Eric Voegelin Today: Voegelin’s Political Thought in the 21st Century 9781498596633, 9781498596640

Table of contents :
Contents
Introduction
Part I: The Ideological Nature of Liberalism Today
1 Rethinking Eric Voegelin’s Interpretation of Liberalism and Its History
2 The Necessity of Moral Communication in a Pluralistic Political Environment
3 Defenders of Democracy
4 The Origins of Scientism
5 Voegelin, Rawls, and the Persistence of Liberal Civil Theology
Part II: Geopolitics Today
6 The Comparative Politics of Eric Voegelin
7 The Dream of the Caliphate and the Loss of Reality
8 The Five Ways of World-Empire
9 Eric Voegelin’s 1944 “Political Theory and the Pattern of General History”
Index
About the Authors

Citation preview

Eric Voegelin Today

Political Theory for Today Series Editor: Richard Avramenko, University of Wisconsin, Madison Political Theory for Today seeks to bring the history of political thought out of the jargonfilled world of the academy into the everyday world of social and political life. The series brings the wisdom of texts and the tradition of political philosophy to bear on salient issues of our time, especially issues pertaining to human freedom and responsibility, the relationship between individuals and the state, the moral implications of public policy, health and human flourishing, public and private virtues, and more. Great thinkers of the past have thought deeply about the human condition and their situations—books in Political Theory for Today build on that insight. Titles Published Tradition v. Rationalism: Voegelin, Oakeshott, Hayek, and Others, edited by Gene Callahan and Lee Trepanier Democracy and Its Enemies: The American Struggle for the Enlightenment, by Paul N. Goldstene Plato’s Mythoi: The Political Soul’s Drama Beyond, by Donald H. Roy Eric Voegelin Today: Voegelin’s Political Thought in the 21st Century, edited by Scott Robinson, Lee Trepanier, David N. Whitney

Eric Voegelin Today Voegelin’s Political Thought in the 21st Century Edited by Scott Robinson, Lee Trepanier, and David N. Whitney

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN 978-1-4985-9663-3 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-9664-0 (electronic) TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Contents

Introduction: Voegelin Today Scott Robinson

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Part I: The Ideological Nature of Liberalism Today 1 Rethinking Eric Voegelin’s Interpretation of Liberalism and Its History David D. Corey 2 The Necessity of Moral Communication in a Pluralistic Political Environment Scott Robinson 3 Defenders of Democracy: Freedom and Responsibility in America Today Scott Robinson 4 The Origins of Scientism: Revisited David N. Whitney 5 Voegelin, Rawls, and the Persistence of Liberal Civil Theology Grant Havers Part II: Geopolitics Today 6 The Comparative Politics of Eric Voegelin Lee Trepanier 7 The Dream of the Caliphate and the Loss of Reality: An Application of Eric Voegelin’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and “In Search of the Ground” Scott Philip Segrest v

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The Five Ways of World-Empire Christopher S. Morrissey Eric Voegelin’s 1944 “Political Theory and the Pattern of General History”: An Account from the Biography of a Philosophizing Consciousness Nathan Harter

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Index

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About the Authors

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Introduction Voegelin Today Scott Robinson

The goal of this volume is to demonstrate the relevance of Eric Voegelin’s works from the 1950s and early 1960s to the political atmosphere of the early twenty-first century. The contributors to this volume argue that this relevance should be taken seriously; the thesis is collectively produced that Voegelin’s writings from this time are particularly adept at diagnosing and offering therapeutic insights into ideologically charged political circumstances. We believe that today’s political environment may be described as especially ideologically charged. Despite Voegelin’s adeptness in this area, the problems which he understood very well continue to plague humanity today. For this reason, we hope that this volume will, in some modest measure, help those who wish to understand the ideologically hostile atmosphere which has characterized Western civilization for some time now. The twelve-year stretch spanning from the publication of The New Science of Politics (1952) to the delivery of the lectures which would be published as Hitler and the Germans (1964) marked a period in Voegelin’s career in which he grappled with the radical ideological movements of twentieth-century Europe, Nazism, and Communism. Voegelin’s analyses continue to represent a uniquely powerful diagnosis of the spiritual maladies of a century hallmarked by genocidal death camps, on one hand, and amazing technological progress, on the other. Throughout his voluminous works from this time, Voegelin repeatedly argues that the true problem with modernity lay in the closure of the soul to the classical and Christian ideals of higher and objective truths, placing the ground of truth instead on the desires pursued by individuals in our immanent experience. The product of this closure has been the frequent manifestation of revolutionary movements that aspire 1

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to fulfill their ideological proclivities, eventually revealing that they will pursue their ideological goals at any toll to truth or to human lives. Certain particular measures are taken by these ideological groups, because they share the basic goal of altering the human experience. Voegelin’s ability to characterize and categorize the spiritual deficiencies of modern political ideas which indulge in this desire to alter reality is unsurpassed in the political commentary of the twentieth century and remains applicable to the ideas and ideologues of today. A few words of introduction to Voegelin’s biography and to the critical philosophical ideas that he presented during this time span will be useful to those who are trying to understand Voegelin’s political philosophy or the political environment of the early twenty-first century. Indeed, anyone seeking knowledge about the latter may learn much from the former. In 1952, Voegelin was an accomplished scholar, and a faculty member of Louisiana State University’s Department of Political Science. He had already experienced, witnessed, and written much. Born in Germany in 1901, he was educated at the University of Vienna (a classmate of Hayek), and taught there until the German annexation in 1938. He was subsequently fired for his political views and fled Gestapo soldiers by fleeing overnight into Switzerland and eventually to the United States. He joined the faculty at LSU in 1942 and remained until 1958, when he filled Max Weber’s former chair (left vacant since his death in 1920) at the University of Munich. Three of Voegelin’s most powerful critiques of the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century appeared first in lecture form during this time span: The New Science of Politics (1952), Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (1960), and Hitler and the Germans (1964). Though these works are cited throughout this volume, we have scrutinized a number of lesser-known essays and lectures in which Voegelin expanded on his theories of modernity as presented in the above works. These essays and lectures are compiled in the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volumes 10 and 11. This approach has allowed us to better apply Voegelin’s thought to issues which are more deeply developed in these other works and of some importance today, such as liberalism and scientism. Voegelin’s work from this era contains two consistent themes that are readily applicable to the 21st century and evident throughout this volume. The first theme that appears regularly in this volume is the closure of the soul of the modern ideologue to the life of reason. Voegelin deals with this issue at numerous places within the essays reviewed in this volume. “In Search of the Ground” (Collected Works, Volume 11) explains the basic features of the life of reason. The reasonable life is one guided by Logos or Nous-reason in the classical sense. This life consists in contemplating about the nature of existing things and of acting in accordance with those contemplations and within the limits circumscribed by the nature of things. Voegelin wrote of this reason as “an experienced reality of a transcendent nature which one

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lives in a tension.” 1 The Platonic periagoge or Pauline formula of love, hope, and faith are both historically powerful articulations of the “ground” of reason in Western civilization (CW 11, 230). He put it like this: It all comes back to the question: what is that ultimate purpose toward which we are rationally oriented? This leads us to the question of the nature of man, and to the answer that his nature differentially, as against all other creatures, is openness toward the ground. That is reason: openness toward the ground. (CW 11, 232)

Voegelin explains that such openness facilitates the only true type of community. Reason is cultivated in the individual through a sort of “respect for the organ in himself by which he is aware of and desires for a life toward the ground” (CW 11, 230). That organ is the “intellectual self,” “noetic self,” or “the divineness, the divine part, in man” (CW 11, 230). Reason is cultivated by the faculty which grasps that by tapping into the order of things, one may fare well. This understanding is fomented by a sincere love of self whose nature means a love of others as well: “since every man participates in love of the transcendent Being and is aware of such a ground-Ground, Reason, or Nous-out of which he exists, every man can, by virtue of this noetic self, have love for other men” (CW 11, 230–31). This reasonability is of considerable importance in the formation of political communities: “community in the nous, carried by that noetic self, is for Aristotle the basic political virtue, the philia politike [political friendship] because only if the community is based on that love in the noetic self will it have order” (CW 11, 231–32). Voegelin describes the ideological problems of his time as originating in the closure of the modern soul to a transcendent source of order: What has happened to the transcendent ground . . . ? It has become, let us say, immanentized. We still have, of course, the quest of the ground; we want to know where things come from. But since God [in revelatory language] or transcendent divine Being [in philosophical language] is prohibited for agnostics, they must put their ground elsewhere. And now we can see, beginning about the middle of the eighteenth century, in the Enlightenment, a whole series of misplacements of the ground. The transcendent ground is placed somewhere in an immanent hierarchy of being. . . . The eighteenth century has been called “the Age of Reason” because human, not divine, reason is considered to be the ultimate measure and ground of all actions and everything within the world. This human reason, however, is empty of content. A transcendent Reason, the tension toward transcendence, gives you a criterion, because if you are oriented in your action toward transcendence and see that “here is the nature of man,” then obviously certain things are impossible. If the nature of man is to be found in his openness toward a divine Ground, you cannot at the same time see the nature of man in having certain kinds of passions or in having a certain race or pigmentation or something like that. It is in the openness to the ground; there is a content in it. (CW 11, 234–35)

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The second theme that appears regularly in this volume is the ideological nature of the political ideas that developed into mass movements during Voegelin’s life. To be sure, this theme is a symptom of the first. Voegelin enumerated the important elements of ideology in “In Search for the Ground.” He included “the misplacement of the ground within an immanent hierarchy of being,” “knowledge of the recipe for bringing about the more perfect realm,” “immanentization,” and “an apocalyptic element” (CW 11, 244, 236). One may summarize these characteristics as a political movement which claims to know how to improve the world through some specific change (which is the substance of the ideology), and which moves toward that change despite philosophical or practical obstacles. This certainty of knowledge is tied to the closure of the soul to the ground, for openness toward the ground precludes such certain knowledge of the future. Importantly, ideologies share these basic features even if they are substantially distinct. Indeed, these elements are readily identifiable in various specific ideologies; Voegelin often focused on National Socialism and Communism. Today, these elements are identifiable in the modern liberal movement, as several chapters will argue herein. Voegelin, therefore, helps us to move beyond the obvious differences between liberalism and twentieth century totalitarianism. Some of these differences do suggest that the ideology of today is much less worrisome than the ideologies of the twentieth century; for instance, the value for individual life in liberalism versus the totalitarian use of individuals. But few were worried about the death camps before they were built. A Voegelinian view into ideologies, therefore, provides a warning concerning the ideological character of contemporary liberalism, even if the substance of the movement today appears salutary to many. Many said the same of both National Socialism and Communism in the early twentieth century. The questions which occupied Voegelin’s scholarship were generally tied to the political situation of his time. It is reasonable to ask if his thought has anything to offer today. Although much today appears to be different from the political circumstances of the 1950s and 1960s, there is a fundamental similarity between that time and our own, and therefore much that Voegelin’s thought can teach us today. We continue to deal with mass political movements and with questions of nationality that result when a mass movement becomes internationally successful. Voegelin’s writings from this era grapple with the construction of supranational political movements and political institutions both before and after World War II. Today, we are dealing with the nationalist political movements and the potential breakdown of the supranational institutions that were thrown together in the 1940s and 1950s. Voegelin’s writings grapple with the problem of racial genocide. Today, we are dealing with radical issues of race, gender, and sexuality that derive from the desire to include all identity groups in society. The ideological radicalism

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of the twenty-first century is not all that different from that of the twentieth, though the application of that ideology to practical issues is essentially opposite from the twentieth century. The basic motivation of fanaticism-immanentization remains today, but in a subtler form and directed at different ends than Voegelin witnessed in his lifetime. Put a little differently, though Communism and National Socialism are essentially fringe movements in the West today, many Western liberals today act in ways that share a fundamental ideological character with Communists and National Socialists of yesteryear. The confederation of European states (which has evolved into the European Union), for instance, was constructed in the early 1950s to better prepare the smaller European states to compete geo-politically with the much larger United States and Soviet Union. The cosmopolitan philosophical trends belying the Communist and National Socialist movements had not dissipated in Europe despite the recent historical evidence of failure, but were rather tapped into by cosmopolitan liberalism in the wake of the deaths of Communism and National Socialism. It was the persistence in Germany of ideological behavior that inspired Voegelin to return to Europe to attempt to help develop a political atmosphere, which might remediate the ideological fanaticism. Indeed, Voegelin laments in “Freedom and Responsibility in Economy and Democracy” the continuation of ideologically derived worldviews in Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. He had hoped to spread Americanstyle civics, religion, and rationality to a Germany that remained awash in existentialist philosophy and secular motivations and was struggling to recover from their world war–era behavior. Today, the forces of ideologically inspired mass movements remain strong. Although the supranational institutions of the post-war era are beginning to face resistance, the ideological fanaticism which Voegelin had noticed and worked to alleviate in his own life continues unabated in Europe and has also now contaminated America. The first two decades of the twenty first century have witnessed, along these lines, not the attenuation of racial tensions in America, but the expansion of them. Civil rights issues, women’s rights issues, and sexual rights issues have all seen tremendous improvement since the 1950s, yet the call to arms by ideological activists is arguably louder today than then. There is no end in sight to the progressive movement. We have also witnessed the mass immigration into Europe and America of Middle Easterners, despite the warning that cultural differences would lead to trouble. This bespoke an ideologically engrained cosmopolitanism that outweighed the ability to entertain common sense criticism. Some of these immigrants, inspired by the mutually exclusive ideological goal of building a world-wide Islamic caliphate, undertook massive sprees of violence upon civilian gathering places. With these historical developments, the international cosmopolitan movement became frustrated by the emergence of nationalist movements throughout the Western world.

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This has predictably intensified ideological squabbling by cosmopolitan activists. Although excellent defenses of nationalism along the lines of meaningful community as described above would bear fruit, and although analyses of nationalism as a rational alternative to cosmopolitanism have been recently penned (i.e., Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism), such views must deal with a new face of ideological liberalism. 2 Fanatical responses from within Western civilization to any idea of nationalism are today common. For instance: “Muslims were viciously stereotyped. . . . There was also an attempt to rehabilitate the dark forces that had plunged Europe into world war.” 3 The inflammatory manner in which opposing viewpoints are cast within the West today suggests that we have more in common with radical Islam or with twentieth century totalitarians than we recognize. The complex of issues mentioned above shares the trait that each issue contains actors who behave in a way that is reminiscent to the behaviors characterized as ideological by Voegelin in his writings from 1950 to 1965. The essays in this volume focus on the themes and issues highlighted above, though often discuss other relevant subject matter that would have been tangential to these introductory remarks. The essays are generally organized into two categories: commentary on liberalism and related issues, and commentary on geo-politics in some capacity. Many of the contributors to this volume address the problems of radical liberalism in some fashion or another. David D. Corey organizes the evolving nature of liberalism and highlights its ideological character; I attempt to explain, through a Voegelinian framework, how political behavior in America today is more ideologically extreme than when Voegelin wrote; David N. Whitney demonstrates the ideological nature of modern science by building upon Voegelin’s work from Volume 10 of The Collected Works; and Grant Havers applies Voegelin’s analysis of the Oxford Political Philosophers to the work of Rawls. The amount of ink contributed within this volume to dealing with the ideological problems within Western civilization is easily identifiable evidence of the concern expressed over the direction of Western civilization. In the collection of essays which focus on geo-politics, Lee Trepanier explains how Voegelin’s remarks on the soul and rationality could provide a deeper and more meaningful organization to comparative politics than obtains today; Scott Philip Segrest applies the problems of the closure of the soul to explain the ideological nature of radical Islam; Christopher S. Morrissey discusses the question of world-empire; and Nathan Harter discusses the general pattern of world history. Voegelin saw the need for a resurgence of the type of Aristotelian and Christian thought which had placed weight on common-sense rationality (on openness to the ground) in the formation of political communities. Each of the essays presented in this volume argues or implies that in the twenty first century this need remains. Perhaps, however, patience is a virtue. With the

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following quote, I hope that the material presented herein deepens your curiosity for and understanding of the politics and culture of the early twenty first century, a transitional time in world history that is perhaps poorly grasped in our time: Now for the phenomenon of exhaustion. In a sense, ideologies are criticized to pieces. We have in our time a very peculiar generation of scholars who all are clear about it: Ideologies are finished. . . . The symptoms show that after this generation nobody can be an ideologist if he is intelligent to any degree or a man of any stature. That one can say with certainty, but again I must warn: no optimism with regard to the actual power of ideologies. Things go on in China and elsewhere just as they did in the past, and they will go on for a long while.

NOTES 1. Eric Voegelin, Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 229. Hereafter CW 11. 2. Yarom Hazony, The Virtue of Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 2018). 3. John B. Judis, The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization (New York: Colombia Global Reports, 2018), 97.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Hazony, Yarom. The Virtue of Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 2018). Judis, John B. The Nationalist Revival: Trade, Immigration, and the Revolt Against Globalization (New York: Colombia Global Reports, 2018). Voegelin, Eric. Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000).

Part I

The Ideological Nature of Liberalism Today

Chapter One

Rethinking Eric Voegelin’s Interpretation of Liberalism and Its History David D. Corey

Voegelin’s essay “Liberalism and Its History” remains essential reading for anyone attempting to understand what liberalism is and why it changes. 1 This is because instead of trying to “define” liberalism in terms of a fixed body of doctrine, an effort that has repeatedly failed to produce satisfying results, Voegelin argues that liberalism can be understood only in relation to the underlying revolutionary movement of which it is a part. 2 By historically contextualizing liberalism in this way, Voegelin helps readers appreciate the exact forces that engendered it, as well as those that led eventually to its transformation into what we now call the welfare state. Yet, as valuable as Voegelin’s essay is, it only presents (by Voegelin’s own admission) a basic “outline” of liberalism’s place within the broader revolutionary movement. By filling in this outline with more detail, one can reach an even clearer understanding of liberalism, especially in its contemporary state of crisis. In this chapter I expand Voegelin’s analysis in two ways. First, I offer a more detailed look at the changes that liberalism has undergone from the nineteenth century to the present, thus filling in and bringing up to date. Second, I build upon a profound insight that Voegelin offers with respect to the “spiritual” condition of liberalism, what he calls its perpetual (and unattainable) “revolution of the spirit” toward eschatological fulfilment in the world (CW 11, 92). Throughout this chapter, my argument will be similar to the argument which Voegelin himself wanted to make—that liberalism arises and then changes for reasons that admit of analysis from a historical and spiritual point of view, and that one of the most worrisome 11

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aspects of liberalism remains its susceptibility to ideological thought and practice. CONTEXTUALIZING LIBERALISM Voegelin interprets modern history from the Reformation forward as an ongoing revolutionary convulsion aimed at destroying institutions believed to be socially harmful and obsolete. As Voegelin presents it, this revolutionary convulsion runs its course in three great waves. The first starts with the Reformation, the second with the French Revolution, and the third with the Communist Revolution. Moreover, Voegelin adds, “in each of these waves there can be distinguished, first, the actual outbreak of the revolution; second the countermovement and organization of the resistance; and finally a period of quiescence and adjustment . . . until the next outbreak” (ibid.). The result is a pattern according to which each wave contains within it something resembling Hegel’s historical-dialectical interplay of “thesis,” “antithesis,” and “synthesis.” 3 In the first wave, the Reformation (thesis) begets the counter-Reformation (antithesis) and is followed by a phase of stabilization (synthesis) around the idea of “natural law,” a source of moral and political authority independent of revelation and church doctrine. In the second wave, the French Revolution (thesis) gives rise to such counter-movements as “reaction” and “restoration” (antithesis) before reaching a period of stability in the age of liberalism (synthesis). In the third wave, the Communist Revolution (thesis), prompts such counter-movements as National Socialism and Fascism (antithesis) before stabilizing in a phase about which Voegelin is reticent to speak because at the time of composition (1960) it was not yet complete. However, he does say that “within the Western world the outlines of a stabilization can be seen in the combination of a liberal concept of economics with a politics of the welfare state” (CW 11, 93). Liberalism, according to Voegelin’s schema, emerges as a phase of stabilization within the broader revolutionary movement. The stabilization is achieved by liberalism’s ability to de-radicalize the most extreme aspects of the French Revolution (e.g., the Reign of Terror and the dictatorship of the revolutionary elites) while simultaneously maintaining a solid front against attempts at restoration. A clear example of this “stabilization” occurred in Spain in 1812. That was the year that a party of the Cortes (Spain’s first legislature) drafted and enacted the “Constitution of Cádiz” in an effort to avoid the restoration of the absolutist Ferdinand VII on the one hand, while staving off the invading revolutionary troops of Napoleon on the other. The advocates of this constitution called themselves the Liberales, and what they

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enacted, short-lived though it turned out to be, was a liberal constitutional monarchy. 4 If one now asks how and why liberalism performs this stabilizing role, the answer becomes clear as Voegelin considers liberalism’s substantive commitments, which fall into four basic domains: political, economic, religious, and scientific. Politically, liberalism is committed to putting an end to the abuse of power, not only the encroachment of the executive on the legislative power, but also the abuse of privilege by the clergy and the nobility. Economically, liberalism is committed to ending the practice of mercantilism, acting instead on the assumption that enlightened self-interest will lead to a harmonious order in society. Religiously, liberalism “rejects revelation and dogma as sources of truth,” and, according to Voegelin, “becomes secularistic and ideological” (CW 11, 94). And, scientifically, liberalism is committed to “the autonomy of immanent reason” as the source of all knowledge and progress (ibid.). In light of these substantive commitments it is clear that that the French Revolution was initially conducive to liberalism’s brief. It destroyed the manifold abuses associated with the ancien régime. Yet in its most radical and extreme forms the Revolution posed a threat to liberalism, a threat as ominous as that posed by Restoration. Liberalism thus effected a stabilization somewhere between Revolution and Restoration. However, Voegelin thinks that the stabilization provided by liberalism was in fact highly unstable from the start. For, contrary to those classical liberals who regard liberalism as a universally valid, eminently rational way of practicing politics, Voegelin observes that liberalism is thoroughly historically contingent because of its nebulous relationship to the broader revolution. Here is Voegelin: The picture of liberalism changes because liberalism itself changes in the process of history. And it changes because it is not a body of timelessly valid scientific propositions about political reality, but rather a series of political opinions and attitudes which have their optimal truth in the situation which motivates them, and are then taken over by history and required to do justice to new situations. Liberalism is a political movement in the context of the surrounding Western revolutionary movement; its meaning alters with the phases of the surrounding movement. (CW 11, 85)

Voegelin’s account here accords with empirical evidence. Liberalism is frustratingly Protean. At one point it seems focused on securing individual political freedoms; at another point it seems chiefly concerned with economic freedom. Here it seems obsessed with expanding democratic participation, there it takes on a paternalist guise of caring for the helpless masses. Again, it seems at times to emphasize individual autonomy and a minimal state, while at other times it emphasizes collective welfare and large-scale intervention.

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WHY LIBERALISM CHANGES The insight that liberalism changes because the broader revolution (of which it is a part) also changes is generally true. But, beyond this, Voegelin offers three specific reasons for liberalism’s Protean character. The first is that liberalism simply must change if it is to avoid being overtaken by the revolution. This is an insight which Voegelin attributes to the French liberal Charles Comte (1786–1862). Comte was convinced that the ancien régime was socially unjust and that the revolution occurred because “necessary reforms were not implemented at the proper time” (CW 11, 88). Comte therefore concluded that: if in the future we wish to avoid a repetition of the horrible events, then what the revolution achieved by unhappy means must be achieved at the proper time through the less unpleasant means of reform. The revolution must become permanent in the sense that a permanent, flexible politics of reform buys off revolutionary terror. (Ibid.)

According to Voegelin, Comte’s insight was embraced by liberalism early on and “has become today a constant in all shades of liberalism” (ibid.). In short, liberalism changes because modern beliefs about social justice change, sometimes quite rapidly; 5 and liberalism must quickly make the necessary adaptations or else fall victim to more violent revolutionary forces. A second reason that liberalism changes relates to its own economic and political successes. Initially, liberalism was opposed to the privileged position of the clergy and nobility. But as economic freedom produced material results, as the Industrial Revolution began to transform the economic landscape, and as the working class became gradually more unified and powerful, the liberal attack on privilege soon turned against the bourgeoisie itself (CW 11, 94). When pushed to its ultimate extreme, Voegelin astutely observes, “the attack cannot end until the society has become egalitarian” (ibid.). Thirdly and finally, liberalism changes because it is not an independent phenomenon but is rather colored by the various forces it opposes, various rival ways of responding to the underlying revolution. Liberalism is one way of responding to the revolution, but there are also alternative responses such as “conservatism,” “reaction,” and “restoration.” And depending on how strong these rivals are in any given place or time, liberalism takes on a different character. This goes a long way toward explaining the difference between European and American liberalism. “In the first half of the nineteenth century, during European liberalism’s heroic time of struggle, America did not have to battle the movements of restoration, a surviving monarchical principle, or a politically active church allied with the state” (CW 11, 87). Nor did it have to battle conservatism of the European variety. As a result, a

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form of liberalism that was essentially Lockean could become so hegemonic in America that later European developments such as socialism could hardly take root here. 6 Again, liberalism changes across space and time depending upon its social context, on the nature and strength of the forces it opposes. Voegelin’s multidimensional account of why liberalism changes deserves to be studied today, because no theory quite like it is currently available. Professor Michael Freeden has perhaps done more than any living scholar to study the way liberalism changes, what he calls its “ideological morphology.” 7 Freeden is similar to Voegelin in holding that liberalism cannot be defined once and for all in terms of fixed doctrines or canonical authors. Freeden is similar also in holding that the best way to understand liberalism (in its many varieties) is historically, as a diverse set of beliefs and practices that evolve over time like a narrative. 8 Yet while Freeden’s approach is certainly historical, it is historical in a markedly different way from Voegelin’s. For one thing, it is considerably less value-laden, more an empirical description of concepts and beliefs held by liberals over time. Compared to this, Voegelin seems like a moralist. This comes through most forcefully in Voegelin’s use of the term “ideology.” For him, ideology is a political disease of the first order, while for Freeden, ideology refers simply to patterns of political thought. Thus, what Voegelin offers that Freeden does not is an ethically charged, even theologically charged, interpretation of the status of liberalism within the broader modern-Western context of secularization and ideological deformation. One need not be sympathetic to this account (as I am) in order to recognize that it fills a significant lacuna in the literature. THE WEAKNESSES OF LIBERALISM After contextualizing liberalism historically and explaining the causes for its variability as a body of doctrine, Voegelin highlights its chief weaknesses before ending his essay on a somewhat optimistic note. The criticisms are quite straightforward, especially if one reads them from the perspective of post-war Germany—where Voegelin originally delivered this essay as a talk. Politically, liberalism is weak because it tends to regard the “liberal constitution” as a kind of talisman that can magically solve all the problems of a given nation. Yet the liberal constitution is but an artifact of an age gone by, a device for opposing absolute monarchs and socially privileged classes. When this historically contingent artifact is “dogmatized into a worldview,” when its elements are “raised to articles of faith” in a context vastly different from the one in which it was created, it leads to calamitous political processes and outcomes (CW 11, 96, 95). Especially vexatious for Voegelin was the Western practice of exporting the liberal constitutional model to countries (such as Germany between the wars) that lacked the appropriate political

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experiences to make it work. “We know today,” says Voegelin, “that societies do not become free through liberal constitutions, but that free societies produce liberal constitutions and can function in their framework” (CW 11, 96). Economically, liberalism is weak, Voegelin thought, because its doctrines of laissez-faire and minimal state intervention were also the product of an age gone by. They were devised in the context of a “relatively low concentration of population and a predominantly agrarian economy,” where every household was supposed to be able to husband a piece of land and produce a surplus, as in Locke’s economic vision in the Second Treatise (CW 11, 96). However, as Voegelin explains, “the original harmonious balance of citizens of equal economic potential was destroyed by the development of industrial society” (ibid.). This gave rise to vast inequality, to intense class conflict, and eventually to “the massive introduction of socialist elements into the liberal economic structure” (ibid.). Liberalism is also weakened, according to Voegelin, by its anti-religious posture. The liberal attack was directed against dogmatism and the authority of revelation. If only these influences on thinking and public life could be removed, then the free human being would order society rationally with his autonomous reason. However, if in practice Christianity is successfully driven out of men, they become not rational liberals but ideologues. The undesirable spiritual order is replaced not by liberalism but rather by one or the other of the emotionally as-intensive ideologies (CW 11, 97). Voegelin argues that the “ideologizing of man” renders life under a liberal constitution impossible, because if a majority of voters are not liberal, but are rather Communists and National Socialists (in Germany), or ideological Progressives with strongly socialist proclivities (in the United States), then “they can form a majority voting bloc that makes the functioning of the constitution impossible” (ibid.). Finally, Voegelin argues that liberalism’s overreliance on autonomous, immanent reason proves unworkable over time, because it entails the willful abandonment of a true hierarchy of goods culminating in the summum bonum of transcendent completion. In place of the hierarchy of “goods,” liberalism recognizes only a thoroughly relativistic assortment of “value posits” about which there can be no claims of ultimate validity. The result is the inability of liberal societies to organize themselves around reasonably ordered schemes of goods. Rather, values vie against values, and politics collapse into a war of apologetics for various arbitrary moral attachments. Voegelin points out that this problem was not visible in liberalism’s early history, because in a tradition-laden milieu, the problem of relativism is not so pronounced. But as liberalism presses its attack on tradition and all forms of authority outside the autonomous self, the problem becomes acute. Political community collapses into something resembling civil war, with or without actual weapons.

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The weaknesses that Voegelin identifies are serious. To be sure, they are even more pronounced today than at the time he wrote; and one finds it difficult to remain hopeful about the future of liberalism. In fact, Voegelin himself concludes with the bold assertion that “the classical liberalism of the secularist and bourgeois-capitalist stamp may be pronounced dead” (CW 11, 99). However, Voegelin surprisingly sounds an optimistic note near the end of his essay about what he views as the remaining “sediment” of liberalism and the future of Western society. He argues that liberalism left behind a salutary and abiding commitment to religious toleration as well as a strong disapproval of dictatorial politics. He even believed that the West was entering a kind of modified-liberal age in which (1) the “social-ethical” demands concerning economic inequality were being attended to and (2) liberalism was becoming “filled with Christian substance” (ibid.). On this second point, Voegelin was referring to the rise of Christian-democratic parties in Germany, France, and Italy. The “parties close to the churches” had become “supporters of liberal politics” (ibid.). Yet in the present day it is hard to take these hopeful signs very seriously. The religious toleration that gave Voegelin hope has today eroded substantially in Europe and the United States. 9 Liberalism’s vigilance against dictatorial politics has today given way to a sheepish acceptance of rule by bureaucratic fiat and executive order. The use of the state to meet the “socialethical” demands of economic inequality has strained to the breaking point the budgets of multiple European nations, while even the United States has been downgraded by several credit rating agencies for its enormous national debt. And despite the continued existence of Christian-democratic parties in Europe, mainline churches appear content to vacate their traditional faith for various ideological substitutes that are Christian only in name. Given these more recent trends, the expressions of hope near the end of Voegelin’s essay seem to require qualification. In the remainder of this essay, I set to one side Voegelin’s hopefulness in order to consider—in a slightly more detailed way than does Voegelin—how the revolutionary phenomenon of liberalism actually unfolded from the nineteenth century to the present. This is in no way a repudiation of Voegelin’s general argument. In fact, I shall begin my history by highlighting a part of his argument that is muted and underdeveloped, but nevertheless full of insight. Then, after tracing liberalism’s history to the present, I conclude with a reflection on the ideological and spiritual condition of liberalism.

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RETHINKING LIBERALISM’S ROLE IN REVOLUTIONARY MODERNITY The dominant (though not the only) interpretation of liberalism in Voegelin’s essay holds that it was a nineteenth-century phase of a broader revolutionary movement, a phase that is now dead, save for some degree of liberal “sediment.” Why did liberalism die? Voegelin states several times that it was simply “overtaken” by the revolution as that revolution gradually issued in the ideological mass movements of the twentieth century (Socialism, Communism, National Socialism, and Fascism). 10 But there is another, less dominant interpretation of liberalism in the essay which, if taken seriously (more seriously than Voegelin himself seems to take it), would explain why liberalism has had considerably more staying power than the dominant interpretation allows. After all, National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and Soviet Communism have all passed away. Yet there continues to be a political phenomenon called liberalism which, though different from its classical form, nevertheless seems more than a mere “sediment.” What is this liberalism, and how has it managed to defy the fate of being overtaken by the revolution? Voegelin intuits at one point in the essay that liberalism was not just a passing phase of the broader revolution but is also capable of revolutionary change itself. In fact, he credits liberalism with somehow managing to take a page from the book of the Marxist revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, according to Voegelin, “knew that what is called revolution . . . is a movement—and that a movement lives in that it moves.” Let me quote Voegelin’s account of Trotsky’s thought, which liberalism itself comes to embrace: The radical revolutionary must make the revolution into a permanent condition; there can be no compromise or stabilization of the achievements at a definite point. For as soon as a plateau of stabilization is permitted, the revolution is over. To keep a revolution alive one must carry it on further; it thrives on unrest, it needs a permanent opponent; it must meet obstacles to be overcome by its assault etc. If there are no more obstacles, no more imperialists or deviationists, the revolution dies for lack of things to attack. Revolution can end only if it has reached its goal. And this is precisely the insight expressed by Trotsky in his idea of the révolution permanente [which Trotsky took over from Charles Comte]: Revolution in the modern sense has no intention of producing a stable condition; revolution is the mental and spiritual condition of an act that has no rational goal. . . . Revolution becomes permanent when the revolutionary posits a goal that ex definitione cannot be reached because it requires the transformation of human nature. The unchangeable nature of man constantly places obstacles in the path to the paradisaical goal.

I quote this passage at length because it is key to understanding the character of contemporary liberalism. Liberalism has survived in part because it has managed to put into practice the révolution permanente. Again,

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Voegelin intuited that this was possible: “I have dealt with this shift of the meaning of révolution permanente, not to present a historical curiosity, but because the problem of permanent revolution is involved in liberalism.” (CW 11, 89, my italics) Though Voegelin did not develop this insight into liberalism’s character any further, it deserves our attention because it means that liberalism is not merely a “phase” of the revolution, but also a force with the potential to coopt the revolution and to direct it along lines conducive to liberalism’s future. Historically liberalism does this through its ability to discover constantly new obstacles to freedom that must be overcome. Voegelin’s first interpretation foresees liberalism’s being overtaken by the revolution, but this second interpretation foresees how the revolution could be overtaken by liberalism. And in retrospect, this interpretation has proved more accurate. Indeed, if we break from Voegelin’s dialogical analysis of modern history according to which liberalism is just a phase, and ask instead what the history of liberalism itself has been since it first emerged in the nineteenth century, we can perceive a coherent linear history, one that is still unfolding today. I shall now present an outline of this history. I interpret liberalism as unfolding in six separate revolutionary stages. The first stage is the quest for political freedom from absolute and arbitrary monarchical authority. This was a violent stage in liberalism’s history (for example in England before 1688, in the United States in 1776, in France in 1789, and in Spain 1812). Once the violence was over, the instrument that was used to keep government in check was constitutionalism, the legal proscription of royal interference with the law, of the monarch acting as judge or establishing new courts, of taxation without parliamentary approval, of standing armies or interference with the people’s right to bear arms, and of interference with free speech, especially but not exclusively in parliamentary debate. 11 The second more or less concomitant stage of liberalism’s history was economic in nature. It was the quest for freedom from government intervention in the economy especially with respect to foreign trade, as was typical under the system of mercantilism. Viewed together, the first and second stages of liberalism constitute what we now call “classical liberalism.” The third stage will already begin to put pressure on this model. But before moving forward, let me mention a key feature of liberalism’s history that I term “liberal accretion.” As the early stages of liberalism give way to later stages, the earlier stages do not vanish. They recede in popularity to some degree, but they nevertheless retain ardent adherents and continue to constitute a vital force in political debates and practices. Over the long term, this presents a problem for liberalism—one to which I return below—because as the number of freedoms accumulates over time (liberal accretion), freedoms begin to conflict with other freedoms. Lib-

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erals come to discover that “vitally important liberties do not dovetail into a single, harmonious pattern. They are sites of conflicts of value.” 12 The third stage in liberalism’s history is the democratic stage. It focuses on the extension of the franchise to lower economic classes, to women, and, in the United States after the Civil War, to African Americans as well. This stage was expertly analyzed by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America (1835–1840). De Tocqueville recognized that the movement of democracy across Europe and the United States was a distinct revolutionary phenomenon and that it posed a serious threat, if unchecked, to earlier forms of ordered liberty such as the political and economic freedom espoused by classical liberalism. Liberalism’s fourth stage marks a momentous development. Since the birth of liberalism, the target of its attack had been government or “the state.” But in the fourth stage the target shifts to the bourgeois class, because of its power to command economic resources in such a way that poor workers cannot escape poverty and, in many cases, cannot feed their families. In order to overcome this new obstacle to freedom, concerned citizens enlist the state in their cause, and legislation is passed to regulate the relationship between capital and labor and to establish a state-run system of welfare. To many observers, this seems the opposite of liberalism insofar as it represents an increase in the size and scope of government. But viewed through the lens of liberalism-qua-revolution, of the continual quest for freedom after freedom, it seems quite coherent. Liberalism is not a phenomenon that can easily stand still. If the fourth stage did not occur, the threat to liberalism from socialism might have proved fatal. But instead, liberalism accommodated itself to the situation by expanding the concept of “freedom” to include freedom from economic insecurity. The fifth stage of liberalism aims similarly at a target other than the state. It attacks certain social norms and institutional structures that are felt to be constraining or oppressive insofar as they were created and maintained by socially privileged classes. A classic text of stage five is John Stuart Mill’s essay On Liberty (1859), which argues for “liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow: without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong.” 13 Mill went so far as to say that no society can be free where this liberty is not respected; and he insisted that it be “absolute and unqualified.” 14 Finally, stage six of liberalism’s history is the movement against man’s biological limits, any “given” of our biological nature—for example, our genetic makeup, intelligence, physical appearance, reproductive powers, and gender. Those promoting this movement of freedom often feel unjustly hindered by these givens, not only because they are “given” and not the product

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of free choice, but also because their “givenness” does not accord with rational principles of equality or desert. 15 Some people are given biological advantages, others disadvantages, for no discernible reason. I place a wide range of diverse phenomena in this movement, and in some instances the intention of the agent matters more than the technique being used. For instance, birth control is not a stage-six phenomenon in itself (the use of birth control goes back to remote antiquity), but when the “right” to birth control becomes a political movement aimed at removing the inequality between women and men in their sexual status, it is a stage-six phenomenon. Medicine too is as old as civilization, but the assertion of a right to free and equal healthcare at public expense is, again, part of stage six. The right to physician-assisted suicide, to abortion, to gender reassignment surgery: these are other well-known examples. I also place the “transhumanist” movement in stage six inasmuch as its goal is to transcend the human species, “not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity.” 16 This is a liberation program that will undoubtedly require the active participation of the state, not only for financial support but also to ensure the fair distribution of biological enhancements. I hope that this quick adumbration of liberalism’s history since the nineteenth century serves to demonstrate the truth of that insight which Voegelin intuited but did not pursue, that liberalism is not merely a passing phase of a broader revolution but is also capable of revolutionary change itself. The change in question is sometimes forced upon liberalism by circumstances beyond its control, as when, in stage four, liberalism is compelled to address the radical inequality of economic opportunity that resulted from the Industrial Revolution. But at other times, the changes are clearly self-directed, not merely passive or reactive. This means that liberalism comes to possess an internal principle of revolutionary change; it comes to participate in what Comte and Trotsky called the révolution permanente. What now remains is to say something about the weaknesses of liberalism when it manifests this revolutionary tendency too strongly. IDEOLOGY AND THE REVOLUTION OF THE SPIRIT I use the word “ideology” here much the way Voegelin used it, to refer to a system of dogmatically held beliefs about the ills of our world along with dogmatically held beliefs about how to fix them through collective action. 17 Most ideologies are teleological, even eschatological, in nature. But in order for such teleological belief systems to count as ideologies, the content of the beliefs must be either false or in some other way deeply flawed. The two most common forms of error involve (1) positing knowledge in areas where

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firm knowledge is not humanly possible (what Voegelin calls “gnosticism”) and (2) reducing the complexity of the human condition in such a way that problems seem more readily solvable than they actually are (reductivism). The most familiar form of reductivism since the Enlightenment has been to deny the spiritual nature of man, to treat all problems of human life as mere technical problems that can be solved by rational means. Voegelin refers to this form of reductivism as the rejection of spiritual substance, or the “revolution of the spirit” (92). This account of “ideology” squares perfectly with the twentieth-century mass movements over which Voegelin was exercised: Socialism, Communism, Nazism, and Fascism. But Voegelin also regarded liberalism as an ideology to the extent that it was bound up with the broader revolution of the spirit that constitutes modernity. The fact that liberalism is, or can be, ideological underlies all four of the weaknesses Voegelin ascribes to it (above). But we can now expand upon Voegelin’s criticisms in light of the more detailed history of liberalism just offered. Let me mention two further ideological weaknesses of contemporary liberalism. The first weakness relates to the way liberalism has responded to the problem of “accretion.” As the number of liberal freedoms swells to epic proportions over time, liberalism becomes unstable due to manifest tensions between and among specific freedoms. For example, the freedom from economic hardship and uncertainty that liberals pursue ardently in stage four, a freedom for which the state must become actively involved, is indeed a real freedom; and many of those seeking it no doubt suffered under oppressive conditions. However, the kind of freedom being sought was not easily compatible with the freedoms that liberalism had already secured, particularly freedom from government interference in the economy and freedom from an excessively burdensome state. Similarly, the quest for freedom from our biological nature places enormous constraints on economic freedom as the state attempts (at exorbitant cost) to equalize biological differences. One shudders to speculate about the cost, for instance, of retrofitting the restrooms in every public building across the country in order to accommodate the demands for equality of transgender individuals. Similarly, the social freedoms associated with stage five—especially in the wake of the sexual revolution—place tremendous pressure on liberalism’s commitment to religious freedom, as we have witnessed recently in legal disputes between samesex marriage partners and religious small business owners. These are examples—and many more could be cited—of what philosopher John Gray calls “rival freedoms.” Contrary to what liberal citizens seem to suppose, freedoms often conflict with one another; and the more freedoms we try to balance, the more unstable and warlike our politics become. What would be a non-ideological way of handling the problem of liberal accretion? As a first step, liberal societies should be circumspect about the

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revolutionary quest for freedom itself. Just to the extent that freedoms are incompatible, the incorporation of new freedoms into existing liberal orders ought to be accompanied by sober deliberation about how new freedoms will fit with old, and, most importantly, about which of the many rival freedoms are most necessary for human fulfillment, and to what degree. No doubt there will be extreme controversy over such matters, and citizens will value different freedoms to different degrees. But failure to deliberate about the impact that new freedoms have on the character of the society going forward is simply a failure to think politically, to contemplate the kind of people we want to be and to formulate policies in accordance with our self-understandings. Unfortunately, contemporary liberalism has not approached the problem of liberal accretion in a non-ideological way. Instead liberals have tended to regard as religiously sacrosanct whatever the latest and most fashionable forms of freedom happen to be. They have pressed unceasingly for novel freedoms with a near complete disregard for the toll these will take on the older, more fundamental freedoms that have characterized liberalism thus far. Even more problematically, progressive liberals and conservative liberals alike have increasingly come to view their favorite freedoms as absolute rights; and they have appealed to the Court to adjudicate the conflicts among these “rights” rather than settling disputes in a genuinely political way. This approach to the problem of liberal accretion is ideological in two ways. In reality, freedoms are never absolute; they are always contingent and relative to the existence of other freedoms. The belief that cherished freedoms are “absolute rights” is easily susceptible of exaggeration, and it then becomes politically destructive. For how can conflicts between absolute rights possibly be negotiated? To compromise is to admit that these rights are not absolute. Secondly, the use of the Court to solve problems of an essentially political nature contradicts contemporary liberalism’s commitments democracy and to freedom from absolute rule. In other words, the means that are used in the battle over freedoms violate the ends that liberal societies explicitly embrace. This much on the problem of liberal accretion. The second, much deeper way in which contemporary liberalism is ideological relates to its posture of spiritual revolt. What is it, exactly, that motivates those liberals today who constantly clamor for progressive change, who, as soon as one goal is achieved, urge another in a never-ending torrent of political agitation? To ask this question dispassionately is to entertain the suspicion that they must be motivated by one or another of two impulses. One is a sincere belief that this constant pressing for change will eventually bring about a state of moral perfection (or at least unending moral improvement), a gradual release for mankind from every form of injustice and every obstacle to complete freedom. Voegelin himself comments on this motivation: “For in liberalism also there is the irrational element of an eschatologi-

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cal final state, of a society that will produce through its rational methods, without violent disturbances, a condition of everlasting peace” (CW 11, 89). This motivating hope for the attainment perfect peace, justice, and freedom is rarely if ever explicitly stated by the liberals who entertain it. Rather it has something of the character of a mystical belief for which no fully rational defense can be given but which, once assumed, animates an entire way of life among a community of believers. But the difficulty is that such a final state of perfection cannot in principle be attained through political activism or through any other human means. It cannot be attained because (1) the problem of evil is constitutional for man, not the result of unjust institutions and poor social planning, 18 and (2) the problem of citizens’ forming attachments to rival goods and creating factions around those goods is constitutional for society, not the result of insufficient liberal enlightenment or (to view it from the conservative-liberal side) lack of respect for tradition. Thus, the belief that radical political change will someday cure society of all defects is simultaneously ideological and an instance of spiritual revolt. It is ideological because it is not true; it involves spiritual revolt insofar as it refuses to accept the limits of the human condition as given—limits the acceptance of which is a precondition for the spiritual life itself. 19 The other motive that seems to animate those liberals who today agitate for constant change is the classic lust of man’s fallen nature, the libido dominandi or lust for power. To some extent this lust is directed toward other, fellow citizens who are deemed insufficiently enlightened, insufficiently enthusiastic about the quest for freedom, social justice, and world peace. These citizens must be overpowered so that the quest can move forward. But more fundamentally the lust for power is aimed at God. It is, in effect, the desire to be God. How so? If one follows the history of liberalism from its nineteenth-century origins to today, one sees that liberalism in its revolutionary aspect is ultimately a quest for absolute freedom, for release from any and all constraints that are not self-willed. Albeit, at any given moment, the quest has a specific freedom in mind—political, economic, democratic, social, biological. But no sooner is one kind of freedom achieved, the liberal begins to feel the lack of some other kind of freedom; and so, the quest continues. We must now ask, what is the absolute freedom at which liberalism is tacitly aiming? The word “absolute,” from the Latin absolvere, means to be loosened from or set free from something. In ancient legal as well as theological writing it means to be set free from guilt or blame; and one suspects that some residue of this original meaning might be involved in the liberal-revolutionary quest. In other words, the quest might be interpreted as the effort to establish one’s blamelessness before God—blamelessness, because one has done everything humanly possible to practice the faith of social justice, devoting one’s whole heart, mind, and soul to political progress. 20 This exhibits

