness, 154; on egophanic revolt, 157; on luminosity, 167; on metaxy, 168; on order, 171; overview of, 15–22; reviews of, 20–21; and Sandoz’s interviews of Voegelin, 17–20; writing and publication of, 17, 18 “Autobiographical Statement at Eighty-Two” (Voegelin), 20 Averroës (Ibn Rushd), 80 Axis-time, 129 Bacon, Sir Francis, 118–19 Bakunin, Mikhail, 90 Balance of consciousness, 152 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 53, 92 Baumgarten, Eduard, 40 Baur, Ferdinand Christian, 92–93 Bayazid I, 64 Beginning and beyond, 152 “Beginning and the Beyond: A Meditation on Truth” (Voegelin), 177, 180, 184–85 Bennington College, 16, 84–85 Bergson, Henri, 63, 139, 153 Berith, 152 Bertram, Ernst, 44 Between, the. See Metaxy Beyond, 152. See also Parousia Beziehungslehre, 54 Biology, 52–53, 66 Bios theoretikos, 152 Blacks: in the United States, 142 Bloch, Ernst, 72 Bloch, Mrs. Ernst, 72 Bloom, Arthur, 21 Bodek, Hermann, 67 Bodin, Jean, 64, 65, 138–39, 178, 184 Bohm-Bawerk, ¨ Eugen, 31 Böhme, Jakob, 93 Brooks, Cleanth, 86–87 Brunner, Otto, 32 Brunschvicg, Léon, 62 Buddha, 129

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index Camus, Albert, 75, 120 Cancer Ward (Solzhenitsyn), 119 Caritas, 152, 160. See also Amicitia; Fides formata Causa materialis, efficiens, formalis, finalis, 152 Chicago Oriental Institute, 90, 98, 120 Chiliasm, 152–53 China, 91, 109, 113, 129, 130 Chou Dynasty, 91 Christ. See Jesus Christ Christianity: and Blessedness or Beatitude, 180; on caritas, 152; on eschaton, 158–59; on homonoia, 162; on hypostasis, 163; and millenarianism, 152; on Paraclete, 171; parallel events between Greek philosophy and, 134–35; on Parousia, 171; and pneumatic differentiation, 134–35; and reason, 134 Christliche Gnosis, Die (Baur), 92–93 Cicero, 168 “Cimetière Marin” (Valéry), 63 Civilizations, 129–30 Clement of Alexandria, 180 Climate of opinion, 148 Closed existence, 152–53 Closing of the American Mind (Bloom), 21 Cognitio fidei (or amoris, or spei), 153. See also Fides formata Cohen, Hermann, 50 Cohn, Norman, 93 Colossians, Epistle to, 174 Columbia University, 52, 56–58 Commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics (Thomas Aquinas), 105 Commons, John R., 58, 60 Common sense, 153. See also Noesis; Nous Common Sense philosophy, 56–57, 153 Communism, 85, 112, 143, 146 Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), 82, 109 Compact, 153. See also Differentiation of consciousness Comparative civilizational knowledge, 40–44, 60

Complex of consciousness-realitylanguage, 153 Comte, Auguste, 42, 123, 127 Concrete, 153 Condicio humana (conditio humana), 154 Condorcet, Marquis de, 127 Confessions (Augustine), 20 Confucius, 91, 129 Coniuratio, 154 Consciousness: definition of, 154; and divine presence, 137–39; Hegel on, 123–24; Husserl on, 96–97; and In-Between, 98–99; James on, 98; luminosity of, 99; modern conception of, 123– 24; and participation, 98; and symbols, 137; theory of, 96–100. See also Existential consciousness; Intentional consciousness; Luminosity; Pure experience; Reflective distance; Tension Consciousness of kind, 58 Constancy of reality, 133 Consubstantial, 154 Consubstantiality, 98, 154 Contemptus mundi, 154 Conversio, 154. See also Epistrophe; Periagoge Cosmion, 154 Cosmological myth, 154 Cosmos, 154. See also Kosmos; Primary experience of the cosmos Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 50 Crowther, Ian, 21 Czechoslovakia, 70 Daimonios aner, 154 Dämonen, Die (Doderer), 122 Death and eschatology, 145, 147 Death of God, 94, 102 Decline of the West (Spengler), 42 Deculturation, 154–55. See also Deformation De-divinization, 155 De Descartes à Proust (Lalou), 63 Deformation: and alienation, 124– 25, 131; definition of, 155; and ideology, 127; and myth of polis, 125; propositional metaphysics as

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index deformation of philosophy, 124; and refusal to apperceive, 122–23; use of philosophy in recapturing reality from, 118–26. See also Deculturation Delegationszusammenhang, 48 Demiurge, 138 Democracy, 69 Dempf, Alois, 115 Despotikos, 155 Deux sources de la morale et de la religion, Les (Bergson), 63, 139 D’Evelyn, Thomas, 21 De Vera Religione (Augustine), 11 Dewey, John, 56, 57–58 Dialectic, 155 Dialogue of a Suicide with His Soul, 101 Dianoetic, 155 Dianoia, 155. See also Nous Dichter als Führer, Der (Kommerell), 44 Differentiation of consciousness, 155 Dikaion, ta dikaia, 155 Dikaiosyne (or dikaiosune), 155 Dike, 155, 158 Disorder, 101–2, 127–28 Disputatio, 155 Divina scripta, 155 Divine, the, 156. See also God; Reality, divine Divine presence, 137–39 Divine reality. See Reality, divine Doctrine, 130–31 Dodds, E. R., 120 Doderer, Heimito von, 113, 122 Dogmatomachy, 139, 156 Dollfuss, Engelbert, 79 Dopsch, Alfons, 31–32 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 62, 113 Dottrina del Fascismo (Mussolini), 82 Doxa, 156 Doxic thinking, 156 Doxography, 156 Dreimal Österreich (Schuschnigg), 82 Dritte Walpurgisnacht (Kraus), 46 Duguit, Léon, 63 Dvoˇrák, Max, 32 Dynamis, 156