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the lust for power because it puts man in the place of God; we attempt to become the agents of our own redemption. But we need not search so far to find in liberalism’s ultimate aim the desire to become God. Only God exists in a condition of perfect freedom from any and all constraints that are not self-willed. Only a being above and beyond the human condition could experience this. Thus liberalism’s ultimate, if tacit, goal is self-divinization. Again, this is both ideological and an instance of spiritual revolt. It is ideological because it is not possible, and yet we act as if it is. And it is an instance of spiritual revolt—indeed the classic instance of spiritual revolt— because it is a refusal to accept that we are not God. One last thought about the problem of spiritual revolt before I turn to the final section of this essay. In Voegelin’s essay, the phrase “spiritual revolt” has as its thematic contrast the notion of “spiritual substance.” Voegelin does little more than to mention these concepts; he does not develop them on this occasion. But we are in a position here to comment on them briefly. Spiritual revolt involves the denial of the limiting conditions that God has placed upon man and his social world. The revolutionary liberal tries to escape from these conditions and thus to become Godlike in his state of absolute freedom. But freedom, ultimately, cannot be the source of meaning in human life, because freedom is an essentially negative phenomenon. (This applies to all freedom, so-called “negative and “positive” alike.) Freedom is not something but the absence of something (constraints). As such, it cannot be meaningful save for those fleeting moments when something burdensome is first removed. This explains in part why revolutionary liberals are perpetually seeking freedom after freedom. The quest never seems to deliver the anticipated sense of satisfaction that can only be found in something positive, something essentially meaningful. Spiritual revolt, then, is ultimately unfulfilling. It strives for a condition more satisfactory than the one we have been given, but it cannot in principle attain the satisfaction it seeks. What, then, is “spiritual substance,” as Voegelin understands it? One is tempted to say it means acceptance of the limits God has placed upon us. But I suspect there is more to the answer than this. Surely, it has to do with the fact that God (as man has come to understand him both philosophically and by revelation) is so much more than the negative freedom we believe (erroneously) will satisfy us. God is, besides, Goodness, Wisdom, and Love. If this is right, then spiritual substance refers to the positive, not merely the negative, qualities of divine being and to the possibility of these qualities filling the soul of human beings with their positive substance, thereby filling the soul with profound meaning much deeper than any meaning derived from revolutionary liberalism. With respect to this substantive divine meaning, the revolutionary liberal is simultaneously ideological and rebellious—ideological, because he believes falsely that the attainment of negative freedom is synonymous with the attainment of positive good; rebellious because he is

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attempting to create meaning for himself rather than finding meaning in what God himself has made meaningful and good. CONCLUSION: ON THE POSSIBILITY OF A NON-IDEOLOGICAL LIBERALISM The analysis here prompts one to wonder if there can be a non-ideological form of liberalism. Much turns on this question, because the more liberalism becomes ideological (the more it is motivated by false beliefs and committed to ideals that can never be achieved) the less likely it is to survive. To some degree, then, the future of liberalism depends on discovering ways to discourage and constrain its ideological tendencies. Would a “non-ideological” liberalism be perfectly synonymous with a “non-revolutionary” liberalism? I do not think so. The analysis above shows that liberalism can be revolutionary in two ways, one more dangerous than the other. On the one hand, it can be revolutionary in its ability to respond to changes forced upon it by conditions beyond its control. We saw this in the way liberalism responded to the dislocations and degradations associated with the Industrial Revolution. It morphed into something different from classical liberalism in order to address concrete problems in the material world and to avoid being overtaken by socialism. This ability to change seems revolutionary but not necessarily ideological. I do not deny that it could be (and sometimes was) pursued in an ideological way which refused to take proper account of limits (e.g., of human potential, of economic resources, and of competing goods). But, as I argued above, liberalism’s shift from its classical to its more “social” form may well have been necessary for its survival. On the other hand, liberalism can be revolutionary in the way it creates its own crises and orchestrates its own changes, not because it must respond to pressing circumstance, but because it desires to keep the movement going. Here liberalism becomes synonymous with the révolution permanente, and at this point it becomes necessarily ideological. It pursues ends that cannot be achieved because it is animated by a set of false beliefs about what is possible and necessary for human satisfaction. The possibility of a non-ideological liberalism, then, reduces to the possibility of discouraging and constraining the révolution permanente. I do not believe (indeed, it would be ideological to believe) in the possibility of a politics in which all citizens, or even most citizens, approach political maintenance and change in the manner of sober, spiritually mature beings, recognizing what kind of changes are necessary and, simultaneously, what the likely effects of change will be upon the ordered liberty already achieved. That would be too much to expect. Nor do I believe that liberalism can be

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saved by redoubling our efforts at institutional design, such that overzealous schemes of change will somehow be negated mechanically through an elaborate system of checks and balances. Rather, I believe that the problem of ideological politics is at root a problem with the way liberal citizens understand what politics is. And I believe that understandings are changeable, though not quickly or easily. If there is something hopeful to be said about the possibility of a less ideological politics, it is that ideological politics is, by definition, out of step with reality. It does not work over the long term. Of course, if liberal citizens refuse to rethink the understandings and practices that currently render politics unsustainable, we may someday witness the end of liberalism in the West. But liberalism has been remarkably resilient over its long and dynamic history, and there is at least some reason to hope that the project of rethinking and reforming may occur organically as liberalism’s weaknesses become more acute. NOTES 1. Eric Voegelin, “Liberalism and Its History,” in Published Essays: 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 92 (hereafter CW 11). Voegelin’s essay originated as lecture delivered to the Bavarian Catholic Academy in 1960, under whose auspices it was subsequently published. It was later translated by Mary and Keith Algozin and published in Review of Politics 36:4 (1974): 504–20. All further references to this essay will refer parenthetically in the text to the Collected Works edition. 2. For the effort to define liberalism doctrinally, see, e.g., Ludwig von Mises, Liberalism: The Classic Tradition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005); and from a quite different perspective, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971) and Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). For criticism of the doctrinal approach, see John Gray, The Two Faces of Liberalism (New York: New Press, 2000), 69–104; and Paul Edward Gottfried, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), especially 28. 3. The similarity to Hegel’s dialectical analysis of history is likely coincidental. Voegelin was more directly influenced by the “third power” approach of Friedrich Heer, according to which liberalism is an effort to stabilize the counter-pressures of revolution on the one hand and reaction on the other. Voegelin cites Heer’s book, Die Dritte Kraft at the beginning of the essay. 4. Short-lived, because Ferdinand reestablished an absolute monarchy in 1814. Nevertheless, the Constitution of Cádiz became a model for several other countries around the world: for the Norwegian Constitution of 1814, the Portuguese Constitution of 1822, and the Mexican Constitution of 1824. On the historical circumstances surrounding the constitution, see Brendon Westler, “Between Tradition and Revolution: The Curious Case of Francisco Martínez Marina, the Cá diz Constitution, and Spanish Liberalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 76:3 (2015): 393–416. 5. Blaise Pascal, Pensées (New York: Penguin, 1995), 18: “Justice is as much a matter of fashion as charm is.” 6. This point was made by famously by Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955), which predated Voegelin’s “Liberalism and Its History” by five years. 7. See Michael Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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8. See Michael Freeden, Liberal Languages: Ideological Imaginations and Twentieth-Century Progressive Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 12. 9. Data for the United States are available from “Firstliberty.org,” according to whom, incidents of hostility to religion increased 15 percent over the period of just one year, and 133 percent over the period of five years. These data come from their 2017 report. The 2018 report is not out yet. The erosion has become so serious that for many Americans today, the very terms “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” are regarded as synonymous with bigotry, intolerance, racism, sexism, and homophobia. Available at https://firstliberty.org/wp-content/ uploads/2017/05/Undeniable-2017.pdf. 10. See, e.g., CW 11, 92, “liberalism must unavoidably be overtaken by the spiritually much-more-powerful revolution.” Also 94, “We must now look more closely at the phenomenon of liberalism being overtaken and mired down.” Also 96, “The overtaking by history of the antireligious attitude of liberalism is so well known that a brief indication will be sufficient.” 11. I draw this particular list from the Bill of Rights (1689) that was drawn up after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. 12. Gray, The Two Faces of Liberalism, 76. 13. John Stuart Mill, J. S. Mill: “On Liberty” and Other Writings, ed., Stefan Collini (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 15. 14. Ibid., 16. An overstatement to be sure. Compare the more qualified position of William A. Galston in “Expressive Liberty and Constitutional Democracy: The Case of Freedom of Conscience,” The American Journal of Jurisprudence 48:1 (2003): 149–77. 15. This is an important aspect of John Rawls’s political theory. See, e.g., Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Erin Kelly, ed. (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2001), 74–75: “Do people really think that they (morally) deserved to be born more gifted than others? Do they think they (morally) deserved to be born a man rather than a woman, or vice versa? Do they think that they deserved to be born into a wealthier rather than into a poorer family?” Rawls tried to address this problem of desert through his “difference principle.” 16. Julian Huxley, “Transhumanism,” in New Bottles for New Wine: Essays by Julian Huxley (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957), 17. See also Nick Bostrom and Julian Savulescu, eds., Human Enhancement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). For a sophisticated critique of transhumanism, see Peter Lawler, Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biological Future (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005). 17. See my essay, “Eric Voegelin’s Critique of Ideology,” in Tradition v. Rationalism: Voegelin, Oakeshott, Hayek, and Others, Lee Trepanier and Eugene Callahan, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018), 25–50. 18. On liberalism’s refusal to come to terms with evil, see John Kekes, Against Liberalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), chapters 2 and 10. 19. A tantalizing claim that I will not develop further here. I treat it from the perspective of Greek philosophy in The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015), 5–6. 20. For a powerful analysis of the “identity politics” movement in terms of guilt and redemption, see Joshua Mitchell, “The Identity Politics Death Grip,” City Journal (Autumn 2017). Available at https://www.city-journal.org/html/identity-politics-death-grip-15500.html.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bostrom, Nick and Julian Savulescu, eds. Human Enhancement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Corey, David. The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015). ———. “Eric Voegelin’s Critique of Ideology,” in Tradition v. Rationalism: Voegelin, Oakeshott, Hayek, and Others, Lee Trepanier and Eugene Callahan, eds. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018). Freeden, Michael. Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). ———. Liberal Languages: Ideological Imagination and Twentieth-Century Progressive Thought (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005).

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Galston, William A. “Expressive Liberty and Constitutional Democracy: The Case of Freedom of Conscience,” American Journal of Jurisprudence 48:1 (2003): 149–77. Gottfried, Paul Edward. After Liberalism: Mass Democracy in the Managerial State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999). Gray, John. The Two Faces of Liberalism (New York: New Press, 2000). Hartz, Louis. The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955). Huxley, Julian. “Transhumanism,” in New Bottles for New Wine: Essays by Julian Huxley (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957). Kekes, John. Against Liberalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). Lawler, Peter. Stuck with Virtue: The American Individual and Our Biological Future (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2005). Mill, John Stuart. J.S. Mill: “On Liberty” and Other Writings, Stefan Collini, ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Mises, Ludwig von. Liberalism: The Classic Tradition (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2005). Mitchell, Joshua. “The Identity Politics Death Grip,” City Journal (Autumn, 2017). Available at https://www.city-journal.org/html/identity-politics-death-grip-15500.html. Pascal, Blaise. Pensées (New York: Penguin, 1995). Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1971). ———. Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, Erin Kelly, ed. (Cambridge, UK: Belknap Press, 2001). ———. Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). Voegelin, Eric. “Liberalism and Its History,” in Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 83–99. Westler, Brendon. “Between Tradition and Revolution: The Curious Case of Francisco Martínez Marina, the Cá diz Constitution, and Spanish Liberalism,” Journal of the History of Ideas 76:3 (2015): 393–416.

Chapter Two

The Necessity of Moral Communication in a Pluralistic Political Environment Scott Robinson

Eric Voegelin’s 1956 essay “Necessary Moral Bases for Communication in a Democracy” is of tremendous worth to the careful analyst of 21st century American political thought. It sheds much light on the effect that communication styles may have on the character of a society, and it sheds further light on the true but concealed nature of pluralistic societies. Characterizations of such societies as bastions of toleration are misleading; instead, the types of communication that are prevalent in most pluralistic societies today conceal the rather vitriolic competition for power that occurs within them. By applying Voegelin’s essay to today’s environment, this chapter develops the thesis that if we seek to identify the reasons why America’s Constitution has endured for so long, we would be better served to study the sprit in which America’s institutions were created, rather than the spirit which animates many of America’s political debates. Voegelin distinguishes three types of communication in “Necessary Moral Bases.” Substantive communication is used to foment the necessary homonia, or like mindedness, among society members regarding the philosophical truths of questions pertinent to the existence and well-being of a community. Pragmatic communication does not rise to concern itself with substantive truth, but rather “has the purpose of inducing in the human target a state of mind in conformity with the communicator’s intention.” 1 Such communicators have the “morally dubious position of [destroying] their fellowman’s order” because “the personal organization of a man’s life will disintegrate under the constant stimulation of anxieties and passions through the pragmatic propaganda aimed at him” (CW 11, 49). Finally, communica31

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tion as an intoxicant serves the role of alleviating boredom. Intoxicating communication can be the most dangerous for it targets “the blackness that pervades the soul, the emptiness that results in boredom and ultimately in despair, when soul is not ordered by faith” (CW 11, 50). Voegelin argues that in our contemporary massive and highly secularized societies “a goodly bulk of movie-going, listening to radio, and . . . looking at television has the character of a divertissement in the sense . . . of an intoxicating activity that will drown the anxiety of an empty life” (CW 11, 50). The problem for the cultivation of substantively truthful and thus moral communication is indeed that philosophically true and morally stimulating substantive communication is simply missing from society’s predominant discourse. Voegelin argues that the veneer of social politeness in contemporary Western “pluralistic” democratic societies can be misleading. Beneath the surface of an ostensibly rational and objective pursuit for philosophical truths lies a plethora of forces competing for power within these societies; the true picture of the West is one of “the blood and stench of the war that is conducted now for four-and-a-half-centuries, with no end visible” (CW 11, 53). The succession of movements beginning with the Protestant Reformation, and including the English, American, and French Revolutions, culminating in the Russian Revolution and its offshoots, produce a cacophony of pluralistic forces. Voegelin notes that these revolutions proceed in the form of “movement, countermovement, wars, peace settlements” (CW 11, 53). In other words, the ostensibly polite and rationally presented arguments occurring within Western democracies are anything but polite and rational; the medium of mass communication distorts the intoxicating and pragmatic elements of mass communication and provides instead the false sense that rational debates aimed at objective truths are the actual substance of mass communication. Voegelin’s analysis of modern mass communication thus contributes meaningfully and uniquely to the debates concerning the civility of Western democratic societies. “Moral Bases” highlights the seriousness of this particular symptom of incivility, for this analysis shows mass communication to be the very battleground upon which is fought the pluralistic wars waged within the West. A particular landscape feature tends to re-appear in the substance of mass communication; fortunately, Voegelin identified this feature as the “prohibition of questions,” and provided a satisfactory description of the term in Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (1960), which appeared during the same era as “Necessary Moral Bases.” 2 Voegelin presented the prohibition of questions as the technique used by Marx to provide the evidence needed to adequately present his notion that man’s nature was compatible with the ends of his Communist theories. Essentially, a theoretician of Marx’s pay-grade will understand the philosophical uncertainty of his claims, as uncertainty is an indelible feature of our existence. Yet, in order to make a dubious claim

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appealing to masses who may empower the idea posed by said theorist, the theorist will distort or conceal the fact that his claim may or may not contain truthful claims. Hence, questions regarding the viability of the theorist’s ideas are discouraged in much the same way that a used-car salesman might distract potential buyers from potential issues with a car’s engine. Such politicians are particularly dangerous, for murder of political opposition is an obvious and comprehensive way of prohibiting questions that might hinder the movement. Voegelin’s analyses of German and Russian totalitarianism focused on this particular theoretical maneuver. In “Necessary Moral Bases,” the notion of the prohibition of questions is applied to pluralistic democratic nations. Here, the prohibition of questions appears in a subtle form when implemented politically; communication rather than violence is the tool of political prohibition. In the pluralistic context, confusion by individuals over the fundamental distinction between the rationality of substantive communication and the irrationality of pragmatic and intoxicating communication is the key to the rouse perpetrated by pragmatic communicators. Voegelin posits that an individual’s proclivity to resist conformist propositions is a function “of a soul that is essentially open toward God” (SPG, 58). Such a soul is produced through the education of the soul to love rational arguments. A soul cultivates a love for rationality through the experience of undertaking a common-sense study of our world through the Platonic method (SPG, 57). This disposition of the soul does not exist in a soul which does not undertake this basic experience of the soul. A society which does not present rational mass communications to individuals, therefore, may also subtly prohibit individuals from asking the questions that a rational person would ask: In order to achieve his purpose, the pragmatic communicator must therefore rely on the arsenal of psychological tricks—suppressio veri and suggestio falsi, repetition, the “big lie,” and so forth—to create the emotional diversions that will prevent his target from questioning the substantive authenticity of the communication. For this reason, essentially pragmatic communication is inevitably forced in the direction of intoxication. (SPG, 58)

I have identified a particular tactic in this essay that has been employed by mass communicators to prohibit questions. Pragmatic messages are communicated in particularly provocative ways that are intoxicating to the receiver of these messages. Generally, messages are presented which portray the opponent in a hostile and antagonizing manner. These messages solicit countermessages that are similarly provocative and hostile in turn. This style of debate, though highly effective at riling the mass audiences, is by its very nature destructive of the homonia which cultivates the circumstances in which substantive messages might flourish. And, indeed, this type of prohibition of questions is most successfully implemented in that type of society in

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which substantive communication through the medium of classical philosophy and religious devotion has been whittled from the education and experiences of the citizens of a society. In other words, the more pluralistic a society becomes, the more dependent it will become on pragmatic and intoxicating messages, and the more difficult it will become for substantive messages to flourish. In order to demonstrate that a subtle prohibition of questions can be fomented through the style of mass communication used in a modern, pluralistic, and democratic society, this chapter will examine mass communications from several noteworthy eras from American history and from an era of English history that is especially pertinent to American political development. I will look at pamphlets, sermons, and newspaper articles from 1670–1680 England; from 1760–1776 America; from 1800 America; and from 2016–present America. Pamphlets from each period, with the exception of 1760–1776 America, contain a strong element of pragmatic and intoxicating arguments which also tacitly prohibit questions about their premises through the manner in which they are presented. I will dwell on the features of the American Revolutionary era which made it unique from the others, and posit that the effects of the Great Awakening combined with America’s geo-political self-view provided the unique set of factors needed to produce a constitutional order uniquely situated to preserve factional conflict within a large pluralistic republic. Human nature being what it is, the benefit of the system derived during this unique and brief period in American history is not that is has produced over time a society of angelic men who do not fight with one another. Rather, the greatest benefit of this order is that it allows for and even encourages the conflicts which hallmark most other eras. Perhaps the most interesting finding of this chapter is that the institutions produced during the American revolutionary era more deeply reflect the classical and Christian philosophical inspirations, and contain deeper substantive messages, than do the debates that persist throughout American history. In many eras of American history, the rationality of the institution operates in contradiction to the intoxicated nature of the debates that occur between the humans that made those institutions function. This analysis will allow me to comment in the conclusion of this chapter on the relationship between institutions and mass political movements, on the ways in which Voegelin was correct about the resilience of American institutions, and to speculate on the ways in which contemporary debates in American society portend any meaningful change to either societal or world order.

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COMMUNICATION IN ENGLAND BETWEEN THE RESTORATION AND GLORIOUS REVOLUTION Contemporary work on the seminal development of liberalism in Restoration England does indeed reveal that the arguments and language used to foment and further the Protestant movement during this time had deep political motivations. 3 The religious language used to justify individual liberty in the era was employed to create voters for dissenting representatives in Parliament in the struggle for power being waged therein. Samuel Parker’s Discourse on Ecclesiastical Polity (1669) and A Defense and Continuation of the Ecclesiastical Polity (1671) both contained such profound attacks upon the dissenters that they can both necessarily be characterized as prohibiting any questions pertaining to the fundamentals of Charles II’s political policies and motives. Ostensibly at stake in these documents was the reasonability or rationality of the dissenters; though in actuality at stake for King Charles II was no less than the consolidation of power for his regime. Charles II intended to win the favor of the Anglican church through his persecution of dissenters in 1669 and 1670; the issue which had angered Anglican leaders was Charles’ promise to grant greater religious freedom “to tender conscience” as a component of the Restoration Settlement. 4 Thus Charles’ persecution of dissenters and the tracts aimed at justifying it turned on this issue of conscience. Charles intended later to win back the favor of dissenters by providing precisely those freedoms he had persecuted in 1669–1670. It was in this political context that Parker’s 1669 attack appeared. This was not a philosophical tract. It argued rather simply that dissenters constituted a “wild and fanatic rabble,” “pests and enemies . . . [of] the nation’s welfare,” and “rude and boisterous zealots,” who would be irresponsive to “calm and sober reason.” 5 Thus it was necessary to persecute them. The object being not to reason with but to “silence them.” He wished to “brand and punish” anyone who supported the idea of freedom of conscience, so that all who remained would be “scare[d] into better obedience.” 6 The argument for both parties then turned on whether conscience could demonstrate to an individual that civil and religious authorities are incorrect about any specific issue. Much literature has focused on the intricacies of this debate, which side might have been advocating some form of Hobbesian thought, and which side is logically correct. I would like to focus instead on the structure of the argument as it developed between the rival parties, and what the consequences of this structure might be in this case and for any argument generally. By “structure” I specifically mean the ways in which the wording and language employed by one party to a debate may encourage or solicit this instead of that response from another party to a debate. My argu-

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ment is essentially this: by responding to a tract which prohibited questions on the terms created by that tract, one is likely to respond in a hyper-defensive manner to the attack—one is likely to defend oneself from the charges made in the attack on the terms created by the attack itself. This makes sense in a military context—when Pickett charged up Cemetery Ridge, Meade moved troops from his flanks to atop Cemetery Ridge; the decision to respond to a specific attack instead of to retreat is a commonly made decision in rhetorical wars as well. This need not be done in a rhetorical war, as the battlefield is a rhetorical and imaginative work. Ground need not be defended as it is when attacked physically. Rather, a counter-parry could more productively re-create the battlefield by re-defining the terms rather than responding to the narrative created by one’s opponent. By responding to the debate terms created by one’s opponent, one decreases the likelihood that the political debate will be reconciled respectfully or peacefully. In the case of the debate about conscience in 1670s England, the principled defense of individual conscience is made by Whig writers in a way which almost immediately divorced the concept of freedom of conscience from its more limited classical portrayals by the likes of Plato and Aristotle. For Parker, the directives of revelation through church officials are what is correctly truthful and real; only those individuals are competent to properly interpret affairs. For Locke and dissenters such as Ferguson, the insights of conscience are what is correct and truthful, and their arguments are forced by the argument employed by Parker and by the political context of their goal to argue that absolutely all individuals are competent in this regard. Importantly, they do not attempt to argue that some consciences, such as the consciences of the consistently inept or those who are consistently wishing to harm others, should not be included in the lot of those possessing the capacity for rationality. Hence, in both Robert Ferguson’s reply to Parker and in Locke’s various writings that address conscience we see a structure to their argument for conscience which rules out any in-between regarding whether all men are capable of rational and proper behavior and insights, or if what is rational may only be seen innately by the supremely qualified. Ferguson writes that “no action can be moral that is not free . . . freedom intrinsically belongs to every action, as it is a human action.” 7 He does not mean to endorse libertinism but rather couches this argument in creationism, along the lines that certain important “duties” such as “love and reverence” are “obliged to by the rule of creation.” 8 Ferguson argues very clearly that this capacity to correctly interpret the extent of one’s duties to others is universally achievable, declaring that “we are limited with such faculties” necessary to distinguish the complexity of consequences to an action and accordingly to weigh its morality. 9 He states this capacity to be inherent to “every man,” and his

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contemporary Richard Baxter proclaims that “every rational creature is endowed with” the reasonability to discern moral consequences in actions. Locke also develops an argument for reasonability regarding morality in a similar manner. For Locke, conscience is “the sentence which everyone passes on himself.” 10 It is a judgment pronounced within a man’s head, concerning the morality of his own actions; in Locke’s words, “conscience is nothing else but our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions”: 11 It is not conscience that makes the distinction of good and evil, conscience only judging of an action by that which it takes to be [eternal] rule of good and evil, acquits or condemns it. I call not conscience practical principles. He who confounds the judgment made with the rule of law upon which it is made perhaps talk so. Conscience is not the law of nature, but judging by that which is (by it) taken to be the law. 12

Conscience is a judgment, but it does not provide the basis upon which the judgment is rendered; conscience is only the voice that announces the decision. Conscience is the voice, but not the reason. Locke affirms this in the Essays: I grant that some have undertaken to prove from the testimony of conscience that there is a Diety presiding over the world. However, for the purpose of confirming the truth of our argument it suffices that man, by exercising the senses and reason at the same time, can attain to the knowledge of some supreme godhead. 13

Conscience, then, is the judgment pronounced as a result of man’s sense perception and reasoning faculty. Using his senses and faculties, man may arrive at judgments concerning the morality of his actions. In the Second Treatise the judgments announced by conscience have political ramifications, affecting the decision to resist or to consent to political authority. Despite the significance of the term, it is not defined in the text. The critical question is whether or not the conscience of the Second Treatise means the soulful wonderment at final causes in a manner that is attuned to real order of things (what has been called the Logos or Divine Nous). In short, the answer to this question is no, it is a reduced, soulless version of conscience that may judge the propriety of retributive violence. If one attempts to understand Locke on conscience, solely from the text of the Second Treatise, one may do little more than operate from context clues in the few passages where conscience is either mentioned or ostensibly applicable. Undertaking such an exercise is profitable, for it reveals that Locke’s conception of reason indeed prompts man to pursue that action which is most personally advantageous from a materialistic perspective.

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Locke suggests that the appeal to heaven resembles Jephtha’s appeal to heaven: “whether I may as Jephtha did, appeal to heaven.” 14 That is, we may appeal, as much as possible, “as Jephtha did.” Conscionable decisions resemble Jephtha’s decision. It is necessary to inquire as far as possible into Jephtha’s appeal if Locke’s view of conscience is to be garnered from the Second Treatise. Locke writes: Had there been any such Court, any superior Jurisdiction on Earth, to determine the right between Jephtha and the Ammoniites, they had never come to a State of War, but we see he was forced to appeal to Heaven. The Lord the Judge (says he) be Judge this day between the Children of Israel, and the Children of Ammon, Judg. 11. 27. and then Prosecuting, and relying on his appeal, he leads out his Army to Battle. 15

This evidence has been misconstrued by some scholars. Jacqueline Stevens, for example, argues that Jephtha’s appeal was made by the people of Israel, and was not a private decision by Jephtha. 16 Stevens concludes that, consequently, a right of resistance may only be made by the people at large, and not by private individuals. Stevens’ evidence is Locke’s line, later in the text, “they may appeal, as Jephtha did, to Heaven, and repeat their Appeal.” 17 Stevens ignores Locke’s first reference to Jephtha, “I may as Jephtha did, appeal to heaven.” Taken together, the lines suggest that either an individual or the people at large may make such an appeal. It is true, as has been noted, 18 that the majority must at some point conclude that resistance is reasonable; but this decision must be reached by the independent people that compose the majority. Stevens further argues that Jephtha’s decision to go to war against the Ammonites was decided by the “‘the people’ of Israel.” 19 A manner of reading the account in scripture affirms Stevens’ interpretation; Israeli people and elders decided to attack the Ammonites and to make Jephtha the military leader. 20 This argument, however, ignores the fact that we are dealing with Locke’s reading of Jephtha and not our own. Locke insists that Jephtha made this appeal as an individual act: “and relying on his appeal, he leads out his Army to Battle.” 21 Such an argument further ignores Locke’s position on individual action versus the action of a ruler. Locke distinguishes between the powers inherent to princes and the powers inherent to the people given cases of interstate war: “the Resolutions of Peace and War, being ordinarily either in the People, or in a Council. Though the War it self, which admits not of Plurality of Governours, naturally devolves the Command into the King’s sole Authority.” 22 Thus by Locke’s account Jephtha’s decision was ultimately made in his own conscience; that is, as a purely individual act. Locke later affirms, clearly, that single individuals may undertake an individual appeal to heaven:

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And where the Body of the People, or any single Man, is deprived of their Right, or is under the Exercise of a power without right, and have no Appeal on Earth, there they have a liberty to appeal to Heaven, whenever they judge the Cause of sufficient moment. 23

This point is consequential. Locke’s justification for resistance is greatly expanded because it is countenanced in terms of the appeal to heaven—in terms of the individual conscience—and not in terms of majority rule, a theme emphasized elsewhere in the Second Treatise. 24 The first thing discerned from the use of Jephtha, then, is that conscience does not only countenance resistance when it is approved by a majority of individuals. A majority of the Israeli people may have supported Jephtha’s decision to confront the Ammonites, but it was not necessary for Jephtha to make the appeal, or to act on the basis of his appeal, which was a result of his action alone. The second thing to be learned from Jephtha’s appeal is that the moral character of decisions rendered through conscience is not always self-evident. Jephtha’s appeal was: “Wherefore I have not sinned against thee, but thou doest me wrong to war against me: the Lord the Judge be judge this day between the children of Israel and the children of Ammon.” 25 The Ammonites, however, insisted that the Israelis were the aggressors in the confrontation: “Israel took away my land . . . now therefore restore those lands peaceably.” 26 Jephtha argued that the Israelis had taken the land in question from the Ammonites three hundred years prior, and that the amount of time to have passed since implied the rightfulness of the Israeli claim to the land. 27 Scripture, therefore, suggests that the land was originally possessed by the Ammonites, taken and held for three hundred years by the Israelis, before being challenged by the Ammonites. It would seem, then, that the Israelis, not the Ammonites, were the aggressors in the state of war between the two parties. The circumstance would, given Locke’s typology of power, be a case of unjust conquest. In such an event, “the Conquered, have no Court, no Arbitrator on Earth to appeal to. They may appeal, as Jephtha did, to Heaven, and repeat their Appeal, till they have recovered the native right of their ancestors.” 28 Locke insists that the native possessor of lands is entitled to a right of war against unjust conquerors, regardless of the time to have elapsed since the conquering invasion. The puzzling aspect of the above quote is Locke’s suggestion that it is the Israelis, and not the Ammonites, who are granted this right of war. It was, after all, the Ammonites who had possessed the land first, and time cannot exempt them from this claim. This discrepancy can be explained in one of two ways. First, Jephtha’s actual appeal provided convenient scriptural support for Locke’s resistance theory. Judges 11:27, stripped from the context, is attractive in that regard, and this attractiveness is only watered down upon a close inspection of the full history between the

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Ammonites and the Israelis. Perhaps Locke thought such an analysis superficial, somehow inappropriate, or otherwise unlikely to be undertaken. Second, intentionally or not, Locke’s argument makes a subtle point regarding the nature of the appeal made by the conscience. Jephtha’s appeal, in actuality specious, provides no moral foundation. One may proclaim that one is a victim, that one is invoking one’s right of war, while one is actually introducing and aggressor in a state of war. Locke’s writings on Jephtha, then, give us no more evidence that conscience will countenance the morally superior position than it gives us evidence that conscience will approve of morally deplorable propositions. The moral vapidity inherent to Locke’s “as Jephtha” is suggestive of the political stakes involved in Locke’s writings, and helps us to see the Two Treatises as a work of propaganda relying on the medium of pragmatic and, it is possibly even fair to say, intoxicating mass communication. So, Ferguson’s response and Locke’s writings on the topic both contain prohibitions of questions which, less vehemently articulated, are equally as prohibitive as was Parker’s original articulation. Per Parker, all dissenters are incapable of rationality. So per Ferguson, all humans (which would include all dissenters) are capable of rationality. And per Locke, we see how such can be contorted to support either claim in a controversy. Of course, Parker’s purpose was indeed to persecute, and his language was effective. But Ferguson’s language was intended to defend. I believe that he and his contemporaries feared that the more moderated and probably more accurate defense— “some or most of us are capable of rationality, even if some of us are not”— could not be articulated for at least two reasons of probably equal importance. First, this would not go over well with the lower-class voting block the dissenters were attempting to create. Secondly, this would cede too much of the battlefield to Parker—such an argument would provide fuel to the notion that unfettered individual conscience could err, that public welfare is more likely protected by demonstrating deference to the moral prerogatives of religious leaders. In other words, Parker had already claimed this turf by the way in which he structured his attack. The only viable move in response was the one it generated, the claim that all individuals are capable of rationality. The above evidence demonstrates a tendency for political discourse to quickly degenerate once some prohibition of questions is introduced. The stark nature of Parker’s attack solicited replies to it on the terms it had created. And, indeed, a counter-prohibition-of questions was created in the dissenters’ response to Parker’s invectives. Once both sides are adopting language which dismisses out-of-hand the possibility that the opponent could possibly be correct, or could be correct in some elements of his argument, it is highly unlikely that a conciliatory outcome will occur.

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COMMUNICATION IN AMERICAN BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION The decade leading up to the American Revolution, though producing a flood of politically charged pamphlets, produced very few arguments containing the rhetorical nastiness displayed in England during the 1670s and 1680s, despite the fact that many of them still employed polemics and satire as had the English seventeenth-century pamphlets. Indeed, the revolutionary decade seems to fundamentally different from the revolutionary decades in England a century before. As Bernard Bailyn notes: The American writers were profoundly reasonable people. Their pamphlets convey scorn, anger, and indignation; but rarely blind hate, rarely panic fear. They sought to convince their opponents, not, like the British pamphleteers of the eighteenth century, to annihilate them. For the primary goal of the American Revolution, which transformed American life and introduced a new era in human history, was not the overthrow or even the alteration of the existing social order but the preservation of political liberty . . . 29

Bailyn’s observation corroborates Voegelin’s view that there was indeed something special about the American Revolution. In the space allotted, I may only briefly expand upon Bailyn’s analysis of the reasonability of the pamphlets produced during that decade by also pointing toward the prolific use of sermons as a medium to convey political messages throughout the eighteenth century. The sage words of Ellis Sandoz summarize the impact of the Great Awakening upon the sermons of the era: “This rhetorical form expressed the philosophical mean that free government is based on liberty, and liberty is founded in truth and justice as framed by eternal laws.” 30 This era is one of several flashes-in-the-pan of reasonable and substantively oriented mass communication in American history; it represents not the bulk but the vast minority of political arguments throughout our history. One such exemplary sermon by Silas Downer, A Discourse Beneath the Liberty Tree (1768), is a careful examination of the principles of consent and representation in the English political tradition, at many junctures applying Whig resistance arguments reminiscent of Locke, going so far as to draw North America as a sort of state of nature. 31 But it is important to note that Downer’s use of conscience turns on a basic and clearly classically derived understanding of natural rights and natural law, and does not rely on the radical notion implied by Whig writers of Locke’s day, namely that all humans always possess a perfectly functioning conscience. Downer then uses this analysis to lament certain trade restrictions, such as the prohibition on the production of nails. His case is reasonably made that such a prohibition over distant colonies who find themselves in a state of nature and without representation is indeed tyrannical. Downer is not unlike other authors from

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this period—both Whig and Tory—who were able to develop rational arguments grounded in persuasively developed contemplations of natural human needs, and to restrain from name calling as a political tactic. This sermon is noteworthy in that it postures a defensive tone upon rational grounds. It is typical of writings in this era by portraying the colonies as victims of an aggression whose validity is empirically discernable by candid humans; it does indeed convey scorn and anger, but differs from the pamphlets cited during the religious debates of the 1670s in that it does not convey blind hate. Pamphlets and newspaper articles produced post-revolution demonstrate that the rationally presented arguments of the revolution degenerated quickly into a competition for power in the early years of the republic. This era contained similar degenerative rhetoric to that which had characterized English political discourse in the decades prior the Glorious Revolution. Indeed, as tensions flared during the tumultuous presidential election of 1800, the shape of the propaganda appearing in partisan newspapers during that campaign (the era’s equivalent of the pamphlets of the 1670s) exhibited the vitriol that characterized the 1670s pamphlets cited above. One New York Federalist newspaper characterized the choice between New York state legislature candidates in April 1800 in profoundly oppositional terms. This passage serves to illustrate the general tenor of this era nicely: You who are for French notions of government; for the tempestuous sea of anarchy and misrule; for the arming of the poor against the rich; for fraternizing with the foes of God and man; go to the left and support the leaders, or the dupes, of the anti-federal junto. But you that are sober, industrious, thriving, and happy, give your votes for those men who mean to preserve the union of the states, the purity and vigor of our excellent Constitution, the sacred majesty of the laws, and the holy ordinances of religion. 32

Federalist and Republican newspapers both routinely and systematically partook of such inflammatory rhetoric. Presses at this time explicitly identified themselves as either Federalist or Republican, and often stories would emanate from the leading presses in Philadelphia, the Gazette and Aurora respectively, throughout the nation. 33 The rhetoric on both sides was identifiably designed to be intoxicating and for politically pragmatic reasons. One commonly employed Federalist tactic was to compare the Republican Party to the French Jacobins. For instance, Federalist papers repeated the alleged though never proven and heatedly disputed claims that two white Frenchmen had helped to foment a slave revolt in Virginia in August 1800—a claim made because “anything linking French Jacobins to domestic instability helped to justify the Federalists’ Alien Act and counter republican criticisms of it.” 34 It is worth noting that Federalists both believed and enflamed the French allegations (some historians now contend there is some merit to them, but that the evidence was destroyed by Governor James Monroe), and in some in-

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stances indulged in conspiracy theories regarding the revolt: “it was planned by Frenchmen, and . . . all the whites, save the French, were to have been sacrificed.” 35 These quoted passages provide clear evidence of the nature of the political communication during this era, and the impact that such communication had upon those who digested it. Federalists did not shy away from indulging in theories which were not supported by evidence, and apparently did so because the indulgence in such narratives was fun for them. The Boston Gazette opined, with more than a little disgust for their political opponents, that “if anything will correct and bring to repentance old hardened sinners in Jacobinism, it must be an insurrection of their slaves.” 36 Common and regularly digested political communication during this era consistently showed that mass communication was designed to contain pragmatic messages presented in an intoxicating fashion, but lacked the unifying and soul deepening substantive communication that had hallmarked the revolution merely two decades prior is absent. The tensions between Federalists and Republicans during this era were quite intense, and exemplified a competition for power between factions that was absent during the revolution. This is not surprising. Much like the era leading up to the Glorious Revolution, the Revolution of 1800 was characterized by two partisan efforts to outwit one another. The era leading up to the American Revolution was markedly different, as the predominant factions in America became united against what evolved into a foreign threat as the 1770s unfolded. Though the similarities between the eras in terms of tyrannical behavior and natural rights defenses against that behavior has confused many scholars, including Voegelin (who saw the Glorious Revolution, though not Locke, comparably to the American Revolution), I believe that the most important variable in these eras is the combination of a natural rights awareness through some awakening movement with certain geo-political circumstances, particularly the recent victory over or immanent threat of a powerful foe. COMMUNICATION IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICA The dynamics discussed above, specifically the path dependent deterioration of civic virtue in societies whose political debates have begun relying upon prohibitions of questions, are evident in the current state of American society. The widening gulf between partisan attitudes in recent decades, noticed by some scholars, has provided for an atmosphere in which pragmatic and intoxicating political messages could be utilized prolifically for political and financial gain. Cable news and social media have undoubtedly accentuated the divisive social trends that can be traced to about the 1960s, as others have noticed. 37 Although it would be profoundly difficult to trace this particular

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skirmish back to the volley that began it, it is quite easy to trace the ways in which a few arguments between President Trump and opposition voices expressed in the media have contained the elements discussed in this chapter: pragmatic and intoxicating messages that have had the effect of prohibiting questions from opposition on rational terms, which only serves to further exacerbate social divisions. I will dwell upon merely one issue area of importance throughout the second decade of the twenty-first century to exemplify the subtle prohibition of questions through intoxicating language. Immigration debates have been especially contentious and exemplify the path deteriorative rhetoric that exemplifies competing arguments in pluralistic societies. The first move in the most recent immigration gambit was cast by the Obama administration’s careful avoidance of the word “terrorism” in connection with mass casualty attacks perpetrated by Islamic radicals that occurred on American soil. This strategy was implemented, at least ostensibly, to avoid backlash attacks on American Muslims, but it also demonstrated Obama’s aversion to mostly rural Americans who opposed him politically, by suggesting that this demographic was fundamentally xenophobic and incapable of civility. Such a strategy allowed candidate Trump to successfully play to the fears of these voters, who saw themselves not as xenophobic but as defending American interests. The murder of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by an illegal immigrant in June 2015 provided an intoxicating setting for the pragmatic arguments on both sides to develop. This story, of an attractive young woman inexplicably shot to death on a pier while walking with her father and the subsequent acquittal on the most serious charges of the man who shot her, infatuated many because it painted clearly and provocatively the picture of illegal immigrants as dangerous and irresponsible and also of American liberals as hostile toward American citizens while protective of illegal immigrants. 38 Candidate Trump referred, shortly thereafter, to immigrants indiscriminately as “killers and rapists.” 39 One liberal journalist responded to this comment by proclaiming that “Donald Trump and his conservative allies twisted the facts of a deadly shooting to stoke America’s xenophobia.” 40 The prominent features of the mass communication discussed above are evident here as well. Individuals’ curiosity about this issue is subtly prohibited by the presentation of it by mass media. Arguments against illegal immigration are made in a flagrant manner—“rapists and killers”—which allows immigration advocates to claim that this argument itself is evidence of xenophobia. Likewise, the portrayal as xenophobic of the defense of American interests is equally if not more destructive. Rational arguments aimed at cultivating homonia among society members are unlikely to develop in an atmosphere in which homonia among society members is defined by one prominent faction of society as xenophobia.

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CONCLUSION This chapter has demonstrated that Voegelin’s analysis of communication styles in “Necessary Moral Bases” receives relatively robust support from a historical study. Indeed, the essential purpose of pluralistic societies appears to be, when viewed through this lens, to provide a civilized forum through which the ideological wars of our times may be waged. It is not surprising to discover that so much of our rhetoric is typically marked by an un-philosophical strategy that is also seen in totalitarian circumstances in a different form, the prohibition of questions. It is interesting to discover that the era analyzed in which more philosophical and substantive arguments did appear, the American Revolutionary Era, was also an era lauded by Voegelin in the New Science of Politics for producing political institutions of great longevity in an era of ideological warfare. 41 This analysis and others have identified the religious factors which strengthened America’s spine for rational truths. The cultivation of rational discourse through the sermons and pamphlets of the 1760s and 1770s was rather evident, and is indeed among the factors which allowed America to develop a constitutional system designed around the supposition that “all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.” Yet beneath the relative unity which defined the revolutionary decade lay the inexorable forces of political power which would inevitably affect the American order. These forces indeed began to manifest in George Washington’s second term, and erupted by 1800 into a vociferous competition for power, which quickly dilapidated the rational political discourse of the 1760s and 1770s. Absent the imminent and overwhelming threat by England to eviscerate Americans’ natural rights, the Americans’ religious attitudes were not sufficient to curb the types of pragmatic and intoxicating rhetoric which came to characterize the election of 1800. 42 Greater displays of civility in communication reemerged temporarily during the Era of Good Feelings, and again, particularly, in the 1950s, at about the time that Voegelin was lauding the religiosity of the Americans. These time periods, however, were distinctly affected by the dual forces of foreign competition and religious sentiment. During each of these decades in American history (1770/80s, 1820s, and 1950s) the American society was more unified by historical events than they otherwise were; it was effectively organized as a one-party system during these brief eras. In the 1770/80s and 1820s the Americans were gaining independence and then celebrating their victories over the English, French, and English again, setting the stage for the Monroe Doctrine (another unifying ideal). During the 1950s, America was settling into postwar life, rebuilding Western Europe, and a general sense of euphoria and success temporarily characterized society. Despite the arms race, Americans saw the 1950s as an

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unchallenging and triumphant one: “A 1958 study . . . fretted that ‘the most dangerous threat hanging over American society is the threat of leisure.’” 43 In each decade’s historical circumstances, an evident geo-political reason explains why the nation was particularly unified and engaging in more rational discourse than at other times. Absent such unifying opportunities, political discourse aimed at dividing instead of unifying the nation is common, as the tendency for American factions to compete more intensely for power, and to see their interests as divergent, can be seen. Ideas presented in religious messages may provide a medium through which substantive instead of pragmatic messages can be conveyed. When combined with the historical circumstances described in the preceding paragraph, religiously inspired senses of individual culpability may greatly encourage substantive and unifying political language. During each of these time periods, we also see an abnormally high level of Protestant activity that has been inspired by some sort of awakening movement, much as Sandoz described the impact of the Second Great Awakening: Republicanism and virtue were far from split apart by James Madison and his colleagues at the Federal Convention, as the clergy understood our constitutional system. For these preachers and their flocks, the two remained essentially bound together. The political culture of this country was not only all the things it is most frequently said to be (I think of Bernard Bailyn’s five items), but was deeply rooted in the core religious consciousness articulated above all by the preachers; theirs were the pulpits of a new nation with a privileged, providential role in world history. 44

Just as the Great Awakening of the 1730s had a down-stream effect on the political thought of the Revolutionaries, the Second Great Awakening provided this same rekindling in the Era of Good Feelings. Again, in the 1950s, when Voegelin writes about this theme, Protestantism and evangelicalism are at high-water marks in 20th century America. In short, the time period in which Voegelin offered the insights reviewed in this chapter uniquely resembled the Awakening movements which had caught Voegelin’s and Sandoz’s attention. In times of relative geo-political stability in which some time has passed since some awakening movement and that movement’s momentum has slowed down, therefore, we might expect to see a greater degree of domestic instability in pluralistic societies whose institutions provide for open opposition. Because the factions that are competing for power within such a society are not unified by some external event, they are provided with an opportunity to compete for power under the guise of pluralistic debate. But competition for power is what it is, and the essentials of force and power do not change just because the society’s laws are democratic. Such laws do, however, obscure the true nature of power within a democracy. Liberal democracies

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uniformly discourage the murder of political opposition, but the strategy of prohibiting questions remains, only now through the substance of the mass communications presented to the society. There is probably little utility in recommending various changes that might alleviate the tendency to engage in the prohibition of questions in a competitive political environment. This analysis has shown that human beings are inclined to indulge in such techniques—it is a strategy which has been relied upon in various types of societies, at various times, and in various different ways. Human beings within a society will compete for power over it, and it would be unrealistic to expect that such competitions would be hallmarked by some angelic standard of civil debate, in even Western liberal democracies that have a historical cultural affinity for Christianity or who presently profess a high standard of toleration. There is utility in recognizing bluntly the effect that competing for power has on pluralistic societies. Absent an awakening movement that coincides with some unifying event that might induce rational debate, it is likely that a society will fight among itself, and will rely on the strategies of pragmatic and intoxicating messages in order to wage such a fight. An historical analysis of the manner of conduct such as the one conducted above only affirms that “men are rascals,” and human nature “fallible.” To make such an observation is to conduct the modest exercise of political science. When we encounter recommendations based upon a desire to escape this type of ostensibly dilapidated social rhetoric, we should be dubious. Indeed, Voegelin’s own concluding remarks in “Necessary Moral Bases” are appropriately ambivalent on this point. He does argue clearly that pragmatic and intoxicating communication is unhealthy for individuals, and I agree with him on this point: “A man who is confused about the essentials of his existence is incapable of rational action; and if he is incapable of rational action, he is incapable of moral action,” therefore “communication will not be formative but destructive of personality if the conception of order it communicates moves on one of the levels of ontological reduction” (CW 11, 57). Voegelin does not make any societal recommendations which should be used to rectify this situation, and he does not make any specific recommendations for changes to the style of media communications in light of the unhealthy circumstances he detected. Perhaps this is because, as Voegelin has elsewhere indicated, the ultimate culpability for action is an individual one; cultivating a love of wisdom through persuasion cannot be achieved through societal programs. Or perhaps this is because Voegelin understood the work of science to be an observational and not an activist role; his work very rarely concluded with advice. Though this editorial decision speaks plenty of advice for itself (and, of course, Voegelin did have plenty to say in other works regarding how a love

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of wisdom and rational behavior may be cultivated within a society through classical science). Communitarian theorists, by contrast, often offer recommendations to improve American culture. Robert Bellah’s recommendations, for instance, to improve the American society seek “the transformation of our culture and our society.” 45 He insists that “personal transformation among large numbers is essential, and it must not only be a transformation of consciousness but must also involve individual action. . . . With a more explicit understanding of what we have in common and the goals we seek to attain together, the differences between us that remain would be less threatening.” 46 Such recommendations are not grounded in the nature of the human experience. Bellah claims that “courage to face our deepening political and economic difficulties” would produce this change, but courage in politics very rarely means anything other than courage to be more of a rapscallion than the competition. He may be correct that some sort of courage could produce this concord, but we have seen that the historical coincidence of an Awakening movement and of national geo-political triumph is what is truly needed to only temporarily produce this type of homonia. Instead, we find Bellah offering under this guise of courage an explicitly partisan and liberal-abandoning proposition: one critically important action that government could take in a new political atmosphere would be . . . to reduce the “punishments of failure and the rewards of success.” Reducing the inordinate rewards of ambition and the inordinate fears of ending up as losers would offer the possibility of a great change in the meaning of work in our society and all that would go with such a change. 47

Bellah’s recommendation to escape from the problem of human nature is to impose a transfiguration of human nature itself through the impositions of government. Even a cursory reading of the Federalist Papers demonstrates that the Union was formed with the understanding that profoundly antagonistic political debates would arise; the hostile atmosphere surrounding the 1800 election, a mere thirteen years after the Constitution was drafted, only affirms how correct the Founders’ understanding of human nature was. The success of our political system is that it allows human beings to fight like real human beings without killing each other; we have built a city of sows and we meant it to be one. We are not in Rousseauian chains here. Our high fever is precisely the diseased state in which we should expect to find a thriving regime. In this vein, Robert Putnam’s plea “to create new structures and policies (public and private) to facilitate renewed civic engagement” is likewise a well-intentioned but unrealistic sentiment. 48 His comments regarding an awakening movement are particularly ill-advised:

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From a civic point of view, a new Great Awakening (if it happened) would not be an unmixed blessing. . . . Proselytizing religions are better at creating bonding social capital than bridging social capital, and tolerance of unbelievers is not a virtue notably associated with fundamentalism. 49

This may perhaps be true, but the goal in an already pluralistic society is not to bridge but to bond. He criticizes precisely the element of awakening movements which are therapeutic for diverse societies. Again, a cursory understanding of the antagonistic spirit which animates pluralistic societies dispels the idea that a deep sense of homonia should characterize America. It was precisely the notion that prolific social capital would be facilitated through a small republic which was rejected by the theories of Federalist 10 and 51; implicit in that rejection is a rejection of the need to create prolific social bonds throughout a large and diverse continent. The insinuation that American society must be saved from the hostile manner in which we view our competitors in society is based upon the illusory view of civics created by Tocqueville and clung to by progressive theoreticians ever since. The constrained fighting facilitated by our political institutions is what makes us Americans who we are; the rare moments of civically minded unity are historically important exceptions which do much good for us, but they are exceptions. With these thoughts in mind, a few remarks on America’s current politics is warranted. The vitriolic nature of the arguments presented against Donald Trump by the American mass media machine, and toward the mass media machine by Donald Trump and his surrogates, indicates only two things. We have not experienced an awakening movement of any true meaning in recent years, and we have not overcome a significant geopolitical or existential threat in recent years. The incendiary attitudes displayed in our politics are neither unnatural nor unhealthy for our society, despite the countless pleas for civility from both academics and activists. The religious attitudes of America, especially during our Founding Era, have surely helped to create the institutions which have survived America’s tumults. Indeed, the basic ideas which animate America’s institutions, though not always our political debates, were created during a time when religious attitudes that were particularly conducive to individual responsibility were prominently displayed. Surely the Christian views regarding the imperfectability of man, along with the classical political philosophies of especially but not exclusively Aristotle, are deeply etched into the functioning of our institutions. It is important that these attitudes remain alive within our culture, in some form or another. Should our institutions ever cave against the unrelenting ideological warfare that exists in our society, we would need some light from someplace to guide us.

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NOTES 1. Eric Vogelin, “Necessary Moral Bases for Communication in Democracy,” in Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 48. Hereafter CW 11. 2. Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2004), 17–21. Hereafter SPG. 3. See Richard Ashcraft, Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). 4. Ibid., 22. 5. Ibid., 23, 42. 6. Ibid., 42. 7. Ibid., 56. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. John Locke, Essays on the Law of Nature and Associated Writings, W. Von Leyden, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 117. 11. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke, Alexander Campbell Fraser, ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1959) , I.ii.8. 12. Ibid., 71n1. 13. Locke, Essay on the Law of Nature, 155. 14. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Peter Laslett, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), II. §21, c.f., I §163; II §109, §168. 15. Ibid. 16. Jacqueline Stevens, “The Reasonableness of John Locke’s Majority: Property Rights, Consent, and Resistance in the Second Treatise,” Political Theory 24 (1996): 423–63. 17. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, II §176. 18. Robert C. Grady II, “Obligation, Consent, and Locke’s Right to Revolution: Who Is to Judge?” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 9:2 (1976): 277–92; Donald L. Doernberg, “We the People: John Locke, Collective Constitutional Rights, and Standing to Challenge Government Action,” California Law Review 73:1 (1985): 52–118. 19. Stevens, “The Reasonableness of John Locke’s Majority,” 461. 20. C. I. Scofield, The Old Scofield Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Judges 10:18. 21. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, II §21. 22. Ibid., 108. 23. Ibid., 168. 24. Ibid., 95–96. 25. Judges 11:27. 26. Judges 11:13. 27. Judges 11: 26. 28. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, II §176. 29. Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Founding (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992), 18–19. 30. Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991). 31. Charles Hyneman and Donald S. Lutz, Political Writings of the American Founding Era, Volume I (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 1983), 87–108. 32. Cited in Edward J. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumumltous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign (New York: Free Press, 2007), 93. 33. Ibid. 34. Larson, A Magnificent Catastrophe, 196. 35. Ibid., 197. Republicans gave as good as they got in this propaganda battle. A prime example of this would be the incendiary work of James Callendar. His May 1800 pamphlet The Prospect Before Us and his Richmond Examiner columns later that year (the latter of which were written from a jail cell, as Prospect had resulted in his prosecution under the Sedition Act)

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provided equally inflammatory rhetoric against the Adams administration. Callendar preyed upon this proclivity throughout the era and without partisan discrimination. A few years later it was Callendar who published a story alleging a sexual relationship between Thomas Jefferson, the man he had just helped to elect, and a slave named Sally Hemmings. 36. Ibid., 196. 37. For instance, see Paul Passavant, “Political Subjectivity and Presidential Campaign Ads,” PS: Political Science and Politics, 49:1 (2016): 36–41. 38. Ron Hosko, “Kate Steinle’s Tragic Death Shows Why the ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Movement Threatens the Safety of All Americans,” Fox News, December 3, 2017. Available at https:// www.foxnews.com/opinion/kate-steinles-tragic-death-shows-why-the-sanctuary-cities-movement-threatens-the-safety-of-all-americans. 39. Ibid. 40. Jeremy Stahl, “The Exploitation of ‘Beautiful Kate,’” Slate, August 2017. Available at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/the-death-of-kate-steinle-and-the-rise-of-donaldtrump.html. 41. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 187. 42. The partisan fighting over which ostensible threat, England or France, was the gravest, is only evidence that neither posed a threat that was perceived to be as imminent or as dire as the threat posed to the colonies during the Revolution. 43. Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), 16. Putnam found this to be “a startling claim in the decade in which the Soviets got the bomb” (16). Despite the historian’s surprise, this does convey that the danger sensed in the later years of the Cold War did not characterize American sentiments in the 1950s. 44. Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding. 45. Robert Bellah, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 286. 46. Ibid., 286–87. 47. Ibid., 287. 48. Putnam, Bowling Alone, 403. 49. Ibid., 410.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ashcraft, Richard. Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). Bailyn, Bernard. Ideological Origins of the American Founding (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1992). Bellah, Robert. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007). Doernberg, Donald L. “We the People: John Locke, Collective Constitutional Rights, and Standing to Challenge Government Action,” California Law Review 73:1 (1985): 52–118. Grady, Robert C., II. “Obligation, Consent, and Locke’s Right to Revolution: Who Is to Judge?” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 9:2 (1976): 277–92. Hosko, Ron. “Kate Steinle’s Tragic Death Shows Why the ‘Sanctuary Cities’ Movement Threatens the Safety of All Americans.” Fox News. December 3, 2017. Available at https:// www.foxnews.com/opinion/kate-steinles-tragic-death-shows-why-the-sanctuary-citiesmovement-threatens-the-safety-of-all-americans. Hyneman, Charles S. and Donald S. Lutz, Political Writings of the American Founding Era, Volume 1 (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund Press, 1983). Larson, Edward J. A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumumltous Election of 1800, America’s First Presidential Campaign (New York: Free Press, 2007). Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke, Alexander Campbell Fraser, ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1959).

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———. Essays on the Law of Nature and Associated Writings, W. Von Leyden, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). ———. Locke: Two Treatises of Government, Peter Laslett, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Passavant, Paul. “Political Subjectivity and Presidential Campaign Ads,” PS: Political Science and Politics 49:1 (2016): 36–41. Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). Sandoz, Ellis. Political Sermons of the American Founding (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 1991). Scofield, C.I. The Old Scofield Study Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), Judges 11:27. Stahl, Jeremy. “The Exploitation of ‘Beautiful Kate.’” Slate. August 2017. Available at https:// slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/08/the-death-of-kate-steinle-and-the-rise-of-donaldtrump.html. Stevens, Jacqueline. “The Reasonableness of John Locke’s Majority: Property Rights, Consent, and Resistance in the Second Treatise,” Political Theory 24 (1996): 423–63. Voegelin, Eric. The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987). ———. “Necessary Moral Bases for Communication in Democracy.” In Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 47–58. ———. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2004).

Chapter Three

Defenders of Democracy Freedom and Responsibility in America Today Scott Robinson

An ongoing debate in American political science regards the dispositions of the factions within American society toward one another; some scholars argue that a culture war obtains, while others point toward the peaceful transitions of power and the respect for political opposition in America as hallmarks of an exemplary civil society. 1 Eric Voegelin’s analysis of twentieth century America and twentieth century revolutionary movements supported the former position, but identified trends in other nations which help to diagnose the behavior of radical factions within a society. In The New Science of Politics (1952) he depicted America as particularly well-positioned to resist ideological fanaticism, and in “Freedom and Responsibility in Economy and Democracy” (1960) he depicted the aspects of German society which exacerbated ideological fanaticism. These works are especially helpful to us today because the same sort of ideologically inspired arguments that afflicted Voegelin’s time are increasingly identifiable today, and presently challenge American political institutions. With American institutions bent but not broken, we may still conclude that “the fate is in the balance.” 2 Voegelin’s work helps us to understand how culture war claims may be more applicable to America today than when he wrote, and his analysis may provide some guidance for how to alleviate the deterioration of America’s political culture and political institutions.

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REVIEW OF VOEGELIN ON CIVIC VIRTUE Voegelin’s 1960 essay “Freedom and Responsibility in Economy and Democracy” was addressed to a German audience and explained why Germans at that time lacked “a sound knowledge . . . of the right behavior of man in political society.” 3 Voegelin’s work from this time indeed often focuses on the substance of this “sound knowledge” and what is needed for “right behavior.” Although Voegelin’s remarks on this “sound knowledge” are not thorough in “Freedom and Responsibility,” his idea of it was adequately presented elsewhere in The New Science of Politics (1952) and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (1960). “Sound knowledge” may be summarized as an understanding of the limits of human knowledge and of the human propensity to err in light of claiming to possess certainty of knowledge that no human may possess (he referred to such claims of certain knowledge as “modern gnosticism” in these writings). The behavior needed is a cultivated curiosity for truth in all matters of consequence to humans, and the openminded disposition toward the truth necessitated by the human inability to attain certain knowledge. This behavior may also be characterized as restraint in the face of the temptations associated with having a libido and with wielding power (NSP, 179). Such behavior is grounded in the knowledge of classical philosophy and the Christian (especially Protestant) religion, which instill the fundamental viewpoint that man is fallible; the eradication of both from the forces shaping German society in the twentieth century had resulted in the Nazi regime and the continuing ideological corruption within Germany even after the fall of the Nazi regime. Voegelin emphasizes the variation in Western liberal societies regarding their respective propensities to succumb to ideological fanaticism, as had the Germans. He was especially fond of the American and English societies in this regard. In “Freedom and Responsibility” he put it this way: “one important aspect of the German historical-political situation is particularly distinct from the Anglo-Saxon. Unlike in England, no Second Reformation took place in the eighteenth century in Germany . . . for in the critical period of the Industrial Revolution and the forming of the industrial proletariat, the second reformation carried Christendom in England to the people . . . and thereby virtually immunized them against later ideological movements. A comparable phenomenon does not exist on the continent, above all not in Germany” (NSP, 72). Voegelin argues that the lack of the second reformation in Germany is responsible for both the prominence of Marxism in the nineteenth century and of Nazism in the twentieth. The concluding chapter of The New Science of Politics (1952) depicts a similar variation in the propensity for ideological infatuation among Western liberal societies. As depicted there, the timing of the national revolutions reflects a relative proximity to the Protestant movement—the English and

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American revolutions, occurring prior to the French and German, display a greater resilience of soul against ideology than the latter. This is because “in the seventeenth century . . . gnosticism had not yet undergone its radical secularization. England had preserved the institutional culture of aristocratic parliamentarism as well as the mores of a Christian commonwealth.” America, too, “also had the good fortune of [having its revolutionary founding come] to its close within the institutional and Christian climate of the ancien regime” (NSP, 188). France and Germany, he posited, were blown into rocky waters because of the secularized nature of the movements that destroyed old institutions. The French Revolution “permanently split the nation” and the German, “in an environment without strong institutional traditions, brought for the first time into full play the economic materialism, racist biology, corrupt psychology, scientism, and technological ruthlessness—in brief, modernity without restraint” (NSP, 188–89). In “Freedom and Responsibility,” Voegelin also ties the sound knowledge needed for a society to avoid the temptations of appealing but misleading philosophical and political systems with political institutions. Voegelin asserts that Germany lacks the “centuries-old depth of western democracies” (CW 11, 71). The longevity of the English and American constitutions, much older than Germany’s 1871 constitution, provides the backbone needed to endow that civil theology which endows political institutions, in time, with venerability. He asserts that it was only feasible for Hitler to commandeer the German state because Germany lacked the “established, respected traditions which, for example, made it impossible even for a Roosevelt to fill the Supreme Court . . .” (CW 11, 71). Hence, Voegelin’s thesis in both pieces is ultimately that the Second Reformation helped to endow American and English institutions with that sense of civil theology necessary to endure against the tempting mass movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Voegelin transitions in the second section of “Freedom and Responsibility” to analyzing the attitudes and behaviors of his German students in the early 1960s. He found that three traits characterized these students: valuerelativism, existentialism, and neo-positivism. Voegelin referred to this cultivation of these traits in German students as “non-sense” because these attributes facilitated the “arbitrary narrowing down of the area of discussion in political science. The investigation is to be restricted in such a way that rational principles of action cannot become thematic. It is the attitude of dogmatists . . .” (CW 11, 81). To limit one’s way of thinking along such ideological lines was profoundly dangerous to the preservation of democracy: Rational discussion is, however, the lifeblood of democracy. . . . The primary danger [to democracy] is the intellectual climate in which movements like National Socialism and Communism can grow. And the primarily dangerous

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Thus, this 1960 essay is particularly valuable to those seeking to analyze contemporary America because, as I intend to show in this work, the lack of rational behavior resulting from an attenuation of sound knowledge within society can be seen in America today. This irrational behavior is cultivated by the indoctrination of American students with the same three philosophical traits Voegelin identified in German students. Furthermore, this behavior is aimed toward a degeneration of American political institutions. The destruction of America’s political institutions would result in the loss of institutions which are designed to protect us from gnostic-style claims to power, as discussed above. The implications of such a development were cast by Voegelin in dire terms: “Totalitarianism, defined as the existential rule of gnostic activists, is the end form of progressive civilization” (NSP, 132). To put this concern bluntly: this chapter will argue that the behavior described herein suggests that America could be already in the process of turning into a totalitarian regime. The destruction of our institutions by activists would be the tell-tale sign of this change. CHANGES IN AMERICAN SOCIETY The cultural disposition of America has changed since Voegelin’s analysis summarized above was conducted. We are presently less insulated against gnostic activism by reformation-style Christianity than we were in the 1950s and early 1960s. Voegelin had linked America’s sound knowledge of rational principles to America’s involvement in the Second Reformation. Throughout the decade of the 1950s, this heritage was empirically prominent in American culture. Indeed, today’s America is a more secular society and a decidedly less Protestant society than the America of the 1950s. The social forces driving this secularism had simply not become prolific at that date, though the social revolution of the 1960s would provide the opportunity for such growth. For instance, the series of Supreme Court rulings that radicalized the Establishment Clause and effectively removed any veneration for religion in the public education system did not begin to roll out until 1962; case law

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prompting the removal of religious symbols from public spaces did not appear until the late 1980s. The trend against religiosity in America, exemplified by this case law, is empirically discernable. According to Gallup, those identifying with no religion have increased steadily from 1 percent to 20 percent of the population from 1957 to 2017. 4 In 2017, 73 percent of Americans believed that religion was losing its influence, 65 percent had not attended church or synagogue within the past week, and 46 percent were not members of a church or synagogue at all. 5 Each of these numbers was at or near record levels since Gallup began collecting such data in 1992. America is also a decidedly less Protestant nation that it was in the fifties. Affiliation with Protestant denominations has declined steadily from 70 percent of the population in 1957 to 38 percent of the population in 2017, according to Gallup. 6 By contrast, the percentage of the population identifying with Catholicism, Judaism, and Mormonism have all remained nearly constant throughout the same time period (Catholicism has declined from 27 percent to 24 percent, for instance). 7 Before moving on, it is important to emphasize that the diminishment of Protestantism has not annihilated the Protestant tradition and the associated cultural dispositions from American culture. Rather, the clashing of American factions along the cleavages created by these changes has accounted for the rising “culture war” claims cited above. One side of this coin wishes to preserve, and the other to fundamentally alter America’s institutions and culture. In such a context, the purpose of this chapter is to identify the strategies and tactics of the movement aimed at such alterations. Strategically, we see this movement cultivating hostility toward those aspects of American culture and institutions which Voegelin had praised in the 1950s. This process begins in our universities and manifests in the behaviors of political actors. Tactically, we see this hostile attitude manifesting in ways which gnostic behaviors historically have: the activist vision is accompanied by attempts to create the world envisioned and to destroy the order which might prevent such a creation. In the American case, this has meant the vilification of those political actors who are believed by these activists to be at the root of their problems—namely, the white male conservatives who support the prevailing constitutional order. This tactic is particularly concerning because, as this chapter will argue, the end-goal of the movement is to fundamentally alter American political institutions by using the persecution of white American males as the vehicle through which such a change may attempt to be justified. This tactic has manifested in a number of fraudulent claims of violence and wrongdoing against white male Trump supporters, much as Jews were fraudulently persecuted in Europe in the decades proceeding Hitler’s “final solution.”

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DESTRUCTION OF THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT ORDER IN AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES Voegelin’s analysis of Germany in “Freedom and Responsibility” focused on the ways that German students were failing to demonstrate the sound knowledge needed to preserve German political institutions in the face of ideologically fanatical times. Today, American students are comparable to the German students Voegelin taught in 1960 in the ways identified by Voegelin in this chapter. As the above section notes, changes in religious attitudes have occurred steadily since about 1960. Many of the changes discussed in this section are likewise not new and have been well-recognized since at least Allan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind recounted the radicalism at Cornell in the 1960s. 8 However, the steady amplification of these trends continues unabated since Bloom’s work, and a brief description of some tendencies demonstrated among contemporary American students is warranted in this piece. Voegelin focused on the strong tendencies toward existentialism, valuerelativism, and neo-positivism in German students of 1960. 9 He noted that each of these tendencies eroded the capability for rationality in Germany needed to preserve German political institutions. Today, each of these traits is evident in American university students. Changes in American society since 1960 that diminish rational discourse through existentialism, valuerelativism, and neo-positivism which have been buttressed by support through university research and curriculum offerings are too numerous to offer any sort of categorical analysis in the space allotted here. Instead, I may merely identify some of the ways in which things that Voegelin had identified as tendencies in 1960 Germany are now institutionalized aspects of today’s American education system. Because they bear more explicitly on the trends discussed in the later sections of this chapter, I will focus on the proliferation of existentialism and value-relativism. Existentialism is a philosophical system which may easily give rise to value relativism. “Themes from Existentialism” is, for instance, hailed by Brown University as “by far the most popular philosophy course at Brown.” 10 The prominent existentialist thinkers from whom Voegelin demurred (Kierkegaard, Hegel, and Sartre) are all standard fare in most philosophy programs today and household names to undergraduate philosophy students; most have not heard of Voegelin. Though Walter Kauffman was able in 1960 to write about the “Reception of Existentialism in America,” Heidegger in America was published by Cambridge University Press in 2010. 11 Therein, Martin Woessner argues that Heidegger was among the most influential philosophers in America in the twentieth century. 12 It is fair to say that Heidegger has been well-received.

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Heidegger’s work exemplifies nicely the philosophical allure of existentialism to today’s youth. Growing up in an age in which, as summarized above, the notion of religion and its ability to provide grounding moral orientation is waning significantly as a social influence, today’s American youth are primed for Heidegerrian nonsense. Grounded by “nothing,” the experience of being human is presented as limitless—described by Heidegger as “challenging” the reality in which we exist. 13 Modern man’s potential is unlimited by his essence—moral limits fall away much like the technological challenges facing the mining industry had fallen away in Heidegger’s time. 14 In such an atmosphere, the classical idea that some standard or pattern for human welfare has been laid out by some divine entity which may be discerned by humans to our benefit is simply not seriously considered. The lesson conveyed by existentialism is that “nothing is true, everything is permitted.” 15 Brown’s degree requirements for political science, typical of most American political science degrees, would do little to push students into courses on classical political philosophy or to challenge the idea that truth is subjective. Merely one political theory course is required for graduation at Brown, and students may take elective courses in African American studies, sociology, and a number of other choices in lieu of philosophy courses if they wish. 16 These trends have been occurring since Voegelin wrote, but classically trained political philosophers simply do not have the votes in their academic departments to change these trends in curricular offerings. This is the effect of Heidegger’s reception. These curricular requirements diminish the propensity for American students to possess the sound knowledge of civic virtue needed to preserve American institutions. American institutions are buttressed by the type of rational thinking which was evident in classical and Christian philosophy, and also displayed by the American Founding generation, as Voegelin pointed out in his observations on America’s success as a nation. Heidegger’s view of fundamental nothingness is all the more appealing to an American student who has learned that his homeland is Imperialist, colonialist, and racist. Voegelin contends that “value relativism posits in its radical form that the social science researchers act within the values dominant in his society and time” (CW 5, 79). This quote aptly describes the contemporary American university course offerings, which have been flavored by the existentialist tendencies discussed above, such as Florida Gulf Coast University’s course “White Racism,“ which teaches students that whites are racist but that “there is no such thing as black racism.” 17 Academic discussions of the highest good and right reason are replaced with discussion on identity issues, triggers, and social justice. 18 Women’s studies, for instance, did not exist as a degree offering in 1960. 19 Such studies would have occurred within tradi-

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tional philosophy courses at that date; and, indeed, such topics are replete in the great philosophical texts of the West. The idea of women’s studies as a major degree developed in America concurrently with the proliferation of the feminist movement in the 1960s and 1970s, growing from 0 to 276 major programs nationwide by 1977; by 2007, there were 650 such major programs nationwide. 20 Many of these majors have been augmented since to “Gender and Sexuality Studies” to also investigate issues related to the more recent LGBT movement. In other words, a strong, positive correlation exists between the proliferation of existentialism and of the proliferation of valuerelative collegiate curricular offerings, which reinforce without also intellectually challenging the ideas inherent to existentialism. The sum of the institutionalization of these traits in American higher education is that the conditions necessary for a rekindling of classical political science are quite poor at present; likewise, the conditions for activist gnosticism to flourish are quite strong. Moreover, these activist traits are affecting the behavior of our students and the functioning of the university system. This behavior is mirrored in the behavior of activist political actors and the functioning of our political system. An exemplary development in the trend of value-relativism is the rise in recent years of false claims made by college students who alleged some sort of racial or sexual discrimination in apparent attempts to barter for good grades or reputations. Students discern the value-judgements of our system rather quickly, and some have developed tools to exploit it. Some of them have learned that the victimized portrayals of race, gender, and sexuality in their curriculums may be exploited to their benefit. Instances of black students defacing their own dormitories with racist graffiti have been documented, as have false incidents of sexual harassment. 21 To find our youth playing so loosely with the truth in the arena of justice bespeaks an educational trend in which truth and justice are neither serious nor interesting topics of study. Voegelin has provided a helpful framework for understanding this particularly strange trend of fraudulent claims of racist or sexist violence. Indeed, our students are taught in elementary and secondary school about the extent of racial injustice in America’s history, and one might imagine that such a sensitive upbringing to racial issues would cultivate a serious respect for such matters. Voegelin helps us to understand why this is not the case. In Hitler and the Germans he develops the idea of a “second-reality.” 22 In such a psychological state, the ideological beliefs of an individual have overwhelmed that individual’s capability to live and act rationally. Such an individual will, instead, irrationally develop the “construction of a system” to deal with the inevitable “conflict with first reality” (CW 31, 108). This second-reality construction of evidence is a noteworthy symptom of ideological fanaticism and is indicative that ideologically constructed worldviews are

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becoming further divorced from objectively relatable standards in America. Voegelin puts the practical result in this way: . . . the consequence of the conflict between second and first reality is . . . the lie. The lie becomes the indispensable method because the second reality claims to be true, and since it constantly comes into conflict with the first reality, it is necessary to lie constantly: for example, on holds that the first reality is quite a different one from what it actually is. (CW 31, 109)

The Heideggerian “challenging” of reality takes on a strange new meaning as “lying” when the creative tendencies of existentialist thinking manifest as the fraudulent claims of violence or wrongdoing suffered. An historical example of a second-reality production relevant to contemporary American developments is the French Dreyfus Affair of the 1890s. 23 Dreyfus, a Jewish French Army Officer, was framed and convicted of espionage and sentenced to life imprisonment at Devil’s Island. The only evidence against him was a document allegedly in his handwriting, to which a fellow officer later confessed to a British tabloid for having authored in order to frame Dreyfus. The motive for Dreyfus’ framing was anti-Semitism. AntiSemitism had been growing in the decades prior due to Jewish financial conspiracy theories which were egged-on by the Panama Scandal. The conflict between the first-world reality (no Jewish conspiracy for world domination indeed existed) and the second-reality belief (that Jews secretly plotted for world domination) resulted in a fraudulent persecution. The French press, political and judicial institutions, and military responded with lethargy to the evidence of Dreyfus’ innocence; he was not fully acquitted until a decade after he was charged with espionage, and the process was not done in the legal manner through proper channels. The case demonstrates both the concept of second-reality, and the softer ways in which Jews were persecuted in Europe for some time before Nazi atrocities made the consequences of second-reality lies readily apparent. The above-mentioned trend of fraudulent hate crimes in America contains the same pattern of second reality construction that can be seen in the Dreyfus case. The fake assailants in comparable recent American cases are usually implied to be white males who support Trump politically. This incident is indicative: One day after Trump’s election, a Muslim San Diego State University student wearing a hijab claimed Trump supporters stole her purse, backpack, and then her car. She claimed the robbers were saying things like “Now that Trump is president get ready to start fleeing,” and said she no longer felt safe on campus, adding, “My religion, just being so visible, it breaks my hearts that I’m such a target for most people just because of the religion that I choose.” 24

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This incident was false and the student involved was arrested for making the fake claims. In this case, though, the construction of the evidence by the ideological adherent necessary to justify or corroborate her own ideology in the face of evidence to the contrary (namely, that such hate crimes had not really been perpetrated as a result of Trump’s election at all) is readily apparent. The well-publicized 2019 case of Jussie Smollet also exemplifies this trend. Smollet, a homosexual black actor, fraudulently claimed that two white men attacked him, tied a noose around his neck, and poured a chemical on his body. The evidence now indicates that Smollet himself hired two blacks to perpetrate the attack fraudulently. 25 Smollet was arrested and, as of this writing, is awaiting trial. The similarities between the Dreyfus Affair and contemporary American fraudulent claims of violence should concern us about the trajectory of race relations in America. In both the French and American cases cited above, crimes were invented for the purpose of manufacturing the reality that corroborates the ideological worldview of the ideologue: that Jews are conspiring secretly against their European societies or that white Trump supporters are committing random acts of sporadic violence against various left-leaning identity groups (blacks, gays, etc.) in America. The institutional effects of this trend upon twentieth century France in the short-term and upon twentieth century Europe in the long-term are well known. The long-term effects of this trend in twenty first century America cannot yet be diagnosed; the shortterm effects on twenty first century American political institutions are discussed below. INSTITUTIONAL ASSAULT IN AMERICA ISIS’ destruction of religious temples in Palmyra in its plight to create a new caliphate shocked Westerners. 26 But in reality, the act of destroying old “modes and orders” is one which any incipient political regime, or any movement aspiring to create a new political order, must undertake. The current revolutionary movement sweeping America, inspired by the philosophical tendencies discussed above, also undertakes this activity. The key difference is the subtlety required to force change upon one’s own liberal society using those same liberal modes. The ISIS case is one of conquest and is consequently not very difficult to analyze; territory is conquered, and then temples are torn down. Change is imposed by physical force. Institutional change occurring through a social movement in a liberal society looks much different and is more challenging to analyze. Force must masquerade as persuasion and the changes implemented simply appear to be the passage of laws, or the lawful prosecution of individuals, as the normal outcome of the appropriate legislative or judicial process. Attempts to change institutions do not appear

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as attempted change (and change may not appear as change); attempted and even actual change, again, masquerades as proper functioning. However, when we see the destruction of traditional symbols of political meaning in the American South—statues of Confederate soldiers—we do see a very basic similarity to Palmyra: the motivation behind the destruction is a desire to rid a society of the ideas being represented by the demolished structure. Voegelin’s analysis of the systems used to facilitate the prohibiting of questions in Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (1960) is helpful in disclosing this tendency in America (NSP, 17–21). According to Voegelin, constructs designed to achieve particularly ideological ends will prohibit questions or rational discourse about such constructs, precisely because such discourse would expose the irrational or ideological nature of the construct. In other words, artificers of institutional change for the purposes of ideological gain are often aware that their constructs would not pass scrutiny on objective terms, but can appear to be appealing if they are only scrutinized in the light suggested by the artificer. They understand that their construct is the product of hostility toward this or that component of existence, and therefore will take efforts to conceal this hostility and their desire to destroy existing institutions before they construct something different instead. In the very tangible case of the destruction of confederate statues, the act is done overtly in the name of eliminating hatred; the concealed act, the expression of hostility toward the ideas of freedom as preserved through a balanced federal structure, and the concealed motivation, the desire to rebalance power in a national government who may restrict freedoms which conflict with the identities empowered by value-relative thinking supplanted by existentialist inclinations, are not noticed for what they are. In “Freedom and Responsibility” Voegelin articulates a keen awareness of how problematic this strategy can be for democratic societies. In particular, he asserts those who pose as defenders of democratic institutions while attempting to profoundly change those institutions can actually be quite successful at doing so. America, like many regimes, has a deeply seeded civil theology that venerates its institutions; the democracy functions because the people have a preference for it. Fomenting any institutional change, therefore, requires that the ideological movement designing change does not appear hostile to the regime. Thus, as mentioned, we see statues perverted into idols of slavery rather than left as the idols of freedom which they were when self-interpreted by southerners. We also see substantial headway in the movement’s ability to affect public opinion with these re-definitions; in about half of the country, more individuals saw these statues as “racist” than did individuals who saw them as expressing “southern pride” (a poor description), and even in the South individuals were deeply conflicted over this issue, in part because “southern pride” does not accurately portray the meaning of the symbol—“freedom.” “Federalism,” or “states’ rights” may have

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produced different responses, but the surveyor prohibited this answer with his selection of answer choices. 27 In this case, the phenomenon of the prohibition of questions appears in a subtler form than it had in Voegelin’s analysis of Marx. Marx invoked clearly: “do not think, do not question me.” 28 Totalitarian death squads demonstrated the practical consequences of this rhetorical strategy with horrifying clarity. Here, the meaning of a statue is simply defined in public media and substantiated through the empirical evidence provided by a scientific survey. On the surface, there is nothing here to remind us of totalitarian-style gnosticism. But the meaning of the statues identified (racism) is not what the statues mean to those who revere them (freedom). The definition offered subtly betrays a hostility toward the individuals in the South; they are portrayed thereby, as one American politician put it, as “a basket of deplorables.” And the evidence presented to support this definition in the form of an authoritative appearing scientific survey subtly prohibits the true meaning of the statues (freedom) from surfacing in public discourse—although no further evidence really needs be presented: the bulk of social science training has already taught us that white Americans from the South have always been inherently racist. Hence, the act of the removal of statues from our landscape is made to appear to be a defense rather than a destruction of American political principles. In other words, a revolutionary movement is presently altering our political landscape in a clandestine manner. The above example identified two key components of the strategy and tactics employed by this revolutionary movement. A hostility is cultivated toward white men generally, but toward conservative whites especially; and, second, an alteration to the political institutions is undertaken to protect society against conservative white men. The tactic of altering institutions as a result of strategically manufactured hostility is evident in a number of other recent examples from American political culture, and in the cases discussed below the institutional changes attempted are fundamental and bespeak attempts to deeply change the American constitutional order. Catherine McKinnon’s remarks on the U.S. Constitution in light of a free speech ruling which contradicted her views pertaining to pornography in the 1980s provides one very good example of hostility and a desire for institutional change. She comments that “those domains in which women are distinctively subordinated are assumed by the Constitution to be the domain of freedom . . . our exclusion means that the First Amendment was conceived by white men from the point of view of their social positions.” 29 In other words, she contends, the American constitutional order as it exists is explicitly sexist by design. She clearly indicates her hostility toward white men in the ensuing line: “Some of them owned slaves, most of them owned women.” 30 She develops her argument against the First Amendment by relying

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upon a rather strange reference which might be characterized as an attempt to manufacture a “second-reality” in regard to the sexuality of white men: I must say that the First Amendment has become a sexual fetish through the years of absolutist writing in the melodrama mode in Playboy in particular. You know those superheated articles (she is now referring to this magazine as one would a coffee-table staple which everyone reads, and not one sold from a plastic sleeve to mostly underage teenage boys in seedy gas stations) where freedom of speech is extolled and its imminent expression is invoked. Behaviorally, Playboy’s consumers are reading about the First Amendment, masturbating to the women, reading about the first Amendment, masturbating to the women, reading about the first amendment, masturbating to the women. What is conveyed is not only that using women is as legitimate as thinking about the Constitution, but also that if you don’t support these views about the Constitution, you won’t be able to use these women. 31

The hostility evoked toward (especially white) men in these passages is very difficult to miss. Her line of reasoning is not only strange, but creates a second-reality fiction which is then used to call for fundamental limitations to free speech—a right which is interpreted expansively because it is an aim which is at the heart of America’s political order. Indeed, the First Amendment is among the political institutions which have led to the expansion of women’s rights in our nation’s history. Her narrative distorts much about our political principles and social relations and could curtail gains we have made in the realm of equality by curtailing the protections which have ensured those gains in the past. The situation may be confusing to students in the academic environment discussed above. McKinnon postures herself as the true defender of the American values articulated in the Constitution while attacking the First Amendment and those who drafted it. Some may also see her as out to further the safeguards assured by the First Amendment in the first place, that is, the general protection of individual rights by protecting women from the exploitation of pornography. Thus, the students in our universities are forced to decide who the true defender of democracy is: the Bill of Rights which protects rights including speech, or the political movement which would fundamentally alter or abolish the Constitution (and the social view of white men in course) to protect a slightly (or radically) different set of rights (or powers). This is all admittedly quite confusing, and would be especially so for an undergraduate student who is just grappling with the notion of justice in a serious way for the first time in his or her life, and doubly so in the environment in which he or she is trained to believe that the hostility expressed by MacKinnon is just as philosophically credible as, if not more philosophically credible than, the next proposition, as Voegelin put it, that “whoever interprets freedom of speech and freedom of conscience to the

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effect that the society should behave in the way that he considers right, is not qualified to be a member of a democracy” (CW 31, 85). Through the academic tendencies discussed in the above section, we do not equip our youth with the sound knowledge necessary to adequately wade through the morass of conflicting social forces which confronts them in our contemporary society. The dynamics of McKinnon’s argument reappeared recently in the U.S. Senate proceedings which confirmed Bret Kavanaugh, a conservative white male, to the United States Supreme Court. In this episode, the weight of value-relativist indoctrination was manifest in the eagerness displayed by many to circumvent due process protections in the case of alleged sexual assault. Particularly interesting was the eagerness displayed by some actors to quell concerns over apparent gaps in Christine Blasey-Ford’s account of the alleged assault. Blasey-Ford’s inability to recount important details from that event, such as where it occurred, how she got there, or how she returned home afterward, could not be recounted in her sworn testimony to the Senate judicial committee. 32 Many rushed to defend these inconsistencies by pointing out that psychological research demonstrates that survivors of trauma often forget facts pertinent to their traumatic event (as others cited these inconsistencies as evidence of deception). 33 Indeed, a sizeable body of psychology literature deals with this issue, and ostensibly supports this conclusion. 34 The nuances, however, within this literature leave plenty of room to doubt the presentation of it in mass media. For instance, frequently cited research within this field argues that the impacts of trauma on memory are most significant within months of the event, and that psychological therapy may remediate memory deficiencies. 35 We also know from Blasey-Ford’s testimony that she is not only a psychologist herself, but sought counseling and discussed the alleged incident, which occurred decades ago, with a professional psychologist. 36 The literature’s nuances, upon scrutiny, actually leaves substantial doubt that Blasey-Ford would be unable to recall the facts that she could not recall. Of course, no casual observer is equipped with the knowledge needed to draw any conclusion about what occurred in this specific case from scientific research. Such research draws generalized conclusions about these types of traumatic experiences. Thus, whether Blasey-Ford manufactured her Senate testimony is actually irrelevant to the purposes of the gnostic activist in this case, as the defense of her testimony offered in public effectively prohibited any meaningful reflection about her specific case by citing the general claims in scientific literature. The intent of the tactic was to make her account fundamentally unquestionable. Pointing to expertise as a means of prohibiting questions about dubious claims made within the political arena has emerged in this case as a means to circumvent such questions. Rather, the general claim suffices as the defense: the expertise of the subject matter expert and the ignorance of the audience serve to prohibit questions.

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Trust in expertise and a lack of self-confidence in the audience relative to the expert is evoked to psychologically dissuade questions from arising. This same essential strategy employed by hate-crime hoax perpetrators, McKinnon, and Blasey-Ford commentators can be detected in important institutional areas following Donald Trump’s presidential election in 2016. Among the most interesting of the scholarly responses to Trump came from the discipline of psychiatry. Shortly after Trump’s election, Yale University held a “Duty to Warn Conference,” consisting largely of psychiatrists. Each paper published from this conference makes a case against Donald Trump’s psychological character, arguing that his presidency is consequently particularly dangerous. The concluding paper argues that “there are two huge dangers [nuclear war and environmental catastrophe] that the human species faces . . . Trump wants to race toward the precipice as quickly as possible.” 37 John Gartner develops the narrative that Trump is “a profoundly evil man” who is “increasingly more irrational, grandiose, paranoid, aggressive, irritable, and impulsive.” 38 Many of the essays make the case that public statements uttered along the campaign trail betray a dangerous mental instability in both Trump and Trump supporters. Craig Malkin, for instance, cites as his evidence for pathological narcissism a tweet sent by Trump regarding The Celebrity Apprentice. 39 Malkin’s concluding section suggests that the meaning of Trump’s election for the human race is dire; “Spotting Lethal Leaders: How to Save the World” questions “if pathological narcissists . . . bring themselves to the precipice of disaster, why should we, as nations, allow them to pull us into the abyss with them.” 40 If we are to believe these experts, the situation cannot get much worse. Interestingly, this is not the first time that psychiatrists have accosted a political figure whom they have not interviewed personally and disagreed with politically. Barry Goldwater successfully sued for libel after a similar diagnosis from psychiatrists prior to the 1964 election. 41 The Goldwater case established the “Goldwater Rule”: accusations should not be made by psychiatrists against any type of public figure without having diagnosed them personally. 42 The rule is well-known to practitioners and mandated by the APA code of ethics. Nevertheless, the “Duty to Warn” authors each violate the Goldwater rule. They were aware of this violation, and explain that they do so because they understood that the danger posed by Trump was profound, and because “the public trust is . . . violated if the profession fails in its duty to alert the public when a person who holds the power of life and death over us all shows signs of clear, dangerous mental impairment.” 43 Malkin professes that doing so is for the sake of “allowing risk assessment (to the country, to the world) to take precedence over the sanctity of current ethics.” 44 One participant in the conference was a legal scholar and lawyer. James Herb felt this “duty to warn” so profoundly that he not only participated in this conference, but undertook legal action to prevent Trump’s election by

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filing a petition in Palm Beach County Circuit Court to “determine [the president’s] mental capacity.” 45 Herb made it clear that it was his duty to circumvent to the electoral processes in the United States due to the urgent nature of the circumstances, which he could detect but so many others could not: I assumed that Trump would not get the Republican nomination for president. Then, in July 2016, he did. I started to agonize over the possibility over a Trump presidency. It was true that two hurdles stood between Trump’s nomination and what I believed might be the Apocalypse. One was the general election . . . the second was the voting of the Electoral College. Was there anything that I, a simple probate attorney, an ordinary citizen, could do? I started to review the public record regarding things Trump had said and done. I compiled a list of two hundred items that I believed reflected his mental disability to discharge the duties of a president. The list could have been substantially longer, but I stopped at two hundred. 46

The district court in Florida twice rejected his case; after the election the author filed another arguing that Trump should be dismissed from office per the Twenty-Fifth Amendment’s “incapacitated person” clause, which was also rejected. The elements involved in the Yale Conference show these authors masquerading as defenders of democratic values and institutions, while at the same time attempting to find loop-holes to the normal operations of those institutions in order to change them for merely partisan gain. One can discern that the violation of the Goldwater Rule or the filing of legal action—work by experts done in their respective fields—is used to provide them with the justification needed to make this case. Because their actions are profound, they assert that they must be correct. The situation becomes confused, again, because successful professionals with an array of initials after their names have sounded the alarms. The situation occurring in McKinnon and Yale are not isolated incidents, nor are they restricted to academic presentations, as Herb’s petition indicates. Some of the machinations occurring within the federal government betray actors who seem to possess similar strategies and tactics. Shortly after Trump’s election, it is alleged that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment with members of Trump’s cabinet. 47 In the fall of 2018, several months before midterm elections, the purported leading Democratic senator for the presidential nomination in 2020 echoed the plea to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. 48 Senator Warren’s call came one day after an anonymous opinion editorial in the New York Times, which claimed to be penned by a “senior administration official,” alleged the president’s instability and unfitness for office. The editorial too called for the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to be invoked. In this

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case, as in the McKinnon / Blasey-Ford example, the theoretical maneuvers made by academics to justify hostile behavior toward a political actor appears in full public form. Particularly interesting about this letter is its anonymity. Anonymity was once invoked during the Federalist and Anti-Federalist debate in order to remove personal passions from the equation. This case is altogether different. Anonymity is now invoked as a manner of prohibiting questions concerning the veracity of the claims in the letter. A secret cabal is acting under the auspices of the defense of democracy: “we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.” 49 And, moreover, the hostility and personal vendetta against a president whose “policies have already made America safer and more prosperous” can easily be detected: “the root of the problem is the president’s amorality.” 50 The American political institutions provide an opportunity for opposition—and perhaps especially even senior opposition from within an administration—to work effectively without resorting to anonymity. Indeed, the station of these officials provides them with this opportunity, as Richard Neustadt summarized best: Those who share in governing this country frequently appear to act as though they were in business for themselves. So, in a real though not entire sense, they are and have to be. When Truman and MacArthur fell to quarreling, for example, the stakes were no less than the substance of American foreign policy, the risks of greater war or military stalemate, the prerogatives of Presidents and field commanders, the pride of a proconsul and his place in history. . . . There is no reason to assume that in such circumstances men of large but differing responsibilities will see all things through the same glasses. 51

In other words, the station of this alleged anonymous actor in our system affords him the ability to confront the president, and, as many others have done when their arguments and interests were not followed by the president, resign. Our free and eager press would additionally afford this individual the opportunity to tell his story openly, and to impact our upcoming elections accordingly. Indeed, elections are our proper mechanism for redressing grievances concerning word choice; the Twenty-Fifth Amendment was designed, obviously, to deal with mental and physical incapacity. Its invocation in the case of mere partisan or political opposition is best described as an attempted constitutional coup of the presidency, a subtle but significant abuse of our political institutions.

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CONCLUSION The analysis conducted above presented various strategies and tactics utilized by American political actors and categorized each of these cases as examples of a subtle prohibition of questions. Strategically, each case demonstrated some sense of hostility expressed toward the prevailing institutional or social order in America and invoked this hostility as evidence of a need to alter or change political circumstances in extraordinary and extra-legal ways. Tactically, the extraordinary nature of the actions attempted in these cases is downplayed or concealed by the subtle prohibition of questions used in the various cases. Specifically, we saw claims of expertise, anonymity, or both being used to obfuscate the factual basis of the appeal being made by the expert. Such obfuscation is occasioned as a means of prohibiting questions only in the social context described above. The continental philosophical tendencies of the mid-twentieth century now exemplify a sizable percentage of American university curricular tendencies. The traits of value-relativism, existentialism, and neo-positivism analyzed by Voegelin in “Freedom and Responsibility” have replaced a sizeable portion of the social influence of Protestantism in America. The consequences of these social changes are profound, although these consequences are hedged in the American case. The philosophical rationality represented by the Protestant movement has lost ground since the 1950s but remains energetic and impacts American elections. The subtly in the American version of the prohibition of questions is a result of this antagonism between the gnosticism represented by the social revolutionary movement and the philosophical validity of America’s traditional natural-rights principles. The landscape of this battlefield disadvantages the forces of gnosticism; subtlety is not the true friend of coercion. The good news, then, for American institutions is that they have not broken to the relentless assault upon them, which began at about the time that Voegelin was lauding the Americans’ sound knowledge which had long allowed them to preserve those institutions. Though my students have not heard of Voegelin, they exhibit a sincere curiosity for his ideas when I introduce them to him. Kavanaugh was confirmed. The Twenty-Fifth Amendment petition discussed above was filed but dismissed multiple times. The organizers of the Yale Conference admit that “most” of their professional colleagues did not share their views. 52 The effects of the anonymous editorial cannot yet be detected, but I do suspect it will do more harm than good for this cabal. In other areas of institutional assault that were not covered in this chapter, the same outcome has thus far resulted. No real ground has been gained in the attempts to replace the Electoral College in the two years since Trump’s election. An FBI director and multiple agents have been fired for attempting to use the justice department as a tool of persecution

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against a duly elected president. Time and again, gnostic activists, while swinging from the lampposts, fail to take the city. Although Voegelin’s analysis of Germany is increasingly useful in helping us to analyze some of the political trends occurring in contemporary America, and although the trends discussed in this chapter should concern us greatly, it is still fair to say that the fate remains in the balance. NOTES 1. For instance, Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel Abrams, and Jeremy Pope, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (Boston, MA: Longman Press, 2004); Nolan McCarty, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 2016). 2. Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 189. Hereafter NSP. 3. Eric Voegelin, “Freedom and Responsibility in Democracy and Economy,” in Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 70. Hereafter CW 11. 4. Gallup, “In-Depth Topics A to Z: Religion.” Available at: https://news.gallup.com/poll/ 1690/religion.aspx. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). 9. Eric Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, Volume V: Religion and the Rise of Modernity (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 23), James L. Wiser, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 79–82. Hereafter CW 5. 10. Brown University Course Catalog. Available at https://precollege.brown.edu/catalog/ course.php?course_code=CEPL0904. 11. Martin Woesner, Heidegger in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 12. Ibid. 13. Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings (San Francisco: Harper Press, 1997); on “nothing,” see “What Is Metaphysics?” 100–110; on “challenging” see “The Question Concerning Technology,” 320. 14. Ibid., 320. 15. Fredrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morality (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998), 109. 16. Brown Political Science Major Requirements. Available at https://www.brown.edu/academics/political-science/undergraduate/requirements-concentration. 17. Ted Thornhill, “Why I Teach a Course Called ‘White Racism,’” 2018. Available at http://theconversation.com/why-i-teach-a-course-called-white-racism-90093. 18. Bell Adams and Griffin Adams, “Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook,” 1997. Available at https://www.vanderbilt.edu/oacs/wp-content/uploads/sites/140/Responding-to-Triggers.pdf. 19. Michael Reynolds, Shobha Shagle, and Lekha Venkataraman, “A National Census of Women’s and Gender Studies Programsin U.S. Institutions of Higher Learning,” December 26, 2007. Available at https://www.nwsa.org/Files/Resources/NWSA_CensusonWSProgs.pdf. 20. Ibid. 21. Kathy Bolton, “Drake University Officials: Four of Five Racist Notes Found on Campus Were Hoaxes,” The Des Moines Register, November 30, 2018. Available at https:// www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2018/11/30/drake-university-stu-

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dent-fakes-alleged-racist-note-racism-campus-des-moines/2162705002/; Caleb Parke, “Hate Crimes and Hoaxes: 10 Campus Stories Debunked in 2017,” FoxNews.com, December 27, 2017. Available at https://www.foxnews.com/us/hate-crimes-and-hoaxes-10-campus-storiesdebunked-in-2017. 22. Eric Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 31), (Colombia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999). Hereafter CW 31. 23. For a thorough and excellent analysis of the Dreyfus Affair, see Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1975), 89–120. 24. Parke, “Hate Crimes and Hoaxes: 10 Campus Stories Debunked in 2017.” 25. Erin Ailworth and Joe Barrett, “Police Say Smollett Faked Hate Crime Because He Was Dissatisfied with His Salary,” The Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2019. Available at https:// www.wsj.com/articles/jussie-smollett-arrested-after-charge-of-filing-false-report-of-attack11550753504?mod=hp_lead_pos6. 26. Dan Binkley, “ISIS Destroys Part of Roman Theatre in Palmyra, Syria,” The New York Times, January 20, 2017. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/world/middleeast/ palmyra-syria-isis-amphitheater.html. 27. YouGov. “Huff-Post: Confederate Flag,” August 2017. Available at https:// big.assets.huffingtonpost.comtabsHPConfederateFlag20170815.pdf. 28. Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2004), 19. 29. Catherine A. MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), 207. 30. Ibid. She does not explain what she means by this ambiguous line. 31. Ibid., 209. Parenthetical comments are mine. 32. “Kavanaugh Hearing: Transcript,” The Washington Post, September 27, 2018. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-hearing-transcript/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ce10c6061ceb. 33. Linda Geddes, “Why Sexual Assault Survivors Forget Details,” BBC.com, September 26, 2018. Available at http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180926-myths-about-sexual-assaultand-rape-debunked. 34. S.J. Brown, M.A. Conway, J.A. Ellis, R. Holliday, E.A. Holmes, A. Madill, L. Morrison-Coulthard, C.J.A. Moulin, D.G. Pearson, D.B. O’Connor, V. Robinson, M. Shorrock, D.B. Wright, and S.C. Wright, “Sexual Assault Trials Handbook,” The British Psychological Society Report, June 2008. Available at https://www.judcom.nsw.gov.au/publications/benchbks/sexual_assault/british-guidelines_on_memory_and_the_law.html#d5e11272. 35. Barbara Olasov Rothbaum, Edna B. Foa, David S. Riggs, Tamera Murdock, and William Walsh, “A Prospective Examination of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Rape Victims,” Journal of Traumatic Stress 5:3 (1992): 455–75; Nick Grey and Emily Holmes, “Cognitive Structuring within Reliving: A Treatment for PeriTraumatic Emotional ‘Hotspots’ in PostTraumatic Stress Disorder,” Behavioral and Cognitive Psychotherapy 30:1 (2002): 37–56. 36. “Kavanaugh Hearing: Transcript.” 37. Noam Chomsky, “Epilogue,” in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Brandy X. Lee, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 357. 38. John Gartner, “Donald Trump is a) bad b) mad c) all of the above,” in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Brandy X. Lee, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 107. 39. Craig Malkin, “Pathological Narcissism and Politics,” in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Brandy X. Lee, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 57. 40. Ibid., 65. 41. Benedict Carey, “The Psychiatric Question: Is It Fair to Analyze Donald Trump from Afar?” The New York Times, August 16, 2016. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/ 16/health/analyzing-donald-trump-psychology.html. 42. American Psychiatric Association, “The Principles of Medical Ethics with Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry” (Arlington: American Psychiatric Association, 2013). 43. Judith Herman and Brandi Lee, “Prologue,” in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Brandy X. Lee, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 5. 44. Craig Malkin, “Pathological Narcissism and Politics: A Lethal Mix,” in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Brandy X. Lee, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 65.