Eckhart, Meister, 138 Eclipse, 156 “Eclipse of Reality” (Voegelin), 75 Eclipses of reality, 134–35 Ecumene, as symbol, 129. See also Ekumene Ecumenic age, 128–30, 156 Ecumenic Age (Voegelin): on apeiron, 151; on homonoia, 162; overview of, 128–30; writing and publication of, 17 Ecumenicity, 156 Edman, Irwin, 56, 59 Edwards, Jonathan, 60 Egological, 156 Egophanic revolt, 94, 102, 157 Egophany, 157 Egregium et admirandum humanum spectaculum, 157 Egypt, 101 Eidos, 157 Eidos kai morphe, 157 Eikon, 157 Eikos mythos, 157. See also Mystery (mysterium); Myth Einai, 157 Einstein, Albert, 37–38 Ekpyrosis, 157 Ekumene (ecumene, oikumene), 157, 185 Eliade, Mircea, 120 Eliot, Jack D., Jr., 149n Elliot, W. Y. (Bill), 84 Elpis, 157. See also Cognitio fidei (or amoris, or spei) Empires, 130–31. See also specific empires Eneinai, 157 Energeia, 157 Engel-Janosi, Carlette, 36 Engel-Janosi, Friedrich von, 35–36 Engels, Friedrich, 109 English language, 55, 86–87 English revolution, 140 Entelechy, 157 Enthousiasmos, 157 Epekeina, 157. See also Beyond; Transcendence Epigeos, 157

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index Episteme, 157–58. See also Aletheia; Theoria Episteme politike, 158 Epistles (Horace), 183 Epistrophe, 125, 158. See also Conversio; Periagoge Equivalence, 133 Equivalence of symbols, 158 Eristic, 158 Eros, 158. See also Existential consciousness Eros tyrannos, 158 Ersatz, 158 Ersatzform, 75 Eschatology, 145–48, 158 Eschaton, 158–59 Essai sur les données immediates de la conscience (Bergson), 63 Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke), 90 “Eternal Being in Time” (Voegelin), 164 Ethnic-cultural diversity, 131–32 Etiology, and Marx, 76–77 Euboulia, 159 Eudaimonia, 159 Euergesia, 159 Euergetikos, 159 Eunomia, 159 Europe: ethnic-cultural diversity of, 132 Eusynesia, 159 Euthyoria, 159 Eutyches, 159 Evil: Arendt on banality of, 47 Existential consciousness, 159. See also Eros; Truth of existence Existentialism, 134 Existential psychology, 125–26 Existential tension. See Existential consciousness Existent reality. See Reality, existent and nonexistent Exodus, 159 Experience, 159. See also Pure experience; Transcendence, experiences of Experiences: and ideas, 90, 104–5; and symbols, 121–22

Experiences of transcendence. See Transcendence, experiences of Fackel, Die (The Torch; Kraus), 45, 46, 78 Faith: definition of, 159; experiential grounding of, 5; metastatic faith, 94–95; nominalist versus mystical faith, 138. See also Fides formata; Metastatic faith; Pistis Fascism, 68 Federalist Papers, 5 Felix, 160 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 34, 51 Fides formata, 160. See also Cognitio fidei (or amoris, or spei); Faith Fides informata, 160 Fides quaerens intellectum, 160 Flaubert, Gustave, 62, 63 Form, 160 Fortuna, 160. See also Tyche France: and French Revolution, 140; religious civil wars in, 138; riot in Paris (1968), 142; Voegelin’s studies in, 56, 62–65 Frankfort, Henri, 98 Frankfort, Henriette A., 98 French Revolution, 140–41 Freud, Philip, 37–38 Freud, Sigmund: on Eros, 158; Herwig’s study on, 113; on sublimation, 95; on Thanatos, 181; Voegelin’s association with men trained by, 32 Friedemann, Heinrich, 44 Friedländer, Paul, 44–45, 120 From Enlightenment to Revolution (Voegelin), 17 Fruitio Dei, 160 Fuerth, Herbert, 35 Funktionentheorie, 33 Furtwaengler, Philipp, 33 Gaia, 133 Gebhardt, Jürgen, 113 Geistkreis (Spiritual or Intellectual Circle), 34–36 Geltung, 37 Genesis, Book of, 165–66 Genetics, 52 George, Stefan, 44–45, 46

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index “German University and the Order of German Society” (Voegelin), 179 Germany, universities in, 116–17 Geschichte des politischen Denkens, 113 Gesinnungsethik, 39 Gezweiung, 54 Giddings, Franklin Henry, 56, 58 Gilson, Étienne, 53, 120 Glossary of terms, 149–86 Gnoseological, 160 Gnosis, 160. See also Gnosticism Gnosticism: definition of, 160– 61; history of, 92–93; and metastatic apocalypse, 93–95; and Parousiasm, 171–72. See also Gnosis God: death of, 94, 102; and Tetragrammaton, 181; Thomas Aquinas on, 165, 181; Voegelin’s teaching on, 5; Voegelin’s use of term, 161 Goethe (Gundolf), 44 Gorgias (Plato), 157 Greek philosophy: and eschatology, 145, 147–48; parallel events between Israelite-Christian revelation and, 134–35; theophanic core of, 134–35. See also Aristotle; Plato; and other Greek philosophers Gregarius miles, 161 Ground, 161 Gruenberg, Carl, 32 Grundnorm (basic norm), 48 Gundolf, Friedrich, 44 Gütersloh, Albert Paris, 122 Haberler, Gottfried von, 34, 35, 71, 84 Habitus, 161 Hallowell, John H., 17 Hamilton, Sir William, 56–57 Hanak, M. J., 149n Harris, Robert J., 86, 87–88 Hartmann, Heinz, 32 Harvard University, 16, 56, 58, 71, 72, 84, 89 Hauriou, Maurice, 80 Havard, William C., 6 Hayek, Friedrich August von, 34, 35 Hedone, 161

Hegel, G. W. F.: on consciousness, 123–24; on death of God, 94, 102; final philosophy of, 96; and hypostatization of reflective consciousness, 184; Marx on, 76; and neo-Platonism, 76, 77; and philosophy of history, 127; and philosophy of religion, 93; premises of, 75–76, 77, 123; Voegelin’s education in, 34 —Works: Phenomenology, 123–24; Philosophy of Law, 76 Heidegger, Martin, 57, 60–61, 171–72 Heilman, Robert B., 86–87 Heimarmene, 161 Helkein, 161, 174 Henningsen, Manfred, 7n10, 113 Hentze, Carl, 109 Heraclitus, 129, 163 Herodotus, 129 Herwig, Dagmar, 113 Herwig, Hedda, 113 Hexis, 161 Hiera anagraphe, 161 Hildebrandt, Kurt, 45 Hinduism, 138 Historici mundiales, 161 Historiogenesis, 161–62 Historiography, 129, 162 Historiomachy, 162 History, advances in historical sciences, 107–9, 128 History of Antiquity (Meyer), 42 History of Caesar’s Fame (Gundolf), 44 “History of Political Ideas” (Voegelin), 17 History of Political Ideas (Voegelin): assumptions underlying, 104; “Astrological Politics” in, 65; Bodin in, 64; publication of, 17n4; value of research for, 106; Voegelin’s dissatisfactions with, 90–91, 104–6; writing of, 90 History of Political Theory (Sabine), 89 History of the Peloponnesian War (Thucydides), 127–28 History of the Race Idea from Ray to Carus (Voegelin): banning of, by National Socialists, 53; and biological theory of race, 52–53; and

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index Gestapo search of Voegelin’s home, 83; influences on, 45 Hitler, Adolf: and Austria, 34, 70; Mein Kampf by, 82; success of, 46, 78; U.S. participation in war against, 142; Voegelin’s opposition to, 15 Hitler and the Germans (Voegelin), 7 Hobbes, Thomas, 79, 94 Holcombe, Arthur, 71, 72, 84 Homoion, 162 Homo mensura, 162 Homonoia, 57–58, 162 Homo novus, 162 Hora, 162. See also Opsis; Parousia Horace, 183 Horizon, 162 Hughes, Glen, 177 Humanisme et Terreur (MerleauPonty), 75 Human nature, 147, 162. See also Representative humanity Human Nature and Conduct (Dewey), 56 Human Nature and Property (Commons), 58 Hupka, 33 Husserl, Edmund, 59, 96–97, 156 Hybris, 162. See also Insolentia; Superbia vitae Hyle, 162 Hyperouranion, 162–63 Hypostasis, hypotases, 99, 163. See also Hypostatizing; Substance Hypostatizing, 163 Ibn-Khaldun, 113 Ideas, 90, 104–5 Ideology: and American students, 85, 114–15; criterion for diagnosis of, 123; and deformation of existence, 127; discrepancies between science and, 109; and dogmatomachy, 139; and intellectual dishonesty, 73–74; and interdict on questioning, 123; and killing of people, 74–75; and language, 45–46, 75, 78; and order and disorder, 127; and refusal to apperceive, 122–23; Voegelin’s opposition to, 73–81; Weber on, 39–40, 74

Idiotes, 163 Ikhnaton, 79 Imago Dei, 163 Immanence, 163 Immanent, 163 Immanentism, 93–94, 163. See also Metaxy; Participation Immanentization, immanentizing, 163 “Immortality: Experience and Symbol” (Voegelin), 101 Immortalizing, 164. See also Aphtharsia; Exodus Imperator, 164 Imperium, 164. See also Translatio imperii In-Between, 98–99, 147, 168. See also Metaxy Indelible present, 164 Index, 164 India, 129 In novo esse constituuntur ex nihilo, 164 In Search of Order (Voegelin): on anoia, 151; on complex of consciousnessreality-language, 153; on It-reality, 165; on luminosity, 166–67; on Parousia, 171; publication of, 17 Insolentia, 164. See also Hybris; Superbia vitae Institute of Political Science (Munich), 4–5, 16, 112–17 Institutionalism, 80 Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Frankfort, Wilson), 98, 154 Intellectus, 164. See also Nous Intellectus unus, 80 Intentional consciousness, 164. See also Thing-reality Intentionality, 164. See also Thingreality Interaction and Spiritual Community (Voegelin), 54n1 Intuition, 164–65. See also Noesis; Nous; Reason Ipsum Esse, 165 Ira Dei, 165 Isaiah, 94–95 Israel and Revelation (Voegelin), 16, 168