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45. James A. Herb, “Donald J. Trump, Alleged Incapacitated Person,” in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Brandy X. Lee, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 136. 46. Ibid., 137. 47. Matt Zapotosky, “McCabe Says Rosenstein was ‘Thinking Off the Top of His Head’ When He Brought Up 25th Amendment,” Washington Post, February 19, 2019. Available at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/warren-urges-trumps-cabinet-to-invoke-25th-amendmentremove-him-from-office. 48. Manu Raju, “Elizabeth Warren: Time to Use 25th Amendment,” CNN.com, September 26, 2018. Available at https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/06/politics/elizabeth-warren-25thamendment/index.html. Warren repeated this assertion in February 2019. Adam Shaw, “Warren Urges Trump’s Cabinet to Invoke 25th Amendment to Remove Him from Office,” FoxNews.com, February 19, 2019. Available at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/warren-urgestrumps-cabinet-to-invoke-25th-amendment-remove-him-from-office. 49. Anonymous, “I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” New York Times, September 5, 2018. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trumpwhite-house-anonymous-resistance.html. 50. Ibid. 51. Richard E. Neustadt, Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (New York: The Free Press, 1990), 38. 52. Judith Herman and Brandi Lee, “Prologue,” in The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, Brandy X. Lee, ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017), 1.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Bell and Griffin Adams, “Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice: A Sourcebook.” 1997. Available at https://www.vanderbilt.edu/oacs/wp-content/uploads/sites/140/Responding-to-Triggers.pdf. Ailworth, Erin and Joe Barrett. “Police Say Smollett Faked Hate Crime Because He Was Dissatisfied with His Salary.” The Wall Street Journal. February 21, 2019. Available at https://www.wsj.com/articles/jussie-smollett-arrested-after-charge-of-filing-false-report-ofattack-11550753504?mod=hp_lead_pos6. American Psychiatric Association. “The Principles of Medical Ethics with Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry.” ( Arlington: American Psychiatric Association, 2013). Anonymous. “I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.” The New York Times. September 5, 2018. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/ trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html. Arendt, Hannah. The Origins of Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1975). Binkley, Dan. “ISIS Destroys Part of Roman Theatre in Palmyra, Syria.” New York Times. January 20, 2017. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/world/middleeast/palmyra-syria-isis-amphitheater.html. Bolton, Kathy. “Drake University Officials: Four of Five Racist Notes Found on Campus Were Hoaxes.” The Des Moines Register. November 30, 2018. Available at https:// www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2018/11/30/drake-university-student-fakes-alleged-racist-note-racism-campus-des-moines/2162705002/. Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). Brown, S.J., M.A. Conway, J.A. Ellis, R. Holliday, E.A. Holmes, A. Madill, L. MorrisonCoulthard, C.J.A. Moulin, D.G. Pearson, D.B. O’Connor, V. Robinson, M. Shorrock, D.B. Wright, and S.C. Wright. “Sexual Assault Trials Handbook.” The British Psychological Society Report. June 2008. Available at https://www.judcom.nsw.gov.au/publications/ benchbks/sexual_assault/british-guidelines_on_memory_and_the_law.html#d5e11272. Brown University Course Catalog. Available at https://precollege.brown.edu/catalog/ course.php?course_code=CEPL0904. Brown Political Science Major Requirements. Available at https://www.brown.edu/academics/ political-science/undergraduate/requirements-concentration.

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Carey, Benedict. “The Psychiatric Question: Is It Fair to Analyze Donald Trump from Afar?” New York Times. June 16, 2016. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/health/ analyzing-donald-trump-psychology.html. Fiorina, Morris P., Samuel Abrams, and Jeremy Pope. Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (Boston, MA: Longman Press, 2004). Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings (San Francisco: Harper Press, 1997). Gallup. “In-Depth Topics A to Z: Religion.” Available at https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/ religion.aspx. Geddes, Linda. “Why Sexual Assault Survivors Forget Details.” BBC.com. September 26, 2018. Available at http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180926-myths-about-sexual-assaultand-rape-debunked. Grey, Nick and Emily Holmes. “Cognitive Structuring within Reliving: A Treatment for PeriTraumatic Emotional ‘Hotspots’ in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.” Behavioral and Cognitive Psychotherapy 30:1 (2002): 37–56. “Kavanaugh Hearing: Transcript.” The Washington Post. September 27, 2018. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/national/wp/2018/09/27/kavanaugh-hearing-transcript/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ce10c6061ceb. Lee, Brandy, ed. The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2017). MacKinnon Catherine A., Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987). McCarty, Nolan, Keith Poole, and Howard Rosenthal. Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press, 2016). Neustadt, Richard E. Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents (New York: The Free Press, 1990). Nietzsche, Fredrich. On the Genealogy of Morality (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1998). Parke, Caleb. “Hate Crimes and Hoaxes: 10 Campus Stories Debunked in 2017.” FoxNews.com. December 27, 2017. Available at https://www.foxnews.com/us/hate-crimes-andhoaxes-10-campus-stories-debunked-in-2017. Raju, Manu. “Elizabeth Warren: Time to Use 25th Amendment.” CNN.com. August 26, 2018. Available at https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/06/politics/elizabeth-warren-25th-amendment/ index.html. Reynolds, Michael, Shobha Shagle, and Lekha Venkataraman. “A National Census of Women’s and Gender Studies Programs in U.S. Institutions of Higher Learning.” December 26, 2007. Available at https://www.nwsa.org/Files/Resources/NWSA_CensusonWSProgs.pdf. Rothbaum, Barbara Olasov, Edna B. Foa, David S. Riggs, Tamera Murdock, and William Walsh. “A Prospective Examination of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Rape Victims.” Journal of Traumatic Stress 5:3 (1992): 455–75. Shaw, Adam. “Warren Urges Trump’s Cabinet to Invoke 25th Amendment to Remove Him from Office.” FoxNews.com. February 19, 2019. Available at https://www.foxnews.com/ politics/warren-urges-trumps-cabinet-to-invoke-25th-amendment-remove-him-from-office. Thornhill, Ted. “Why I Teach a Course Called ’White Racism.’” 2018. Available at http:// theconversation.com/why-i-teach-a-course-called-white-racism-90093. Voegelin, Eric. The New Science of Politics: An Introduction (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987). ———. Hitler and the Germans (Colombia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999). ———. “Freedom and Responsibility in Democracy and Economy.” In Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 70–82. ———. Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2004). Woesner, Martin. Heidegger in America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). YouGov. “Huff-Post: Confederate Flag.” August 2017. Available at https://big .assets.huffingtonpost.com/tabsHPConfederateFlag20170815.pdf. Zapotosky, Matt. “McCabe Says Rosenstein was ‘Thinking Off the Top of His Head’ When He Brought Up 25th Amendment.” The Washington Post. February 19, 2019. Available at https://www.foxnews.com/politics/warren-urges-trumps-cabinet-to-invoke-25th-amendment-remove-him-from-office.

Chapter Four

The Origins of Scientism Revisited David N. Whitney

Writing in the wake of World War II, Eric Voegelin grimly remarked: “we who are living today shall never experience the freedom of the spirit in society.” 1 This however was not just a statement on the war itself, but rather an assessment based on a deeper and more enduring civilizational problem of modernity: scientism. Voegelin saw scientism as an acute global problem and had little hope that its increasing power would decline in his lifetime. 2 While agreeing with the spirit of Voegelin’s critique and acknowledging the legitimacy of the sources covered in the chapter, I argue the most significant origin of scientism lies in the philosophy of Francis Bacon. The sources covered by Voegelin represent the fulfillment of Bacon’s philosophy and contemporary, scientistic movements such as transhumanism can best be understood within the Baconian framework. While echoing Voegelin’s gloomy assessment nearly seventy years later, I argue an opportunity exists to escape the prison of scientism. Before delving into the question of origins, it is important to outline the primary features of scientism. Scientism is a deformation of science and arrogates the name of science to pseudo-scientific, and often politically motivated, endeavors. It refers to the intellectual movement that places primacy on the methods of the natural sciences. It can be characterized as a pseudoreligion or a form of idolatry since its adherents express a dogmatic faith in the power of science. As Voegelin notes, “Science becomes an idol that will magically cure the evils of existence and transform the nature of man” (CW 24, 208). This ignores the limitations of the scope of science and mistakenly ascribes transformative power to it. In spite of differences of emphasis within scientistic thought, several important themes remain constant within the 75

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movement, including the dogmatic faith in the methods of the natural sciences (and the accompanying assumption that those methods can be successfully imported into the social sciences), a materialistic worldview, the rejection of the bios theoretikos, the prohibition of philosophical questions, and an emphasis on immanent fulfillment through the power of science. VOEGELIN’S ARGUMENT Voegelin, following the lead of Giordano Bruno, points to the fundamental distinction between sciences of phenomena and sciences of substance. 3 The emphasis within modern science has been settled decisively in favor of the former. The mathematizing methods of the natural sciences do an exemplary job of answering questions within the realm of phenomena, but cannot adequately address questions of substance. As Bruno notes: Substance and being are separate and independent of quantity; and consequently measure and number are not substance, but incidental to substance, not essence, but incidental to essence . . . he who would deny everything that is not perceptible to the senses would have to in the end deny his own being and substance. . . . The truth starts from the senses, but only as a weak and very small starting point; it is not in the senses. (CW 24, 169)

The incredible success enjoyed within the realm of phenomena (a direct result of the Newtonian revolution) led initially to an “underrating and neglect of concern for experiences of the spirit,” but later turned into a dictatorial prohibition of metaphysical questions and complete denial of the legitimacy of questions outside of the realm of phenomena (CW 24, 168). However, this is not to say questions of substance magically disappeared. 4 In spite of losing the prestigious label of “scientific,” man naturally desires answers to questions of his origin and purpose and will not stop looking merely because someone like Auguste Comte tells him to. Yet when such questions are deemed “useless” and “unscientific” by society at large and the scientistic pathos has infected the educational institutions, as Voegelin notes, “the spiritual desire, in the Platonic sense, must be very strong in a young man of our time to overcome the obstacles that social pressure puts in the way of its cultivation” (CW 24, 193). Voegelin’s focus within the essay is on the social effectiveness of the Newtonian revolution. He uses the argument(s) over the concept of absolute space to show how superior philosophical ideas are not sufficient conditions to social acceptance. 5 Within the work of Copernicus, there is “the tendency to assume an absolute space of which the sun in the ontologically real center, but this tendency is secondary to the predominant motivation of simplifying the mathematical description of planetary movements. The problems of sci-

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entific description and ontology were clearly distinguished” (CW 24, 171). Copernicus justified his revolutionary system by explaining the relativity of movement: “he made it clear that the ‘real’ movement of two bodies that move relatively to each other is in no way affected by the assumption of one or the other as the origin of the coordinates” (CW 24, 171). Jean Bodin, looking at the issue not from the perspective of a scientist, but as a political philosopher, drew the conclusion one might as well shift the coordinates back to earth. Natural scientists might prefer the simpler mathematical description of the sun as the center of the universe, but this does not change the fact that under relativity, such a choice is arbitrary. As Voegelin explains, “relativity must be taken seriously; if the theory of space as an absolute extension around the earth is a fallacy, the theory of space as an absolute extension around the sun is no less a fallacy” (CW 24, 171). Voegelin points to Bruno and Leibniz as correctly identifying the implications of relativity, yet as we know, natural science went in a different direction, riding the wave of the Newtonian revolution and with it, the concept of absolute space. For instance, Leibniz, citing the first law of motion, calls the choice of a resting body for the purposes of a description a “hypothesis” and while one of these may render a simply description, it does make it any truer than the other. Therefore, “on principle, all such hypotheses are equivalent” (CW 24, 172). Leibniz applied this “general law of equivalence” to the Copernican and Ptolemaic systems, noting the greater simplicity found in the former “does not imply the movements described by it are real in an ontological sense” (CW 24, 173). In spite of the support for relativity found in the works of his contemporaries, “Newton found it necessary to assume the existence of absolute space and of absolute motion” (CW 24, 174). Newton explains his rationale in the second edition of the Principia: Because the parts of space cannot be seen, or distinguished from one another by our senses, therefore in their stead we use sensible measures of them. For from the positions and distances of things from any body considered as immovable, we define all places; and then with respect to such places, we estimate all motions, considering bodies as transferred from some of those places into others. And so, instead of absolute places and motions, we use relative ones; and that without any inconvenience in common affairs; but in philosophical disquisitions we ought to abstract from our senses, and consider things themselves, distinct from what are only sensible measures of them. For it may be that there is no body really at rest, to which the places and motions of others may be referred. (CW 24, 174) 6

In other words, Newton insists on assuming absolute motion and space even though empirical observation points to relativity. According to Voegelin, there are both scientific and religious reasons for doing so. From a practical,

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scientific standpoint, Newton needed the concept to maintain the first law of motion. “Without the assumption of absolute space no meaning can be given to the notion of absolute rest; and absolute rest was for Newton as it was for Galileo, a fundamental experience that could not be dispensed with in the formulation of the first law of motion” (CW 24, 175). According to Voegelin, the more important (and interesting) motivation for Newton was religious in nature. Newton realized the implications of the Cartesian position of identifying space with matter: God would be pushed out of his own creation. Henry More’s response to the problem involved creating a theory of spatial extension “as an infinity that has existed from eternity, and will exist into eternity, independent of our thought. Since extension is a ‘real attribute,’ a subject for this attribute must exist” (CW 24, 176). That subject of course would be God. As Voegelin notes, More was explicit in his religious motivation: he wished to “bring God back into the world by the same gate through which Cartesian philosophy tried to shut Him out from it” (CW 24, 176). Newton employs a similar construct in the Optics. From the phenomena of nature it follows that “there exists an incorporeal Being, living intelligent and omnipresent.” This Being uses space “as it were a sensorium;” and by this sensorium “it sees all things intimately in themselves and perceives them throughout, and in its presence embraces all things present in it” (CW 24, 176). However, the attempt to “save” God ultimately failed, as “men of a less religious temper simply did not care about the divine substance underlying absolute space” (CW 24, 177). Newton’s postulate of a divine substance had no empirical bearing on his physics and thus could be easily discarded. As Voegelin observes: Here was the system of the world, legitimated by the genius of the man whose name at this time carried more authority in the intellectual world than any other; and this system showed the world as consisting of nothing but matter obeying a uniform law. The theory of absolute space sealed the system ontologically against God; and by virtue of this character, the Newtonian system became socially effective. The well-intentioned theory of absolute space resulted in precisely the disorder it had intended to avert. (CW 24, 177–78)

The social effectiveness was undoubtedly secured in large part due to the enormous, tangible advances that arose from the new science. Voegelin spends nearly a full page listing the political and economic impacts and rightly argues “the advance of science after 1700 is the most important single factor in changing the structure of power and wealth on the global scene” (CW 24, 188). Practical utility, rather than the search for truth, became the attribute most commonly associated with science as a result. While Voegelin is correct in his identification of the Newtonian revolution as an epochal break in Western civilization, the groundwork for the

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revolution was laid nearly a century earlier by Francis Bacon. The aforementioned attributes of the scientistic attitude are all clearly outlined in Bacon’s work. It is instructive to briefly examine Bacon’s philosophy to demonstrate its scientistic character. BACON’S INFLUENCE Francis Bacon (1561–1626) is undoubtedly one of the great minds of modern thought. 7 Thomas Jefferson included Bacon as part of his “trinity of the three greatest men that have ever lived, without exceptions.” 8 Jean-Jacques Rousseau referred to him as “possibly the greatest philosopher.” 9 And John Dewey referred to him as the “real founder of modern thought.” 10 Bacon was the partisan for the advancement of science within the early modern period. Although he cannot be credited with a particular scientific achievement, Bacon helped establish the foundation on which the new science was to be built. 11 He was the first to outline the scientific method, with an emphasis on experimentation and observation. 12 And perhaps more importantly, he argued for the adaptation of that method. Unlike Newton’s generation, the benefit of science was not readily apparent to Bacon’s contemporaries, and it was no small feat to convince them of its utility. While Bacon can arguably be credited as the founder of the new science and deserves praise for that feat, he also must be held accountable for the deleterious effects of his project. Bacon’s dismissal of Plato and Aristotle, along with his seemingly unbounded optimism in regard to the transformative nature of his project, led him to overlook important aspects of political reality. While he was right to criticize the lack of progress within natural philosophy, he too readily dismissed the political and ethical dimensions of ancient and medieval thought. 13 Bacon substitutes his new science in the place of the natural philosophy of his predecessors, but fails to adequately account for politics. This is not to say that he ignores the subject altogether. Instead, he subsumes it under the umbrella of his new science: It may also be doubted (rather than objected) whether we are speaking of perfecting only Natural Philosophy by our method or also the other sciences, Logic, Ethics and Politics. We certainly mean all that we have said to apply to all of them, and just as common logic, which governs things by means of the syllogism, is applicable not only to the natural sciences but to all the sciences, so also our science, which proceeds by induction, covers all. 14

In other words, his method can be applied to every facet of knowledge. The problem with this is at least twofold: man cannot be subjected to experimentation and his nature is not exhausted by sensory perceptions. 15 The second problem is related to the first in that questions of substance are simply off

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limits. The experimental method is designed to explain phenomenal relations and how things work. It does not and cannot answer questions of substance. Furthermore, it does not provide guidance as to proper action, or ethics. Bacon explicitly denounces metaphysics and derides moral and ethical philosophy since it deals with the “proud knowledge of good and evil.” 16 A final troubling aspect of his thought is his utopianism. As evident in New Atlantis, Bacon essentially foresees no limit to man’s ability to control his own fate through the domination of nature. He presents us with a technological society that seemingly knows neither death nor disorder—in other words, heaven on earth. The only precondition for this earthly salvation lies in the adoption of Bacon’s new science. Thus, man no longer needs to rely on Providence for assistance or pin his hopes on an otherworldly existence. Instead, he can manipulate nature to provide a seemingly endless array of earthly goods. Bacon’s dogmatic emphasis on method (and the postulate that it can be utilized in all areas of knowledge), along with his reductionist account of man and his utopianism, leads me to claim that he was not only the founder of the new science (as he is often credited, and rightly so), but also that he serves as the founder of scientism. 17 To support this claim, I will briefly examine one of Bacon’s most important works: Novum Organum. Novum Organum provides insight into Bacon’s project as a whole, as it gives us both a critique of the past and a plan for the present and future. NOVUM ORGANUM Novum Organum stands as Bacon’s most important philosophical work. It comprises the second part of Bacon’s six-part Great Instauration. As such, it is designed to “equip the human understanding to set out on the ocean.” 18 As Bacon notes: We plan therefore, for our second part, an account of a better and more perfect use of reason in the investigation of things and of the true aids of the intellect, so that (despite our humanity and subjection to death), the understanding may be raised and enlarged to overcome the difficult and dark things of nature. . . . Different results follow from our different design . . . we conquer nature by work. 19

From the onset, Bacon makes it clear that his project is novel. He rejects the traditional modes of investigation, namely Aristotle’s logic, for it proves to be “quite divorced from practice and completely irrelevant to the active part of the sciences.” 20 According to Bacon, the syllogism fails to get at first principles and cannot provide the insight into nature that is required for true progress in the sciences. And “there has been no one who has spent an

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adequate amount of time on things themselves and on experience.” 21 The solution lies in a new method, which will provide the proper tools to aid human understanding. “Before one can sail to the more remote and secret places of nature, it is absolutely essential to introduce a better and more perfect use and application of the mind and understanding.” 22 To get to the “secret places of nature,” Bacon offers his experimental method. The experiment provides an “assistant to the senses” and therefore: We do not rely very much on the immediate and proper perception of the senses, but we bring the matter to the point that the senses judge only of the experiment, the experiment judges of the thing. Hence we believe that we have made the senses (from which, if we prefer not to be insane we must derive everything in natural things) sacred high priests of nature and skilled interpreters of its oracles; while others merely seem to respect and honour the senses, we do so in actual fact. 23

Bacon’s method is designed to overcome the problems that have plagued the advancement of natural philosophy up until his time. He claims not to be “dethroning the prevailing philosophy” or disrespecting the achievements of the ancients, but merely guiding us to the correct path. This somewhat guarded language in the preface gives way to a sharper tongue as Bacon begins Book I. Book I focuses on the inadequacy of the current state of knowledge and the need for a renewal of learning. Bacon asserts, “no great progress can be made in the doctrines and thinking of the sciences, nor can they be applied to a wide range of works, by the methods commonly in use.” 24 In fact, he points to only three periods in history where actual progress was made in natural philosophy: the Greeks, Romans, and present-day (circa 1600) Western Europeans. 25 And those periods only saw limited progress. There are numerous reasons for the lack of progress, but Bacon specifically mentions four “illusions of the mind” that are particularly troublesome. 26 These are the idols of the tribe, idols of the cave, idols of the marketplace, and idols of the theater. The idols of the tribe “are founded in human nature itself.” 27 This includes the influence of the emotions and limitations of the senses. The idols of the cave “have their origin in the individual nature of each man’s mind and body; and also in his education, way of life and chance events.” 28 This includes the inclination of individuals to admire tradition or to embrace novelty. The idols of the marketplace are the “biggest nuisance of all, because they have stolen into the understanding from the covenant on words and names.” 29 In other words, language is problematic. Words need to be carefully defined and must refer to observable objects. 30 Finally, the idols of the theater are “openly introduced and accepted on the basis of fairytale theories and mistaken rules of proof.” 31 Bacon includes religious and philosophical sects in this group. 32 All of these idols must be “rejected and re-

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nounced and the mind totally liberated and cleansed of them, so that there will be only one entrance into the kingdom of man, which is based upon the sciences, as there is into the kingdom of heaven.” 33 Aside from the idols of the mind, “the greatest obstacle to the progress of the sciences and to opening up new tasks and provinces within them lies in men’s lack of hope and in the assumption that it is impossible.” 34 Indeed Bacon’s reliance on hope is critical to the flourishing of his project as a whole. We must have a reasonable expectation that the new path recommended by Bacon will lead to tangible benefits. Therefore, Bacon states: “we should reveal and publish our conjectures, which make it reasonable to have hope, just as Columbus did, before his wonderful voyage across the Atlantic Sea, when he gave reasons why he was confident that new lands and continents, beyond those previously known, could be found; reasons which were at first rejected but were afterwards proven by experience, and have been the causes and beginnings of great things.” 35 The primary reason for hope is that the lack of progress in the past has been due to human error. Men simply focused on the wrong things and did not devote their time properly to the study of natural philosophy. Bacon notes, “every error that has been an obstacle in the past is an argument of hope for the future.” 36 Furthermore, “Natural philosophy is not yet found in a pure state, but contaminated and corrupted: in the school of Aristotle by logic, in the school of Plato by natural theology. . . . Better things are to be hoped from natural philosophy pure and unadulterated.” 37 Bacon is the one who will accomplish this feat and he fully expects posterity to reward him for it: “if someone of mature age, with faculties unimpaired and mind cleansed of prejudice, applies himself afresh to experience and particulars, better is to be hoped of him. And in this task we promise ourselves the fortune of Alexander the Great; and let no one accuse us of vanity before he sees the result of the thing, which aims to uproot all vanity.” 38 Bacon again emphasizes the feeble state of natural philosophy, but he sees an opportunity to forever change its course through his experimental method. Unlike the past where nature was merely observed, Bacon’s method requires active participation and manipulation of nature: “Just as in politics each man’s character and the hidden set of his mind and passions is better brought out when he is in a troubled state than at other times, in the same way also the secrets of nature reveal themselves better through harassments applied by the arts than when they go their own way.” 39 Since this has not been tried, “it is very much to be expected that many exceedingly useful things are still hidden in the bosom of nature . . . which have however not yet been discovered, but without a doubt will appear sometime.” 40 Since “men have not spent much time on experience” we have not yet reaped the rewards that surely await us. Bacon goes so far as to say, “if there were anyone present among us who would answer interrogators about the

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facts of nature, it would only take a few years to discover all causes and all sciences.” 41 Bacon does not promise to deliver these results himself since he is “the busiest man” of his age in political affairs and “not in very good health.” 42 In spite of his limited time and opportunity, Bacon has managed to outline the method that can bring about such discoveries. Therefore, he concludes that we should have “an abundance of hope.” 43 The theme of hope is one that Bacon sticks with throughout his works and it finds its greatest expression in the New Atlantis. It is worth noting a few passages in the Novum Organum that seem to be at odds with what is presented in the New Atlantis. Although Bacon implores us to have hope, he chides those “glib, fanciful talkers” who promise more than they can deliver: Promising and advertising longer life, postponement of old age, relief from pain, healing of natural defects, temptations for the senses, enchantment and excitement of the passions, stimulation and enlightenment of the intellectual faculties, transmutation of substances, unlimited power and variety of movement, impressions and alterations of air, drawing and control of celestial influences, divination of future things, representation of distant things, revelation of hidden things and much more of the same. The right verdict on these false benefactors is that in philosophical teaching there is just as much difference between their empty promises and the true arts as there is, in the narratives of history, between the achievements of Julius Caesar or Alexander the Great and the deeds of Amadis of Gaul or Arthur of Britain. 44

Bacon claims that these “impostors” have caused prejudice against novel claims, thus making his task even more difficult. What is not immediately clear is whether Bacon finds the above promises to be impossible outright or whether it is simply a function of them not following the correct method. 45 A final passage worth noting can be found in the Great Instauration. After Bacon has outlined his six-part plan, he prays, “May God never allow us to publish a dream of our imagination as a model of the world.” 46 Four years later, he wrote New Atlantis, his last major work and one of the great utopian myths of modern times. While space precludes a full examination of the work, Bacon’s New Atlantis represents the most coherent and clearest picture of the end, or final cause, of his project. It presents us with a scientific utopia: a society based on the principles of Baconian science. The society is controlled by a group of technically trained scientists who have been able to devise ways, through the help of Baconian science, to overcome the perpetual problems of human existence such as disease, lust, greed, and warfare. More specifically, science has provided for the means to control chance, or vicissitude. The scientists of Solomon’s House decide what inventions will be “allowed” into society and they serve in a “parent-like” role. Bacon’s vision raises several important issues such as how the scientists determine

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which inventions should be allowed. On what basis can those decisions be made? Such decisions require political judgment, yet Bacon subsumes politics under his overall method: a method designed for natural philosophy, or science. Moreover, Bacon is making bold promises as to the transformative nature of his project. Death, as part of the human condition, cannot be overcome, yet Bacon is careful to veil this truth in his presentation of Bensalem in New Atlantis. Is it not dangerous to gloss over such harsh realities? What is to stop the scientists of Solomon’s House from abusing the power of science to control not only nature, but also their fellow men? These are questions that are not adequately answered within Bacon’s presentation or within the works of his scientistic successors. THE “EVOLUTION” OF SCIENTISM Since this chapter is focused on the origins of scientism as opposed to its historical development, I have not discussed influences beyond Newton’s time. However, it is important to note the emergence of Darwinism only hardened the lines between questions of phenomena and substance. Even though Darwin personally grappled with spiritual questions, his biological discoveries led him to present a reductionistic account of human nature. Darwin embraced the widely accepted materialistic outlook of his time. The primary difference between Darwin’s materialistic account and that of Newton was the lack of an appeal to design in nature. While the revelatory aspects of religion had certainly taken a hit with the rise of Enlightenment thought, natural theology had remained as an ally and perhaps last line of defense for Christianity. On Darwin’s own account, his theory undermined such a view of the world: “The old argument from design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered.” 47 Darwin’s own account of this transformation in his autobiography is telling: “I well remember my conviction that there is more in man that the mere breath of his body. But now the grandest scenes would not cause any such convictions and feelings to rise in my mind.” 48 Darwin’s theory puts man firmly in nature and any spiritual proclivity is explained away through appeals to biological processes. His fidelity to biological determinism is apparent in his unpublished writings: “The general delusion about free will is obvious. . . . One deserves no credit for anything . . . nor ought one to blame others” and the punishment of criminals is “solely to deter others—not because they did something blameworthy.” 49 Darwin’s social influence was enormous and this is perhaps why Einstein’s relativity, even though it vindicated the likes of Bruno and Leibniz, did not

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“reverse” the reductionistic worldview ushered in by the Newtonian revolution. SCIENTISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY Writing in the 1940s, Voegelin offered a dismal assessment of the prospects of a civilizational escape, noting, “the destructive effects defy repair in any visible future” (CW 24, 193). And he squarely placed the blame for the “major intellectual scandals” of modernity (positivism, Darwinian evolutionism, and Marxism) on scientism (CW 24, 31). While there have been changes in the seventy years since Voegelin wrote the essay (the decline of Marxism, the rise of transhumanism), scientism’s grip on Western civilization has remained tight. If anything, the “rational-utilitarian” impulse has only grown stronger as technology has rapidly changed society. Since those changes have benefited the average citizen, the “case” for science is as strong as ever. Everything from national defense to medicine to creature comforts is enhanced by further scientific developments. As a result of widespread social acceptance, the push within the academy (and primary education) has been strongest in the STEM fields. When politicians in the United States talk about the need for better education, they inevitably talk about how students are lagging behind international competitors in math and science. 50 This is not to suggest we should not close the gap or provide ample opportunities for students to pursue studies and careers in those areas. Rather, it is a problem of balance, as the belief that “human existence can be oriented in an absolute sense through the truth of science” has only grown stronger since Voegelin’s time (CW 24, 193). The remarkable advances in technology and scientific knowledge in the latter half of the 20th century to the present day have been paralleled by “an unspeakable advance of mass ignorance” with regard to problems of substance (CW 24, 193). Ignorance can of course be cured by proper education, but this is particularly problematic when it comes to the destructive effects of scientism since it began as an intellectual malady. Bacon’s philosophy ushered in a new way of examining the world and set boundaries as to what type of knowledge would be considered legitimate. 51 While it took the Newtonian revolution to gain social acceptance, the Baconian model of education was enthusiastically embraced in leading European institutions, most notably in France with the influence of the Encyclopedists. 52 The Royal Society was also modeled on Baconian principles. And Auguste Comte’s project emphatically rejected questions of substance within the social sciences, the effects of which are still being felt today in political science departments across the country. 53

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In addition to the manifestations of scientism in the educational system, political variants of scientism remain prominent. Transhumanism, which represents a logical extension of Bacon’s philosophy, has emerged as a powerful ideology. Unlike Bacon’s contemporaries, the intended audience for transhumanism lives in societies that have already been transformed by science. The case no longer needs to be made why science is beneficial to society. Transhumanism takes Bacon’s goal of improving the human condition to the next level as it promises the ability to transcend the human condition altogether. Features once thought to be unchangeable parts of human nature are now in play, including death itself. The genetic lottery is also in question as technologies such as CRISPR give us the ability to edit features, which were heretofore left to chance (or God). Zoltan Istvan’s bestselling work, The Transhumanist Wager, gives us good insight into the mindset. The revolutionary character of the work is readily apparent from the start as Istvan outlines the Three Laws of Transhumanism: 1. A transhumanist must safeguard one’s own existence above all else. 2. A transhumanist must strive to achieve omnipotence as expediently as possible—so long as one’s actions do not conflict with the First Law. 3. A transhumanist must safeguard value in the universe—so long as one’s actions do not conflict with the First and Second Laws. 54 At the end of the book, with a successful (and violent) revolution in the name of transhumanism, the protagonist awakens to find a new world where “procreation was now done exclusively in test tubes. Genetic engineering was commonplace. All forms of cancer were fully curable. Mars was an inhabited colony. Artificial intelligence was ubiquitous, even having its own moral systems and consciousness. Reverse-aging enterprises and bionics were some of the biggest fields in science and industry.” 55 Transhumania stands as the 21st century Bensalem. A final example of the scientistic attitude in the 21st century can be found in the climate change debates. While the issue of climate change has been around for decades, former senator and vice president Al Gore successfully brought it into the public spotlight with the documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Coming in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the film drew a direct connection between human activity (primarily in the form of carbon dioxide emissions) and calamities such as hurricanes, droughts, malaria, and melting ice caps. While the film presents some scientific data, fear is the primary motivator as the viewer is left with a sense of imminent catastrophe if substantial changes are not made immediately. Critics have taken the opportunity to point out that many of Gore’s dire predictions have not materialized and also point to a hiatus in warming spanning most of the 21st century (in spite of increasing carbon dioxide

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emissions). 56 This is not to say climate change is not an important issue or that some of the warnings in the film will not occur. However, the apocalyptic fervor of some climate change purveyors has undermined the cause as many in the general population likely will tune out future warnings due to the failed predictions of imminent catastrophe. Saying “the science is settled” is meant to cut off critical debate and presents anyone raising questions as antiscience. 57 There is indeed scientific evidence of man-made (or aided) climate change, but the climate is incredibly complex, and we would be better served to have a sense of openness and humbleness toward our understanding of it. 58 The practical implications extend beyond the possibilities of inaction. The true believer will have to enact drastic policies immediately to save the world. Within the United States, this can be seen in the recent proposal of a “Green” New Deal. Much like FDR’s plan, this requires massive government intervention, but in addition to helping poor, working-class Americans, the earth itself is the primary beneficiary of the plan. While the plan is simply outlined through a resolution, it does give us a glimpse of what kind of policies would need to be implemented if Gore’s predictions are to be taken seriously. Among the highlights are the eradication of fossil fuels as a source of energy, upgrading every existing building to be energy efficient, and a guaranteed job for every American (with the necessary health, retirement, and family leave benefits). 59 We are not told what the costs would be, but since we are told the cost of inaction could be the loss of an inhabitable planet, the assumption is that no cost is too high. The biggest challenge in overcoming the problem of scientism is to bring about the realization that there is a problem in the first place. While the likes of Voegelin and Hayek accurately diagnosed the problem in the first half of the 20th century, very little has changed on a societal level. This would surprise neither writer, but the question remains as to what, if anything, can be done to address the problem? There is an emerging opportunity to reexamine the fundamental questions of existence, as technology continues its exponential rate of growth. Technologies that were considered “science fiction” a generation or two ago are now becoming realities, and policymakers (and the general public) will have no choice but to confront questions raised by them. 60 Some will undoubtedly offer “more science” as the solution to the problems caused by scientism, but that approach is bound to fail. Likewise, abandoning science and technology is as unrealistic as it is foolish. The radically immanent, materialistic worldview reflected in the scientistic pathos must be replaced with one that reflects the full amplitude of human nature and experiential reality. To do so, we would be well advised to turn to the sources Bacon (and his scientistic successors) abandoned in the quest to conquer nature.

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NOTES 1. Eric Voegelin, The English Quest for the Concrete, Volume VI: Revolution and the New Science (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin: History of Political Ideas Volume 24), Barry Cooper, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998), 214–15. Hereafter CW 24. 2. In an age of messianic, political mass movements, the addition of advanced technology (such as nuclear weaponry) was a horrifying prospect. 3. Bruno, a 16th century philosopher, was infamously burned at the stake for his “heretical” views. 4. Voegelin does not specifically outline question of substance within the essay. Any question dealing with the truth of existence fits into this category. Questions about virtue, justice, happiness, the divine, and the best form of constitution all fit into this category. 5. Marxism’s success is a prime example. Marx’s system, deemed anti-philosophical even by his own editors, explicitly prohibits philosophical questions, yet gained tens of millions of followers. More remarkably, the ideas continue to draw followers in spite of the miserable results. 6. It is taken from the scholium to Definition VIII of the Principia. 7. The majority of this section is taken from my full-length study on scientism. See David N. Whitney, Maladies of Modernity: Scientism and the Deformation of Political Order (South Bend: St. Augustine Press, 2019). 8. Locke and Newton were the other two. See Jefferson to John Trumbull, February 5th, 1789, in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., Thomas Jefferson Writings (New York: Library of America 1984), 939. 9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 332. 10. John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1950), 46. 11. Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), xiii. 12. See Lisa Jardine’s introduction in Francis Bacon’s The New Organon, Lisa Jardine, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), xv. 13. For example, the rejection of Aristotle’s physics needs not lead to the rejection of his politics. See Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1984). 14. Bacon, The New Organon, 98. 15. Experimentation on humans is especially problematic for two reasons. One is due to epistemological reflexivity. Those being observed know they are being observed and thus may react differently than in “natural” conditions. Secondly, there are serious ethical constraints as to what kind of experimentation can be implemented. 16. Francis Bacon, The Advancement of Learning (London and Melbourne: Dent Publishing, 1973), 37. 17. This is not an altogether novel claim. While the likes of Dewey, Jefferson, and Rousseau heaped praise upon Bacon, F.A. Hayek referred to him as the “demagogue of science.” See F.A. Hayek, The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979), 21. 18. Bacon, Novum Organum, 15. 19. Ibid., 15–16. 20. Ibid., 16. 21. Ibid., 8. 22. Ibid., 11. 23. Ibid., 18. 24. Ibid., 98–99. 25. Ibid., 64. 26. Ibid., 40. 27. Ibid., 41. 28. Ibid., 46. 29. Ibid., 48.

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30. Ibid., 49. 31. Ibid. 32. Most notably, he includes Aristotle, Plato, and the Scholastics. See ibid., 51–53. 33. Ibid., 56. 34. Ibid., 76. 35. Ibid., 77. 36. Ibid., 78. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 79–80. 39. Ibid., 81. 40. Ibid., 86. 41. Ibid., 88 (emphasis added). 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid., 72. 45. Since New Atlantis promises many of the same things, we can assume it is the latter. 46. Ibid., 24. 47. John Brooke, “Darwin and Victorian Christianity,” in Cambridge Companion to Darwin, Jonathan Hodge and Gregory Radick, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 201. 48. John West, Darwin Day in America (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2007), 38. 49. Ibid., 31. 50. I have yet to hear one mention art, music, or philosophy unless it is to explain why funding can be taken from those areas. 51. The best expressions of this can be found in Novum Organum and The Advancement of Learning. 52. The group included prominent philosophes such as D’Alembert, Diderot, Rousseau, and Condillac. 53. The “science” in political science is often attributed exclusively to the use of quantitative methodology. 54. Zoltan Istvan, The Transhumanist Wager (Lexington, KY: Futurity Imagine Media, 2013), 4. 55. Ibid., 297. 56. As an example, Gore said the snows of Mount Kilamanjaro would be gone within a decade. He also predicted more intense and more frequent hurricanes in the Atlantic. Neither has occurred to date. 57. As Thomas Kuhn demonstrates, the history of science is one in which advancements are made precisely because someone dares to question the assumptions of the current paradigm. 58. The fact the local weatherman can only sometimes accurately predict what the weather will be like tomorrow should cause us to question some of these definitive, long-term statements on climate impacts. 59. Honorable Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “Resolution: Recognizing the Duty of the Federal Government to Create a Green New Deal,” House Resolution in the First Session of the 116th U.S. Congress. Available at https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/sites/ocasio-cortez.house.gov/files/ Resolution%20on%20a%20Green%20New%20Deal.pdf 60. Genetic engineering, cloning, memory alteration, space travel, and highly sophisticated A.I. are but a handful of dozens of advancements that would have appeared as flights of the imagination a century ago.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bacon, Francis. The Advancement of Learning (London and Melbourne: Dent Publishing, 1973). ———. The New Organon, Lisa Jardine, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

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Brooke, John. “Darwin and Victorian Christianity.” In Cambridge Companion to Darwin, Jonathan Hodge and Gregory Radick, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 192–213. Dewey, John. Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1950). Hayek, F.A. The Counter-Revolution of Science: Studies on the Abuse of Reason (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1979). Istvan, Zoltan. The Transhumanist Wager (Lexington, KY: Futurity Imagine Media, 2013). Macintyre, Alasdair. After Virtue (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1984). Ocasio-Corte, Alexandria. “Resolution: Recognizing the Duty of the Federal Government to Create a Green New Deal,” House Resolution in the First Session of the 116th U.S. Congress. Available at https://ocasio-cortez.house.gov/sites/ocasio-cortez.house.gov/files/Resolution%20on%20a%20Green%20New%20Deal.pdf. Peterson, Merrill D. ed. Thomas Jefferson Writings (New York: Library of America, 1984). Rossi, Paolo. Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Voegelin, Eric. The English Quest for the Concrete, Volume VI: Revolution and the New Science (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin: History of Political Ideas Volume 24), Barry Cooper, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998). West, John. Darwin Day in America (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2007). Whitney, David N. Maladies of Modernity: Scientism and the Deformation of Political Order (South Bend: St. Augustine Press, 2019).

Chapter Five

Voegelin, Rawls, and the Persistence of Liberal Civil Theology Grant Havers

Eric Voegelin published his essay “The Oxford Political Philosophers” in 1953, a time of prosperity in Britain, which had gradually recovered from the ravages of World War II. 1 Even the tense atmosphere of the Cold War was relaxing for the moment, as the hot war in Korea was ending with an armistice, albeit one that fell short of an effective peace treaty. Winston Churchill, who had returned to Downing Street after defeating the governing Labor Party two years before, was urging the United States to engage in détente with the Soviet Union in the wake of Stalin’s demise that same year. In Britain, the political scene was calm. Churchill’s Conservatives were continuing Laborite policies in the areas of nationalization and trade union reform, thus displaying their utter lack of interest in returning to the days of laissezfaire. 2 In short, Britain was an island of stability, eight years after World War II ended. Voegelin respected the achievement of political moderation that resulted from the strength of the English temperament. In fact, this achievement had reinforced the post-war demand that the modern nation-state, whose very existence had been threatened by various wars since the Reformation, should imitate “democracy in the Anglo-Saxon sense” (OPP, 25). Voegelin warned, however, that this demand ignored the distinctive histories of European and Asian states. From the vantage point of political philosophy, then, it was imperative “to separate the essential from the historically contingent and to break with the habit of treating the institutions of a particular national state at a particular time as if they truly manifested the nature of man” (OPP, 25). What, then, specifically contributed to the particular success of fair Albion? Voegelin did not discount the role of good luck here: 91

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It is not that English history lacked harsh experience with civil wars or struggles with authoritarianism. Voegelin is particularly hard on Hobbes and Locke for justifying religious intolerance (toward Catholics, for example) in the name of secular freedom (OPP, 35–38). Yet, as George Grant once observed, the English “confidence in their liberalism saved them from taking seriously the traditions which proceeded either from Rousseau or from Nietzsche.” 3 Toward the end of his essay, Voegelin credits the presence of “enough Christian substances” for having the moderating effect of making “at least the worst sort of good consciences socially ineffective” (OPP, 45). In other words, Christianity reminds humanity of the tension between the ways of the world and the truth (to be in the world but not of it). Despite the savagery of two world wars, England’s version of Christian faith had helped the island muddle through, to invoke Churchill’s famous phrase, even as it enjoyed its relative isolation from the convulsions of the Continent. Whether the Oxfordian political philosophers appreciated the indispensable nature of this religious precondition was another question. One of the recurrent themes in Voegelin’s essay on the Oxfordians is that these political philosophers of the English tradition, some of whom wrote major political works after World War II, were unprepared to weather the ideological storms that modernity has unleashed. The various authors whom Voegelin examines (including T. H. Green, Sir Ernest Barker, and R. G. Collingwood) were collectively guilty of ignoring the fundamental tension between their ideas and political reality. These gentlemen thought that their ideas conformed well with the English way of life, which they mistakenly assumed to be the universal norm for all of humanity. Voegelin’s sharp indictment of J. D. Mabbott’s work 4 on the citizen’s obligation to the state applies equally well to all of the Oxfordians that he critically analyzes: The reader, while being a little envious of the happiness that such assurance must confer on its possessor, will also feel a little uneasy about a philosopher in such harmony with his environment. He will remember Plato and Aristotle, who did not hesitate to rank Hellenic political culture higher than any other but found enough of a gulf between standards and reality to make them despair that a well-ordered polis could ever be realized in Hellas. The Oxford political philosophers do not adopt the classic philosophical attitude that reality at its best is still far from conforming with principles. (OPP, 29)

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These Oxfordian philosophers were perhaps whistling in the graveyard while they easily assumed that respect for a “good conscience” could keep England decent and stable. At the end of his essay, Voegelin warns that even the “Christian substances” that have had a moderating impact on England’s politics may not save her from a “nihilistic theory of conscience” that paves the way for “the totalitarian killers” (OPP, 46). The naïve Oxfordian faith in a good conscience was a poor defense against the most radical political movements that have wreaked havoc in the name of a good conscience (Hegel’s concept of the “beautiful soul” comes to mind here). In the discussion to follow, I shall apply Voegelin’s critique of post–World War II Oxfordian political philosophy to the philosophy of John Rawls, whose influence on the analytical tradition of philosophy far surpasses the collective impact of the Oxfordians that Voegelin discusses. 5 The connection between Oxford and Rawls, who taught philosophy at Harvard until his death in 2002, is not hard to fathom. In 1952, a year before the publication of Voegelin’s essay, Rawls went to Oxford on a Fulbright Scholarship, where he spent “a critical year” studying under Isaiah Berlin and H. L. A. Hart. 6 In fact, Rawls may be more “Oxfordian” than the Oxfordians who are subject to Voegelin’s critique. David Boucher, in his introduction to R. G. Collingwood’s The New Leviathan (1942), notes that Collingwood’s hostility to analytical philosophy obscured the “affinities” that he shared with this tradition. The New Leviathan, a work that Voegelin discusses in his essay, does not quite count as an analytical contribution to political philosophy, a discourse that was “in suspended animation awaiting revival by such philosophers as Rawls and Nozick.” 7 Although it is absurd to contend that Rawls revived political philosophy in toto, it is safe to claim that analytical political philosophy was severely limited until A Theory of Justice, Rawls’s first and most famous work, appeared in 1971. The analytical philosopher Kai Nielsen, one of Rawls’s friendly interpreters, argues that the “most undeveloped side of analytical philosophy was political philosophy” until this work came along. According to Nielsen, the publication of A Theory of Justice breathed new life into a side of philosophy that had long been ignored or neglected within the analytical tradition. Nielsen writes: John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice brought back to English-speaking philosophy the tradition of systematic and holistic socio-political philosophy. It was also the first book written in English on moral and political thought during the post-War era which received extensive attention outside of philosophy. It also gave us a sense of how we could systematically do moral and social philosophy with discipline and sophistication and how, as well, in doing so we could set aside questions of metaethics or the analysis of moral concepts. 8

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Despite this achievement, a few readers have wondered whether Rawls unwittingly continued what Voegelin diagnosed as the Oxfordian tendency of easy philosophical conformity with the political status quo. 9 I have already noted that Voegelin published his essay on the peaceful Britain that existed in 1953. Rawls published A Theory of Justice in the America of 1971. Rawls’ republic was embroiled in the Vietnam War, although President Nixon had already begun the gradual withdrawal of American boots on the ground while drastically escalating the aerial bombing of North Vietnam. Racial strife and campus unrest were heating up the political temperature of the divided republic. Although the war itself had taken a terrible toll in blood and treasure, its humiliating end was still four years away, when the last helicopters took off from the roof of the American embassy in Saigon while North Vietnamese tanks rolled into the city. Rawls writes as if the Vietnam War and other struggles that dominated the 1960s never happened. In fact, the human beings whom Rawls describes in this work do not seem to have real lives. The hypothetical “original position” that Rawls sets out in his book deliberately abstracts from real-life human beings who seek a truly just social contract. Rawls’s potential citizens must exist in a “veil of ignorance” of their identities—their race, gender, talents, and socioeconomic status—so that they can objectively decide on a just regime that will extend “primary goods” (e.g., rights, economic wellbeing) to all human beings. This veil “ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances.” 10 From this rational calculation, Rawls derives two principles of justice: “equality in the assignment of basic duties and rights” and the acceptance of “inequalities of wealth and authority” on the condition that they benefit “the least advantaged members of society” (TJ, 13). The result of this process is the achievement of “justice as fairness” (TJ, 11). Thus, Rawls has little interest in human beings who know their tradition, faith, or class position in an actual existing society. 11 In the recurring debate over Rawls’s legacy, this timeless question arises: what exactly makes a decent liberal regime possible? A Voegelinian emphasis on the religious preconditions that ground this regime provides, I shall argue, an essential philosophical framework for critically evaluating Rawls’s defense of liberalism. VOEGELIN AND THE PLACE OF A THEORY OF JUSTICE IN THE TRADITION In a lecture at Hillsdale College in 1977, Voegelin made some brief remarks on Rawls’s A Theory of Justice. Voegelin acknowledged the obvious fact that

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the publication of this work was a “major event” that had garnered a great deal of media and scholarly attention. Whether this attention was justified was another matter. Voegelin took aim at Rawls for failing to understand the proper preconditions of justice, a theme that is recurrent throughout Plato’s Republic. Instead, Rawls had come up with a “theory of injustice,” based on faulty premises that ignore what makes justice possible in the first place: If you apply philosophical language (which is originally the Platonic), then, in Platonic language, Rawls’ theory would be a theory of injustice, because justice presupposes the openness toward divine reality as the [operating factor in the existent of a society in history], while Mr. Rawls uses [language] as the constructive factor—what he does is an ideological construct [making] certain assumptions in original [propositions which make certain assertions about] information or non-information and so on. [There are a number] of assumptions which he uses himself in order to arrive . . . at the result of something which comes more or less close to a New-Leftist egalitarianism. That is, he starts from a certain opinion, as Plato would call it, a doxa, of certain egalitarianism. Then [he] tries to find—in order to support his faith—a number of axioms. These axioms he has to invent for the purpose. He calls his purpose a theory (Plato would call it a doxa). It isn’t a theory. It is a non-theory. And the result is then a conception—not of any justice—but of what Plato would call the injustice of the ideologue who wants to impose his peculiar conception of reality on everybody else. Here you have a classical modern case of the dimensions of the problem of deformation. (My italics) 12

Notwithstanding his polemical tone, Voegelin is systematically exposing a serious defect not just in Rawls’s theory, but in the entire tradition of analytical philosophy as well. His remark that justice “presupposes the openness toward divine reality as the [operating factor in the existent of a society in history]” serves as a reminder to secular intellectuals that, try as they might, they cannot transcend the religious sources of the experiences that feed their ideas. Voegelin is also calling attention to the abstract nature of Rawls’s account of justice, resting on a “contract theory” that had been called into question as far back as Book Two of Plato’s Republic. Perhaps worst of all, Rawls falls back on “New-Leftist egalitarianism,” one of the most parochial ideological premises of his time, without even acknowledging the epiphenomenal nature of his assumption. What is simply a doxa, an opinion, in favor of egalitarianism becomes an unchallengeable abstraction that all rational individuals must follow. Whether Rawls knew it or not, he was importing a “faith” into the rational calculations that characterize his original position. In the decades following the publication of A Theory of Justice, Rawls takes a greater interest in what Leo Strauss famously called the “theologicopolitical problem,” namely the challenge of understanding religion’s role in a political order as well as its relation to philosophical freedom. Whether this

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new interest represents a new attitude that Rawls is taking toward the value of religion is the question that I seek to address. I shall argue that Rawls’s greater attention to religion in Political Liberalism (1993), the sequel to his first work, indirectly vindicates Voegelin’s suspicion that English (or AngloAmerican) liberalism still requires a theological foundation, even though Rawls never acknowledges this fact. RELIGION AMID “POLITICAL LIBERALISM” In Political Liberalism, Rawls devotes far more attention to the diversity of belief in a liberal society today in order to qualify his earlier position, as stated in A Theory of Justice, that liberalism requires a generally secular citizenry. In particular, he is more concerned with accommodating religion. In an essay on “public reason,” or the process by which citizens determine the rationality of beliefs in his liberal regime, Rawls explains the key difference between the two books: The first explicitly attempts to develop from the idea of the social contract, represented by Locke, Rousseau, and Kant, a theory of justice that is no longer open to objections often thought fatal to it, and that proves superior to the long dominant tradition of utilitarianism. A Theory of Justice hopes to present the structural features of such a theory so as to make it the best approximation to our considered judgments of justice and hence to give the most appropriate moral basis for a democratic society. Furthermore, justice as fairness is presented there as a comprehensive liberal doctrine (although the term “comprehensive justice” is not used in the book) in which all members of its wellordered society affirms that same doctrine. This kind of well ordered society contradicts the fact of reasonable pluralism and hence Political Liberalism regards that society as impossible. 13

In short, the “comprehensive” liberalism of Rawls’s first book dictates that all citizens act as secular liberals. The “political” liberalism of the sequel allows for a great deal of public space in which citizens can freely agree to disagree about their comprehensive views of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Why did Rawls change his mind? In his essay on public reason, he explains: Political Liberalism considers a different question, namely: How is it possible for those affirming a comprehensive doctrine, religious or nonreligious, and in particular doctrines based on religious authority, such as the Church or the Bible, also to hold a reasonable political conception of justice that supports a constitutional democratic society? 14

Rawls fully admits that liberalism and religion may conflict: the political conceptions are liberal, self-standing, and not comprehensive, whereas the

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religious doctrines may be comprehensive but not liberal. Yet this conflict need not be worrisome as long as the various doctrines held by citizens “support reasonable political conceptions—although not necessarily the most reasonable—which specify the basic rights, liberties, and opportunities of citizens in society’s basic structure.” 15 This new interest in accommodating religion is not consistent with A Theory of Justice. As Allan Bloom argues, Rawls in this work, unlike the early modern social contractarians, is disinterested in faith or how it fits into a political order. He simply assumes that religion is irrelevant: “Rawls, counting on men’s having weak beliefs, simply ignores the challenge to his teaching posed by the claims of religion.” 16 Why did Rawls change his mind on the importance of religion? Is it because, as Carlos Fraenkel has argued, “the secularization thesis is in trouble”? 17 Fraenkel writes: “Appealing to reason is not enough in the case of citizens for whom reason holds less authority than God.” 18 If reason is not the supreme authority for all, then the accommodation of religious belief, as long as it does not seriously conflict with liberal principles of freedom and equality, sounds reasonable. Still, two questions arise: does Rawls’s political liberalism require a civil theology, an uneasy synthesis of both religious and secular symbols in the political realm, which Voegelin associates with traditional liberals such as Hobbes and Locke? If that is the case, does Rawls’s secular philosophy adequately account for the role of religion in his system? In order to address these questions adequately, I return to Voegelin’s discussion of the postwar Oxfordians. The relevance of this essay, which precedes the publication of A Theory of Justice by almost twenty years, lies in Voegelin’s argument that the Oxfordian tradition of political philosophy since World War II has always been dangerously indifferent to the importance of religious (especially Christian) belief as a barrier to the most toxic ideologies of our age. Although the Rawls of Political Liberalism is far more attentive to religion than the Rawls of A Theory of Justice, he still suffers from two blind spots that Voegelin attributes to the Oxfordian tradition as a whole. First, he does not clearly admit the necessity of a role for religion in politics, even though he unwittingly depends on its survival. Second, his accommodation of religion insists that believers adapt their faith to liberal politics. Whether Rawls acknowledges it or not, religion must be subordinate to liberalism. This move on Rawls’s part repeats what Voegelin describes as the attempts of past liberals (Hobbes, Locke) to create an intolerant “civil theology” (OPP, 36) which is ill-equipped to deal with the ideological challenges of our age. In brief, Rawls fails to acknowledge the religious (Christian) preconditions essential to his philosophy of liberalism.

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VOEGELIN, RAWLS, AND THE PERSISTENCE OF RELIGION One of the central themes of Voegelin’s essay (and, indeed, his entire scholarly oeuvre) is his argument that even the most secular political movements of modernity have a theological core or root. “Secularization,” a concept that became popular among sociologists and historians in the twentieth century, is too simplistic a term to describe the transition from the “religious” Middle Ages to the “secular” Enlightenment. The “immanentist creed movements” that emerged out of the Reformation and the Enlightenment were not secular in any clear sense (OPP, 25–26). The mighty efforts of Hobbes and Locke to subordinate religious authority to political rule were an exercise in “civil theology.” Voegelin warns English liberals that a great deal of their political philosophy rests on theological assumptions about human nature (e.g., Puritanism) that would not withstand philosophical scrutiny if put to the test: And, as a consequence, contemporary political debate is only to a minor extent theoretical discussion, while to a larger extent it is a cautiously moving elaboration of civil theology and its adaptation, if possible, to the disquieting events of the age. Since, however, history does not seem to tread the path of English civil theology, its adherents are in a difficult position. Unless one is willing to give up political theologizing altogether and to take the plunge into philosophy, one has to act with great circumspection, or the dogmatic edifice will come tumbling down. When the dogmatic symbols of the creed, such as Locke’s toleration and liberty of conscience, or John Stuart Mill’s improvement, are touched by critical examination, they will inevitably fall apart. (OPP, 36–37)

Rawls, however, goes out of his way to deny that a “civil theology” is necessary for the liberal regime. The difference between “comprehensive liberalism” and “political liberalism” is, once again, critical here: in a constitutional democracy “the public conception of justice should be, so far as possible, presented as independent of comprehensive religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines.” 19 A comprehensive liberalism, which Rawls defends in A Theory of Justice, dictates that the citizenry abide by certain metaphysical doctrines (religious or secular) as stipulated by the state. Yet Rawls insists that this version of liberalism wrongly denies the “diversity of reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines found in democratic societies as a permanent feature of their public culture” (PL, 136; my italics). Because Rawls does not openly believe that any civil theology is necessary or beneficial, he also contends that it is up to citizens, not the state, to decide the truth or falsity of beliefs through the process of public reason. Rawls also does not worry about the capacity of all human beings, whatever their faiths, to undertake this task. He insists that his citizenry has a “capacity for a sense of justice and a capacity for a conception of the good,” both of

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which must be expressed in rational ways so that a society based on “social cooperation” can result (PL, 19). Yet Rawls admits that this type of person comes from a “normative conception” of humanity, not from “natural science and social theory” (PL, 18n). In short, he is silent on the origin of this conception. Nevertheless, Rawls steadfastly rejects the accusation that he is indifferent to questions of “truth” regarding the norms that he presupposes: We try, as far as we can, neither to assert nor to deny any particular comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral view, or its associated theory of truth and the status of values. Since we assume each citizen to affirm some such view, we hope to make it possible for all to accept the political conception as true or reasonable from the standpoint of their own comprehensive view, whatever it may be. Properly understood, then, a political conception of justice need be no more indifferent, say, to truth in philosophy and morals than the principle of toleration, suitably understood, need be indifferent to truth in religion. (PL, 150–51)

Since Rawls’s citizens agree to a basis of public justification in matters of justice, and since no political agreement on those disputed questions can reasonably be expected, they must turn instead to the fundamental ideas shared through public political culture. From these ideas citizens reflect and try to work out a political concept of justice congruent with considered convictions. Once accomplished, citizens may within their comprehensive doctrines regard the political conception of justice true, reasonable, or whatever their views allow. As Kai Nielsen puts it, Rawls “was not in the business of answering Calvin or Luther or Nietzsche or Carl Schmitt or Marx or fundamentalists of any stripe.” 20 Although Rawls did not deny that “there may be a deep, contested truth or soundness in political liberalism,” a person “committed to political liberalism need not invoke or even grasp such a truth or soundness (if indeed there is one) to achieve agreement with other political liberals who hold very different metaphysical and epistemological views.” 21 The radical nature of what Rawls articulates as “political liberalism” is in striking contrast to the history of the liberal tradition as a whole. If Rawls is successful in defending a liberalism that requires no underlying metaphysical doctrines to legitimize it, then he has pulled off a feat that no other liberal philosopher has ever accomplished. 22 In accord with his discussion of the civil theology that is at the root of early modern liberalism, Voegelin elsewhere contends that every regime in history has required “minimum dogmas” to provide a semblance of legitimacy to the regime. These doctrines need not be strictly true or evident in the philosophical sense (they are, after all, dogmas), but they require obedience. Moreover, because they are dogmas (or theologies), they may not easily withstand philosophical scrutiny. The

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first defenders of early modern liberalism did not believe that these dogmas would unduly suppress freedom. Voegelin notes in the case of Spinoza that the latter “conceived the idea of an aristocratic government that would institute a state religion on the basis of a minimum dogma but leave to everybody the freedom of adding as much as he wanted to the minimum as long as he did not try to enforce his additions on others.” 23 Like Rawls, Spinoza affirms, in his Theologico-Political Treatise (1670), the freedom of citizenry to decide on the truth of these questions, but with the un-Rawlsian proviso that the state ought to play some role in laying out comprehensive doctrines, or what Spinoza calls the “doctrines of the universal faith”: these include belief in God, His forgiveness, and the command to love thy neighbor. 24 Whether Spinoza himself believed in these dogmas is a much contested question, not least because of Leo Strauss’s influential interpretation of Spinoza as a Machiavellian who measures the value of religion solely in terms of its political utility. 25 Voegelin appears to follow the Straussian hermeneutic of suspicion when he writes: The position of Spinoza differs, moreover, from that of his predecessors insofar as he himself did not believe in the minimum dogma but advanced it as a bit of exoteric political advice for the satisfaction of the multitude. The ideas of Spinoza are, therefore, the first high point in the new development, indicated previously, towards psychological management of the masses by playing on their convictions in order to keep them satisfied, while the player himself does not necessarily share them. 26

Although Voegelin exudes a critical tone here with regard to Spinoza’s honesty, he elsewhere associates Spinoza with a long line of philosophical double-truth that goes as far back as Plato: “Spinoza the mystic needed the dogma for himself no more than Plato, but created it deliberately, as did Plato, for the mass of men whose spiritual strength is weak and who can absorb the spirit only in the form of dogmatic symbols.” 27 In Rawlsian terms, however, Spinoza’s liberalism is, unfortunately, “comprehensive.” Where does Rawls stand on the famous Platonic teaching of the “noble fiction” in politics? At first glance, he appears to be hostile to such a project. As early as A Theory of Justice, he opposes the use of this strategy in politics. Rawls sternly remarks: There is no necessity to invoke theological or metaphysical doctrines to support its principles, nor to imagine another world that compensates for and corrects the inequalities which the two principles permit in this one. Conceptions of injustice must be justified by the conditions of our life as we know it or not at all. (TJ, 398)

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In a footnote on the same page, he adds that “such devices as Plato’s Noble Lie in the Republic, bk. III, 414–415, are ruled out, as well as the advocacy of religion (when not believed) to buttress a social system that could not otherwise survive, as by the Grand Inquisitor in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov” 28 (TJ, 398n). In Political Liberalism, he also resists the temptation to make use of religious or mythical ideas in the public square as well as the assumption that many human beings may require an authority independent of human reason. In the introduction, Rawls recounts the old debates during the Enlightenment over the proper use of religion in the public square: Is the knowledge or awareness of how we are to act directly accessible only to some, or to a few (the clergy, say), or is it accessible to every person who is normally reasonable and conscientious? Again, is the moral order required of us derived from an external source, say from an order of value in God’s intellect, or does it arise in some way from human nature itself (either from reason or feeling or from a union of both), together with the requirements of living together in society? Finally, must we be persuaded or compelled to bring ourselves in line with the requirements of our duties and obligations by some external motivation, say, by divine sanctions or by those of the state; or are we so constituted that we have in our nature sufficient motives to lead us to act as we ought without the need of external threats and inducements? (PL, xxvi–xxvii)

Although Rawls concludes that his political liberalism does not take a general position on the three questions above, he further remarks that “political liberalism does affirm the second alternative in each case with respect to a political conception of justice for a constitutional democratic regime” (PL, xxvii). We no longer need the theological-metaphysical doctrines of the past that preoccupied Hume and Kant. Rawls concludes the introduction with the simple assumption that a “reasonably just political society is possible” (PL, lx). With a nod to Kant, he later calls this assumption a “reasonable faith” (PL, 172). Presumably, this faith is not a comprehensive doctrine or civil theology, at least according to Rawls. One large question that arises out of Rawls’s belief in the human rationality that makes good government possible is whether this assumption counts as a minimum dogma or comprehensive doctrine all its own. Despite Rawls’s opposition to the usage of religion in politics (as opposed to the accommodation of belief), does he presuppose a civil theology? There is considerable debate over this possibility. Some have argued that the liberal Protestantism of Rawls’s youth persisted as an influence upon his later philosophy. 29 Others have warned against reading too much religious (that is, Christian) content into his mature thought. 30 I am inclined to believe that Rawls went out of his way to avoid any hint of a reliance on civil theology (or religion as a whole), even though his political philosophy ultimately requires it. 31 Admit-

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tedly, this interpretation is not so easy to demonstrate, given the fact that Rawls’s official views on religion are traditionally analytical (and thus dismissive). Although he wrote a thesis on “the meaning of sin and faith” as an undergraduate at Princeton in 1942 (which was posthumously published in 2009 32), Rawls, in the last years of his life, warned against the temptation of reading any religious content (including the influence of liberal Protestantism on his thought as a young man) into his mature philosophy. His short essay “On My Religion,” which he wrote in 1997, is the only essay in his oeuvre in which he devotes considerable attention to religion in a personal vein. The essay begins with the assertion: “My religion is of interest only to me, as its various phases and how they followed one another are not unusual or especially instructive.” 33 In the next two pages, as he recounts a series of events that he witnessed as a soldier fighting the Japanese during World War II, Rawls poignantly describes how he gradually lost his Christian faith amid the horrors of war. Then he turns to the history of various attempts by theologians to defend the most indefensible evils in the name of God’s providence. Clearly, like most analytical philosophers, Rawls doubts that these exercises in theodicy have been well spent, not least because the Church itself was guilty of oppression and persecution in its long history before the dawn of the Enlightenment. “The history of the Church includes a story of its long historical ties to the state and its use of political power to establish its hegemony and to oppress other religions.” 34 Traditional doctrines such as predestination and papal infallibility do not withstand Rawls’s philosophical scrutiny any better than the actual behavior of the Church through the Middle Ages and Reformation. 35 The upshot of this conventional secular portrayal of Christianity is, at least for Rawls, the stubborn fact that faith and reason will always be antagonists. Continuing with his autobiographical tone, Rawls observes: “To the extent that Christianity is taken seriously, I came to think it could have deleterious effects on one’s character. Christianity is a solitary religion: each is saved or damned individually, and we naturally focus on our own salvation to the point where nothing else matters.” 36 In short, Christianity has no political utility as long as its adherents focus on their place in heaven instead of relieving human suffering in this vale of tears. This last observation should not suggest that Rawls supports the exclusion of religions from his version of liberal democracy. After a brief and sympathetic discussion of Jean Bodin’s pluralism (which he defended in The Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime), Rawls reaffirms his defense of political liberalism by remarking that “the religions of the seven are each reasonable” and in accord with public reason. “Part of the significance of this is that a person’s religion is often no better or worse than they are as persons, and the idea of the reasonable, or some analogous idea, must always be reasonable.” 37 The ques-

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tion that Rawls leaves unanswered here is: reasonable according to whose criterion? In this autobiographical essay, Rawls never explains what is “reasonable” about religion. Instead, at the end of “On My Religion,” Rawls indirectly dismisses this question by restating the conventional analytical view that religion at best does not help rational inquiry, and at worst hinders it altogether: Now if we deny the existence of God, we do deny the existence of a reason with divine powers, but do we deny the soundness of reason’s content? There is a great divide on this point. For my part, I don’t see how it is possible that the content and validity of reason should be affected by whether God exists or not, thinking of God as a being with will. We cannot deny the validity of those inferences or the truth of the facts recognized as true. If we do this, we undercut our reasoning about anything and might as well babble at random. 38

Why, then, does Rawls argue that political liberalism should accommodate religious perspectives that “babble at random?” In the last two paragraphs of this essay, Rawls restates his view, which he elaborates upon in Political Liberalism, that religion is indeed reasonable as long as “divine practical reason” will connect “with social facts about how human beings are related in society and to one another.” 39 There must be broad agreement, or a “stable overlapping consensus” about what these facts are (see PL, 152). “Given these facts as they undeniably are in our social world, the basic judgements of reasonableness must be the same, whether made by God’s reason or by ours. This invariant content of reasonableness—without which our thought collapses—doesn’t allow otherwise, however pious it might seem to attribute everything to the divine will.” 40 Ultimately, it matters what religious folks do, not what they believe, “for what is punishable in religion is not beliefs, but deeds.” 41 Perhaps needless to say, there is no “in-between” existence (metaxy) in which humanity seeks understanding of the divine. Rather, there is the sheer necessity of subordinating religion to the liberal social contract, a practice that goes as far back as Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke. It sounds as if Rawls is simply restating the idea of “reflective equilibrium” that he outlined in A Theory of Justice. In this state of equilibrium, which results from a rigorous “going back and forth” in dialogue, citizens in Rawls’s just society will eventually “know to what principles our judgments conform and the premises of their derivation,” even if “further examination” is necessary (TJ, 18). Despite his efforts to distinguish between his two big works, Rawls also gives the impression that he is anticipating his view, as expressed in Political Liberalism, that a true liberal regime should not take any official stance on the truth-value of a religious perspective. As long as metaphysical views (whether religious or secular) do not lead to violent conflict or “civil strife” (PL, 152), all will be well. An “overlapping consen-

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sus” is possible as long as religious and secular folks agree on the facts, as stated earlier. A “reasonable pluralism” (PL, 153) will function as long as there is no fundamental disagreement. These passages are about as close as Rawls gets in Political Liberalism to acknowledging a Voegelinian tension or gulf between principles and politics. At first glance, then, Rawls would be just the opposite of a “doxic thinker” who seeks to settle philosophical questions once and for all in the public square. 42 Still, the question remains: does Rawls need a “reasonable” religion? IS RELIGION NECESSARY IN POLITICS? None of the above discussion denies that Rawls sees religious ideas as useful. The proviso is that religious ideas must conform with liberal credos. In his essay on “public reason,” he acknowledges that if a Christian endorsed a constitutional democratic regime in accord with his belief that God sets limits to human liberty, that would be acceptable. 43 For this reason, Rawls approvingly refers to Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. as appropriate examples of how religious speech can be compatible with public reason (PL, 249–50, 254). A “concern for salvation” need not “require anything incompatible with that liberty” (PL, 153). Unsurprisingly, then, it sounds as if Rawls desires a liberal version of religion. 44 My interest, however, is in detecting the presence, in Rawls’s thought, of a “civil theology” of the sort that Voegelin describes. This possibility is worth exploring in light of the fact that Rawls in Political Liberalism is resigned to the inevitability that religion will never disappear. In the introduction, Rawls writes that “the fact of religious division remains” (PL, xxiv). This statement is consistent with his oftexpressed view that the “diversity” of reasonable and comprehensive doctrines is a “permanent feature” of life in a liberal democratic state (PL, 36; see also 64n, 129, 150). To some critics, it is far from obvious that Rawls is right about the facts here. For example, the Marxist historian Perry Anderson chides Rawls for ignoring the rise of secular states in the West: “Given the relentless advance of secularization in all European societies, the fate of supernatural beliefs today tells, of course, against rather than for Rawls’s assumption. Perhaps American anachronism here has misled him.” 45 (Given the steady rise of political Islam in the United Kingdom and Europe since the end of the Cold War, perhaps Marxian anachronism here has misled Anderson. 46) Recalling Voegelin’s argument that the Oxfordian philosophers were indifferent to the danger that many of their cherished assumptions could not withstand philosophical scrutiny and depend on a civil theology more than they know or admit, is Rawls smuggling into his liberalism a theology that he would otherwise consider unnecessary at best and false at worst? Does his

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exoteric political liberalism require an esoteric comprehensive liberalism? I ask these questions because I suspect that Rawls depends on a particular religion—Christianity—more than he acknowledges, particularly in his treatment of “equality.” 47 VOEGELIN, RAWLS, AND THE ORIGINS OF EQUALITY In his discussion of the Platonic hierarchy of souls, which sharply distinguishes between those who are close to the divine and those who are far away from it, Voegelin notes that the “experience of creaturely equality before a transcendent God” which fits within a “Christian orbit” is absent “in the Platonic experience.” 48 In other words, it is not natural to believe that all human beings are equal before the divine, given the fact that there is substantial disagreement over the meaning of the “divine.” Voegelin is not claiming that Christianity has a monopoly on the belief in equality before God, a credo that appears in Stoicism as well. What is instructive about his approach is that an historical study of equality reminds us that equality is not an abstraction that all human beings embrace just because they happen to reason it out in dialogue with others. In his essay on the Oxfordians, Voegelin laments the ignorance of moderns who fail to understand how cherished secular principles have historically specific origins. A typical modern political theorist “will be blind to the fact that his own secular state is not quite so secular as he believes it is, but that civil rights and democratic recognition of equality derive from an idea of man that has grown in the shelter of Stoic cosmology and Christian faith, and hence does not make sense to men who do not live in this cultural tradition” (OPP, 26). If I have interpreted Rawls accurately, it is hard to imagine him worrying about the particular religious or philosophical origins of equality. It is even harder to imagine him endorsing a “comprehensive” liberalism that is based on the minimum dogma or civil theology that explicitly recognizes these origins. Rawls instead expects peoples of all faiths (and those without faith) to embrace equality under conditions of “political liberalism” for the sake of peace in his just society. At the very least, they should not let their religious beliefs seriously conflict with a belief in human equality. To act otherwise is to act in an unreasonable manner. As J. Judd Owen has astutely argued, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Rawls simply conflates what is “reasonable” with what is “liberal.” 49 As many of his critics from the Right and the Left have suspected, Rawls dresses up historically specific ideas as abstract truths (or at least judgments) that everyone should accept, however uneasily. Yet Rawls never suggests that these ideas depend upon any religious traditions from which they originate. Nor does he worry about the possible tension between his idea of reason or

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the “reasonable” and his own ethical preferences. Perhaps, as we have seen, he simply has faith that people will reason together in order to avoid serious disagreements. Yet this faith requires no religious basis. This blind spot on Rawls’s part appears in both of his major works on liberalism. In A Theory of Justice Rawls insists that the “original position” requires a sense of universal love of humanity that is essential to his social contract: It may seem strange at first that we should have the desire to act from a conception of right and justice. How is it possible that moral principles can engage our affections? In justice as fairness there are several answers to this question. First of all, as we have seen, moral principles are bound to have a certain content. Since they are chosen by rational persons to adjudicate competing claims, they define agreed ways of advancing human interests. . . . But secondly, it is also the case that the sense of justice is continuous with the love of mankind. I noted earlier that benevolence is at a loss when the many objects of its love oppose one another. The principles of justice are needed to guide it. The difference between the sense of justice and the love of mankind is that the latter is supererogatory, going beyond the moral requirements and not invoking the exemptions which the principles of natural duty and obligation allow. Yet clearly the objects of these two sentiments are closely related, being defined in large part by the same conception of justice. If one of them seems natural and intelligible, so is the other. (TJ, 416–17)

Even Rawls’s most sympathetic readers have spotted some metaphysical baggage here. Nielsen pointedly asks: “why is it, or is it, that a man is in any way faulted in his rationality if he does not love mankind?” 50 Although Voegelin and Nielsen share few philosophical assumptions, they both agree that certain cherished moral notions may not withstand close philosophical scrutiny. Yet Rawls, in A Theory of Justice, like his Oxfordian predecessors, evinces no worry about the survival or staying power of the sentiments that feed these notions. They are “natural and intelligible,” after all. Does Political Liberalism require such a love, notwithstanding some exemptions? I believe that it is implicitly required within his system, which strives to avoid comprehensive liberalism. Rawls expects his citizens to be tolerant or accepting of each other, to disagree without being disagreeable. These sentiments sound uncannily like a version of universal love, although Rawls makes no connection between these attitudes. He simply expects that citizens will generally accept liberal norms or at least not go out of their way to undermine them. Rawls, whether he admits or not, is depending on a religious precondition that he considers philosophically obsolete (even though, oddly enough, religion is also a “permanent” feature of a pluralistic society). The last thing that Rawls would consider is privileging one religion over another since, as we have seen, he believes that all religious communities can act reasonably (or in accordance with liberalism). Rawls’s insistence that

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religious beliefs be translated into the language of public reason, which is accessible to all, may even be reminiscent of St. Paul’s attempts to translate Christian symbols into the language of the pagan Greeks whom he encountered on his travels. 51 Spinoza, Rawls’s great liberal predecessor, made similar arguments about the need for philosophers to accommodate the “vulgar” by communicating ethical ideas in a manner that their limited understanding could grasp (ad captum vulgi loqui). Rawls is also clear on the importance of accommodating only those religious beliefs that are “not a threat to democratic institutions.” 52 In order to make this reality possible, Rawls has to fall back on a concept of universal love to which he referred in A Theory of Justice. Put differently, an attitude of easy tolerance of others likely requires the belief (comprehensive doctrine?) that all human beings have value. Do all religions teach this? Does secular rationalism even teach this? These questions, as far as I know, do not interest Rawls. Yet this is another example of Rawls’s profound failure to think through the historical and religious origins of the liberal morality that he assumes to be “reasonable.” As George Grant once wrote, the belief that all human beings have value (or are equal, in some sense) is hard to sustain through rational argumentation. The only alternative foundation for this belief is religious. “This religious basis for equality seems to me the only adequate one, because I cannot see why one should embark on the immensely difficult social practice of treating each person as important unless there is something intrinsically valuable about personality.” 53 Yet, as analytical philosophers constantly remind us, this assumption of intrinsic value is just a preference that is far less rational than the assumption that people simply have instrumental value. 54 Political Liberalism is ultimately no more successful than A Theory of Justice in demonstrating that rationality requires love of humanity or our intrinsic value as persons. Rawls simply asserts that “the knowledge and ways of reasoning that ground our affirming the principles of justice and their application to constitutional essentials and basic justice are to rest on the plain truths now widely accepted, or available, to citizens generally” (PL, 225). Yet he never demonstrates that any of this counts as a “plain truth” to all human beings. Rawls is oblivious to the problem of Hume’s “sensible knave,” a rational person who pays lip service to moral conventions even as he secretly flouts them if they do not serve his interests. 55 Although this person is reprehensible, Rawls would have difficulty explaining why he is irrational. If cherished norms lack a rational or empirical basis, Rawls has no choice but to fall back by necessity on a religious tradition. For this reason, even sympathetic readers of Rawls, such as the analytical Marxist G. A. Cohen, came to the conclusion that a truly egalitarian society in which people treat each other as equals would require a “revolution in feeling or motivation” that Rawlsian prescriptions and rules would not make possible. Instead,

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only Christianity would effect this “revolution in the human soul.” 56 In Voegelinian terms, “Christian substances” must precede secular justice in modernity. VOEGELIN, RAWLS, AND AMERICA IN 2019 If Rawls’s A Theory of Justice did not fit easily with the strife-torn America of its time, how well does Rawls’s Political Liberalism fit within the Trump era? American Christianity, at least measured in terms of mainstream church attendance and belief, is in decline. 57 Is the rising secularization of America, then, leading to a new birth of moderation? As we have seen, Voegelin would warn against this hasty and uninformed conclusion. There is a great deal of angry talk about equality across the entire political spectrum. We live in an age that sharply contrasts with what Voegelin admired most about England’s political culture, one that “has engendered loyalties that motivate justification rather than dissolving criticism” (OPP, 37). The Rawlsian insistence on “reasonable” discourse seems to be missing in action amid the political polarization that is the new normal in America. The contemporary version of what Voegelin calls “New-Leftist egalitarianism” conflates “equality” with special entitlements for variously aggrieved groups on the margins. To say the least, the radical Left today has no interest in preserving a Christian heritage, even if it sometimes uses theological language for propagandistic purposes. It has even less interest in practicing the Rawlsian version of “accommodating” traditionalists who disagree with current Left-liberal credos. What Voegelin calls the “Puritans of the Left” are now openly hostile to Christianity even as they impose their own secularized idea of “the elect” on the citizenry (OPP, 40). In today’s political parlance, this attitude rationalizes the denial of free speech to all those critics (usually on the political Right) who question the new “equality.” 58 It is a safe bet that this political climate is not what Rawls would have desired or anticipated. Yet it is hard to see how his insistence on people acting “reasonably” protects us from these toxic ideologies with any more success than the ideas of the post–World War II Oxfordians protected Britain from similar outrages. Abstractions that are divorced from historical experience provide a weak inoculation against ideology. At the end of his essay on these authors, Voegelin reminds readers of the inconvenient truth that the real meaning of equality requires a sobering recognition that neither conscience nor appeals to moral principle can save us from evil: All men are equal, to be sure, or they would not be individuals of one species; but sometimes it is forgotten that the point in which they most certainly are equal is their capacity for evil. Enough of that evil is rampant; and this is no

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time to pat the viciously ignorant on the back for being “sincere,” or abiding by their conscience. (OPP, 46)

The contemporary version of the “New Left” has no sympathy with this toughminded understanding of equality, one that is based on the biblical idea of fallenness. The humility that is at the heart of this truth demands far more than a good “conscience,” which can rationalize extremism and violence. Voegelin’s preference for a “polis” that still “offers the opportunity for full actualization of human nature” does not fit any democracy in our age (OPP, 45). However, the philosopher who recognizes the fundamental tension between ideals and reality has always had the profound duty to resist the easy temptation to conform with unstable political realities, even if “that brings him into conflict with an environment infested by dubious ideologies and political theologies.” (OPP, 46) The alternative is to pretend that mere abstractions can counter the political radicalism of our post-Christian era. NOTES 1. This article was first published in Philosophical Quarterly 3:1 (1953). It is reprinted in Eric Voegelin, Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000). In my discussion, I cite this essay as OPP, with the page numbers from this volume. I am grateful to David Whitney for making helpful editorial suggestions. 2. Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (London: Phoenix, 1995): “Conservatism was thus reduced to trying to administer the enlarged state more efficiently” (254). 3. George Grant, English-Speaking Justice (Toronto: Anansi, 1985), 52. 4. J. D. Mabbott, The State and the Citizen: An Introduction to Political Philosophy (London: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1947). 5. See also Bjorn Thomassen, “Reason and Religion in Rawls: Voegelin’s Challenge,” Philosophia 40:2 (2012): 237–52. Although Thomassen provides a very fine Voegelinian critique of Rawls, he does not discuss Voegelin’s essay on the Oxfordians. 6. Paul Weithman, “John Rawls and the Task of Political Philosophy,” Review of Politics 71:1 (2009): 113. Berlin at times had doubts that political philosophy was still a vital discipline. See his “Does Political Theory Still Exist?” in The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays, Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer, eds. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 59–90. This essay first appeared in 1962. 7. David Boucher, “Editor’s Introduction,” in R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan, or Man, Society, Civilization, and Barbarism, revised edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), xv. 8. Kai Nielsen, “On Finding One’s Feet in Philosophy: From Wittgenstein to Marx,” in Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: The Political Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, David Rondel and Alex Sager, eds. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2012), 7. 9. See Grant, English-Speaking Justice, 39–42. See also Allan Bloom, “Justice: John Rawls versus the Tradition of Political Philosophy,” in Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 315–16. 10. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised edition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999 [1971]), 11. I henceforth cite this work as TJ in the text. 11. Grant contends that the abstract content of this book “is even more surprising when one remembers that the Vietnam War was justified in terms of liberal ideology, was largely planned by men from the liberal universities, the most influential of whom were from Rawls’s own university” (English-Speaking Justice, 42).

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12. Eric Voegelin, “Deformations of Faith,” VoegelinView, January 1, 2014. Available at https://voegelinview.com/deformations-of-faith-pt-1/. 13. John Rawls, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” University of Chicago Law Review 64:3 (Summer 1997): 806–7. 14. Rawls, “Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 807. 15. Ibid. 16. Bloom, “John Rawls,” 327. 17. Carlos Fraenkel, Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), xiv. 18. Fraenkel, Philosophical Religions, 298. 19. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, expanded edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005 [1993]), 144. I henceforth cite this work as PL. 20. Nielsen, “On There Being Wide Reflective Equilibria: Why It Is Important to Put It in the Plural,” in Pessimism of the Intellect, 47. 21. Ibid. 22. See Ismail Kurun, The Theological Origins of Liberalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016). 23. Eric Voegelin, “Spinoza,” in History of Political Ideas Volume 7: The New Order and Last Orientation (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 25), Jürgen Gebhardt and Thomas A. Holloweck, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 134. 24. Benedict Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, in The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 2, Edwin Curley, ed. and trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), 268–69. 25. Leo Strauss, “How to Study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise,” in Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 142–201. For a thoughtful critique of Strauss’s hermeneutic, see Nancy Levene, “Ethics and Interpretation, or How to Study Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus Without Strauss,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 10 (2000): 57–110. 26. Voegelin, “Spinoza,” 134–35. 27. Eric Voegelin, Order and History Volume 3: Plato and Aristotle (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 16), Dante Germino, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 317. 28. Defenders of Rawls argue that his concern with the truth and respect for human reason in both of his big works on justice and liberalism discourage him from embracing the Noble Lie. See Daniel Dombrowski, “Plato’s ‘Noble Lie,’” History of Political Thought 18:4 (Winter 1997): 577–78. 29. See Thomassen, “Reason and Religion in Rawls,” 240. Comparing Rawls to other twentieth-century philosophers, Weithman writes in “John Rawls and the Task of Political Philosophy”: “With the qualified exception of Dewey, he (Rawls) is the only one whose thought emerged from a formation in liberal Protestantism” (113). 30. Robert Merrihew Adams, “The Theological Ethics of the Young Rawls and Its Background,” in John Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, Thomas Nagel, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 24–101. 31. For a similar critique, see Brayton Polka, “History Between Biblical Religion and Modernity: Reflections on Rawls’ Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy,” European Legacy 7:4 (2002): 445–51. 32. John Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, Thomas Nagel, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). 33. John Rawls, “On My Religion,” in A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, 261. 34. Ibid., 264. 35. Ibid., 264–65. 36. Ibid., 265. 37. Ibid., 267. 38. Ibid., 268. 39. Ibid. 40. Ibid.

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41. Ibid., 269. 42. Thomassen, “Reason and Religion in Rawls,” 245. 43. Rawls, “Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 782. 44. J. Judd Owen, Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism: The Foundational Crisis of the Separation of Church and State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 97–128. 45. Perry Anderson, Spectrum (London: Verso, 2005), 106. 46. Despite my caviling here, Anderson’s overall critique of Rawls (pp. 103–12) is very insightful. 47. For a comprehensive discussion of the tensions between Rawls’s account of justice and Christian morality, as well as his subtle dependence on the latter, see Harlan R. Beckley, “A Christian Affirmation of Rawls’s Idea of Justice as Fairness—Part I,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 13:2 (1985): 210–42, and “A Christian Affirmation of Rawls’s Idea of Justice as Fairness—Part II,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 14:2 (1986): 229–46. See also David Walsh, “The Post-Liberal Spirituality of John Rawls,” Church Life Journal, June 22, 2018. Available at http://churchlife.nd.edu/2018/06/22/the-post-liberal-spirituality-of-john-rawls/. 48. Voegelin, Plato and Aristotle, 195. 49. Owen, Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism, 114. The proper limit of religious freedom in a liberal society is still a live issue in the literature on Rawls. See Paul Billingham, “Can My Religion Influence My Conception of Justice? Political Liberalism and the Role of Comprehensive Doctrines,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20:4 (2017): 403–24. 50. Kai Nielsen, “Rationality and the Moral Sentiments: Some Animadversions on a Theme in A Theory of Justice,” in Why Be Moral? (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1989), 220. 51. See Johannes A. Van Der Ven, “The Religious Hermeneutics of Public Reasoning: From Paul to Rawls,” in Rawls and Religion, Tom Bailey and Valentina Gentile, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 170–92. 52. Rawls, “Idea of Public Reason Revisited,” 806. 53. George Grant, “An Ethic of Community,” in The George Grant Reader, William Christian and Sheila Grant, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 69–70. 54. Weithman, in “John Rawls and the Task of Political Philosophy,” provides an informative discussion of the degree to which Rawls avoided these questions that arise from his own philosophical tradition (120–21). 55. David Hume, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1983), section 9, part 2. 56. G. A. Cohen, If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 2. 57. George Hawley, Demography, Culture, and the Decline of America’s Christian Denominations (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017). 58. See Paul Edward Gottfried, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 39–70, 131–49.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Robert Merrihew. “The Theological Ethics of the Young Rawls and Its Background.” In John Rawls, A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, Thomas Nagel, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 24–101. Anderson, Perry. Spectrum (London: Verso, 2005). Beckley, Harlan R. “A Christian Affirmation of Rawls’s Idea of Justice as Fairness—Part I,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 13:2 (1985): 210–42. ———. “A Christian Affirmation of Rawls’s Idea of Justice as Fairness—Part II,” The Journal of Religious Ethics 14:2 (1986): 229–46. Berlin, Isaiah. “Does Political Theory Still Exist?” In The Proper Study of Mankind: An Anthology of Essays, Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer, eds. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 59–90.

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Billingham, Paul. “Can My Religion Influence My Conception of Justice? Political Liberalism and the Role of Comprehensive Doctrines,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 20:4 (2017): 403–24. Bloom, Allan. “Justice: John Rawls versus the Tradition of Political Philosophy.” In Giants and Dwarfs: Essays 1960–1990 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 315–45. Boucher, David. “Editor’s Introduction.” In R. G. Collingwood, The New Leviathan, or Man, Society, Civilization, and Barbarism, revised edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), xiii–lviii. Cohen, G. A. If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001). Dombrowski, Daniel. “Plato’s ‘Noble Lie,’” History of Political Thought 18:4 (Winter 1997): 565–78. Fraenkel, Carlos. Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza: Reason, Religion, and Autonomy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Gottfried, Paul Edward. Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002). Grant, George. English-Speaking Justice (Toronto: Anansi, 1985). ———. “An Ethic of Community.” In The George Grant Reader, William Christian and Sheila Grant, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998). Hawley, George. Demography, Culture, and the Decline of America’s Christian Denominations (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017). Hume, David. Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1983). Kurun, Ismail. The Theological Origins of Liberalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016). Levene, Nancy. “Ethics and Interpretation, or How to Study Spinoza’s Tractatus TheologicoPoliticus Without Strauss,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 10 (2000): 57–110. Mabbott, J.D. The State and the Citizen: An Introduction to Political Philosophy (London: Hutchinson’s University Library, 1947). Nielsen, Kai. “On Finding One’s Feet in Philosophy: From Wittgenstein to Marx.” In Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: The Political Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, David Rondel and Alex Sager, eds. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2012), 1–13. ———. “On There Being Wide Reflective Equilibria: Why It Is Important to Put It in the Plural.” In Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will: The Political Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, David Rondel and Alex Sager, eds. (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2012), 41–73. ———. “Rationality and the Moral Sentiments: Some Animadversions on a Theme in A Theory of Justice.” In Why Be Moral? (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1989), 207–27. Owen, J. Judd. Religion and the Demise of Liberal Rationalism: The Foundational Crisis of the Separation of Church and State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001). Polka, Brayton. “History Between Biblical Religion and Modernity: Reflections on Rawls’ Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy,” European Legacy 7:4 (2002): 445–51. Rawls, John. A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, Thomas Nagel, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). ———. “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” In University of Chicago Law Review 64:3 (Summer 1997): 765–807. ———. “On My Religion.” In A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith, Thomas Nagel, ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 259–70. ———. Political Liberalism, expanded edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005 [1993]). ———. A Theory of Justice, revised edition (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999 [1971]). Roberts, Andrew. Eminent Churchillians (London: Phoenix, 1995). Spinoza, Benedict. Theological-Political Treatise. In The Collected Works of Spinoza, vol. 2, Edwin Curley, ed. and trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). Strauss, Leo. “How to Study Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise.” In Persecution and the Art of Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 142–201.

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Thomassen, Bjorn. “Reason and Religion in Rawls: Voegelin’s Challenge,” Philosophia 40:2 (2012): 237–52. Van Der Ven, Johannes A. “The Religious Hermeneutics of Public Reasoning: From Paul to Rawls.” In Rawls and Religion, Tom Bailey and Valentina Gentile, eds. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 170–92. Voegelin, Eric. “Deformations of Faith,” VoegelinView. January 1, 2014. Available at https:// voegelinview.com/deformations-of-faith-pt-1/ ———. Order and History Volume 3: Plato and Aristotle (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 16), Dante Germino, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000). ———. “The Oxford Political Philosophers.” In Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 24–46. ———. “Spinoza.” In History of Political Ideas Volume 7: The New Order and Last Orientation (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 25), Jürgen Gebhardt and Thomas A. Holloweck, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 126–36. Walsh, David. “The Post-Liberal Spirituality of John Rawls,” Church Life Journal, June 22, 2018. Available at http://churchlife.nd.edu/2018/06/22/the-post-liberal-spirituality-of-johnrawls/. Weithman, Paul. “John Rawls and the Task of Political Philosophy,” Review of Politics 71:1 (2009): 113–25.