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index Israelites: and metastatic apocalypse, 93, 94–95 It-reality, 165–66 Jackson, Robert H., 69 Jäger, Werner, 120 James, William, 98, 99, 168, 176 Jaspers, Karl, 57, 129, 134 Jean-Paul (Kommerell), 44 Jesus Christ: as head of all men, 135; incarnate divinity of, 174; and Logos, 135; and pneumatic differentiation, 134; and Second Coming, 137, 146; theophany of, 138; and via dolorosa, 184 John, First Epistle of, 180 Jung, Carl, 93, 113 Justice Department, U.S., 115 Kaiser Friedrich II (Kantorowicz), 44 Kalokagathia, 166 Kalon, 166 Kanon kai metron, 166 Kant, Immanuel, 50. See also NeoKantianism Kantorowicz, Ernst, 44 Kapital (Marx), 38 Kata physin, 166 Kath homoioteta, 166 Kaufmann, Felix, 34, 35, 36, 48 Kelsen, Hans: and Austrian constitution (1920), 48; and neo-Kantianism, 49, 50; on norm logic, 60; and Pure Theory of Law, 31, 48–51, 81; and Staatslehre (political theory), 49–50; at University of Vienna, 31, 32, 33, 34, 48, 49; Voegelin as assistant to, 67; Voegelin’s differences with, 49–50; on Voegelin’s New Science of Politics, 81 Kerényi, Karl, 120 Kierkegaard, Søren, 105 Kinei (kinein, kineitai), 166 Kinesis, 127–28, 166 Kineton, 166 Koinai ennoiai, 90 Koinon, 166. See also Xynon Koinonia politike, 166 Kolberg, Eckard, 113

Kommerell, Max, 44 Kopatschek (mathematician), 38 Kosmokrator, 166 Kosmos, 166. See also Cosmos Kraus, Karl, 45–47, 69, 78, 113 Kraus, Otto Erwin, 37 Kries, Ernst, 32 Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften (Husserl), 96 Kritike, 166 Kronos, 138 Kuntz, Paul G., 21 Kyriotate episteme kai architektonike, 166 La Fayette, Madame de, 63 Lalou, René, 63 Landshut, Siegfried, 76 Land und Herrschaft (Brunner), 32n1 Language: Humpty-Dumpty philosophy of, 122; and ideology, 45–46, 75, 78; as social phenomenon, 118–19; social stratification of, 86–87; and symbols, 99– 100 Lao-tse, 91, 113 La Rochefoucauld, Duc de, 64 Law: French theory of, 63 Laws (Plato), 150, 167, 182 Leap in being, 105 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 151 Lettre à Jean Bautru (Bodin), 138–39, 178, 184 Letzten Tage der Menschheit, Die (Kraus), 46 Leviathan (Hobbes), 79 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien, 98 Libido dominandi, 166 Likemindedness, 57–58 Locke, John, 5, 90 Locus classicus, 166 Logos, 102, 135, 166 Lonergan, Bernard, 179 Long, Huey, 74 Louisiana State University, 3, 5, 6, 16, 49, 86–88, 114, 115 Lozinski, G., 62 LSU. See Louisiana State University Lubac, Henri de, 53, 120

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index Ludwig-Maximilian University, 3–4, 16 Luminosity, 166–67; of consciousness, 99 Mache athanatos, 167 Mach, Ernst, 31 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 64, 65, 121 Machlup, Fritz, 34, 35 Macmahon, Arthur Whittier, 56 Magic, 95 Magie und Manipulation (Vondung), 114 Maier, Robert, 37–38 Malista auto, 167 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 44, 63 Mankind. See Human nature; Representative humanity Mannheim, Karl, 57 Mann, Thomas, 120 Mantike, 167 Man without Qualities (Musil), 179 Mao Tse-tung, Madame, 91 Marcel, Gabriel, 168–69 Maritain, Jacques, 53 Martin, Mildred, 85 Martin, Roscoe, 85 Marx, Karl: Communist Manifesto by, 82, 109; and etiology in human existence, 76–77; final philosophy of, 96; on Hegel, 76; on history, 149; and interdict on questioning, 123; and Paris Manuscripts (1844), 124; and philosophy of history, 127; on revolution, 146; in Voegelin’s History of Political Ideas, 90; Voegelin’s study of, 38, 52 Marxism: Voegelin’s interest in and rejection of, 38, 39, 52, 74, 111; Weber on, 39 Mass media: on Vietnam War, 143 Matière et Mémoire (Bergson), 63 McClain, William, 149n McGraw-Hill, 89 Meditation, 167 Mein Kampf (Hitler), 82 Mémoires literature, 63–64 Meno (Plato), 150 Me physika all’ anthropina dikaia, 167

Merkl, Adolf, 31, 34, 48, 67 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 75 Metalepsis, 167 Metaphysics: Aristotle on, 167; origin of term, 105; propositional metaphysics as deformation of philosophy, 124 Metaphysics (Aristotle): on causality, 152; Commentary on, by Thomas Aquinas, 105; on experience, 159; on metaphysics, 167; myth in, 133; Nous in, 133; on philomythos, 173; Voegelin’s teaching of, 3 Metastasis, 167–68 Metastatic apocalypse, 93–95 Metastatic faith, 94–95, 168. See also Faith Meta ta physica, 105 Metaxy, 98, 99, 168. See also Immanentism Methexis, 168 Metis, 168 Metropolitan Museum of Art, 34, 35 Meyer, Eduard, 42–43, 44 Millenarianism, 152 Miseria humanae conditionis, 168 Mises, Ludwig von, 31, 34 Mochulski, Konstantin V., 62 Modernity, meanings of, 128 Modus deficiens, 168 Morbus animi, 168 Morgan, Thomas Hunt, 56 Morgenstern, Oscar, 34, 35 Morphe. See Eidos; Form Morstein-Marx, Fritz, 89 Motus amoris, 168 Munich University, 7 “Murder of God” (Voegelin), 172 Murray, Gilbert, 55 Musil, Robert, 113, 122, 179 Mussolini, Benito, 68, 70, 82 Mystery (mysterium), 168–69. See also Analogy of being Mystery and Myth in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin (Hughes), 177 Mysticism, 137–39 Mysticism East and West (Otto), 138 Mystiques politiques, Les (Rougier), 78 Myth: Aristotle on, 105, 133, 173; definition of, 169; Plato on, 157, 169