Part II

Geopolitics Today

Chapter Six

The Comparative Politics of Eric Voegelin Lee Trepanier

These three essays—“Democracy in the New Europe” (1959), “Industrial Society in Search for Reason” (1960), and “Democracy and Industrial Society” (1964)—were written in a period of transition in Eric Voegelin’s career, having left Louisiana State University in the United States to Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany. 1 Already having published his best-known works—The New Science of Politics (1952) and Order and History Volumes 1–3 (1956–1957)—Voegelin was working on his mature theory of consciousness, later to be published as Anamnesis (1966), and his revised account of history, which would be published in Order and History Volume 4 (1974). 2 But during this period he also was preoccupied with pragmatic subjects, too. Relocated to Germany, at the heart of the European Cold War theater, Voegelin was concerned whether Germany could transition from an illiberal and ideological society to a liberal democratic one: could Germany transform itself to a democratic society with an industrial economy amid the ruins of World War II with its fragmented political culture and illiberal political institutions? 3 In Autobiographical Reflections, Voegelin remarked that “The motivations of my work, which culminates in a philosophy of history, are simple. They arise from the political situation” (CW 34, 118). The Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union, the unsteady recovery of Europe as liberal democracies, and the deficiencies in the social sciences to analyze contemporary events was the political context—and motivation— for Voegelin to write these essays. 4 Clear thinking was required to understand these events.

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Voegelin acknowledged that one of the motivations in accepting his appointment at Ludwig Maximilian University, and establishing a political science institute there, was his conviction that “the spirit of American democracy would be a good thing to have in Germany” (CW 34, 115–16). 5 The damage done by National Socialism on the German university had been enormous: the best professors were either murdered or had fled while the middling ones survived and remained, now determining “the general climate of the German universities, and that climate is mediocre and limited” (CW 34, 116). 6 Ideology, particularly Marxism, was the predominant climate of opinion and prevented social scientists from pursuing their studies without inference. The authority of great German scholars had disappeared with the scholars themselves. Voegelin hoped that he and his political institute, Institut für Politische Wissenschaft, would inject “an element of international consciousness, and of democratic attitudes, into German political science” (CW 34, 116). German students were not accustomed to be as independently minded as Americans who spoke freely and asked questions. Although Voegelin later admitted that he was not as successful in changing German political science, he did influence those students whom he personally trained to adopt American and democratic attitudes toward political science and politics. 7 Voegelin’s work during this period therefore reflects a more pragmatic direction in both his teaching and research. In his essays “Industrial Society in Search for Reason” and “Democracy and Industrial Society,” Voegelin examined why industrial society functioned better in America than in Germany and whether the American model could be exported to Europe, while in “Democracy in the New Europe,” Voegelin explored whether Europe could be a continental power like the United States and the Soviet Union. In these essays Voegelin was concerned with the political science problem of size, political culture, and economics: whether democracy and industrial society could exist in mass society other than in the United States. This chapter consequently will review Voegelin’s claims made in these three essays, draw out the critical concepts relevant to comparative political science, and determine what Voegelin’s model of politics can teach comparative political scientists today. Well-established is Voegelin’s contribution to political theory and philosophy, but very little work has been done with respect to his perspective on the practical politics side of his political science. 8 This chapter therefore pushes Voegelinian studies into a new and more pragmatic direction in the study of political science and, like Voegelin, hopes to help political scientists think more clearly about political science and contemporary political events.

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DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW EUROPE At the inauguration of the Bavarian Academy for Political Education, a bipartisan and publicly supported institution for scholarship and teaching in civic education in Munich, Voegelin delivered his lecture which was later published as “Democracy in the New Europe.” In this essay Voegelin raised the question how freedom and democracy could be preserved after the adoption of a liberal democratic constitution. Citizens must possess a character that “is a state of daily, well-exercised, and habitual vigilance and discipline in the fundamental questions of political life” (CW 11, 59). In other words, democracy can exist only “when civic virtue exists” (CW 11, 60). Unlike ideology, civic virtue was the proper social basis for all political action and required a “sound knowledge of the principles of social coexistence among free men in a free society” (ibid.). For Voegelin, these principles of social coexistence were not discovered in contemporary political science, but in the Judeo-Christian and democratic traditions of the West. In tracing the genealogy of the phrase, “government of the people, by the people, for the people,” Voegelin showed how these remarks in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address were from the prologue of John Wycliffe’s 1384 Bible translation: “This Bible is for the Government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” It was neither cultural maturity nor ethnic citizenship that determined whether a people could govern themselves, but one “that experienced its birth under God” and, if needed, necessitated a rebirth to be able to govern (CW 11, 61). According to Voegelin, the English reformers of the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries achieved democratization when they modeled their national society after the Christian community. 9 However, this attempt to transform the Christian community into a national one erased the distinction between spiritual and secular authority. The reformers, for example, were inspired by the theopolity of Israel and sought to make Mosaic law the civic law of England instead of common law. This conflict between the reformers and the establishment led to emigrations, civil war, and the persecutions of the seventeenth century. From these struggles emerged the idea of civil government: a national community of Christians who should not make: . . . ecclesiastical-organizational and dogmatic differences the object of political struggles and that there would be a specific civil sphere of life to which political authority is limited by its legal organization. It is such civil government that we call democracy. (CW 11, 62)

But what were the functions and conditions of this civil government? For Voegelin, the function of the civil government was to protect the life, free-

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dom, and property of its citizens by civil and criminal law and protection of society against external enemies. Civil government was to refrain from the “life-spheres of reason and of spirit”: the freedom of thought and discussion (“the life-sphere of reason”) and the freedom of belief and consciousness (“the life-sphere of the spirit”). But this separation of the political (civil government) and nonpolitical (reason and the spirit) was possible only if citizens did not tolerate any group that sought to take advantage of the authority of the state to impose their ideas and belief upon their fellow citizens. Democracy therefore was only tolerant to “those who are willing to submit to the conditions of civil government” (CW 11, 62). To those whom democracy should be intolerant depended upon historical circumstances for Voegelin: Catholics and Puritans in seventeenth-century England; National Socialists and Communists in twentieth-century Germany. Voegelin spoke approvingly of the American electoral college and the de Gaulle constitution where anti-democratic parties were minimalized because these election laws served to strengthen and stabilize democracies rather than disrupt them, as were the cases in Weimar Germany and the First Austrian Republic. Voegelin faulted the democratic parties of the 1920s for their lack of knowledge and resoluteness in allowing anti-democratic parties on the left and the right to participate in Germany and Austria. For Voegelin, it would have been better for these democratic parties to engage in a civil war with their anti-democratic foes rather than have National Socialism triumph and trigger World War II (CW 11, 63–64). The idea of civil government in theory and constitutional practice was created in England and America and, during the nineteenth century, became the model for continental European countries to emulate. 10 The challenge during Voegelin’s time was “activating democracy for the organization of Europe” (CW 11, 65). The “federative joining” of the European states system had become a necessity because “the scale of societies necessary for an independent, free existence has changed significantly” (ibid.). Although democracy developed within the nation state, it must adapt to a new form, as “the time for the Western nation states has run out” (ibid.). For Voegelin, civil government was the only possible way forward for a federative Europe, as the past imperial attempts of Napoleon and Hitler had failed. With the backing of American military and economic power, Europe has a chance to establish a federative Europe as civil government, an opportunity that may not come again (CW 11, 66). 11 The transformation of the agrarian order to industrial society raised this problem of size for civil government: the optimal utilization of industrial technology required a society a certain size of territory and population. 12 As Voegelin put it, “A modern economic constitution necessitates the size of the American or Russian society. A European society would also belong to this scale” (CW 11, 67). European states were too small to develop the “state of

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technological development” to match the power of the Soviet Union or the United States. 13 Although this is a harsh reality that Europeans must confront, it also potentially has a positive prospect for democracy. For a civil government to be a permanent and stable government, it must have free and independent people, which included an economic basis that allowed sufficient freedom of movement, thought, and education to participate in democratic life. Contrary to Marx’s predictions of class warfare, the United States had experienced material security for all its citizens first through social welfare legislation and later through labor productivity through technological development. This standard of living was so high and secured that class warfare faded away as a political possibility (CW 11, 67–68). 14 What had transpired in America was possible in Europe if Europeans were willing to adapt to the conditions of a large-scale industrial society, including the closing of unproductive sectors of the economy for more productive ones and allowing unemployment that would accompany it (CW 11, 69). Critical for this project to succeed was that Europeans themselves must be educated in economic skills of mobility and adaptability as well as in democracy. Civic education therefore was to teach the younger generation not only democratic ideas of limited government, but also the economic skills needed for a unified European market and state to succeed. INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY IN SEARCH FOR REASON But what did Voegelin mean by “industrial society”? One possible answer can be found in his 1960 essay, “Industrial Society in Search of Reason,” where Voegelin wrote about the pragmatic rationality derived from industrial technology. These features were 1) the worker was separated from his tools by technology; 2) the worker no longer produced anything by him- or herself or in small groups; 3) the socialization of work was organized around a complex of raw material and technologies because production transpired at a large scale; with 4) the result was an increasingly interdependence of member of society; where 5) everyone was dependent on the smooth functioning of organization; and 6) the “assurance of an annual increase in productivity as soon as the organization has attained the sector of technical research” (CW 11, 178). These features of industrial society determined the optimum size of society, with the United States and the Soviet Union fulfilling these requirements and European states being too small. Repeating what he had said in his earlier essay, Voegelin warned that if these European states wish to survive as a matter of “power politics,” they need to form a federative union to compete with America and the Soviet Union.

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Because of the pragmatic rationality of industrial society, the legitimacy of ideology had become diminished because there was a basic agreement on questions of social organization. However, there were still questions to be addressed regarding the organization of mass society: 1) who should own the instruments of production; 2) whether planning should be carried out by private companies or the government; and 3) the role of economic class status in society. In addressing these questions, Voegelin compared the Soviet Union with the West as two possible models. The Soviet model was the creation of an industrial society to compete with the West with the state owning the instruments of production and planning accordingly. With its immanentist eschatological ideology, the Communist Party did not represent the proletariat, but was really a sectarian community that imposed its despotic rule on people. The question for the Soviet Union was how long would its irrational ideology be able to resist the growing pressures of pragmatic rationality as it developed its economy (CW 11, 179–80). 15 By contrast, the West had favored a mixture of private and public ownership of the instruments of production and planning the economy with citizens supported by a welfare state and labor productivity. 16 However, the problem that confronted the West was similar to the Soviet Union in providing a civil theology for its citizens. Throughout its history, the West had adopted several different models—the Gelasian system, the minimum dogma, the state cult, and civil government—before settling on constitutional democracy where the constitution had become an article of faith in society (CW 11, 182–83). If this condition were fulfilled, society could become pluralistic with various intellectual and spiritual movements coexisting without subverting the constitutional order. 17 Voegelin’s assumptions here were that humans can participate in the life of reason (logos or transcendent nous); that this participation influenced their characters; and that the life of reason was potentially available to all but “empirically (for whatever reason) they are unequal in the actualization of their potentiality” (CW 11, 180). 18 Thus, only a few humans were capable of an optimum actualization in the life of reason, with the result that society was a de facto hierarchical structure in terms of actualizing this life. Society consequently was defined by the degree to which the life of reason was “actively carried out by a minority of its members” and was a socially effective force throughout society (CW 11, 181). Although all societies were elite-driven for Voegelin, he preferred constitutional democracy over the Soviet model as emblematic of the “good society.” The “good society” was 1) “large enough and wealthy enough to make the life of reason possible, at least for the minority capable of putting this human potentiality to work”; and 2) “organized in such a way that the life of reason becomes a social force in a society’s culture, including its political affairs” (CW 11, 183). However, the good society was not an eschatological

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goal, but an achievement that was subject to decline and fall. It was incompatible with the utopian visions of modern ideologues. In discussing the “good society,” Voegelin also revisited the problem of size with classical thinkers preferring a small community and moderns a large one. But with technology, industrial society became possible, along with the developments of representative government, federalism, and—due to Christianity—civil society: “the meaning of human existence is no longer circumscribed by its expression in political life” (CW 11, 184). Furthermore, the universal acceptance of a certain material standard of living, only possible in a mass industrial society, continued to make the problem of size a relevant one, whether organizing one’s own society or how societies interact with one another at the international level. Connected with the issue of size was the problem of viability where a society must have absorbed and preserved the classical and Christian traditions in both theory and practice to become a functioning constitutional democracy. 19 For Voegelin, one must take into account the historical and contemporary dynamics to see whether a society should adopt constitutional democracy or “some form of enlightened despotism, autocracy, or military dictatorship” (CW 11, 187). Thus, the suitability of constitutional democracy was determined by the historical and cultural components of a society. This raised a series of questions that Voegelin asked about the relationship between Western and non-Western civilizations: Was the impact of the West on non-Western civilization positive and progressive or one of suffering and disaster? Was rapid industrialization copied from the West always the best way to achieve the “good society”? Should non-Western civilizations develop their own indigenous institutions to compete with the West? Although Voegelin left these questions unanswered, he clearly believed that certain historical and cultural requirements were necessary before a society could become a Western-style constitutional democracy. Besides the problems of size and viability, Voegelin wrote about the life of reason as a third component for the “good society.” Voegelin began his discussion of the life of reason by dividing it into pragmatic and noetic: the former was concerned with the rational actions in the sciences of the external world, such as technology and coordinating means and ends; the latter was the rational action “in the sciences of man, society, and history” that provided existential meaning for both the individual and society as a whole (CW 11, 188). The two types of rational action were relatively independent of each other, so that a society could be pragmatically rational but noetically irrational. 20 For Voegelin rational noetic debate was difficult at the international level, especially among different civilizations. First, in some civilizations, like India and China, the life of reason was still part of cosmological myth, whereas in the West the life of reason had become extricated from myth. Even if there

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were leaders capable of carrying on a rational discussion in the Western sense of the term, the masses still believed in the world of myth. This in turn raised pragmatic difficulties, such as persuading a population who still lives in the world of myth of rational ways of organization and administration (e.g., habits of diets should be modified, the caste system should be eliminated) (CW 11, 188–89). 21 Second, the West had developed ideologies that denied participation in the life of the transcendent reason. The result was that rational discussion was impossible whether with ideologues in the West, Communists in the Soviet Union, or non-European university students who have been indoctrinated in a “strange cocktail of Rousseau-Marx-John Dewey” (CW 11, 189). Ideologues may not be able to destroy the life of noetic reason, but the damage inflicted was serious and would take at least a generation for noetic reason to become visible and persuasive again. But even if this were possible, Voegelin warned that the dissemination of such knowledge on a massive scale, whether by the media or academic organizations, to non-Western civilizations “may do more harm than good” (CW 11, 190). Unlike the ideologue, the person with noetic reason possessed a humility about what one would say and do and what effect it may have in society. For Voegelin, one may know the life of reason and the good society—and try to cultivate them—but “that is all one can do; whether or not this offer is accepted depends on the Spirit that blows where It pleases” (ibid.). As all societies began to transform themselves under the pragmatic reason of industrial society, the question was whether they, as in the West, would rediscover the life of noetic reason in an age of ideology; or, in the Soviet Union case, continue to have an irrational ideology counter the rationality of industrialization; or, finally with non-Western societies, see whether the rationality of industrialization was compatible with the world of myth among the many and Western-ideological thinking in the elites. DEMOCRACY AND INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY In Voegelin’s next essay about industrial society, he explored how the American economy had adapted to ever-changing economic circumstances, with its technological productivity and rationalization of forms of production now being led by the service sector. The structure of American industrial society had been so transformed by the service sector such that macro-economic comparisons between the United States and the Soviet Union were defective (e.g., GNP, steel production) because these indices “express qualitatively diverse structures of economy and society” (CW 11, 209). The structure of the economy, the basis of wealth, and the agents of productivity were

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so different between the United States and the Soviet Union that such comparisons were not only incompatible but meaningless. 22 The transformation of the American economy to a service sector one was led by the entrepreneur who now has secured a place in society along with the old-style capitalist, the manager, the labor leader, the politician, intellectual leader, and the “wealthy person” whose inherited wealth allowed him or her to engage in political and social activity. These members were part of a web of mutual dependencies, creating new centers of initiatives in the economy, and were responsible for the functioning of it. In other words, for Voegelin the entrepreneurial function of the economy—those who seize social initiative in any form in the economy, whether labor leader, intellectual, politician, etc.—was the responsibility of all in the economy. 23 With a large portion of the population understanding how industrial society functioned, the social image of the industrial entrepreneur as villain and the laborer as hero had become obsolete in the United States. Instead of class warfare between industrial labor and employers, the social image was one of all parties attempting to find an objectively reasonable organization and politics for industrial society. The interdependence of industrial society no longer made the social image of the industrial entrepreneur “alone in opposition to labor, as in the old-style disputes, but can sometimes find surprising support in a public opinion” (CW 11, 213). An interdependent industrial society can only function as a democratic society when the various economic parties were not willing to demonize the others. But if the “psychology of demonization” were socially dominant, industrial society would be unstable to function as a democracy (CW 11, 213). Since industrial methods of production cannot be jettisoned, there would be “the danger of a dictatorship of the right or the left” emerging in society (ibid.). The government consequently has an explicit entrepreneurial function in maintaining “the rationality of economic processes for the common interest, by organizing and financing the needed adaptations and retraining programs” and should not exclude in concrete cases “large enterprises, entrepreneurial associations, and unions” from participating in this entrepreneurial function (CW 11, 215). Still, an understanding “of the diffusion of the entrepreneurial achievement in a fully developed industrial society is still lacking” (CW 11, 211). It is not clear how productivity in one industry affected other parts of the economy, whether in creating capital, raising labor wages, or public policy. 24 It was also the case that the various economic parties—the politicians, the labor leaders, the industrial entrepreneurs, the financiers, the press—can fail to maintain the rationality of economic process for the common interests. Voegelin illustrated this point in the American steel case example: the union politics of wages were formulated in the old clichés of class warfare, entrepreneurs made tactical mistakes in dealing with labor, the government’s ac-

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tions created bad publicity, the press caused panic in its reports, and the stock market plunged in value. It was only after the stock market crash that the various parties met in the spirit of reconciliation to solve the issue (CW 11, 215). In spite of these problems, the U.S. industrial society still functioned better than Germany because Americans have a better “clarity of awareness” where it was more widespread and socially effective in their society (CW 11, 216). 25 To understand “clarity of awareness,” Voegelin argued that one first must know how society’s economic order fit within society’s spiritual order. This in turn required one to go back to the beginning sources of order in the West. For Voegelin, power, reason, and revelation from the time of Justinian were the sources of Western order where the ruler had to defend society, administer the philosophical-rational order of law, and defend the revealed truth (CW 11, 217). The great disturbances to this order emerged in modernity as four “anticomplexes.” The first was the Reformation’s anti-philosophical complex directed against the intellectual armature of Catholic theology and now manifested in the ideologies of progressivism, positivism, and Marxism (CW 11, 217–18). The second was the result of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ war of religions: the anti-church complex with the demand that church and state should be separated, with the church’s role in addressing intellectual and social problems of the age prohibited. This in turn contributed to the third disturbance, the anti-Christian complex, as well as the anti-philosophical complex (CW 11, 218). The fourth complex was the anti-world complex that was peculiar to Germany with its Pietist’s withdrawal from the world so as not to be corrupted by it (CW 11, 218–19). Common to these anti-complexes was a lack of responsibility “to the duty to shape a life in this world”; for Voegelin, the “responsible living in the world, work is inescapable” (CW 11, 219). 26 Voegelin especially criticized the Germany university system, created by Wilhelm von Humboldt, as emblematic of this attitude of irresponsibly withdrawing from the world (CW 11, 219). The public spiritual and intellectual vacuum left by those who have withdrawn from it allowed ideologies like National Socialism to take its place. 27 By contrast, in the Anglo-American order the classical and Christian traditions were more deeply ingrained in their institutions when compared to Germany, thereby making them more resistant (but not immune) to anti-complexes and ideologies. 28 The consequence was there was a “more lucid public awareness of the conditions under which an industrial society can work in a democratic form can be brought about through rational discussion” (CW 11, 221). Thus, for an industrial society to function, it required a robust and substantive spiritual order that injected itself into the public.

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If cooperation was rejected in democratic society, then serious disturbances would occur in the economy which ultimately may lead to surrender of the economy to one entrepreneur (e.g., Communist Party, a fascist dictator). Instead of having many parties acting as entrepreneurs, society would be reorganized to one party controlling the entrepreneurial function of the entire economy. The awareness of this danger in the public in American society “is a living pathos of responsibility for the achievement of the experiment of a democratic, industrial society” (CW 11, 222). An industrial society can only function if all its members “understand how to cooperate, remain disciplined, and if each person tolerates and develops entrepreneurial initiative for the welfare of the democratic state in accordance with his own capacities” (CW 11, 223). VOEGELIN’S CONCEPTS FOR POLITICAL SCIENCE From these essays we see Voegelin recognized the importance of the industrial society in comparative politics and why it was most compatible with constitutional democracy. Critical to industrial society was the diffusion of the entrepreneurial function—seizing social initiative in the economy— among various parties (e.g., politicians, labor leaders, industrial capitalists) that not only made everyone interdependent in their social and economic activity, but also responsible for common interest of society. The entrepreneur was crucial for industrial society because it made the economy more productive, thereby averting class antagonism in society by raising the wages for members of society. For the entrepreneur to succeed in industrial society, a “clarity of awareness” was required: the willingness of its members to participate in rational discussion and assume responsibility for the public good. This civic responsibility was cultivated in citizens by society’s educational, social, and political institutions that have preserved the classical and Christian traditions of power, reason, and revelation. Although all members potentially can participate in transcendent reason, only a few do so and thus society was hierarchically organized and elite-driven. These leaders were to make the life of reason as socially effective as possible so society could resist the various anti-complexes. Given this model, Voegelin addressed the contemporary political questions that confronted him while in Germany: 1) how can Germany be an industrial society and a democratic one, the so-called “good society,” like the United States?; 2) how can Europe be an industrial society that competes internationally with countries like the United States and the Soviet Union?; and 3) how can different civilizations communicate with one another in the life of noetic reason? Implicit in these questions are the problems of size; the

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relationships between elites and the masses; the cultural and historical compatibility with certain political institutions and economic processes; the challenges of socialization and preservation of ideas and habits among a people; and the question whether certain aspects of a society—cultural, economic, political—can be exported or modeled for other countries. Although he does not directly address the literature of comparative politics in these essays, Voegelin’s concerns were similar to those of comparative political scientists, even though he employed the language and ideas of philosophy rather than positivism to answer them. 29 Voegelin’s answers to these questions also revealed his normative positions on these issues. 30 For instance, Germany can be a “good society” like the United States if its elites assume public responsibility, be entrepreneurial, and make the life of noetic reason socially effective so that society would be receptive to reasonable debate and solutions. For Europe to match the scale and power of the United States and the Soviet Union, European states must be willing to cooperate among themselves to pool their industrial and technological resources for optimal utilization. For Voegelin, this sharing of resources would preferably occur as a constitutional democracy where Europeans would have freedom of movement, thought, and education to participate in democratic life. However, this transformation of Europe would only transpire if 1) they were willing to close unproductive sectors of the economy and tolerate the accompanying unemployment while, at the same time, provide retraining for these workers; and 2) provide a civic education to the younger generation about democratic ideals of limited government, intolerance toward anti-democratic factions, and the economic skills of mobility and adaptability (i.e., entrepreneurship). The last question—how can different civilizations communicate with one another in the life of noetic reason?—was left unanswered by Voegelin. Was it possible, or even desirable, for countries like China and India to extricate their life of reason from cosmological myth? How did one communicate with non-Western leaders who have been educated in Western ideology? How did one address non-Western masses who still live in the world of myth? Voegelin’s silence on these questions may reflect a humility about the limits of his Western-centric science at this time. As he said, even with the best intentions, Westerners may create more “harm than good” when attempting to export their ideas, institutions, and culture to non-Western civilizations. Voegelin’s concepts for political science from these essays therefore were limited to the study of the West, which included the Soviet Union. 31 In subsequent years Voegelin would study non-Western civilizations, such as the Chinese ecumene in Order and History IV, but by that time he had developed new technical concepts and theories to make such an analysis. In this period of 1959–1964, Voegelin’s concepts were Western-derived and consequently Western-applied. In this sense, Voegelin’s self-awareness of

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the limitations of his concepts anticipated the present debate about the applicability of Western political science and theory to non-Western civilizations. He recognized during this period that Western theory and concepts should best stay in the West. 32 So what are the critical concepts from these essays that could be employed in comparative political science? First is the life of reason, both noetic and pragmatic, as ways to organize a society both politically and economically. 33 Noetic reason is human participation in logos or transcendent nous that provides existential meaning to a society, while pragmatic reason is the organization and coordination of means to ends for the administrative governance and economic processes. These two types of reason are relatively independent of one another (e.g., a society could be pragmatically rational and noetically irrational). The opposite of noetic reason is ideology and the various anti-complexes. Two other critical concepts are “viability” or “clarity of awareness”: the life of noetic reason is socially effective when the classical and Christian traditions are preserved in the ideas, habits, and institutions of society. 34 This “viable” condition allows the public to possess a “clarity of awareness” where they assume responsibility for the common good and are receptive and able to partake in reasonable debates about societal issues. Clarity of awareness is only possible if a robust civic education exists to teach each new generation the insights of the classical and Christian traditions. A fourth critical concept is the problem of size for the nation-state with respect to its industrial capacity and international power. 35 If smaller nationstates wish to have international influence, they need to increase their industrial capacity by enlarging the size of their territory and population either through conquest or cooperation. The problem of size, in turn, raises the question about the compatibility of industrial society with constitutional democracy and what prerequisites are needed for both features to coexist. Finally, the concepts of an entrepreneurial economy, its relationship to constitutional democracy, and the connection between elites and the masses were important to Voegelin’s political science in these essays. 36 The economic transformation of society into an entrepreneurial one, where economic initiatives transpired from a variety of sources, made members of society interdependent with one another, but did not necessarily mean it was compatible with constitutional democracy. The life of noetic reason must exist among elites and be socially effective among the masses for constitutional democracy to exist. Voegelin believed that societies were elite-driven, although the masses did play an important role in the functioning of society and therefore could not be ignored. 37 By using the United States as a case study in these essays, Voegelin showed how other countries, like Germany, the Soviet Union, and even the continent of Europe, could be both industrial and democratic. The “good society” was not for America alone.

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VOEGELIN’S COMPARATIVE POLITICS Voegelin’s concepts of life of reason (noetic and pragmatic), viability, clarity of awareness, size, the entrepreneurial economy, the relationship between elites and the masses, and the compatibility between an industrial economy and constitutional democracy all formed a preliminary model of comparative politics. From these essays Voegelin had developed a model of society that consisted of three main components—spiritual and cultural, political, and economic—for analysis. The spiritual and cultural component comprised the ideas and habits defined from noetic reason, ideology, or anti-complexes; the political adopted institutions of constitutional democracy or dictatorship; and the economic was the realm of pragmatic reason that sought industrial and technological development which could either be an entrepreneurial economy or a state-controlled one. The normative ideal for society, the “good society,” was a constitutional democracy and an entrepreneurial economy because it preserved the classical and Christian traditions; protected the life, freedom, and property of its citizens; and provided a material standard of living for all of its citizens. Given this model, Voegelin explored how a society could achieve this normative ideal, which in turn raised a series of sub-questions: 1) the “viability” (suitability) of a society to adopt constitutional democracy and/or an entrepreneurial economy given its spiritual, cultural, and economic conditions; 2) the” clarity of awareness” (mass social effectiveness) of certain ideas and habits in the public to make constitutional democracy and an entrepreneurial economy possible; 3) the relationship between elites and the masses with respect to noetic and pragmatic reason; 4) the civic education of a society in preserving and transmitting the classical and Christian traditions of power, reason, and revelation; and 5) the “size” (resources) of material, population, and territory available for a society to develop an industrial economy that could compete internationally. These issues must be addressed first before any Western society considered embracing constitutional democracy and the entrepreneurial economy. Although grounded in The New Science of Politics, Voegelin’s model of comparative politics—comparing other countries like Germany to the normative ideal of the United States—was fundamentally an empirical account of political reality that one can find in mainstream comparative political science. The problems of size required for economic development, the compatibility between political culture and democratic institutions, how much social capital is needed in societies to function as a democracy, the role of civic education and political socialization for political stability, and the relationships between elites and the public are common topics in mainstream comparative political science. Furthermore, the concepts and theories Voegelin employed in these essays have their equivalents in political science: viability

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(compatibility among cultural, institutional, economic factors), clarity of awareness (political socialization, social capital, and civic education), and the entrepreneurial economy (rationality of the entrepreneur). In these essays Voegelin was more the political scientist than the political theorist or philosopher. However, Voegelin’s concepts also provided a normative flavor to his empirical model of comparative politics. While most comparative political scientists also prefer constitutional democracy (but less so with the industrial economy), Voegelin offered philosophical reasons to explain his preference: it preserved the insights of the Western classical and Christian traditions of power, reason, and revelation. Such an account is absent among political scientist today, even those who strongly support constitutional democracy in their studies. 38 Rather than providing an explanation why constitutional democracy is preferable to other types of regimes, these political scientists start from the assumption that democracy is the normative standard for all political societies—something that even Voeglein would not assume, particularly for non-Western civilizations. 39 Voeglein’s explanatory account of his normative approach towards politics therefore is a lesson that mainstream political scientists can learn from and adopt in their own studies. Instead of dividing political science into interpretivist and positivist accounts, political scientists should follow Voeglein’s example of marrying these two approaches—philosophical ideas and arguments with empirical models and political data—to provide a richer and fuller account of political reality. 40 Granted that Voegelin’s model of comparative politics is limited to Western civilization, it nonetheless provides a more robust account and realistic approach to politics by both explaining and describing ideas and facts. To do one or the other is only to provide half of the story and does a disservice not only to public, but to political science itself. NOTES 1. I would like to thank Richard Avramenko, the Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Saginaw Valley State University for supporting my sabbatical which enabled me to write this chapter and co-edit this volume. For more about Eric Voegelin’s life during this period, refer to the introduction of Eric Voegelin, Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 1–11, hereafter CW 11; Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 34), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 110–17, hereafter CW 34; Ellis Sandoz, The Voegelinian Revolution: A Biographical Introduction (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 84–89; Barry Cooper and Jodi Bruhn, ed., Voegelin Recollected: Conversations on a Life (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 58–118, hereafter VR. 2. These works are now published in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin as follows: Eric Voegelin, Modernity Without Restraint: The Political Religions; The New Science of

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Politics; and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 5), Manfred Henningsen, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), hereafter CW 5; Order and History Volume I: Israel and Revelation (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 14), Maurice P. Hogan, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001), hereafter OHI; Order and History Volume II: The World of the Polis (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 15), Athanasios Moulakis, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Order and History Volume III: Plato and Aristotle (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 16), Dante Germino, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Order and History Volume IV: The Ecumenic Age (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 17), Michael Franz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 6), M.J. Hanak, trans., David Walsh, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002). 3. Numerous works have been written about the Cold War, but Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter, eds., The Origins of the Cold War: An International History (New York: Routledge, 1994) and John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2006) provide excellent overviews. With respect to Germany and the Cold War, refer to William Glenn Gary, Germany’s Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949–1969 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014) and Christian Ostermann, Between Containment and Rollback: The United States and the Cold War in Germany (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2019). For more about Germany’s transition to a liberal democracy, refer to Thomas Saalfeld, “Germany: From Dictatorship to Parliamentary Democracy,” Parliamentary Affairs 50:3 (1997): 380–95; Michael Bernhard, “Democratization in Germany: A Reappraisal,” Comparative Politics 33:4 (2001): 379–400; James Dobbins, Michele A. Poole, Austin Long, and Benjamin Runkle, After the War: Nation-Building from FDR to George W. Bush (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2008), 11–33. 4. For more about Voegelin critique of contemporary social science, refer to CW 5, 88–108. 5. For more about Voegelin’s admiration of America, refer to CW 34, 56–61; On the Form of the American Mind (The Collected Works Volume 1), Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper, eds. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1995); Published Essays 1922–1928 (The Collected Works Volume 7), Thomas W. Heilke and John von Heyking, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003), 118–75, 192–205. 6. For more about Voegelin’s critique of the Germany university, refer to Lee Trepanier, “Eric Voegelin on Race, Hitler, and National Socialism,” Political Science Reviewer 41:1 (2018): 167–96. 7. For more about those students, refer to VR, 58–118. 8. The only studies that employed Voegelin’s “new science of politics” to empirical political reality are James M. Rhodes, The Hitler Movement: A Modern Millenarian Revolution (Palo Alto: Hoover Institute Press, 1980); Lee Trepanier, Political Symbols in Russian History: Church, State, and the Quest for Justice (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007); and Ostap Kushnir, Ukraine and Russian Neo-Imperialism: The Divergent Break (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018). 9. For more about this period, refer to Eric Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, Volume V: Religion and the Rise of Modernity (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 23), James L. Wiser, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998). 10. This idea had been recently re-explored in Kevin Narizny, “Anglo-American Primacy and the Global Spread of Democracy: An International Genealogy,” World Politics 64:2 (2012): 341–73. 11. Whether Voegelin would have supported the present structure of the European Union is a matter of speculation, although he would have approved of the Europeans forming a union. For more about the contemporary challenges and possible solutions of the European Union, refer to Olaf Cramme and Sara B. Hobolt, eds., Democratic Politics in a European Union Under Stress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Henry F. Carey and Zeynep Arkan, The Challenges of European Governance in the Age of Economic Stagnation, Immigration, and Refugees (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016); and Hauke Brunkhorst, Dragica Vujadinov-

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ic, and Tanasije Marinkovic, eds., European Democracy in Crisis: Politics under Challenge and Social Movements (Kanonstraat, Netherlands: Eleven International Publishing, 2018). 12. The classic study of the transformation of society from agrarian to an industrial one is Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Beacon Press, 1966). 13. The problem of size, the ability to compete economically with the United States and the Soviet Union, was one of the factors that led to the formation of the European Union, along with desire for a peaceful Europe. However, since the formation of a common European market, the problem of size has been neglected when comparing the United States and Europe; rather, attention has shifted to global governance of the world economy. Again, this attention is still concerned with the problem of size but now has moved the unit of analysis to the integrated world economy. With the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the problem of size has reverted to the concerns during Voegelin’s time, with the United States, the European Union, and other imperial units competing with another one. Martin J. Dedman, The Origins and Development of the European Union, 1945–95 (New York: Routledge, 1996); Jean Grugel and Nicola Piper, Critical Perspective on Global Governance: Rights and Regulations in Governing Regimes (New York: Routledge, 2007); Laurent Warlouzet, Governing Europe in a Globalizing World: Neoliberalism and Its Alternatives following the 1973 Oil Crisis (New York: Routledge, 2017); Joseph E. Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017). 14. However, this is no longer the case today in the United States where wages have been stagnant for the past forty years in spite of increases in labor productivity, another factor that partially explains the present polarization in American politics. Tyler Cowan, Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation (New York: Dutton, 2013); Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016); Ganesh Sitaraman, The Crisis of Middle-Class Constitutionalism (New York: Knopf, 2017). 15. The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 confirms Voegelin’s prediction that Soviet ideology would eventually collapse when confronted with the pragmatic rationality of industrial society. However, it was Gorbachev’s political decision to end Soviet rule. The pragmatic rationality of economics played a vital role in the collapse of the Soviet Union but it was one factor among many (e.g., ethnic nationalist movements in Soviet republics, the United States willing to negotiate). Economic rationality ultimately was subordinate to political decisions. Chris Miller, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). 16. This continues to be the case today in the West, even after the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s and globalization of the 1990s. Western states may vary in the degree of welfare support and labor productivity in their economies but none of them have either nationalized their economies like Venezuela or adopted wholescale laissez-faire capitalism. Gosta EspingAndersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Salvatore Pituzzello, “International Organization Foundation Trade Globalization, Economic Performance, and Social Protection: Nineteenth-Century British Laissez-Faire and Post World War II U.S.-Embedded Liberalism,” International Organization 58:4 (2004): 705–44. 17. For more about this civil theology, refer to Ellis Sandoz, The Roots of Liberty: Magna Carta, Ancient Constitution, and the Anglo-American Tradition of the Rule of Law (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1993) and A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1990). 18. These assumptions are explicated in CW 5, 109–48 and OHI, 39–53. 19. The issue of “viability” is the compatibility of a society’s history and culture to a certain set of political institutions and economic processes. For example, much of the recent work on social capital argues that societies require high levels of social capital for democratic institutions to function effectively. Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001); Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (New York: Crown Forum, 2013).

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20. Voegelin’s discussion of noetic rationality is neglected by comparative political scientists who only focus on pragmatic rationality. For example, refer to Mark I. Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman, eds., Comparative Politics: Rationality Culture, and Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 21. By examining the possible incompatibilities among different civilizations, Voegelin anticipated Samuel Huntington’s account of global politics as civilizations. Samuel P. Huntington, Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). 22. Voegelin’s criticism of comparing American and Soviet GNP raised the question of how to make proper comparisons between countries. This problem is later analyzed in Giovanni Sartori, “Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review 64:4 (1970): 1033–53 and “Comparing and Miscomparing,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 33:3 (1991): 243–57. 23. The literature on political and economic entrepreneurs is vast but what makes Voegelin’s insight unique is that he argued that any party in society could be an entrepreneur and, because of this, it made society interdependent and responsible for all. Some recent examples of entrepreneurship are D. Hugh Whittaker, Comparative Entrepreneurship: The UK, Japan, and the Shadow of Silicon Valley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Andrea Colli, Dynamics of International Business: Comparative Perspectives of Firms, Markets, and Entrepreneurship (New York: Routledge, 2016); Bruno Dallago and Ermanno Tortia, eds., Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development: A Comparative Perspective on Entrepreneurs, Universities and Governments (New York: Routledge, 2018). 24. This remains the case with the unexplained account of stagnated wages in the United States. For more, refer to the fourteenth footnote. 25. Voegelin’s concept of “clarity of awareness” is when noetic rationality had penetrated into the masses of society so that it is socially effective. It is similar to social capital where citizens learn both in theory and practice the habits of democratic life. 26. These anti-complexes are explicated in CW 5, 196–241, 251–313. 27. For more, refer to Trepanier, “Eric Voegelin on Race, Hitler, and National Socialism.” 28. Sandoz, The Roots of Liberty and A Government of Laws. 29. The problem of size has been studied by John A. Agnew, Place and Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987); Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W.W. Norton., 1997); Dedman, The Origins and Development of the European Union; Grugel and Piper, Critical Perspectives on Global Governance; Warlouzet, Governing Europe in a Globalizing World; and Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents. For the relationship between the elites and the masses, refer to Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy; Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Gregory M. Lubbert, Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). For the relationship among culture, history, institutions, and economics, refer to Seymour M. Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53:1 (1959): 69–105; Gabriel Abraham Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963); Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968); Robert Dahl, Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972); Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973); James G. March and Johan.P. Olsen, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” American Political Science Review 78:3 (1984): 734–49; Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986); Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Putnam, Making Democracy Work and Bowling Alone; Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Coun-

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tries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Carles Boix and Susan S. Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization,” World Politics 55:4 (2003): 517–49; Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). For political socialization and the transmission of ideas, refer to Sandoz, The Roots of Liberty and A Government of Laws; Philo C. Washburn and Tawnya J. Adkins Covert, Making Citizens: Political Socialization Research and Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). For modeling another society, refer to Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991) and Clash of Civilizations; Adam Przeworski and Fernando Liongi, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World Politics 49:2 (1997): 155–83; Immanuel Wallerstein, World System Analysis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). 30. Political science traditionally has been value-neutral since the behavioral revolution in the 1950s. Clifford Angell Bates Jr., The Centrality of the Regime for Political Science (Warsaw, Poland: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Waszawskiego, 2016); Lee Trepanier, “The Relevance of Political Philosophy and Political Science,” in Why the Humanities Matter Today? In Defense of Liberal Education, Lee Trepanier, ed. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), 127–44. 31. Since Peter the Great (reign 1682–1725), Russians have asked themselves whether they are part of the West. In his own works, Voegelin himself was not clear on this question, although in these essays he did include Russia as a country to which Western concepts, models, and theories could be applied. However, Voegelin wrote elsewhere that Russia was fundamentally not a Western country (CW 5, 179–83). Perhaps it was only because of its proximity, historical engagement with Europe, and later adoption of Western ideologies that Russia could be considered in the same civilizational unit of analysis for Voegelin. Lee Trepanier, Political Symbols in Russian History and Nicholas V. Riasanovsky and Mark D. Steinberg, A History of Russia (9th Edition) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 32. For more about the debate whether Western concepts, models, and theories can and should be applied to non-Western civilizations, refer to Andrew F. March, “What is Comparative Political Theory?” Review of Politics 71:4 (2009): 531–65; Fred Dallmayr, ed. Comparative Political Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Farah Godrej, Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, Discipline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Jon D. Carlson and Russell Arben Fox, eds., The State of Nature in Comparative Political Thought: Western and Non-Western Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013); Adrian Little, “Contextualizing Concepts: The Methodology of Comparative Political Theory,” Review of Politics 80:1 (2018): 87–113. 33. For how this concept fits into the literature of mainstream comparative political science, refer to the twentieth footnote. 34. For the same as above, refer to the nineteenth and twenty-ninth footnotes. 35. For same as above, refer to the twelfth, thirteenth, and twenty-ninth footnotes. 36. For same as above, refer to the twenty-third and twenty-ninth footnotes. 37. For same as above, refer to the twenty-ninth footnote. 38. For example, the literature on democracy and democratization in comparative politics makes the assumption that liberal democracy is the normative standard for regimes. O’Donnelll et al. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule; Przeworski, Democracy and the Market; Huntington, The Third Wave; Rueschemeyer et al., Capitalist Development and Democracy; Putnam, Making Democracy Work; Boix and Stokes, “Endogenerous Democracy”; Acemoglu and Robinson, Economics Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. 39. For more about non-Western civilizations, refer to twenty-first and thirty-second footnotes. 40. For more about this divide in political science, refer to Stephen Welch, The Theory of Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Bates, The Centrality of the Regime; and Trepanier, “The Relevance of Political Philosophy and Political Science.”

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Acemoglu, Daron and James A. Robinson. Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Almond, Gabriel Abraham and Sidney Verba. The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963). Agnew, John A. Place and Politics (London: Allen and Unwin, 1987). Bates Jr., Clifford Angell. The Centrality of the Regime for Political Science (Warsaw, Poland: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Waszawskiego, 2016). Bernhard, Michael. “Democratization in Germany: A Reappraisal,” Comparative Politics 33:4 (2001): 379–400. Boix, Carles and Susan S. Stokes, “Endogenous Democratization,” World Politics 55:4 (2003): 517–49. Brunkhorst, Hauke, Dragica Vujadinovic, and Tanasije Marinkovic, eds. European Democracy in Crisis: Politics under Challenge and Social Movements (Kanonstraat, Netherlands: Eleven International Publishing, 2018). Carey, Henry F. and Zeynep Arkan, The Challenges of European Governance in the Age of Economic Stagnation, Immigration, and Refugees (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016). Carlson, Jon D. and Russell Arben Fox, eds. The State of Nature in Comparative Political Thought: Western and Non-Western Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013). Colli, Andrea. Dynamics of International Business: Comparative Perspectives of Firms, Markets, and Entrepreneurship (New York: Routledge, 2016). Cooper, Barry and Jodi Bruhn, ed. Voegelin Recollected: Conversations on a Life (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2008). Cowan, Tyler. Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation (New York: Dutton, 2013). Cramme, Olaf and Sara B. Hobolt, eds. Democratic Politics in a European Union Under Stress (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). Dahl, Robert. Polyarchy: Participation and Opposition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972). Dallago, Bruno and Ermanno Tortia, eds. Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development: A Comparative Perspective on Entrepreneurs, Universities and Governments (New York: Routledge, 2018). Dallmayr, Fred, ed. Comparative Political Theory (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Dedman, Martin J. The Origins and Development of the European Union, 1945–95 (New York: Routledge, 1996). Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel (New York: W.W. Norton. 1997). Dobbins, James, Michele A. Poole, Austin Long, and Benjamin Runkle. After the War: NationBuilding from FDR to George W. Bush (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2008), 11–33. Esping-Andersen, Gosta. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). Gaddis, John Lewis. The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin, 2006). Gary, William Glenn. Germany’s Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949–1969 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014). Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). Godrej, Farah. Cosmopolitan Political Thought: Method, Practice, Discipline (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Grugel, Jean and Nicola Piper, Critical Perspective on Global Governance: Rights and Regulations in Governing Regimes (New York: Routledge, 2007). Huntington, Samuel P. Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). ———. Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968). ———. The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

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Inglehart, Ronald. Modernization and Postmodernization: Cultural, Economic, and Political Change in 43 Countries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997). Kushnir, Ostap. Ukraine and Russian Neo-Imperialism: The Divergent Break (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018). Leffler, Melvyn P. and David S. Painter, eds. The Origins of the Cold War: An International History (New York: Routledge, 1994). Lichbach, Mark I. and Alan S. Zuckerman, eds. Comparative Politics: Rationality Culture, and Structure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Lipset, Seymour M. “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53:1 (1959): 69–105. Little, Adrian. “Contextualizing Concepts: The Methodology of Comparative Political Theory,” Review of Politics 80:1 (2018): 87–113. Lubbert, Gregory M. Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy: Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). March, Andrew F. “What Is Comparative Political Theory?” Review of Politics 71:4 (2009): 531–65. March, James G. and Johan P. Olsen, “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” American Political Science Review 78:3 (1984): 734–49. McCarty, Nolan, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal, Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016). Miller, Chris. The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016). Moore, Barrington. Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge, MA: Beacon Press, 1966). Murray, Charles. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010 (New York: Crown Forum, 2013). Narizny, Kevin. “Anglo-American Primacy and the Global Spread of Democracy: An International Genealogy,” World Politics 64:2 (2012): 341–73. O’Donnell, Guillermo, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead, eds. Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1986). Ostermann, Christian. Between Containment and Rollback: The United States and the Cold War in Germany (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2019). Pituzzello, Salvatore. “International Organization Foundation Trade Globalization, Economic Performance, and Social Protection: Nineteenth-Century British Laissez-Faire and Post World War II U.S.-Embedded Liberalism,” International Organization 58:4 (2004): 705–44. Przeworski, Adam. Democracy and the Market (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Przeworski, Adam and Fernando Liongi, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” World Politics 49:2 (1997): 155–83. Putnam, Robert. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001). ———. Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992). Rhodes, James M. The Hitler Movement: A Modern Millenarian Revolution (Palo Alto: Hoover Institute Press, 1980). Riasanovsky, Nicholas V. and Mark D. Steinberg, A History of Russia (9th Edition) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). Rueschemeyer, Dietrich, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). Saalfeld, Thomas. “Germany: From Dictatorship to Parliamentary Democracy,” Parliamentary Affairs 50:3 (1997): 380–95. Sandoz, Ellis. A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1990).

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———. The Roots of Liberty: Magna Carta, Ancient Constitution, and the Anglo-American Tradition of the Rule of Law (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1993). ———. The Voegelinian Revolution: A Biographical Introduction (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2000). Sartori, Giovanni. “Comparing and Miscomparing,” Journal of Theoretical Politics 33:3 (1991): 243–57. ———. “Concept Misinformation in Comparative Politics,” American Political Science Review 64:4 (1970): 1033–53. Sitaraman, Ganesh. The Crisis of Middle-Class Constitutionalism (New York: Knopf, 2017). Skocpol, Theda. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). Stiglitz, Joseph E. Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017). Trepanier, Lee. “Eric Voegelin on Race, Hitler, and National Socialism,” Political Science Reviewer 41:1 (2018): 167–96. ———. Political Symbols in Russian History: Church, State, and the Quest for Justice (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007). ———. “The Relevance of Political Philosophy and Political Science.” In Why the Humanities Matter Today? In Defense of Liberal Education, Lee Trepanier, ed. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017), 127–44. Voegelin, Eric. Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 6), M.J. Hanak, trans., David Walsh, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002). ———. Autobiographical Reflections (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 34), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2006). ———. History of Political Ideas, Volume V: Religion and the Rise of Modernity (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 23), James L. Wiser, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998). ———. Modernity Without Restraint: The Political Religions; The New Science of Politics; and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 5), Manfred Henningsen, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000). ———. On the Form of the American Mind (The Collected Works Volume 1), Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper, eds. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1995). ———. Order and History Volume I: Israel and Revelation (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 14), Maurice P. Hogan, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001). ———. Order and History Volume II: The World of the Polis (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 15), Athanasios Moulakis, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000). ———. Order and History Volume III: Plato and Aristotle (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 16), Dante Germino, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000). ———. Order and History Volume IV: The Ecumenic Age (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 17), Michael Franz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000). ———. Published Essays 1922–1928 (The Collected Works Volume 7), Thomas W. Heilke and John von Heyking, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2003). ———. Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000). Wallerstein, Immanuel. World System Analysis (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004). Warlouzet, Laurent. Governing Europe in a Globalizing World: Neoliberalism and Its Alternatives following the 1973 Oil Crisis (New York: Routledge, 2017). Washburn, Philo C. and Tawnya J. Adkins Covert, Making Citizens: Political Socialization Research and Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Welch, Stephen. The Theory of Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).

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Whittaker, D. Hugh. Comparative Entrepreneurship: The UK, Japan, and the Shadow of Silicon Valley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Chapter Seven

The Dream of the Caliphate and the Loss of Reality An Application of Eric Voegelin’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” and “In Search of the Ground” Scott Philip Segrest

After the demise of Fascism, Nazism, and Soviet Communism in the twentieth century, some concluded that the “age of ideology” was over—that all ideological movements of any consequence had “exhausted” themselves, and that political controversy would henceforth not be about big ideas or grand ideological projects, but only about how best to tweak the workings of the welfare state, now widely accepted as the basic political paradigm, and to secure the blessings of economic growth and general affluence. 1 Eric Voegelin noted “the phenomenon of [ideological] exhaustion” at about the same time, but was not so sanguine as the “end of ideology” theorists that this meant an end was in fact imminent. He pointed to the “empirical rule” established by Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee that, in Voegelin’s words, “Periods of great establishment . . . have a habit of running for two hundred and fifty years [unless] finished earlier through foreign intervention.” He thought, correctly, that Russian Communism might last a “shorter period,” but he expected, rightly again, that the age of ideology would continue for a long while. 2 In the short term, the end-of-ideology theorists failed to anticipate the academic and campus radicalism that began to make political waves across the United States and Europe in the late 1960s—almost literally before the ink was dry on a published collection of their arguments in 1968 (The End of Ideology Debate)—a movement that has continued in various forms and in varying intensity to the present moment. Even less did Western intellectuals 141

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anticipate the emerging ideological movements outside the West, including radical Islamism 3 and its extreme variant of jihadist terrorism, which blasted into Western public consciousness with the spectacular fiery explosions of the New York World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001. How should we understand the lasting appeal of ideology? In particular—the focus of this essay—what is it about jihadist ideology that can inspire thousands to leave their normal, and in material terms sometimes quite comfortable, lives and join a campaign of mass murder and total war against the world? It would be a mistake to dismiss jihadism as a half-baked, vaguely conceived worldview, or one likely to have a short historical life span. As Farhad Khosrokhavar observes, “Jihadism is the largest violent utopian, anti-Western, and anti-democratic movement in the world. It has extended to all continents, with the partial exception of Latin America, where it is still a minor phenomenon. At the same time, it attracts many non-Muslims, who convert and adopt a Jihadist view of the world. . . . Jihadism as an ideology is, after the collapse of communism, the most comprehensive—and in a way, cogent—set of notions, rules for action, and propaganda that the last twentyfive years of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first have witnessed so far.” 4 There is of course no viable endgame for jihadist movements. The utopian Islamic state they hope to achieve after their demolition of “non-Muslim” orders will not attract enough Muslims to establish a genuine people, and if any of them manage to establish a state (as ISIS, or the Islamic State, tried to do), they will not be able to maintain popular enthusiasm for long because the requirements of a functioning real-world society will eventually make the unreality of the utopia too obvious to ignore, aside from the fact that life under a regime of ultra-violent warriors is likely to be much worse than it was in whatever place people left to be part of it. Unfortunately for the rest of us, there are probably enough Muslims attracted to the vision of a utopian Islamic state to keep jihadist movements alive for at least the next generation or two. The Soviet Union managed to sustain Communist rule for seventy-two years despite its failure from the beginning to achieve a decent quality of life for the people within its orbit, and despite the fact that Communism was founded on the thin-ice foundation of a highly speculative theory of history fashioned by two men (Marx and Lenin) standing solely on their own authority. By contrast, the jihadist project is sustained, however misguidedly, by attachment to a great religion over 1,400 years old, and its rhetorical leaders can employ the language of that religion in a way that resonates in certain disaffected corners of the Muslim world. Despite the dramatically divergent conceptual content of their ideologies, the spirit of the jihadist movements and the apocalyptic cast of their view of history are remarkably similar to those of extreme Western ideological movements such as Nazism and Communism. For that reason, the works of

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Eric Voegelin, who shed so much light on these latter movements, are an invaluable resource for helping to understand this newer phenomenon. This essay focuses on two short but highly suggestive pieces of Voegelin’s, his 1965 lecture “In Search of the Ground” and his 1953 essay review of Hannah Arendt’s Origins of Totalitarianism. The lecture addresses the nature of ideology in general, and the review provides insight into the totalitarian spirit that jihadism shares with Fascism, Nazism, and Communism. THE EXISTENTIAL ROOTS OF IDEOLOGY “In Search of the Ground” contains one of Voegelin’s clearest statements on the essential elements of ideology and on the criteria for judging ideologies. Following the order of his analysis, I turn first to his criteria for judgment. Simply put, the criteria are the transcendent divine “ground” or source of existence and the structure of reality made clear by awareness of that ground. “We all,” Voegelin explains, “experience our own existence as not existing out of itself but as coming from somewhere even if we don’t know from where.” Awareness of a divine ground emerges from a desire and a quest to discover the ultimate ground of human existence—our own existence—and thereby the meaning of our lives. Voegelin describes the desire involved in terms of a “tension” toward the ground, or that from which we ultimately came to be and which gives us living substance. In ancient Greek and Christian thought this was worked out in terms of “love, hope, and faith,” to use Heraclitus’ formulation, or as Saint Paul later put it, “faith, hope, and love.” Saint Augustine cast these experiences in terms of amor Dei (the love of God) and corresponding inspiration to a life of faith and hope seeking fullest enjoyment of God’s presence. In the modern period, Henri Bergson characterized the phenomenon as the soul’s openness to transcendence. As Voegelin sums up, “Where love toward Divine Being is experienced, where hope for fulfillment in relation to such a Being is experienced as the point of orientation in life, where these experiences are present, there is an openness of the soul in existence that is an orienting center in the life of man.” The “soul” as understood by the classical philosophers—the psyche—is the “sensorium of transcendence, that organ of man, by which he experiences or in which he experiences the various tensions of which I have spoken. And insofar as it is engaged in such experiences, the psyche can be called the ‘noetic’ self, ‘noetic’ being derived from nous, the Greek term for the intellectual self,” or reason (230). Reason in the classic sense is precisely “openness toward the ground” (232), and the tension toward the ground—a drawing out of the self from beyond itself and, from the human side, an intentional responsiveness to the pull—is a kind of “participation in divine Being” (230). Or as Voegelin puts

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it perhaps more clearly in a footnote, reason is “the consciousness of being caused by the divine Ground and being in search of the divine Ground” (232, fn. 2). In the same footnote, Voegelin refers to Plato’s myth of the puppetmaster in the Laws (as Voegelin often does in his writings), in which the Athenian Stranger pictures man as pulled in various directions by different cords, toward real human fulfillment in connection to transcendence by a golden cord of reason, or away from fulfillment by competing cords of lower passions. 5 This experience, or set of experiences, is what enables us to see clearly and objectively the larger structure of reality in which we live as a “hierarchy of being” (229), with divine reality at the top of the hierarchy and man as participant in divine being through reason ranking higher than the other parts of reality in which he also participates, within man the soul ranking higher than the body, and within the soul reason ranking higher than his animal passions. Augustine elaborates the hierarchy of being under God with succinct precision in The City of God, and his description, because of its clarity and comprehensiveness, is worth quoting at length: The supreme and true God . . . the one all-powerful God, creator and maker of every soul and body, the God who bestows not vain but true happiness by allowing people to participate in himself, who made man a rational animal with soul and body, who when man sinned, neither allowed man to go unpunished nor abandoned him without mercy; who gave, to both the good and the evil, being, which they share with stones, the vegetable life shared with trees, the sensitive life shared with the beasts, and the intellectual life shared with the angels alone; from whom is every kind, every species, every order . . . from whom is everything having existence in nature, of whatever kind and value . . . who gave also to flesh its origin, beauty, health, fertility, disposition of parts, healthy balance; who also gave to the nonintellective soul memory, sense, appetite, and to the rational soul in addition to these mind, intelligence, and will; who has not neglected to give, not only to the heavens and the earth, not only to angels and men, but even to the entrails of the lowest, feeblest creature, to the bird’s pinfeather, to the plant’s tiny flower, and to the tree’s leaf, a harmony of its parts and a certain peace—never should this God be thought to have wanted the kingdoms of human beings and their dominations and servitudes to be alien from the laws of his providence. 6

The ranking is one of intrinsic value, greater value corresponding to greater degrees of completeness in the scale of existence and relative closeness to God. This God is “creator” of everything and thus the source of existence, who continues to sustain all things, including man, who unlike the lower creation can participate in the divine life through reason, faith, hope, and love as well as in all the other sectors of reality. But man participates in reality not only vertically, as it were, but also horizontally, in relation to other men. Human relationships, up to the com-

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plete level of political community, are healthy when the individuals composing the community share a love for divine being and correspondingly for that part of each of them which is capable of such love. In Aristotle’s terms this healthy regime would be a “community in the nous,” bound together by what Aristotle called homonoia, “a common nous,” a “like-mindedness” in mutual orientation to the divine (231). These, then, according to Voegelin, are the criteria for judging individuals, groups, and communities: their level of openness to the divine ground and the extent to which they order their lives in orientation to that ground. But one thing further should be added to complete the picture. The ordering of human life is a process in time, and so understanding human orders requires a grasp of history and how things work out historically. Essential to understanding historical processes is to understand that people order their lives partly according to their own ideas about history, or at least about their own particular histories. This matter of history is connected to the question of the ground. Essential to any society’s identity or self-understanding is its conception of where it came from and where it is going, or should be going. The “where we came from” question, if pushed to the point of ultimate origins, is the question of the ground. Every society has a story of meaningful beginnings. Prior to the advent of Greek philosophy, with the important exception of Israel, societies found their grounds in myths. “A myth,” Voegelin tells us, “is a technique of imputing a ground to an object of experience,” and myth—as opposed to philosophy or revelation—always finds the ground in some “intracosmic object or action” as opposed to a transcendent Ground as discovered by the ancient Hebrews (via revelation) and the ancient Greeks (via philosophy). Once the transcendent Ground was discovered, discussion of the ground required “an entirely new vocabulary” (233). That vocabulary as developed by the ancient Greeks and Christians included terms like philosophy, reason, revelation, faith, sacred and profane history, and so on. The point about history is important for understanding and evaluating the problem of ideology because, as Voegelin most famously argued in his New Science of Politics, conceptions of history have been decisive in determining the shape of modern ideologies. In the lecture currently under review, “In Search of the Ground,” Voegelin focuses his treatment of ideologies on their various “misplacements” of the ground. All ideologies, as Voegelin understands them, misplace or mis-locate the ground of existence. Socialism, for instance, and in a somewhat different way liberalism as well, places it in economic or material conditions. “Identity politics,” a more recent development, finds it in race or gender. Conservatives of a certain stripe find it in tradition. In whatever form, the ground is whatever one makes, whether deliberately or unconsciously, the foundation of human meaning and wellbeing.

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But in the question-and-answer period after the lecture, Voegelin points to three additional features of ideologies, all having reference to history: apocalypticism, gnosticism, and immanentization: In the first place, all ideology comes out of the classic and Christian background (beginning with enlightenment)—so one element always is the survival of apocalypse, the idea that this present imperfect world is to be followed by a more perfect phase. A second element is gnostic, that is, knowledge of the recipe for bringing about the more perfect realm. . . . Third, immanentization, as distinguished from older apocalypses. In old apocalypse, the new realm— the Fifth Monarchy 7 [Dan. 2:44]—is brought about by the intervention of God, or by a messenger of God, by an angel. In modern immanentist ideologies, it is always brought about by human action. (244)

As Voegelin explains in The New Science of Politics, the Christian conception of history as classically articulated by Saint Augustine (in his City of God) was refashioned by certain medieval Christian thinkers, most notably and influentially Joachim of Fiore, who claimed to have discovered the nature of the more perfect phase of history and how it would come about. Augustine had stressed the mystery of both the historical process and the end of the process, all of which were determined by God, who has chosen not to reveal these matters to us, except, perhaps, in symbolic form that really tells us little about the concrete process or end. The medieval Christian soothsayers, in contrast, tried to banish the mystery and thereby made men, in particular men of special insight like Joachim, in a certain sense the arbiters of history, even if they continued to see God as the primary agent of change. 8 A new, secularized conception of history emerged in the Enlightenment, but the elements of apocalypse, gnosticism, and immanentization characteristic of the late-medieval apocalyptic speculations remained active. In the Enlightenment theories, the latter age of human perfection was no longer conceived in spiritual terms, but in terms of rational enlightenment and material progress. Enlightenment reason was not nous, with its orientation to transcendence, but an immanentized, instrumental reason concerned with human means to merely human ends. The human being was no longer the creature capable of participating in God, but the being capable of endless material self-improvement. Reason was reduced from noetic immortalizing, to use Aristotle’s term, 9 to mere logical reasoning and technical know-how. Paradoxically, but not incidentally, reason in this shrunken form underwent an apotheosis, became Reason with a capital R—it did, after all, possess the godlike, gnostic power to grasp the meaning of history. 10 So men became gods, fully in control of their destinies, capable of conquering nature and directing history. Reason could no longer see God, but it could see the meaning of history and the corresponding imperative of Progress with a capital P. In effect, there was still a divine ground of existence, it was simply

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relocated in man as a pseudo-divine power. Divine transcendence was irrelevant to human fulfillment, if it existed at all, but immanent reality was redivinized (after the de-divinization achieved by Christianity), and men regressed (note again the irony) to a cosmological view of the world: the gods, now conceived as Man (capitalized), were again intracosmic, as with the old pagans. JIHADISM The specific contents are different, but all the elements of ideology Voegelin identifies in the Western ideological movements can be found in jihadism: a misplacement of the ground, a gnostic insight into the movement of history, including its apocalyptic culmination, and an immanentization of all these elements. At first glance it might seem that jihadist ideologues, as emphatically theistic, seek to restore divine transcendence as the ground of existence, but that is in fact not the case. Certainly the ideological vanguard are genuinely religious in the sense of believing in God, and in conformity with the teachings of the Quran they pray, believe in God as sole creator and absolute sovereign of the universe, and take God to be radically Other than man, and in that sense transcendent. But it is also the case that they tend to reject emphatically any kind of mystical fellowship with God such as that celebrated in the Muslim Sufi traditions. All Muslims reject the Christian Trinity, with its assumption of a decisive Incarnation of God in the man Jesus, but the jihadist anti-mystics go further to reject the more ordinary incarnations implicit in the idea of a participation of man in God and of God in man through spiritual communion. God is for them transcendent in the sense of being beyond man, but his transcendent reality is not experienced as the ground of their beings, as a living presence that draws them out beyond themselves and in drawing them out reveals the real nature of God’s relationship to man—that God is simultaneously other and beyond but also with and in man, vitally so in those responsive to the divine movement within and through them. The jihadist ideologist instead, de facto, locates the ground of existence in men, specifically in the men who led the original Muslim community—in Muhammad and his immediate successors (caliphs), called by Sunni Muslims the Rashidun or “Rightly Guided” caliphs. 11 Or more precisely, the jihadist finds his ground in the inspiration of the Rashiduns’ example as rulers of the original Muslim religio-political order, the caliphate. He imagines the caliphate as a perfect community under a perfect law, the Sharia, and led by men perfectly in line with God’s will through their own obedience to that law and their ordering of the community in strict accordance with that law. The original Muslim community or umma is seen by many, perhaps by

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most, practicing Muslims as a Golden Age of Islamic experience, but for most of them it was an unrepeatable historical event, inspiring perhaps, but not something that can be re-created. For most practicing Muslims, in fact, it is not the original community that inspires them so much as the person, teachings, and life of the Prophet Muhammad. Even then, many or most of them take the life of the Prophet as a model for their lives not in all its details, such as his waging of military jihad, but rather in his approach to life, the way he lived and the way he treated those around him. For the jihadists, not the Prophet alone but also the community he founded is the model, and they understand that community in highly legalistic terms, even though the Sharia as a codified body of law did not yet exist in that initial period. They think that, if only we could recapture that Golden Age and its presumptively regimented, and therefore (in their legalistic understanding) holy, way of life, the world would be set right again. For this reason they are often referred to as Salafis, from al-Salaf al-Salih, “the pious predecessors,” traditionally understood as the first three generations of Muslims. It is not usually the case that the jihadists want literally to live again as if it was the seventh century—they do not typically reject all modern technology, for instance—but they do insist on living under Sharia according to its narrowest and strictest interpretation, as typified by the ultra-conservative Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia. 12 They want, further, for the Sharia to be enforced by a modern caliph or caliphs, or at least caliph-like leaders, eventually across the Muslim world and ultimately worldwide, so that non-Muslims, too, are brought in under the rule of Sharia. They want, in short, to restore the caliphate as originally conceived, or as they imagine it to have been conceived, by the Rashidun. A political caliphate, or at least, for a start, an Islamic state ordered on the model of the caliphate, is for the jihadist ideologists the sine qua non of a complete Muslim life. That is, one cannot fully live as a Muslim should live in the absence of Islamic political control and direction of one’s community. An Islamic state in the shape of a nation-state will probably have to be established first, in a geographically restricted area, before a more expansive, globally integrated Muslim political community of some kind can be achieved and the whole world can be brought under Sharia. Until that happens, the dream of the caliphate, and the pursuit of it, if only for the time being through destroying or terrorizing into compliance the people and the non-Muslim political orders (read: non-Sharia compliant as the jihadists define that) that stand in the way of achieving the caliphate. The effective ground, so to speak, of the jihadist’s existence is his own will to power to actualize the caliphate, or perhaps more likely in the short term, to sacrifice himself as a martyr for the cause. (For many, of course, martyrdom is preferable for its immediate reward of paradise in the afterlife and the glory of heroism.) 13

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The immanentization involved here is the attempted hijacking of divine providence, that is, the effort to seize control of the process of history, and to try to establish or pave the way for an earthly kingdom as the kingdom of God. It was in part the tendency to reduce the spiritual community under God to an earthly political order that the later Hebrew prophets wanted to correct in the case of Israel. The destruction of Israel by the Babylonians and the scattering of the Israelites into a diaspora without a homeland forced a reconsideration of the status of the Israelitic community. The effect, articulated and directed by the prophets, was to refocus on the spiritual foundations of the community that were its true basis. 14 Similarly, the final destruction of the caliphate as a political order with the carving up of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and then its formal abolition by the Republic of Turkey forced Muslims to reconsider the status of the Muslim world. Many Muslims, of course, had not lived under the Ottoman Empire, and the problem was not in fact a new one. Muslims had experienced multiple crises of order and identity through the course of Islamic history, from the assassinations of Uthman and Ali (the last two of the four Rashidun as the Sunnis conceive it); the Shia-Sunni schism over the issue of caliphal succession; the disaffection of many pious Muslims with the Ummayad caliphate, which they considered for varying reasons to be wrongly guided (thus the distinction of the first four caliphs as “Rightly Guided”); the traumatic brutal destruction of the Abbasid caliphate by the Mongols in 1258; the emergence of multiple caliphates, none of them capable with practical efficacy of sustaining a claim to represent all Muslims; and the decline and fall one by one of all the caliphates. Suffice it to say, contemporary jihadists have taken the wrong lesson from the disappearance of the caliphate as a political reality. 15 In any case, for jihadists the restored caliphate—which would be a final restoration—constitutes or serves as prelude to a more perfect phase of history and, somewhere along the line, a literal apocalypse in the biblical sense, one with a distinctly Christian flavor. Jesus (though not of course the Son of God in the Muslim view) will come again, this time not as a teacher-prophet but as a warrior, to defeat the armies of a recently emerged Antichrist. Another important figure, the Mahdi, a descendent of Muhammad and a kind of political messiah, will finish the job Jesus begins, and after this will come the Final Judgment. These are all elements in traditional Muslim belief, and there is, indeed, a long tradition of Muslim apocalyptic speculation, still very much alive, from which jihadists can draw. 16 Few Muslims, however, ancient or modern, have imagined like the jihadists that they could themselves achieve an age of perfection, to say nothing of triggering a literal apocalypse.

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THE CASE OF ISIS The phenomenon of modern jihadism just outlined has taken perhaps its purest form in the group ISIS, which now calls itself simply the “Islamic State.” 17 ISIS could be taken as a kind of Weberian ideal type of jihadism, to which other jihadist groups can be considered in their varying approximations to it. On July 4, 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the “Islamic State” (formerly ISIS), ascended a pulpit in recently conquered Mosul to announce himself as the new caliph to whom all Muslims now owed baya, allegiance. 18 ISIS, at that point controlling territory in Syria and Iraq roughly the size of Britain, was, it claimed, restoring the ancient caliphate. As noted above, in Sunni Islam (ISIS identifies as Sunni), the first four caliphs—Abu Bakr (from whom al-Baghdadi took his name—Abu Bakr of Baghdad, Baghdadi’s own original home), Umar, Uthman, and Ali—are understood to be the Rashidun, the “rightly guided” caliphs, who set the standard for what any later caliphs should be. They were rightly guided because of their deep familiarity with and adherence to the Prophet’s message and way of life. All of them knew Muhammad personally. Early in Muhammad’s career as religious leader, his followers fled Mecca (a kind of exodus known as the hijra) to escape the hostility of the Meccan townspeople and settled in the town of Yathrib, which became known as Medina (lit. “The City”). Medina then became the model political community, a kind of Muslim city-state from which the Muslims spread out, first defeating rival Arabian tribes and then rapidly conquering territories beyond Arabia. Jihadists generally take the religio-political order of Medina as the inspiration and standard for the Islamic state or caliphate they hope to see established. The first great political order after the wave of Muslim conquests and Uthman’s and Ali’s assassinations was the Ummayad caliphate, based in Syria, which is often viewed by pious Muslims to have been excessively worldly and tyrannical, and thus a departure from the model of the original umma. In time the Ummayad caliphate gave way to the Abbasid caliphate, based in Baghdad, more widely accepted as a legitimate, true caliphate in the original sense. The official color of the Abbasid regime was black—the rulers wore black, and the army fought under black banners—and so it is highly symbolic that al-Baghdadi gave his first speech as self-appointed caliph clad in a black turban and black robes and that ISIS fighters wear black and carry black flags. Iraq, too, has great significance for ISIS as the site of the Abbasid caliphate, with its center in Baghdad, where Islam as a political and cultural power achieved its greatest glory. After the Abbasid caliphate was destroyed by the Mongols, the caliphate was taken up again by others, most notably by the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt and later by the Ottomans in Asia Minor. One of Osama bin Laden’s grievances expressed in several of his speeches was that the Islamic caliphate had finally been elimi-

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nated in the fashion mentioned above. 19 No caliphate has existed since, until, according to ISIS, they restored it in 2014. ISIS’ territorial caliphate was short-lived, but the idea of the caliphate lives on powerfully in the Muslim imagination, which is part of why ISIS could have recruited an army and a “people,” such as it was, in the first place. To be sure, the caliphate is not a living option for most contemporary Muslims, who either do not know anything of the tradition of the caliphate, or if they do, do not particularly care about it except perhaps as a historical curiosity. But the idea of the caliphate lingers in some Muslim circles as a utopian dream. As one book title aptly puts it, “longing for the lost caliphate” in those circles remains a living force. 20 For some perhaps the idea of the caliphate is an edifying vision of spiritual community, but for others it holds a sometimes literally fatal attraction. While all jihadist groups are apocalyptic in Voegelin’s qualitative sense, and probably all religiously educated jihadists believe in a literal apocalypse to come at some future date (a prospect attested by various hadiths, sayings or stories of the Prophet), 21 few of them like ISIS have made a literal apocalypse explicit and central in their ideological framework or have made precipitating this apocalypse part of their program of action. ISIS believes, based on the relevant hadiths, that in the Last Days there will be a final decisive battle at Dabiq, a small town near Aleppo in Syria—the Muslim equivalent of the battle of Armageddon. (This is the basis of the title of ISIS’ flagship publication, Dabiq.) According to the hadiths, the great battle will be against Rum—Rome, which at the time meant the Greek Roman Empire (now usually called the Byzantine Empire). ISIS takes Rum to denote Christian civilization generally or, since the center of power in that civilization shifted back west, Western civilization—now led by the United States. ISIS for this reason would like eventually to draw the United States into a fight at Dabiq, triggering the great events of Jesus’ return and the appearance of the Mahdi. 22 Granting the possibility that all this is meant literally by the relevant hadiths, and that these hadiths are authoritative, 23 how does ISIS know that God wants the apocalypse to be precipitated now by them? And how do they know God has ordained them to reestablish the caliphate, or that a restored caliphate in the original sense of the term is even called for? These are of course gnostic claims, akin to the claims of assorted imbeciles in Christian history (in modern times especially in the United States) to have figured out the date of Christ’s Second Coming—imbecilic not necessarily in intellectual capacity, but in the stupidity that comes from overexcited imagination, wishful thinking, and willed certainty. 24 In short, ISIS wants to seize control of history and bring about the kingdom of God on earth through military and political means. It is precisely the same maneuver made by Robespierre, Hitler, Lenin, and other revolutionary

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activists in the Western context, with their various efforts to force an End-ofHistory earthly paradise. The paradise might have been a virtuous Republic embodying true liberty, equality, and fraternity and the perfect will of the People; or a thousand-year Third Reich (the elusive trinitarian, and therefore final, Third Rome) and the thousand-year reign of the true believers in that Reich (an obvious echo of the thousand-year reign of Christians asserted in John’s Apocalypse); or it might have been the Marxist realm of freedom and universal brotherhood (in distinct echo of Joachim’s third age of the Holy Spirit); or it might have been something else less obviously poached (consciously or unconsciously) from certain Christian ideas. The terms are different, but substantively it is all the same thing. In this qualitative sense, all the jihadist groups—and, Voegelin thinks, all ideologies in general—are apocalyptic in character, whether apocalypse is directly part of their thinking or not. When the apocalyptic urge is combined with revolutionary activism as it is in the movements just mentioned, it becomes a deadly force. THE TOTALITARIAN CHARACTER OF JIHADISM Jihadism is sometimes characterized as totalitarian. This is true, but the specific character of its totalitarianism has not been adequately explored. 25 It is directly related to the elements of ideology we have been discussing. The essential motive behind the construction of ideology is a longing to escape the challenges of real life and a will to certainty about how to escape, including a dogmatic assertion, based on nothing but intense desire, of a panacea final solution (pardon the term, but it fits precisely—that is why Hitler called his solution “the final solution”); and then at least some vague idea of what the new world will be like once the old one (i.e., the real one) is escaped— here is the apocalypse. 26 The new life to come implies a new ground of existence. In the old (real) world there seemed either to be no ground to stand on, or whatever the ground had been taken to be was deemed insufficient, or undesirable, or unstable. Certainly, the old ground of faith or philosophy, in the mind of the ideologue, would be too uncertain to serve as a solid grounding. This is why some traditionally religious people become “fundamentalist”: to secure the foundations by trying to eliminate the risk of faith, specifically by trying to nail down the exact meaning of the right doctrines or practices once and for all so that no questions about them will ever have to be asked anymore. 27 Or, in the case of philosophy, the apparent vagueness and inconclusiveness—I stress, apparent—of Plato’s zetetic quest, the inevitable disorientation that comes from questioning old assumed verities, and the severe internal discipline required to maintain and continue to believe in the quest in the face of all the occasional doubt and confusion as well as to study and

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think in a very serious rather than superficial way—all this, like the similar challenges of faith, is quite difficult, requiring simultaneously strong desire and a refusal to be satisfied with cheap answers. Much easier to cut off the questioning, settle on some appealing, oncefor-all solution, and stick to it. Unfortunately, the cost of this move is distortion of reality and a loss of the reality at the root of both faith and philosophy, the experienced pull of transcendence which if followed persistently bears the self-evidently good fruit of strong moral character (wrought from the discipline of the pursuit), a sympathy for those seeking “something better” (which includes everyone, even if they seek it in misplacements of the ground), and freedom from a host of falsehoods and worldly cares. Both faith and philosophy require a certain humility, and specifically a recognition that we do not exist from ourselves and therefore that we cannot make of reality whatever we will; we must, rather, adapt ourselves to a reality greater than ourselves. The contrary attempt of ideology to escape the difficulties and uncertainties of real life by assuming control of reality (which cannot really be done) produces, or rather is one with, a spirit of dominion. This is the real root of totalitarianism. If the will to power over reality is relentless and ruthless enough, if one really tries to achieve total control, the result is a totalism of life, and if such a one achieves political power and maintains it for any length of time, that spirit of totalism (if the people embrace his leadership), or at least the external form of totalism (whether many people embrace it or not), is transferred to society. Voegelin spoke occasionally on the question of totalitarianism, very directly in the 1953 essay review of Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and in his early book The Authoritarian State, where he distinguished between totalitarianism and authoritarianism and traced the intellectual roots of the totalitarian idea. 28 In the review, Voegelin commends Arendt for the evident spirit from which she wrote her book and how it directed her analysis. “The delimitation of subject matter,” Voegelin says, “through the emotions aroused by the fate of human beings is the strength of Dr. Arendt’s book” (18). The emotional root was the sense of “shock” at “the fate of the Jews,” and this feeling was “the center from which radiates her desire to inquire into the causes of the horror, to understand political phenomena in Western civilization that belong to the same class, and to consider means that will stem the evil” (17). The reason Voegelin thinks this emotional center helped Arendt in her analysis is that “The emotion in its purity makes the intellect a sensitive instrument for recognizing and selecting the relevant facts.” He adds that “if the purity of the human interest remains untainted by partisanship, the result will be a historical study of respectable rank—as in the case of the present work, which in its substantive parts is remarkably free of ideological nonsense” (18). Voegelin touches on an important point here:

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no analyst can fully understand an ideology if looking at it himself from an ideological perspective, and this is true even if the ideology is comparatively mild in its outlook and active intentions. The ideological lens may be more or less distortive of reality, but there will always be some distortion. In the end, Voegelin thinks Arendt’s analysis is undermined by an assumption that liberalism actually shares with totalitarianism. I leave aside the details of Voegelin’s review of the three parts of Arendt’s book (on Antisemitism, Imperialism, and Totalitarianism) to focus on the points most relevant to the current analysis. Arendt notes in Origins the modern phenomenon of “superfluous people,” people without roots, who in the period of Western imperialism and global capitalism and corresponding reshaping of national identities around the world found themselves effectively stateless, claimed by no one, and who consequently had no stake in, or much benefit from, political life or the life of the societies in which they lived. The feeling of homelessness was exacerbated by the impersonality of mass society, where individuals disappeared into the mass and groups found their unique identities increasingly undermined by the amorphous tide of mass opinion and culture, to say nothing of their anxiety from the economic and job insecurity inherent in the constant revolutionizing of work and society inherent in capitalist innovation. In the larger picture, what was happening was, in Voegelin’s words, “the disintegration of a civilization [the West] into masses of human beings without secure economic and social status” (19). The most superfluous of the superfluous people were the Jews, the greatest victims among them, but the victimizers, the members of the totalitarian movements, were typically also superfluous people of a sort, also homeless in an existential sense and also deeply insecure economically and socially, especially after the traumas of the Great War and then the worldwide Great Depression, made worse in Germany by the burden of postwar reparations. The totalitarian movements offered a sense of belonging to a group with a purpose and, ostensibly, a great destiny. Members would no longer be lost in the chaos. They would triumph over all the insecurities and anxieties with an iron will. They would make it happen. Joining and fighting for the group of destiny was an ecstatic rush for the totally committed. Arendt saw all this, but she did not, Voegelin thought, quite get to the heart of the matter. She came close at times, but she did not let the glimmer of insight control her analysis. Voegelin singles out one passage in the Origins that reveals Arendt’s awareness of the central problems. Arendt writes: Nothing perhaps distinguishes modern masses as radically from those of previous centuries as the loss of faith in a Last Judgment: the worst have lost their fear and the best have lost their hope. Unable as yet to live without fear and hope, these masses are attracted by every effort which seems to promise a

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man-made fabrication of the paradise they longed for and of the hell they had feared. Just as the popularized features of Marx’s classless society have a queer resemblance to the Messianic Age, so the reality of the concentration camp resembles nothing so much as medieval pictures of hell.

Yet, though “nothing distinguishes modern masses as radically as the loss of faith,” Arendt says nothing in elaboration of the point and neither returns to the point directly nor pursues any similar line of thought to a conclusion. As Voegelin puts it, “The author . . . is aware of the problem; but, oddly enough, the knowledge does not affect her treatment of the materials.” He elaborates: If the spiritual disease is the decisive feature that distinguishes modern masses from those of earlier centuries, then one would expect the study of totalitarianism to be delimited, not by the institutional breakdown of national societies and the growth of socially superfluous masses, but rather by the genesis of the spiritual disease. . . . Then the origins of totalitarianism would not have to be sought primarily in the fate of the nation state and attendant social and economic changes since the eighteenth century, but rather in the rise of immanentist sectarianism since the high Middle Ages; and the totalitarian movements would not be simply revolutionary movements of functionally dislocated people, but immanentist creed movements in which medieval heresies have come to their fruition. (20–21)

Arendt also saw another crucial feature of totalitarianism, its drive for a radical transformation of reality, but because she lost the thread of the earlier insight she was not able to make a coherent assessment of this transformative quest. Voegelin quotes her: “What totalitarian ideologies therefore aim at is not the transformation of the outside world or the revolutionizing transmutation of society, but the transformation of human nature itself.” He responds: “This is, indeed, the essence of totalitarianism as an immanentist creed movement. Totalitarian movements do not intend to remedy social evils by industrial changes, but want to create a millennium in the eschatological sense through transformation of human nature. The Christian faith in transcendental perfection through the grace of God has been converted—and perverted—into the idea of immanent perfection through an act of man.” But Arendt, who is inclined to fixate on externalities or environmental conditions, does not draw the conclusion that the drive to transform human nature is a spiritual disease, much less that the disease involves a shutting out of the movement of grace within that elicits faith in its transcendent cause. She instead turns bizarrely to speculate on whether human nature might indeed be changed with sufficient totalitarian conditioning, a prospect she contemplates with horror, but one she treats as a real possibility. Voegelin “could hardly believe my eyes” when he read these ruminations. “‘Nature’ is a philosophical concept,” he says; “a ‘change of nature’ is a contradiction in terms; tampering with the ‘nature’ of a thing means destroying the thing.” He

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concludes, “To conceive the idea of ‘changing the nature’ of man (or of anything) is a symptom of the intellectual breakdown of Western civilization. The author, in fact, adopts the immantentist ideology; she keeps an ‘open mind’ with regard to the totalitarian atrocities; she considers the question of a ‘change of nature’ a matter that will have to be settled by ‘trial and error’ . . . ” Arendt’s comments here, Voegelin clarifies, “must not be construed as a concession to totalitarianism in the more restricted sense, that is, as a concession to National Socialist and Communist atrocities. On the contrary, they reflect a typically liberal, progressive, pragmatist attitude toward philosophical problems.” Here we see the destructive power of ideology from the other side, the impact of the liberal’s own ideology on her ability to grapple with the ideologically fueled enormities on which she looks in horror. She stands powerless before the awful spectacle. From this tendency Voegelin comes to a startling conclusion: Arendt’s “attitude is, indeed, of general importance because it reveals how much ground liberals and totalitarians have in common; the essential immanentism that unites them overrides the differences of ethos that separate them. The true dividing line in the contemporary crisis does not run between liberals and totalitarians, but between the religious and philosophical transcendentalists on the one side and the liberal and totalitarian immanentist sectarians on the other side” (22). Or to put it another way, liberal intellectual paralysis and totalitarian atrocity are different symptoms of one overarching crisis of Western civilization: its loss of faith and philosophy and the urge to find replacements, whether it is belief in Progress or in the will of the superheroic Leader. When the progressive runs into a phenomenon so manifestly counter to human progress as totalitarianism, she simply cannot understand what she is seeing. Her faith in the god of Progress is shaken. From there the now homeless intellectual may go on to take shelter in other ideological havens— post-Marxism or poststructuralism or some other of the increasingly bleak alternatives, increasingly bleak because the sources of hope are inevitably drying up, the misplaced grounds of existence being, after all, empty wells. What they are really doing is trying to find the ground in themselves, in the cleverness of their critical minds and in the intensity of their passions. 29 Another alternative (outside faith and philosophy) is to turn to a more traditional source of meaning, but also to revise it as needed to achieve the psychological effect that others look for in trendier sources. This alternative has some distinct advantages. Wholly fabricated ideologies like MarxistLeninism and Nazism are inherently unstable and, history shows us, do not last very long, while old traditions are by definition stable and lasting. The Nazis burned themselves out (along with much of Europe) in little more than a decade. Russian Marxist-Leninism had a comparatively good run of seventy-two years, but now, in its original form at least, is dead (though it took

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tens of millions of people down with it). Islam, by contrast, has continued for over 1,400 years, and with about a billion adherents today shows no signs of imminent demise. An ideology crafted out of Islamic materials could potentially last for generations because the pool of potential recruits is so vast that even a tiny percentage of the whole would have sufficient numbers to sustain their program indefinitely, at least until through abject failure its ultimate futility was impossible to ignore. Modern jihadism was born into the context Arendt described with reference to the Western experience. Western imperialism and capitalist disturbance of venerated old customs were bitterly resented in many parts of the Muslim world, above all in the Middle East. Internally, Middle Eastern countries had long been, generally speaking, politically corrupt and economically and culturally stagnant. Many of them experimented with democracy and then with Socialism as the cure for their social ills, but the various Middle Eastern governments because of incompetence, corruption, and/or tyranny proved incapable of handling successfully the challenges of modern developments. Middle Eastern peoples grew increasingly exasperated with the failures of leadership, frustrated with the continuing decline of their standard of living relative to the West, and in some cases alarmed at the intrusions of Western mass culture, which many took to be decadent and morally destructive. Some, like Hasan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb of Egypt, concluded that the secular ideologies of the post-war superpowers simply could not fulfill their promise for humanity, that they were spiritually bankrupt, and that it was time to try something new, or rather to return to something old: Islam. As Qutb put it in Milestones, the first major distillation of jihadist ideology (published 1964): [Liberal] democracy in the West has become infertile to such an extent that it is borrowing from the systems of the Eastern bloc, especially in the economic system, under the name of socialism. It is the same with the Eastern bloc. Its social theories, foremost among which is Marxism, in the beginning attracted not only a large number of people from the East but also from the West, as it was a way of life based on a creed. But now Marxism is defeated on the plane of thought, and if it is stated that not a single nation in the world is truly Marxist, it will not be an exaggeration. On the whole this theory conflicts with man’s nature and its needs. . . . The leadership of mankind by Western man is now on the decline, not because Western culture has become poor materially or because its economic and military power has become weak. The period of the Western system has come to an end primarily because it is deprived of those life-giving values which enabled it to be the leader of mankind. [What is necessary is] a way of life which is harmonious with human nature, which is positive and constructive, and which is practicable. 30

So far this assessment is not far off from Voegelin’s. Qutb’s solution, however, Voegelin would have thought, is vitiated by the same fatal mistake that

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made liberalism and socialism inherently deficient as grounds of existence. “Islam,” Qutb asserted, “is the only system which possesses these [life-giving] values and this [truly human] way of life.” 31 Qutb’s mistake here is not in offering religion as the answer, but in conceiving it as a “system” in the same way that liberalism and socialism are systems. That is, he conceived the solution, the alternative “way of life based on a creed,” in ideological terms. He reduced Islam to an ideology and simply replaced the liberal and socialist ideological creeds with another ideological creed, even if it was crafted from traditional religious materials. This move is more obviously evident in the writings of Mawlana Maududi (sometimes spelled Mawdudi) of Pakistan, whose writings Qutb admired and whose outlook Qutb took to be in line with his own. 32 In a 1939 lecture entitled “Jihad in Islam,” Maududi describes Islam as “a revolutionary ideology and programme which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals. ‘Muslim’ is the title of that International Revolutionary Party organized by Islam to carry into effect its revolutionary programme. And ‘Jihad’ refers to that revolutionary struggle and utmost exertion which the Islamic Party brings into play to achieve this objective.” Maududi explicitly presents this “revolutionary ideology and program” of Islam as being of the same class with other ideologies and ideological programs, only better: “Like all revolutionary ideologies, Islam shuns the use of current vocabulary and adopts a terminology of its own, so that its own revolutionary ideals may be distinguished from common ideals.” That is, the ideals and terminology are different, but not the nature of the enterprise. The purpose of this ideological alternative to the others, moreover, is like them emphatically political: “The purpose of Islam is to set up a state on the basis of its own ideology and programme.” Maududi conceives this “ideological Islamic State” as initially a different kind of nation-state that will be “the standard-bearer of Islam” but immediately thereafter asserts that “Islam requires the earth—not just a portion, but the whole planet.” 33 Here is the dream of the caliphate. Qutb, Maududi, and the other jihadist ideologists all call for an Islamic State on the model of the original Muslim caliphate. ISIS claimed to have actually founded one. This state would be a revolutionary ideological state in the same way the Soviet Union was, enacting a revolution from above within the state and worldwide revolution beyond it. For all this to happen, Qutb argued—as Lenin had argued in the case of Communism—a “vanguard” of the enlightened is needed to lead the way, leaders who have overcome the false consciousness of the current prevailing order and understand the path to perfection. 34 In Qutb’s case, this meant a vanguard of Muslims who understood the Islamic “system” and who recognized the bankruptcy and corrupting influence of the jahiliya (barbaric, religiously ignorant) order which dominated the world (including so-called Mus-

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lim nations) in the form of democracy and Socialism; who would form the equivalent of Lenin’s party, that “organizational weapon” for eliminating (one way or another) ideological rivals and whipping submissive masses into shape; 35 who would employ their own kind of propaganda (Qutb used the term dawa, or preaching) in a project of reeducation; and who would lead believers to “annihilate all [non-Islamic] systems” so that the Islamic system would reign supreme across the world. 36 Unfortunately, dawa would not be enough to win over most of those steeped in jahiliya, and so rival systems would have to be “annihilated by force.” This would require the equivalent of Trotsky’s “permanent revolution.” It would require, in Qutb’s words, an “eternal struggle for the freedom of man” (via Islam) that “will continue until the religion is purified for God” and until “the earth [is] cleansed of corruption.” 37 Here is Qutb’s totalitarian spirit fully unmasked, and his attitude is representative of the spirit of totalitarianism in general. The project to “purify” the world betrays the feeling that the imperfections of mankind are intolerable, and this inability to tolerate the human condition is what leads to the radical intolerance of the totalitarian mind. 38 The will to escape reality as it is and to remake it as one wishes it to be, to change human nature itself to match the perfect ideal and be satisfied with nothing less, is the motive of the totalitarian state and the source of totalitarian terror. This is not the only possible result of that will—one could opt instead to withdraw permanently from the world, for instance—but for the actively inclined who want to effect a radical revolution and find the means and opportunity actually to commence the revolutionary enterprise, repression and terror of some kind may be inevitable. This tendency is there even for those who believe they are fighting for liberation. The totalitarian principle reveals itself even in Qutb’s articulation of his “freedom” agenda. The professed intention of Qutb’s project is to “abolish all those systems and governments which are based on the rule of man over men and the servitude of one human being to another. When Islam releases people from this political pressure and presents to them its spiritual message, appealing to their reason, it gives them complete freedom to accept or not to accept its beliefs.” This at first glance looks like a divergence from Soviet-style forced indoctrination. But Qutb adds, “However, this freedom does not mean that they can make their desires their gods, or that they can choose to remain in the servitude of other human beings [read: live under other regime-types]. . . . [I]n an Islamic system there is room for all kinds of people to follow their own beliefs, while obeying the laws of the country which are themselves based on the Divine authority [meaning Sharia].” 39 In other words, you can live according to non-Islamic beliefs, but not to the point of acting out those beliefs, or in any case not where they might conflict

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with a narrow and severe interpretation of Sharia; this is for your own good, as such actions, being un-Islamic, can by definition not be free. Or as Rousseau put it in a rather different context, you will be “forced to be free.” 40 There are good reasons to believe Rousseau would have hated the radical French revolutionaries who were inspired by his work (Robespierre idolized Rousseau, 41 as, though perhaps less obsessively, did most of the others)—but Rousseau’s formulation that anyone who resists the “general will” must be “forced to be free” was deadly. It was the logic of the Reign of Terror. What to do, after all, with those who will not let themselves be forced to freedom by the revolutionary laws, or by the dictates of the Committee on Public Safety that wants to keep the public safe from such upstarts? Sayyid Qutb may not have condoned the kind of terrorist tactics we have seen employed by contemporary jihadists any more than Rousseau would have approved of Robespierre’s, but there should be no doubt that the logic of Qutb’s ideological program makes way for jihadist terror in much the same way. 42 The principle of totalitarianism, Voegelin suggests in The Authoritarian State, was articulated in high medieval Islam by Averroes (in Arabic pronunciation, Ibn Rushd). In context, Voegelin is speaking of ideas about the relation of the individual and the state. “The problem of the relationship of man in his substantial individuality to the substance of an all-encompassing entity,” Voegelin says, “allows for different solutions (CW 4, 74). The one often chosen by preference today [in the 1930s]—associated with the name of Averroes—stipulates that the objective idea is distributed among all men or pervades the present population and is assimilated into its substance or in some formulation or other are intended to be entirely identical in substance with the entity.” Voegelin is careful to point out that this idea of community “has no essential connection with the further problem of the total state but only an accidental one to the extent that it is a more suitable instrument than any other for the one will, which aims to take hold of people all the way to the ground of their personality” (74). 43 Voegelin had already grasped the problem of “the ground,” then, by 1936 when his Authoritarian State was published. He links “the process of domination in certain totalitarian phenomena” with “the permeation of people with a shared social context with a common idea, a common spiritual and intellectual outlook—the totality of ideology” (73). What is the “totalitarian spiritual and intellectual outlook” as Voegelin understands it? It cannot be explained by the “shared social context,” which is only a conditioning factor, as shown by the fact that not everyone in a given social context embraces the reigning ideology, even if they might pretend to for the sake of survival. Nor does the conceptual content of the ideology explain it, because the thing to be explained is why people embrace the concepts, which do not have great rational force for any intelligent, well-

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adjusted person not already locked into the ideological framework. The important thing, Voegelin says in The Authoritarian State, is “the substance of the idea” (emphasis added), by which he means, really, the existential attitude in the souls of its adherents for which the idea stands as “symbol” (79). The ideological symbols emerge in a “situation of struggle” (79f). Hitler indicated this directly in Mein Kampf, “My Struggle.” All of the totalitarian leaders have claimed to be part of a heroic struggle of decisive human significance. This is true of jihadist leaders, for whom the jihad (lit. “struggle”) is a struggle for existence of the umma, the community—Qutb said it does not currently “exist” and cannot exist apart from a bona fide Islamic State 44— and by implication a struggle for their own personal existence. The struggle of the movement grows out of and fuses with the individual’s struggle to overcome his own questionable existence. It is always my struggle as well as ours; if it were otherwise there would be no attraction to the movement’s struggle. The totalitarians conceive the struggle in grand terms. They are, effectively, waging a cosmic war for the destiny of mankind. But to succeed, they will need to “activate the people,” and they will do this by articulating the symbols that will evoke and give form to the people’s desires. To put it differently, the masses will need an ideological “education” (87–88). The education program is certainly manipulative, but it can only work to activate the people if they are existentially inclined to receive it. When the people embrace the “idea” and let themselves be “assimilated into its substance,” to that extent their wills are fused with the will of the Leader into “one will.” The basic form of the resulting total entity was traced (and recommended) by Thomas Hobbes, and then in a “democratic” way Rousseau. The “Leviathan,” Hobbes said, is an “artificial man” in which Sovereignty is an “artificial soul” that directs the political body. 45 This sovereignty, or “common power” of the community, can be fully effective only if the members of society “confer all their power and strength upon on man, or assembly of men, that may reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will: which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or assembly of men, to bear their person; and everyone to own, and acknowledge himself to be the author of whatsoever he that so beareth their person, shall act, or cause to be acted, in those things which concern the common peace and safety; and theirein to submit their wills, everyone to his will, and their judgments, to his judgment.” Hobbes next specifies that “This is more than consent, or concord; it is a real unity of them all, in one and the same person. . . .” 46 The resulting ensouled “person” would then be a kind of “mortal God” against whom any individual would be terrified to act. Hobbes described here, in abstract form, the essence of the “total state” of which Voegelin writes in The Authoritarian State. 47