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index Mytho-speculation, 169 Mythos synkeitai ek thaumasion, 169 Nabi, 135 National Socialism: Austrian resistance to, 53; banning of Voegelin’s work by, 53, 79; damage of, 116; and firing of Voegelin from University of Vienna, 16, 70, 111; and Kraus, 46–47; and race conception, 52–53, 66; symbolisms of, 79; and University of Vienna, 34; Voegelin’s brief interest in, 70; Voegelin’s opposition to, 70, 72–74, 77–78, 82–83, 85, 111 Nature of the Law and Related Legal Writings (Voegelin), 49n1 Naumann, Michael, 113 Nefanda crudelitas, 169 Neo-Kantianism, 49, 50, 121 Neo-Platonism, 76, 77, 93–94 Neo-Thomism, 53 New School for Social Research, 34 New Science of Politics (Voegelin): on apocalypse of man, 94; on chiliasm, 152–53; on Gnosticism, 161; Kelsen’s critique of, 81; on representation, 178; on scientism, 178–79; on theoria, 181; writing and publication of, 16 Nicomachean Ethics (Aristotle), 164, 170 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 90, 94, 95 Nietzsche (Bertram), 44 Noein, 169 Noesis, 169 Noetic. See Dianoetic; Noesis; Nous Noetic differentiation, 169. See also Reflective distance Noetic symbols, 169 Noetic vs. pneumatic. See Intentionality; Luminosity; Noetic differentiation; Nous; Pneuma; Pneumatic differentiation; Reason; Revelation Noeton, 170 Nomikon dikaion, 170 Nomikon, ta nomika, 170 Nomos, 170. See also Theios nomos

Nonexistent reality. See Reality, existent and nonexistent Normlogik, 50 Northwestern University, 16 Nosos, nosema, 170 Nous: Aristotle on, 133; Christians’ ignoring of, 134; definition of, 170; Plato on, 138. See also Dianoia; Intellectus; Reason Nous echon, 170. See also Nous; Zoon noun echon Novum Organum (Bacon), 118–19 Nulla fortunae varietatis habita ratione, 170 Ochlocracy, 170 Oikoumene. See Ekumene Old Testament: and Tetragrammaton, 181 “On Debate and Existence” (Voegelin), 183, 184 Onken, Luise Betty. See Voegelin, Luise Betty “Lissy” Onken On, ta onta, 170 On the Form of the American Mind (Voegelin): contents of, 59–60; and Gestapo search of Voegelin’s home, 83; on Husserl’s conception of consciousness, 96–97; influences on, 45, 59–60; writing and publication of, 66 Opaque, 170 Open existence, openness, 170 Opitz, Peter J., 113 Opsis, 170–71, 184–85. See also Hora Order: definition of, 101, 171; and logos, 102; and philosophy of history, 127–28 Order and History (Voegelin): and advances in historical sciences, 107–9; background of, 104–9; on ecumenic age, 156; Ecumenic Age in, 128–30; on eros, 158; on eros tyrannos, 185; on form, 160; on historiogenesis, 161–62; on homonoia, 162; on human nature, 185–86; on idiotes, 163; on incarnate divinity of Christ, 174; on It-reality, 165–66; organizational plan for, 106–7; on philomythos, 173; on the

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index question, 176; on secularization, 179; on techne metretike, 180; on Tetragrammaton, 181; on Thanatos, 181; on Thing-reality, 182; on truth of existence, 183; writing and publication of, 16, 17; on xynon (or to koinon), 185; on zetema, 185 Oregesthai, 171 Orekton, 171 Organon, 171 Oriental Institute (Chicago), 90, 98, 120 “Origins of Scientism” (Voegelin), 179 Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (Talmon), 80 Orwell, George, 120 Otto, Rudolf, 138 Ouranos, 133 Ousia, 171 Oxford University, 55 Pagani, 171 Pan, to, 171 Paraclete, 171 Parainesis, 171 Parmenides, 67, 157 Parousia, 171. See also Hora Parousiasm, 171–72 Participation, 98, 172. See also Immanentism; Thing-reality; Transcendentals Pathos, 172 Patrikon, 172 Patrios doxa, 172 Paul: and aphtharsia, 145; and metastatic apocalypse, 93; and pneumatic differentiation, 134, 135; and Second Coming, 137, 146 Peiras, ta peirata, 172. See also Apeiron Peitho, 172 Penia, 172 Percipere, 172 Periagoge, 125, 172. See also Conversio; Epistrophe Peripatetic, 172 Peri tes physeos, 172 Perlman, Selig, 58 Persian Empire, 129 Phaedrus (Plato), 157, 162–63 Phenomena, 172

Phenomenology, 96–97 Phenomenology (Hegel), 123–24 Pheugein ten agnoian, 172 Philia, 173 Philia politike, 173 Philodoxy, 173 Philomythos, 133, 173 Philosophers, tasks of, 148 Philosophia perennis, 173 Philosophia peri t’anthropina, 173 Philosophos, 133, 173 Philosophy: definition of, 173; and eschatology, 145–48; meaning of, as symbol, 122; propositional metaphysics as deformation of, 124; use of, for recapturing reality, 118–26 Philosophy of history: beginnings of, 127; and Ecumenic Age, 128–30; and eschatology, 147; and ethnic-cultural diversity, 131–32; and In-Between, 147; and order and disorder, 127–28; and orthodox empires, 130–31; and range, constancy, eclipse, and equivalence of truth, 133–36 Philosophy of Law (Hegel): Marx on, 76 Phronema, 173 Phronesis, 173–74 Phronimos, 174 Physei dikaion, 174 Physikon, 174 Pistis, 174. See also Faith; Fides formata Plato: on Agathon, 149, 180, 185; on amathia, 150; on anamnesis, 150; on anima mundi, 150; on athanatizein, 145, 147; on being and not-being, 102; on Demiurge, 138; dichotomic nature of concepts of, 119; on doxa, 156; on eikos mythos, 157; on eristic, 158; on Eros, 158; on existential order, 126; on form, 160; on hora, 184; on hyperouranion, 162–63; on justice, 119; on mache athanatos, 167; on metaxy, 98, 99, 168; on myth, 157, 169; and noetic theophany, 135; on Nous, 138, 170, 182; on opsis, 170–71, 184–85; on peitho, 172; on penia, 172; on periagoge, 125, 172; on philodoxos, 173; on philodoxy,

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index 119; on Philosopher versus Sophist, 119; on philosophy, 119, 173; on phronesis, 174; on theoria, 181; Voegelin’s study of, 34, 44–45, 67; on zetema, 185 —Works: Apology, 20; Protagoras, 3 Plato and Aristotle (Voegelin), 16 Pleonexia, 174 Pleroma, 174 Plethos, 174 Plotinus, 76, 102, 150 Pneuma, 174 Pneumapathology, pneumopathology, 174 Pneumatic differentiation, 175 Poietike, 175 Polarization, 141–44 Polis, 125, 175 Politeia, 175 Political Apocalypse (Sandoz), 113n1 Political Religions (Voegelin), 78–79 Politics (Aristotle), 185–86 Politike episteme, 175 Polybius, 129 Polymythoteros, 175 Polynesian cultures, 109 Polypragmosyne, 175 Poros, 175 Porter, Katherine Anne, 86 Posterior Analytics (Aristotle), 170 Pothos, 175 Powell, Thomas Reed, 58 Present, indelible. See Indelible present Primary experience of the cosmos, 175 Primary symbolism, 180 Princeps, 175 Princesse de Clèves, La (La Fayette), 63 Prince, The (Machiavelli), 64 Prometheus (Balthasar), 92 Prophets, 93, 94–95, 134–35 Protagoras (Plato), 3 Proton kinoun, 175 Proust, Marcel, 63 Pseude plasmata, 175 Pseudo-Dionysius, 137–38 Pseudos, 175 Psyche, 137, 175–76 Puech, Henri Charles, 93, 120 Pure experience, 98, 99, 176

Pure Theory of Law, 31, 48–51, 81 Pursuit of the Millennium (Cohn), 93 Quadragesimo anno, 53 Question, the, 176 Quispel, Gilles, 93, 120 “Quod Deus Dicitur” (Voegelin), 184 Race, 52–53, 66 Race and State (Voegelin), 52, 66–67, 83 Rad, Gerhard von, 95 Radiocarbon dating, 108 Rafael (Stein), 44 Ratio, 176 Realissimum, 176. See also Reality, divine Reality: constancy of, 133; definition of, 176; eclipses of, 134–35; second reality and alienation, 122; systematic falsification of, 102–3; use of philosophy for recapturing, 118–26. See also Reality, divine; Reality, existent and nonexistent Reality, divine, 177. See also Realissimum Reality, existent and nonexistent, 177 Reason, 134, 177. See also Noetic differentiation; Nous; Ratio “Reason: The Classic Experience” (Voegelin), 185 Rechtslehre, 49–50 Reflection, 177 Reflective distance, 177 Reflective symbols, 177 Reformation, 74 Reid, Thomas, 56, 153 “Reine Rechtslehre und Staatslehre” (Voegelin), 50 Relativity theory, 37–38 Religio vera ipsa, id est purgatae mentis in Deum recta conversio, 178 Representation, 178 Representative humanity, 178. See also Human nature Republic (Plato), 157, 158, 185 Res gestae, 178 Res publica, 178 Retz, Cardinal de, 64 Revelation, 134–35, 178

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index Revel, Jean-François, 141n1 Review of Politics, 65 Revolutions, 140–41, 146 Rickert, Heinrich, 40, 50 Ritschl, Albrecht, 50 Rockefeller Foundation, 56, 62 Roman Empire, 129, 131 Romans, Epistle to, 174 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 115 Rougier, Louis, 78 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 80 Sabine, George H., 89 Sacrae litterae, 155, 178 Saeculum, 178 Saint-Juste, Louis Antoine Leon, 75 Sandoz, Ellis: on Dostoevsky, 113; and Glossary of Terms, 149n; interviews of Voegelin by, 17–20; photograph of, 28; as Voegelin’s student, 3–4, 18 Santayana, George, 59–60, 63 Saros, 178 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 134 Saving tale, 5, 178. See also Exodus; Immortalizing Schabert, Tilo, 113 Scheler, Max, 57, 66–67 Schelling, F. W. J. von, 34, 90, 93, 174 Schey, 33 Schiff, Georg, 35 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 93 Schlick, Moritz, 31 Schmitt, Carl, 80 Schreier, Fritz, 34, 48 Schriftenreihe zur Politik und Geschichte, 113 Schumpeter, Joseph A., 31, 71, 84 Schuschnigg, Kurt von, 82 Schütz, Alfred, 34, 35, 36, 96 Science, 5, 50 Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Voegelin), 76, 152–53, 161, 171–72 Scientism, 178–79 Scotosis, 179 Scriptura sancta, sacra, 179 Search. See Zetema; Zetesis Secondary symbolism, 180 Second Coming, 137, 146 Second reality, 122, 179 Secularization, 179

Sein und Zeit (Heidegger), 60–61 Sergillanges, A. D., 53 Shakespeare und der Deutsche Geist (Gundolf), 44 Siger de Brabant, 80 Simmel, Georg, 54 Sivers, Peter von, 113 Slavery, 142 Snell, Bruno, 120 Social Democratic party, 32–33, 68–69, 111–12 Social science: Weber on, 40 Sociology of Religion (Weber), 39 Socrates, 181 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 119 Sophia, 179 Sophistes, 179 Sophos, 179 Sophrosyne, 179 Soteria, 179 Soteriology, 179. See also Saving tale Soul, 94 Southern Political Science Association, 86 Southern Review, 86 Spann, Othmar: and Gezweiung, 54; and universalism, 49, 54; at University of Vienna, 32, 33, 34, 48, 49 Spengler, Oswald, 42, 44, 60, 140 Spirit, 179. See also Pneuma Spoudaios (aner), 179. See also Phronimos Sprung, 105 Ssu-ma Ch’ien, 129 Ssu-ma T’an, 129 Staat, 51 Staatslehre, 49–50, 66 Stanford University, 16–17, 18 Stefan-George-Kreis, 44–45, 67 Stein, Wilhelm, 44 Stellung des Menschen im Kosmos, Die (Scheler), 67 Stern, Kurt, 52 Stoa (poikile), 179 Stoicism: and alienation, 101–2, 125; and apostrophe, 125–26, 151; origin of name for, 179 Strebinger (chemist), 38 Strisower, Leo, 33

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index Stromateis, 180 Strzigowski, Josef, 32 Study of History (Toynbee), 113 Sublimation, 95 Sub specie mortis, 180 Substance, 180. See also Hypostasis Summodeism, 180 Summum bonum, 180 Superbia vitae, 180. See also Hybris; Insolentia Supreme Court, U.S., 58–59, 60, 69, 87 Swoboda, Hermann, 32 Symbolism: definition of, 180; participatory philosophy of, 99–100; and transcendental representation, 92. See also Symbols Symbolist poetry, 44 Symbols: and consciousness, 137; definition of, 99–100; and experiences, 106, 121–22; “total” and “authoritarian” as, 79–80. See also Symbolism Symposium (Plato), 172 Synesis, 174 Synetos, 174 Systems, 102–3 Tale, the saving. See Saving tale Tale, the time of the, 180 Talmon, J. L., 80 Tamerlane, 64 Tatsachenwissenschaften (sciences of facts), 50 Taxis, 180 Techne, 180 Techne metretike, 180 Techne politike, 180 Telos, 180 Tension, 180–81 Terminiello case, 69 Tes geneseos pateres, 181 Tetragrammaton, 181 Thanatos, 158, 181 Thaumasia, 181 Thaumaston, 181 Thaumazein, 181 Theios nomos, 181. See also Nomos Theiotatos, 181 Theogony, 181 Theophany, 181

Theophilos, 181 Theoria, 181. See also Episteme Thibaudet, Albert, 63 Thingness, 181 Thing-reality, 181–82. See also Intentional consciousness; Intentionality; Participation Third god, 182 Thnetos, 182 Thomas Aquinas: on amicitia, 150; and Aristotle, 80; on caritas, 160; on Christ as head of all men, 135; on fides formata, 160; on fides informata, 160; on form, 160; on God, 165, 181; on ipsum esse, 165; on Ipsum Esse Subsistens, 150; metaphysics as term used by, 105; on mystery, 168–69; and mysticism, 138 Thucydides, 126, 127–28, 166 Timaeus (Plato), 150, 157, 185 Timios, 182 “Timurbild der Humanisten, Das” (Voegelin), 64 To pan. See Pan, to Topoi, 118 Tou eidenai oregontai, 182 Toynbee, Arnold J., 42, 44, 60, 113, 129–30 Transcendence, 182 Transcendence, experiences of, 182. See also Apperception; Transcendentals Transcendent, 182. See also Beyond; Ground; Summum bonum; Transcendentals Transcendental, 183. See also Beyond Transcendental representation, 92 Transcendentals, 183 Transcendentia. See Transcendentals Translatio imperii, 183 Transparent, 183 Trois Contes (Flaubert), 62 Truth, 5 Truth of existence, 183. See also Existential consciousness; Untruth of existence Tua res agitur, 183 Tufts University, 4–5 Tyche, 183. See also Fortuna

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index Ukase, 183 Ultor peccatorum, 184 United States: blacks in, 142; citizenship for Voegelins in, 16, 115; ethnic-cultural diversity of, 131–32; intellectuals in, 141, 143–44; and polarization, 141–44; revolutionary tradition of, 140–41; slavery in, 142; university students in, 85, 114–15; and Vietnam War, 142–43; Voegelin’s immigration to, 16, 71–72, 140 Universality, universal, 184. See also Representative humanity Universities: comparison of European and American students in, 85, 114–15, 116; in Germany, 116–17. See also specific universities University of Alabama, 16, 85–86, 89–90 University of Chicago, 90, 98, 120 University of Vienna: anti-Semitism at, 36, 112; firing of Voegelin from, by National Socialists, 16, 70, 111; Kelsen at, 31, 32, 33, 34, 48, 49; Spann at, 32, 33, 34, 48, 49; Voegelin as faculty member at, 15–16, 67, 79, 112; Voegelin as student at, 15, 31–36, 49, 121 University of Wisconsin, 56, 58–59, 61 Untruth of existence, 184. See also Truth of existence Uphronimos. See Phronimos Valéry, Paul, 44, 59, 63 Values, 50–51 Variae de religionibus sententiae, 184 Vauvenargues, Marquise de, 64 Verantwortungsethik (ethics of responsibility), 39–40 Verdross, Alfred von, 31, 34, 48 Vernunft, 134 Vettori, Francesco, 121 Via dolorosa, 184 Viator, 147, 184 Vietnam War, 142–43 Violence, 146 Vision, 184–85. See also Opsis Vitae nimia cupiditas, 185 Voegelin, Elisabeth Ruehl, 15 Voegelin, Eric: American influence on,

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56–61; as Bennington College faculty member, 16, 84–85; biographical summary on, 15–17; birth date of, 15; Chinese language study by, 91; and Christian Socialist party, 68; as Columbia University student, 52, 56–58; and Communism, 85, 112; and comparative civilizational knowledge, 40–44; criticisms of, 74; death of, 15, 17; development of history of political ideas by, 89–92; on differences between European and American students, 114–15, 116; emigration of, from Austria, 16, 70– 72, 82–83; and English language, 55, 86–87; finances of, 67, 85, 115; firing of, from University of Vienna, 16, 70, 111; flight by, from Gestapo into Switzerland, 16, 71–72, 82, 83; and French language, 62; Stefan George’s influence on, 44–45; Gestapo search of home of, 82–83; Greek language study by, 67; as Harvard University instructor, 71, 72, 84, 89; as Harvard University student, 56, 58; Hebrew language study by, 90; high school education of, 15, 37–38, 53; home of, in California, 18; immigration of, to U.S., 16, 71–72, 140; and Institute for Political Science (Munich), 4–5, 16, 112–17; interviews of, by Sandoz, 17–20; and Kelsen’s Pure Theory of Law, 48–51; Kraus’s influence on, 45– 47; library of, 63, 82–83; as Louisiana State University professor, 3, 5, 6, 16, 49, 86–88, 115; marriage of, 16; and Marxism, 38, 39, 52, 74, 111; Meyer as teacher of, 42–43; as Munich University professor, 7; and National Socialism, 16, 53, 70, 72–74, 77–78, 82–83, 85, 111; as Oxford University student, 55; parents of, 15; in Paris as student, 56, 62–65; personality of, 15; Ph.D. dissertation by, 49, 54, 54n1; photographs and portrait of, 10, 25, 26, 28–30; retirement of, 17; return of, to Vienna in 1927, 66–69; Rockefeller Fellowship for, 56–65; and Russian language, 62; and Social Democratic party, 33, 68–69, 111–12;

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index as Stanford University professor, 16–17; teaching career of, 2–7, 15–17, 84–88, 110–17; as University of Alabama faculty member, 16, 85–86, 89–90; as University of Vienna faculty member, 15–16, 67, 79, 112; as University of Vienna student, 15, 31–36, 49, 121; as University of Wisconsin student, 56, 58–59, 61; U.S. citizenship for, 16, 115; vocabulary of, 1–2; Walgreen Lectures by, 91; Alfred Weber as teacher of, 43; Max Weber’s influence on, 39–41, 73; writings by summarized, 16–17, 50, 66–67, 69, 83. See also specific works Voegelin, Luise Betty “Lissy” Onken: in Alabama, 85; burial place for, 17; California home of, 18; immigration of, to U.S., 16, 72; Louisiana home of, 3; marriage of, 16; photographs of, 27, 28; search of home of, 83; U.S. citizenship for, 16, 115; and Voegelin’s escape from Gestapo, 71; and Voegelin’s retirement, 17 Voegelin, Otto Stefan, 15, 33 Voegelinian Revolution (Sandoz), 17 Vondung, Klaus, 113–14 Waelder, Robert, 32, 35 Wagner, Frederick, 149n Warburg Institute, 65 Warren, Robert Penn, 86, 87 Webb, Eugene, 149n Weber, Alfred, 43, 44, 57 Weber, Max: and comparative civilizational knowledge, 40–41, 44, 60; on ethics of intention and ethics of responsibility, 39–40; on ideologies, 39–40, 74; influence of, on

Voegelin, 39–41, 73; on intellectual integrity, 5, 73, 74; on Marxism, 39; on social science, 40 Weber-Schaefer, Peter, 113 Wechselwirkung, 54 Weininger, Otto, 32 Wellesz, Egon, 32 Wertbeziehende Methode, 51 Wertwissenschaften, 50 Wesley, John, 56 “What Is Political Reality?” (Voegelin), 164, 176 Whitehead, Alfred North, 58, 148 Wieser, Leopold von, 31 Wilde, Johannes, 35 William of Ockham, 138 Williams, T. Harry, 115 Wilson, John A., 154 Windelband, Wilhelm, 40, 50 Winternitz, Emanuel, 34, 35, 48 Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Weber), 39 “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme” (Voegelin), 164, 167 Wissenschaft und Politik (Weber), 39 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 31 World, 185 World of the Polis (Voegelin), 3, 16 World War II, 142–43 Xynon, 185. See also Koinon Zetein, 185 Zetema, 185 Zetesis, 185 Zeus, 138 Zoa, 185 Zoon noetikon, politikon, historikon, 185–86 Zoon noun echon, 186

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Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) was one of the most original and influential philosophers of our time. Born in Cologne, Germany, he studied at the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of political science in the Faculty of Law. In 1938, he and his wife, fleeing Hitler, emigrated to the United States. They became American citizens in 1944. Voegelin spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. During his lifetime he published many books and more than one hundred articles. The * Collected Works of Eric Voegelin make available in a uniform edition all of Voegelin’s major writings. Ellis Sandoz, Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science, is Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute at Louisiana State University. He is the general editor of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin and author or editor of numerous books, including Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America (University of Missouri Press).

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