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Rousseau in Book I, chapter 6 of The Social Contract adopted a very similar conception obviously mimicking Hobbes’, except that everyone would submit to a somewhat nebulous “general will” (as opposed to any particular persons), consisting of what everyone would will if they understood what was good for each and all, and which might be discerned by a detached and perceptive “lawgiver,” who could then make recommendations to the lawmakers. 48 Rousseau probably did not intend, as Hobbes did, for his ideal social contract and system to be taken as an actual plan of action, 49 but radical French revolutionaries like Robespierre did very much take it as such and tried, with disastrous results, to implement it. Robespierre in particular presented himself as someone like Rousseau’s “lawgiver” who could recognize the hidden will of the people and give it political form, in much the same way the twentieth-century Fascists later pretended to do. 50 The self-appointed jihadist vanguard is supposed to be able in a similar way to tap into the “true” spirit of Islam, which qualifies them then to speak and act on all Muslims’ behalf. 51 The form of totalitarianism just outlined—the fusing of wills so the group or the community can act as one personality—is plainly evident within jihadist groups. Members therein must swear baya, allegiance, to the leader of the group, such as Bin Laden or al-Baghdadi, just as Muslims swore baya to caliphs in the various caliphates over the centuries starting with the first caliph, Abu Bakr, in 632. 52 Group members must then submit unconditionally to the decisions of the leader. Baghdadi demanded baya from all Muslims worldwide in accord with ISIS’s conception of the divinely ordained caliph. The psychology of total submission, it turns out, is typical of Islamic terrorist groups in general. Jerrold Post and some of his colleagues, interviewing Middle Eastern terrorists in 2003, some Islamic and some secular (related to the Palestinian Fatah party), were struck by the degree to which individual and group “fused” after commitment to the group was made. Most ominously there was a strong tendency toward loss of personal responsibility in service to group demands. 53 Moral questions were neither encouraged nor asked. As one terrorist said, “There was no room for questioning.” 54 No doubt enthrallment with and deference to the will of their charismatic, heroic leaders, as Post suggests, contribute to the group members’ avoidance of questions, but based on the foregoing analysis we could add further that questioning the cause or the things done in the name of the cause would have destroyed the psychological effect of joining the group in the first place. The effect they are looking for, specifically, is an annihilation of their uncertainties and anxieties and the creation of a new, confident identity, a new self, that is free of such disturbances. This, in truth, is the kind of “freedom” Qutb sought. Post observes that “[W]hat moves a person . . . to become a terrorist and carry out a violent attack . . . often has to do with some personal crisis in the individual’s life or has to do with the death of a brother

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or friend that throws a person over the edge.” 55 Post found in interviews that terrorists frequently spoke of “feelings of victimization,” a sense of empowerment when they joined the terrorist groups, and a “heightened sense of the heroic” with their engagement in group operations. 56 One terrorist expressed his motivation as a matter “of self-fulfillment, of honor and a feeling of independence.” 57 Another summed up the existential motive of related violence strikingly when he said, “An armed action proclaims that I am here. I exist, I am strong, I am in control, I am in the field, I am on the map.” 58 Or as pithily expressed elsewhere, “I bomb, therefore I am.” 59 Other important studies specifically of jihadist fighters have detected and elaborated similar dynamics. Thomas Hegghammer, for instance, in his landmark study of jihadists in Saudi Arabia (the country from which bin Laden came), notices certain recurring themes in the motivations of young Saudis who race to join the jihad, wherever it might be taking place. Before joining the cause they had experienced a sense of impotency and humiliation, 60 but committing to the fight served as a kind of purification from their failures, 61 let loose a spirit of heroic adventurism, 62 and gave them a sense of belonging. 63 Faisal Devji, in his book The Terrorist in Search of Humanity, is struck in observing jihadists by the presence of many of the same qualities mentioned above: a keen sense of humiliation; 64 an estrangement from reality; 65 a quest for certainty; 66 hypocrisy or lying to themselves; 67 apocalyptic thinking; 68 magical creation of an identity; 69 expectation of a magical transformation of mankind; 70 moral blindness; 71 and a feeling of “agency through violence.” 72 In another book Devji stresses a common inability among jihadists to distinguish reality from fiction, an infirmity enhanced by the virtual reality created by global mass media. 73 A number of other studies have similar findings. 74 The basic psychological progression that leads to terrorist violence, and certainly to apocalyptic violence, seems to be this: The attempt to annihilate personal anxieties through commitment to a radical movement leads to or coincides with a further attempt to annihilate the sources of anxiety, the threats to oneself and to the group, who have in effect become one collective person. The individual and the group must assume the sources of anxiety to be external to themselves because to consider that the source of trouble might lie within would certainly ratchet up the anxiety again. It was precisely to escape from themselves, the individual selves that could not handle life as it is, that they created the new collective self, or allowed themselves to be assimilated to it, or to the idea or vision they all serve and from which they derive their new identity. 75 So the threats must be outside, in people and systems alien to them, even if they are the people and systems among whom or within which the group members have lived. (Of course, often the leader is needed to “help” identify the threats.) These existential threats (as they conceive them) must be removed, eliminated—even if this requires mass mur-

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der. Call it extreme self-therapy. The totalitarian element in all this, again, is the self-creator’s drive for total control to the point of trying to annihilate anything outside of his control. Voegelin did not map out all these qualities of the totalitarian mind in The Authoritarian State or in the review of Arendt’s book, but he addressed most of them one way or another in his larger body of work. This is not the place, however, for tracing out all the connections across Voegelin’s ouvre. We should come to a close. CONCLUSION Voegelin’s last word, almost, in the discussion after the “In Search of the Ground” lecture was that “Ideologies are highly dangerous because they make you lose contact with reality” (251). They are intended, in fact, as a means of escape from reality, or parts of it at any rate, with which the potential ideologue cannot come to terms—that is their real function, though of course this is not consciously acknowledged. Ideologies may be more or less open to questioning, and thus some may be more in contact with reality than others, but always there will be some important questions even in these relatively milder ideologies that will not be tolerated, or at least will be strongly discouraged to the point of ostracizing anyone who dares to raise them. It was a liberal inability to take religion seriously that prevented Hannah Arendt from pursuing the clue that the loss of faith was the decisive distinction of the modern masses and was the thing really to be explained, along with why the loss of faith made people vulnerable to the siren call of totalitarianism. As I have suggested, though the ideologue imagines the reality he cannot abide to be external to him, the problem is really internal. The escape attempt from reality comes out of a loss of personal reality, or more specifically out of a horror at the nothingness within. The person has no grounding and therefore no substance, and he seeks a new ground from which he can acquire substance. The problem in the case of jihadists was captured with great precision by Tim Winter (Muslim name Abdal Hakim Murad), a Cambridge scholar and Sufi mystic, in an essay entitled “The Poverty of Fanaticism.” The “poverty” he speaks of is a poverty of personal substance. As Winter sees it, the “increasing radicalization” of Islam in recent times has been “driven by the perceived failure of the traditional Islamic institutions and the older Muslim movements to lead the Muslim peoples into the worthy but so far chimerical promised land of the ‘Islamic State.’” What is really needed is “the revival of the spiritual life within Islam.” 76 The Muslim “fanatics” are far removed from real “faith,” which is “the certainty and sound awareness of God which alone signify that one is firmly grounded in the reality of exis-

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tence.” The fanatics try to fabricate a ground, but the “fruits” of faith “are not man’s own accomplishment.” The fanatics are in fact “not grounded in reality but in illusion.” The faith that produces fruit is the “criterion [by which] we must judge the quality of contemporary ‘activist’ styles of faith.” 77 What Winter finds perhaps most striking about the Islamist radicals is their essential emptiness. He takes an example from his own experience to illustrate. He was once acquainted with “a leader of the radical ‘Islamic’ group, the Jamaat Islamiyya” when the man was in his radical prime. Some years later Winter saw the man in Cairo and “almost failed to recognize him.” He had lost the long beard and costume with which we have come to associate Islamists and he was walking with “a young Western girl” from Australia whom he intended to marry. “I talked to him,” Winter says, “and it became clear that he was no longer even a minimally observant Muslim, no longer prayed, and that his ambition in life was to leave Egypt, live in Australia, and make money.” What struck Winter about the encounter was that “his experiences in Islamic activism had made no impression on him,” and this tracelessness of the “initial enthusiasm” seemed telling. The “ephemerality of extremist activism” exposed its lack of substance. 78 Moving to analysis, Winter asks the question, “What attracts young Muslims to this type of ephemeral but ferocious activism?” The setting in which the attraction takes place, he observes, is “the almost universal condition of insecurity which Muslim societies are now experiencing” with the dramatic “dislocations of modernity.” What the young Muslim wants is “instant certainty, a framework in which to interpret the landscape before him, to resolve the problems and tensions of his life, and, even more deliciously, a way of feeling superior and in control.” But the ideological cause and related activism turn out to be empty. It “produces people whose faith is, despite its apparent intensity, liable to vanish as suddenly as it came. Deprived of real nourishment, the activist’s soul can only grow hungry and emaciated, until at last it dies.” 79 Where, then, can a Muslim soul find nourishment? Winter’s answer is a widespread recovery of Sufism, with its elaborate “science, an ‘ilm, of analyzing the ‘states’ of the heart, and the methods of bringing it into [a] condition of soundness.” 80 The science of the heart reveals various “constituent parts,” of which the most decisive for the soul’s condition is the ruh, the spirit, “that part of man which is not of this world, and which connects him with his Creator, and which, if he is fortunate, enables him to see God in the next world.” But for this connection with the divine ground to take hold, we must remove the “rust” of sin and distraction that builds up on the ruh, and this requires a “process of self-discipline” to purify, not the world, but the person within—which means “daily combat against the lower self,” which without direction from above will lead us astray—and also a concentration of the soul on “the immediate presence and reality of God.” 81

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The solution to Islamist radicalism, then, and the jihadist violence it engenders, Voegelin would agree, is a widespread turning of Muslim individuals to the true ground of existence that gives personal substance and a simultaneous facing up to and struggle against the demons within. Plato’s symbolization of this was the Myth of the Puppet Player in which man lets himself be pulled by the golden cord of reason and counterpulls against the steely cords of passion that can distract and divert him from the subtle movement of divine presence in the soul. The Platonic word for the pursuit of the true ground was “philosophy” (philia + sophia), the love of wisdom, which pulls “reason” (nous) into the search for the true ground (aition), ultimately understood to be divine and to be itself the source of the love that initiates the search. The Christian word was for this pursuit was “faith” (pistis) or conviction, which Saint Paul described as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen” (Heb. 11:1, my emphasis)—the substance and the evidence, specifically, of divine presence in the soul. The great Sufi thinkers like al-Ghazali understood the experience in terms of the spirit’s (ruh’s) orientation to that presence. This ground may not look very solid to those who would like to see the ground they are asked to stand on, but it is infinitely more substantial than the impossible dream of the caliphate. NOTES 1. See Daniel Bell, The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, with “The Resumption of History in the New Century” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000) and Chaim I. Waxman, ed., The End of Ideology Debate (New York: Funk and Wagnalis, 1968). 2. Eric Voegelin, “In Search of the Ground,” in Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 237–38. 3. On the rationale for using the term “radical Islamism” as opposed to “fundamentalism” or other labels to denote the phenomenon of radical Islamic ideology, see William E. Shepard, “Islam and Ideology: Towards a Typology,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19:3 (1987): 307–35. 4. Farhad Khosrokhavar, Inside Jihadism: Understanding Jihadi Movements Worldwide (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009), 1, 3. For a complete analytical review of jihadist thought in its current form, see Khosrokhavar’s Jihadist Ideology: The Anthropological Approach (Denmark: Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation, 2011). On the historical development of jihadist ideology, see Shiraz Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Another especially clear and accessible account of jihadist ideology is provided in Mary Habeck, Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 5. Voegelin’s most complete discussion of the puppet master myth is in his “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme,” in Published Essays 1966–1985 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 12), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1990), 336–39. 6. Augustine, Augustine: Political Writings, Ernest L. Fortin and Douglas Kries, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1994), 40. 7. I believe Voegelin meant to say Fourth Monarchy rather than Fifth.

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8. Voegelin traces the progression of thought and experience from Joachim to modern ideologies in Chapter 4 of the New Science of Politics, which is bound together with The Political Religions and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, both of which deal with related matters, in Modernity Without Restraint: The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 5), Manfred Henningsen and Ellis Sandoz, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999). 9. See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Lesley Brown, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press), X.7.1177a27–b1, b26–33. 10. Some were more or less aware of what they were doing on this point, as witness the French Revolutionaries’ remaking of the Cathedral of Notre Dame into the Temple of Reason. 11. Shia Muslims see Ali, the fourth caliph, as the only rightful caliph of the original community in being the only one of the four in the Prophet’s bloodline. 12. A good synopsis of the relation between Wahhabism and Salafism can be found in Mohamed Bin Ali and Muhammad Saiful Alam Shah Bin Sudiman, “Salafis and Wahhabis: Two Sides of the Same Coin?” Available at https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/ co16254-salafis-and-wahhabis-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/#.XE29VS3MyqA. On the relation of Wahhabism and jihadism, see Mohammed Al Jarman, “The Intersection of Wahhabism and Jihad.” Available at https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/06/07/2017/intersection-wahhabism-and-jihad. 13. To prevent misunderstanding, perhaps I should say directly that my claim here is not that restoration of a caliphate as a functioning religio-political order is always the first concern of all jihadi fighters (whose particular motives and expectations in terms of practical outcomes may vary widely), or even of all jihadist ideological leaders. The claim is that the idea or dream of a highly idealized caliphate serves as a kind of place-marker for the jihadist’s misplaced ground. The actual political order that might be achievable is one thing; the dream is another; and the motive of the dream—the real concern of this essay—is yet another. It is the motive that really gets to the ground, and the motive, understood by the jihadist in terms of inspiration by the original umma, is really a will to power, which will be analyzed below. 14. Voegelin analyzes the issues here in the first book of his masterwork, Order and History: Israel and Revelation (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 14), Maurice P. Hogan, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001). 15. On the history of the caliphate and the varying Muslim perspectives about it, see Hugh Kennedy, Caliphate: The History of an Idea (New York: Basic Books, 2016) and Mona Hassan, Longing for the Lost Caliphate: A Transregional History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). 16. See David Cook, Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton: Darwin Press, Inc., 2002) and Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005), and also Jean-Pierre Filiu, Apocalypse in Islam, M. B. DeBevoise, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 17. I will continue to use “ISIS” as a convenient way to distinguish the group from others who also seek an “Islamic state,” some of them hostile to ISIS for, in their view, prematurely and illegitimately arrogating to itself the caliphal mantle. 18. For information on Baghdadi, see William McCants, The Believer: How an Introvert with a Passion for Religion and Soccer Became Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Leader of the Islamic State (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2015). 19. Bin Laden’s references to the destruction of the Ottoman caliphate were indirect. He would complain, cryptically from an outsider’s perspective, of the suffering of Muslims for the last “80 years.” In a 2001 statement, for example, bin Laden asserted that “Our nation (the Islamic world) has been tasting . . . humiliation and this degradation [at the hands of the West] for more than 80 years.” Osama Bin Laden, “Text Bin Laden Statement,” October 7, 2001. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/07/afghanistan.terrorism15. Eighty years at the time of his speeches would have been around the time that had elapsed since the carving up of the Ottoman Empire by Allied forces at the end of World War I. (The Ottomans had sided with Germany in the war.) 20. The book is Hassan, Longing for the Lost Caliphate, referenced in a previous footnote.

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21. The plural is technically ahadith in Arabic formulation, from the singular hadith. 22. For a more complete treatment of ISIS’s apocalyptic ideology along the lines of the present article, see Scott Philip Segrest, “ISIS’s Will to Apocalypse,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 17:4 (2016): 352–69. A thorough historical and conceptual analysis of the group’s ideology is available in William McCant, The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015). 23. Many hadiths are considered unreliable, of questionable lineage. 24. Voegelin speaks of this in terms of pathological “stupidity” in Hitler and the Germans (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 31), Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell, eds. (Columbia, MO: Missouri University Press, 1999), 89–90, 98–102. In fairness, most speculators on the time of Christ’s coming are not criminally stupid in the sense Voegelin describes in Hitler and the Germans (David Koresh might be an exception). For most of them, the sickness is more akin to a mild fever. It is important, in order to grasp the nature of the stupidity at issue clearly, to realize that while the plausibility of particular imaginary schemes might vary from person to person, anyone lacking in personal substance might succumb to one that appeals to the right passions. Hereafter CW 31. 25. One article that addresses the point more deeply than most is Hendrik Hansen and Peter Kainz, “Radical Islamism and Totalitarian Ideology: A Comparison of Sayyid Qutb’s Islamism with Marxism and National Socialism,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 18:1 (2007): 55–76. 26. Voegelin analyzes these real and unreal worlds in terms of “first” (actual) and “second” (fabricated) reality in Hitler and the Germans, Chapter 7. 27. The term “fundamentalist” has been used rather too broadly and indiscriminately, but here it fits. 28. Eric Voegelin, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” in Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 15–23; also see Eric Voegelin, The Authoritarian State: An Essay on the Problem on the Austrian State (The Collected Works of Eric Voeglein Volume 4), Gilbert Weiss, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999). Hereafter CW 4. 29. It should be said in fairness to Arendt that she later added a chapter to The Origins of Totalitarianism on “Ideology and Terror” that in many respects lined up with Voegelin’s view of the subject. Voegelin believed, in fact, that Arendt added the chapter in response to his criticism, first by personal letter and then in his published review. On this and on Voegelin’s acquaintance with Arendt, see Peter Baehr, ed., and Gordon C. Wells, trans., “Debating Totalitarianism: An Exchange of Letters Between Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin,” History and Theory 51 (2012): 364–80. 30. Sayyid Qutb, Milestones (New Delhi, India: Islamic Book Service, 2001; rpt. 2007–2008), 7–8. 31. Ibid., 8. 32. On the question of Mawdudi and Qutb’s intellectual relationship, see John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 158, 213–14. 33. Abul a’la Maududi, “Jihad in Islam.” Available at http://www.muhammadanism.org/ Terrorism/jihah_in_islam/jihad_in_islam.pdf), 5–6. (The online text was originally published in Beirut, Lebanon, by The Holy Koran Publishing House, date unknown.) Maududi treated the subject of the article at much greater length in a book by the same name; the most recent English translation of the book is Jihad in Islam (Lahore, Pakistan: Idara Tarjuman ul Qur’an, 2017). 34. Qutb, Milestones, 12. 35. Lenin spoke of the party organization he called for in What Is To Be Done? as if it were a weapon. Philip Selznick in 1952 aptly characterized Lenin’s conception of the party in terms of an “organizational weapon.” Philip Selznick, The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1952). 36. Ibid., 75, 61. 37. Ibid., 65, 64.

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38. Hitler’s purification motive is obvious, with his characterization of Jews as “bacilli” (among other things) who contaminate the “purity” of the German race. But it is clearly evident in the other great spiritual totalitarians, in Robespierre’s forthright defense of terror for the sake of virtue, for instance, or Lenin’s assertion of the need to “cleanse the land . . . of all sorts of harmful insects, of crook-fleas, of bedbugs—the rich, and so on and so forth” and to find “ways of exterminating and rendering harmless the parasites (the rich and the crooks, slovenly and hysterical intellectuals, etc., etc.)” (there always seems to be further et ceteras) in a “sacred war.” Lenin’s ruminations here on spiritual hygiene come in the context of his justification of the use of revolutionary violence and terror. On Robespierre’s coupling of virtue and terror, see Ruth Scurr’s aptly named Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006), 303–4. Lenin’s comments in Vladimir Il’ich Lenin, The Lenin Anthology, Robert C. Tucker, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975), 431–32, 424. 39. Qutb, Milestones, 61. 40. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and the Social Contract, John T. Scott, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 175. 41. Robespierre frequently quoted Rousseau in his speeches, and he was so enamored with the Social Contract that a rumor circulated that he slept with a copy of it under his pillow. Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity, 231. 42. There is some evidence that Qutb opposed the use of terrorist tactics, but in his leadership position in the Muslim Brotherhood he did allow paramilitary training for action against the Egyptian government should the government resume efforts to suppress the Islamist movement. See John Calvert, Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism, 242–43. 43. Voegelin’s distinction here is important to prevent misunderstanding of Averroes’ significance in this context. That Averroes conceived of a total community does not imply that he conceived of, much less favored, a total state, to say nothing of totalitarianism proper, with its inherent violence and tyranny. 44. As Qutb says in his Social Justice in Islam, “We call for a restoration of Islamic life in an Islamic society governed by the Islamic creed and the Islamic conceptions as well as by the Islamic Sharia and the Islamic system . . . Islamic life—in this sense—stopped a long time ago in all parts of the world and . . . . the ‘existence’ of Islam itself has therefore also stopped!” William E. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 277. 45. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 1996), 9. 46. Ibid., Part I, Chapter 17, 120. 47. Hobbes did strongly advise that the Sovereign should generally leave the people to their devices in their private affairs (in business, for example), but this was a point of prudence, not a principle of the regime itself. Publicly, the Sovereign—meaning the government—would prohibit all religious opinions, or any other opinions bearing on public affairs, at odds with government-authorized positions. 48. See Book II, chapter 7; Rousseau does not identify who this lawgiver might be. 49. He seemed to be presenting, as Plato did in The Republic, an ideal to be approximated as much as possible in substantive terms, although one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Rousseau’s hints that he writes in the spirit of Plato are very subtle, and Plato gives more and clearer hints in The Republic that some of Socrates’ proposals (as in Book 5) are not to be taken seriously than Rousseau does of his own proposals in The Social Contract. 50. See Scurr, Fatal Purity, 231–32. 51. Qutb in his Social Justice in Islam speaks of a “spirit of Islam,” a presumably divine “emanation” that has historically been instantiated in “human models,” superlatively in Muhammad, and will be instantiated again when his true Islamic state is finally established. He describes this spirit one place (in all editions the book but the last) as a “magic spirit,” betraying perhaps an element of magical thinking in his imagination of it. In any case, Qutb thinks he has tapped into this spirit and knows how it can be instantiated. His Milestones is meant to show how to do it. Shepard, Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism, 183–84. The relevant passage in Milestones comes in the last paragraph of the introduction, where Qutb says, “I have written

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Milestones for this vanguard, which I consider to be a waiting reality about to be materialized.” Qutb, Milestones, 12. 52. See Kennedy, Caliphate, 247, 35–38. 53. Jerrold Post, Ehud Sprinzak, and Laurita Denny, “Terrorists in Their Own Words: Interviews with 35 Incarcerated Middle Eastern Terrorists,” Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1 (2003): 176. 54. Ibid., 182. 55. Jerrold Post, “What Do Terrorists Think? An Interview with Former CIA Psychologist,” International Affairs Review. Available at weblog at http://iar-gwu.org/node/163. 56. Post et al., “Terrorists in Their Own Words,” 175–76. 57. Ibid., 182. 58. Ibid., 183. 59. Quoted in Barry Cooper, New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004), 49. 60. Thomas Hegghammer, Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 61. 61. Ibid., 63. 62. Ibid., 64, 137, 165. 63. Ibid., 67, 194. 64. Faisal Devji, The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 36–40. 65. Ibid., 5. 66. Ibid., 65. 67. Ibid., 80ff. 68. Ibid., 10–11. 69. Ibid., 41. 70. Ibid., 36. 71. Ibid., 46, 61. 72. Ibid., 30. 73. Faisal Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 88. 74. Notable among these are Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003) and Mark Juergensmeyer, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 75. As Voegelin quotes from Heimito von Doderer’s The Demons, “A person who has been unable to endure himself becomes a revolutionary; then it is others who have to endure him. The abandoned, highly concrete task of his own life . . . has of course to be consigned to oblivion, and along with it the capacity for remembering in general”—not the least of which, we might add, is the capacity to remember basic moral distinctions such as “You shall not murder.” CW 31, 256. 76. Tim Winter, “The Poverty of Fanaticism,” in Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 383. 77. Ibid., 384. 78. Ibid., 384–85. 79. Ibid., 385–86. 80. Ibid., 386. 81. Ibid., 389–90.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Al Jarman, Mohammed. “The Intersection of Wahhabism and Jihad.” Available at https:// www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/06/07/2017/intersection-wahhabism-and-jihad.

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Ali, Mohamed Bin and Muhammad Saiful Alam Shah Bin Sudiman. “Salafis and Wahhabis: Two Sides of the Same Coin?” Available at https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/ co16254-salafis-and-wahhabis-two-sides-of-the-same-coin/#.XE29VS3MyqA. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Lesley Brown, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press.) Augustine, Augustine: Political Writings, Ernest L. Fortin and Douglas Kries, trans. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1994). Baehr, Peter ed. and Gordon C. Wells, trans. “Debating Totalitarianism: An Exchange of Letters Between Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin,” History and Theory 51 (2012): 364–80. Bell, Daniel. The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties, with “The Resumption of History in the New Century” (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). Calvert, John. Sayyid Qutb and the Origins of Radical Islamism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). Cook, David. Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005). ———. Studies in Muslim Apocalyptic (Princeton: Darwin Press, Inc., 2002). Cooper, Barry. New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004). Devji, Faisal. Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. ———. The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). Filiu, Jean-Pierre. Apocalypse in Islam, M. B. DeBevoise, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). Habeck, Mary. Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). Hansen, Hendrik and Peter Kainz. “Radical Islamism and Totalitarian Ideology: A Comparison of Sayyid Qutb’s Islamism with Marxism and National Socialism,” Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 18:1 (2007): 55–76. Hassan, Mona. Longing for the Lost Caliphate: A Transregional History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). Hegghammer, Thomas. Jihad in Saudi Arabia: Violence and Pan-Islamism since 1979 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, 1996). Juergensmeyer, Mark. Terror in the Mind of God: The Global Rise of Religious Violence, 3rd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). Kennedy, Hugh. Caliphate: The History of an Idea (New York: Basic Books, 2016). Khosrokhavar, Farhad. Inside Jihadism: Understanding Jihadi Movements Worldwide (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009). ———. Jihadist Ideology: The Anthropological Approach (Denmark: Centre for Studies in Islamism and Radicalisation, 2011). Laden, Osama Bin. “Text Bin Laden Statement.” October 7, 2001. Available at https:// www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/07/afghanistan.terrorism15. Lenin, Vladimir Il’ich. The Lenin Anthology, Robert C. Tucker, ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1975). Maher, Shiraz. Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Maududi, Abul a’la. “Jihad in Islam.” Available at http://www.muhammadanism.org/Terrorism/jihah_in_islam/jihad_in_islam.pdf. McCants, William. The Believer: How an Introvert with a Passion for Religion and Soccer Became Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Leader of the Islamic State (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2015). ———. The ISIS Apocalypse: The History, Strategy, and Doomsday Vision of the Islamic State (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015).

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Post, Jerrold. “What Do Terrorists Think? An Interview with Former CIA Psychologist,” International Affairs Review. Available at weblog at http://iar-gwu.org/node/163. Post, Jerrold, Ehud Sprinzak, and Laurita Denny. “Terrorists in Their Own Words: Interviews with 35 Incarcerated Middle Eastern Terrorists,” Terrorism and Political Violence 15:1 (2003): 171–84. Qutb, Sayyid. Milestones (New Delhi, India: Islamic Book Service, 2001; rpt. 2007–2008). Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and the Social Contract, John T. Scott, ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012). Scurr, Ruth. Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006). Segrest, Scott Philip. “ISIS’s Will to Apocalypse,” Politics, Religion & Ideology 17:4 (2016): 352–59. Selznick, Philip. The Organizational Weapon: A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1952). Shepard, William E. “Islam and Ideology: Towards a Typology,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 19:3 (1987): 307–35. ———. Sayyid Qutb and Islamic Activism: A Translation and Critical Analysis of Social Justice in Islam (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996). Stern, Jessica. Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003). Voegelin, Eric. The Authoritarian State: An Essay on the Problem on the Austrian State (The Collected Works of Eric Voeglein Volume 4), Gilbert Weiss, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999). ———. Hitler and the Germans (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 31), Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell, eds. (Columbia, MO: Missouri University Press, 1999). ———. “In Search of the Ground.” In Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 237–38. ———. Modernity Without Restraint: The Political Religions, The New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 5), Manfred Henningsen and Ellis Sandoz, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999). ———. Order and History: Israel and Revelation (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 14), Maurice P. Hogan, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001). ———. “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” In Published Essays 1953–1965 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 11), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 15–23. ———. “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme.” In Published Essays 1966–1985 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 12), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1990), 336–39. Waxman, Chaim I., ed. The End of Ideology Debate (New York: Funk and Wagnalis, 1968). Winter, Tim. “The Poverty of Fanaticism.” In Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Chapter Eight

The Five Ways of World-Empire Christopher S. Morrissey

In 1961, Eric Voegelin’s lecture on “World-Empire and the Unity of Mankind” concluded with a striking thesis: “the age of empire is coming to its end in our own time.” 1 In light of his other work, we may see how Voegelin has reviewed the historical evidence for the ways empires have been configured in the past and has set forth a series of philosophical propositions distinguishing five essential types of empire: cosmological, ecumenic, orthodox, national, and totalitarian. 2 Yet in light of this lecture, Voegelin’s implicit descriptions of these five ways of world-empire may serve to establish a series of negative demonstrations about world-empire’s ability to embrace the unity of mankind. Voegelin did not argue this point explicitly. Rather, we may take it to be an implicit argument that we are able to deduce from his thought. In short, the argument is: every form of empire is an intramundane experiment, in which an intramundane authority is taken as an idol that serves, in at least some way, to obscure God’s transcendence and his providential ordering of history. If the age of empire may then be said to have come to an end, what that means is that every possible essential structural variation on the intramundane experiments has already been historically exhausted. We have therefore reached a point in history from which we are able to glimpse the polyvalent meaning of transcendence, at least insofar as it stands in contrast to the failed ambitions of every form of world-empire. The purpose of this chapter is to discern the five essentially different structural variations on the intramundane experiment of empire, especially the first paradigmatic form of cosmological empire. By looking to Voegelin’s explication of the meanings that the world-empires embody in their intramundane rivalry with divine transcendence, we can contrast them with the elements of transcendence that escape their efforts of worldly ambition. To highlight these elements of transcendence, we will juxtapose something 173

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pertinent that Voegelin did not discuss in his lecture; namely, the famous Five Ways that Thomas Aquinas thought that humans could attain knowledge of a transcendent God. 3 Whereas the Five Ways of Aquinas look to nature in order to prove God’s existence, Voegelin’s five ways of empire look instead to history. But Voegelin’s discussion serves to disprove the claims of any world-empire to embrace the unity of mankind. By thus placing the intramundane empires in rivalry with the divine, we see along with Voegelin the forms of their failures, and we glimpse the dimensions of transcendence transcending their terrestrial efforts. Reason is thus able to outline what has been experienced and revealed in human history concerning “the meaning of universal order as the order of history under God,” at least if Voegelin is correct in his own philosophical propositions about history (CW 11, 155). Our task in this chapter should perhaps be best understood as seeking how to extend the causal analyses of Aquinas from nature into culture, in accordance with Voegelin’s claim (in 1960) to have discovered “a theory of relativity for the field of symbolic forms” 4 (a discovery made thanks to his unparalleled awareness of historiogenesis as a ubiquitous phenomenon). 5 Despite the post-9/11 evocations of empire that were certainly unknown to Voegelin, John von Heyking has argued that contemporary imperial evocations in fact confirm Voegelin’s thesis about the end of empire. 6 In support of Heyking’s argument, this chapter aims to confirm the perennial relevance of Voegelin’s analysis. We seek to show, however, that Voegelin is not denying the possibility of further (imbecilic) variations on the five ways of world-empire. Rather, consonant with his lifelong survey of the historical field of symbolic forms, we claim rather that the five ways of empire have definitively reduced to absurdity any intramundane denial of the transcendent. By discussing them in tandem with Aquinas’ own Five Ways of thinking about God’s transcendence, we may confirm this insight. However, we will devote the main focus of our analysis to the so-called “cosmological” proof in Aquinas’ First Way, aiming for a retrospective illumination of the historical prototype of empire; namely, cosmological empire. The difficulty with grasping the essential nature of cosmological empires, such as those embodied in the ancient Egyptian or Babylonian forms, lies in their compactness of symbolization. 7 The combination of theological, cosmological, and political symbolizations seems confusing to any mind accustomed to dealing with more differentiated efforts of symbolization. And yet it is still possible to notice the most salient aspect of the ancient empires’ selfconception. By this, we refer not simply to the way in which gods and humans inhabit a shared visible world, yoked together within this singular cosmic order. To be sure, the cosmos as the common home for the divine and the human in fact results precisely from a highly compact blend of the divine and human forms. We refer rather to the most vivid manifestation within this

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common world of the most necessary political reality: namely, that there are the rulers, and there are the ruled. It so happens that the rulers of cosmological empires are viewed as divine, as the symbolizations involved in grasping the meaning of political rule quite univocally blend together the human rulers with the cosmic order’s divinely ordering forces. On this point, we may thus see an analogue with the First Way of Aquinas, which seeks, by contrast, to understand the transcendent nature of God. Unlike the compact blended symbolization of cosmological empires, which meld the human rulers with the divine order, the God of Aquinas’ First Way is wholly other than his created order, depending on it in no way, whereas the created order itself is wholly dependent on God for its actual existence. While this conception of the divine is a more differentiated and intellectually advanced form of conceiving of transcendence, it nonetheless highlights a quite simple, basic asymmetry: there is the Unmoved Mover, and there are the moved movers. Thus there is a fundamental parallel between the Thomistic conception and the worldview of cosmological empire. Not only that, there is a political point of contact. In both ways of thinking, there is the ruler and the ruled. But by comparing the detailed way in which conception of divine transcendence works within the world, we may see the problematic difference that characterizes the cosmological empire’s mode of self-understanding. In short, the cosmological empire’s way of thinking about the ruling force within the universe seems absurd in light of the Thomistic analysis. For example, the pharaoh who rules over a cosmological empire cannot be a being of pure actuality, as the Unmoved Mover is. Because of this impossibility, the cosmological empire’s conception of its ruler as part of a network of Unmoved Movers who live within the visible cosmos can only strike us retrospectively as a mistaken idolatrous understanding of transcendent divine order. The intramundane residence of the pharaoh is, to the modern mind, too much of an anachronistic parody of the real, transcendent source of divine order. For Aquinas, this source is a source beyond the world, whereas the cosmological empire’s symbolization would ridiculously embed the divine source within the world as a privileged material part, as if a politically visible locus of authoritative motion could somehow be glimpsed visibly within the world itself. This metaphysical incongruity is more readily grasped if we turn to the logical argumentation of Aquinas, with which we may better contrast the unintentional parody of the compact intramundane symbolization of the cosmological empire’s self-conception. Aquinas begins his outline of the First Way by noting, “It is certain, and obvious to the senses, that in this world some things are moved. But everything that is moved is moved by another.” 8 The political analogues of these statements may be readily grasped: there is manifest order in this compact world of cosmological empire, and everything

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that is ruled (i.e., manifestly ordered) is ruled by another (e.g., politically). These compact symbolizations are parallel to the first two premises of Aquinas’ argument, which themselves may be formalized as: (P1), “Some things are moved,” and (P2), “If something is moved to being F, then it is potentially but not actually F.” 9 In the language of symbolic logic, these claims may be even more rigorously symbolized. Perhaps the simplest way to do so is with the technique of Aristotelian term logic, 10 which allows us to write them both thus: (P1) +M (P2) –M+P We define M=“that which is moved to being F,” and P=“that which is potentially but not actually F.” The state of being that is being actualized is designated here as F, which in a cosmological empire’s way of thinking is what we may define as F=“being ordered.” The bringer of order, to the cosmological empire’s way of thinking, is thus the ruler. To such a mind, it is the case that (P1) some things are moved to being ordered, but (P2) if some thing is being moved to being ordered, then it is only potentially being ordered, and not actually being ordered. In other words, anything within the cosmos that is being moved is in a state of potency, which makes it naturally able to be moved and thus to be ordered. Whatever is in potency is thus naturally suited to being ruled. But then whatever is in a state of actuality is naturally suited to rule, since it alone is capable of moving, and thus capable of bringing actual order to the natural potency of the cosmos. As Aquinas explains: For nothing is moved except insofar as it is in potentiality with respect to that actuality toward which it is moved, whereas something effects motion insofar as it is in actuality in a relevant respect. After all, to effect motion is just to lead something from potentiality into actuality. But a thing cannot be led from potentiality into actuality except through some being that is in actuality in a relevant respect; for example, something that is hot in actuality—say, a fire— makes a piece of wood, which is hot in potentiality, to be hot in actuality, and it thereby moves and alters the piece of wood. 11

This seems to offer an unproblematic parallel with the cosmological empire’s self-understanding. The pharaoh who rules, for example, is like the fire who activates the potential of the wood to burn, whereas the people he rules are the passive raw matter to be acted upon, or even consumed, for the empire’s divinely ordained ends. But where Aquinas takes his argument is beyond a purely intramundane conception of motion, thereby establishing a way to conceive of divine transcendence as a source of motion, beyond the intramundane causal interactions of potency and actuality within the cosmos.

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Aquinas sets the stage to accomplish this with his next premises about self-motion. They are fascinating to read in light of the cosmological empire’s mythological conception of its ruler as a kind of self-moving mover: But it is impossible for something to be simultaneously in potentiality and in actuality with respect to same thing; rather, it can be in potentiality and in actuality only with respect to different things. For what is hot in actuality cannot simultaneously be hot in potentiality; rather, it is cold in potentiality. Therefore, it is impossible that something should be both mover and moved in the same way and with respect to the same thing, or, in other words, that something should move itself. Therefore, everything that is moved must be moved by another. 12

Accordingly, the reasoning of Aquinas may be viewed as useful for debunking the notion of a ruler who, in effect, functions in the cosmological worldempire as an imperial god. To see this more clearly, we need to articulate Aquinas’ next (third) premise, reconstructed from the passage above, as (P3), “If something moves a thing to be F, then it (the mover) is in a state of actuality relevant to F,” which will eventually permit us to draw, along with Aquinas, the appropriate logical “conclusion”: (C1), “If something were to move itself to be F (e.g., be both moved and its own mover), then it would be both potentially but not actually F and also in a state of actuality relevant to F” (which allegedly follows from P1, P2, and P3 by the rules of inference of conjunction and modus ponens). 13 But what Pawl here identifies as the first “conclusion” (C1) is not really a conclusion in Aquinas’ reasoning. Formalization in Aristotelian term logic permits us to see this. Formalized with term logic, the third premise is: (P3) –P+A. We define A=“that which is a mover in a state of actuality relevant to F,” which allows us to generate, as a real conclusion, either +P (inferred from P1 and P2 above) or +A (inferred from P1, P2, and P3 above), or even the composite conclusion of +P+A (inferred by conjunction from both prior conclusions, +P and +A). Thus, what Pawl calls a “conclusion” (C1) should really be relabeled as an expression of the following conditional: (C1) –S+(+Px+Ax) In this conditional, S is designating any self-mover, and x is designating that the same entity x is then being considered as being simultaneously both P and A. Similarly, in the cosmological empire’s compact and confused selfconception, the human ruler is allegedly both intramundanely P and A: namely, both that which is potentially but not actually ordered (i.e., P, since

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he is a human); and yet a mover in a state of actuality relevant to bringing order (i.e., A, since he is a divine ruler, actually bringing order into the cosmos of which he himself is a part). The logic of Aquinas, by contrast, considers the idea of S=“that which is a self-mover moving itself to be F” to be something that is metaphysically unable to exist, a fact which he establishes via a modus tollens inference, as is able to be reconstructed from the meaning of the very same passage just quoted above, from which the third premise (P3) and the first “conclusion” (C1) were drawn. The conditional we prefer to express, as a precise formalization of Aquinas’ meaning, in the “conclusion” (C1) –S+(+Px+Ax), is in fact the other half of a complementary conditional: (C1a)–(+Px+Ax)+S These two conditionals together express the biconditional notion that defines S: (Def) S=(+Px+Ax) That is, the notion of a self-mover S is equivalent to saying that a thing x is simultaneously human and divine, as is the ruling pharaoh in the cosmological empire of Egypt, for example (e.g., let x = this pharaoh). But the impossibility of this intramundane immanentizing of the eschaton is proven by Aquinas with his fourth premise and his second conclusion, as reconstructed from the meaning of the very same passage last quoted above: (P4), “But it is not possible for something to be both potentially but not actually F and also in a state of actuality relevant to F”; and therefore (C2), “It is not possible for something to move itself to be F” (which follows from C1 and P4 by a modus tollens inference). 14 In Aristotelian term logic, we may write (P4) simply as Aquinas’ flat denial of the actuality of an intramundane ruler who is conceived of too compactly as the self-moving ruler of the cosmological empire, since the same thing x cannot be both “potentially but not actually F” (i.e., Px) and “a mover in a state of actuality relevant to F” (i.e., Ax), where F=“being ordered”: (P4) –(+Px+Ax) Thus, from C1 and P4 the next inference is clear: (C2) –S That is, (C2) says, “It is not the case that some intramundane thing moves itself.”

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The upshot of this process of reasoning requires us to define a final idea that clarifies the next conclusion within the same passage we have just been discussing. Let us call that idea E=“that which, if it is moved, is moved by something else.” Then the final inference of Aquinas in this passage is reconstructed with just one more premise (P5) that allows us to conclude to the actuality of E as (C3). While at first it appears to still keep us within the realm of symbolization about intramundane reality, (P5) is in fact the premise that will open the way to a transcendent divine source of order: (P5) “If it is not possible for something to move itself to be F, then if something is moved, it is moved by something else.” Therefore, Aquinas can now establish the main major premise of his entire First Way argument: (C3) “If something is moved, it is moved by something else” (which is inferred from C2 and P5 by modus ponens). 15 In Aristotelian term logic, we may write: (P5) –(–S)+E (C3) +E In other words, it is the case that everything that is moved (intramundanely) is moved by another (but this other may be either intramundane or transcendent, as we shall see). The ultimate source of order cannot be an intramundane source, and so the conflation of human and divine order in the symbolization of cosmological empire eventually unravels under the more differentiated analyses of logic (as well as the anxieties produced by historical experience). 16 In his highly differentiated analysis, the subsequent argument that Aquinas proceeds to make, to establish the reality of divine transcendence as the source of actual order in the cosmos, is especially interesting when viewed in light of the compact symbolization of the cosmological empire. Aquinas next articulates, in outline, how the main minor premise of the entire First Way concerns the notion of an infinite regress. The impossibility of an intramundane resolution of this regress follows from the fact that an endless tracing of causality per accidens within the cosmos is necessary if we insist on conceiving the cosmos itself as a self-mover. For the cosmos itself is a blend of potency and actuality, since it is a blend of things in movement toward potential order, and of things actually in order. Just like the ruler of the cosmological empire himself, the cosmos itself is the divine bearer of order. The pharaoh could well say, “The cosmos—c’est moi.” For such is the highly compact notion of cosmological empire, as the gods, the world, and political activity are all blended together in an undifferentiated worldview. But what Aquinas realizes, with his own more differentiated reflections, is that the per se source of order can only be transcendent in origin:

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If, then, that by which something is moved is itself moved, then it, too, must be moved by another, and that other by still another. But this does not go on to infinity. For if it did, then there would not be any first mover and, as a result, none of the others would effect motion, either. For secondary movers effect motion only because they are being moved by a first mover, just as a stick does not effect motion except because it is being moved by a hand. Therefore, one has to arrive at some first mover that is not being moved by anything. And this is what everyone takes to be God. 17

To understand how Aquinas arrives at this source of order, we may begin by defining an idea that, as with the self-moved mover S, Aquinas will demonstrate to actually not be the case. This next idea we may define as I=“that which is part of a series of movers in a chain of infinite regress.” If the analogue of S, the self-moved mover, in the cosmological empire would be the ruler, the pharaoh whose human self is compactly blended with the divine and the very order of the cosmos itself, then now the cosmos itself is being thematized by Aquinas with his notion of I (“being part of a series of movers in a chain of infinite regress”), which is nothing less than a conception of a self-sustaining universe. It is an infinite regress of order within the intramundane realm itself, since the universe itself is compactly conceived (in I) as capable of being inhabited by self-moving, other-ruling divine rulers. Whether the self-movers are simply divinely designated humans, or also include scientifically defined particles and forces, does not matter for Aquinas’ argument. To be sure, the analogue with the ruler of the cosmological empire is nonetheless evident, since such an empire conceives of its imperial ruler as precisely such an imaginary S (human-divine self-mover), and its cosmos as precisely such an imaginary I (intramundane infinite regress of order). We have already followed the Thomistic line of reasoning pertinent to debunking the compact mythological idea S (that which is an intramundane, ordering and ordered, self-mover), an idea that confuses P (that which is potentially but not actually in order) and A (that which is a mover in a state of actuality relevant to order). But next we will see how the Thomistic line of reasoning can debunk I (the intramundane immanentization of infinity). The next premise of Aquinas’ argument is reconstructed as (P6), “If B moves A and B is moved, then B must be moved by some other thing, C. And if C is moved, then C must be moved by still some other thing, D. And so on.” 18 With our already defined idea of I, however, we may neatly formalize this premise in Aristotelian term logic as: (P6) –E+I That is, (P6) says, “If anything moved is moved by something else, then it is part of a series of movers in a chain of infinite regress.” But, as Aquinas realizes, the problem with this premise is that it is only true if it is speaking

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about a purely intramundane causal series of per accidens movers. In other words, it is true only if there is no per se causality, in which real effects can be traced back to their real causes. Yet if there are no real causes, then there is no real intelligibility, because then anything is a cause of everything else, since they are all equally bound up in an immanent chain of never-ending “causality.” But if causality is real, then there have to be per se causes. If the pharaoh, for example, is a real cause of order in the cosmological empire, then he actually has to be an intramundane per se cause. But Aquinas goes on to debunk the cosmological notion that the divine can ever be conceived as a purely intramundane cause. For a purely intramundane series of causes cannot terminate in the Unmoved First Mover, whom Aquinas’ argument is going to demonstrate must be purely transcendent with respect to the cosmos. This can be established on the basis of Aquinas’ seventh premise, as reconstructed from the passage we just quoted above: (P7), “If the series of movers were to go on to infinity, then there would be no first mover.” 19 To formalize this premise in Aristotelian term logic, we need to define a new idea F, as F=“that which is moved by a first actual mover that is itself unmoved,” 20 and then we can write: (P7) –I+(–F) That is, (P7) says, “If something is part of a series of movers in a chain of infinite regress, then it is not something moved by a first actual mover that is itself unmoved.” In other words, Aquinas here clarifies precisely what is missing from any cosmological empire’s conception of the divine as necessarily being nothing but a divine part of the cosmos. That is, Aquinas is showing that an intramundane infinite regress, whether purely per accidens, or whether allegedly terminating per se in some mythological intramundane deity or some mythically conceived self-moving human-divine ruler, is nothing but a flat denial of a transcendently acting First (Unmoved) Mover: i.e., (–F). But what premises (P6) and (P7) represent together are the compact worldview of cosmological empire that conflates divine transcendence with the cosmos itself. The infinite intramundane movement of order adumbrated in (P6) is also naively embedded by cosmological empire within (P7), which expresses a cosmos whose divine ordering principle is internally closed off from a transcendently conceived First Cause. But what Aquinas is now able to do is to knock down this worldview by showing how these premises generate an absurdity. He is able to do this when puts forward his final and most devastating premise: (P8), “If there were no first mover, then there would be no motion.” 21 In Aristotelian term logic, this may be clearly expressed as:

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(P8) –(–F)+(–M) In other words, if all per se lines of causality are not themselves traceable back to a First Unmoved Mover that is himself transcendent with respect to the whole series of intramundane causality, then it is not the case that there is any actual motion is that is able to be witnessed within the cosmos. But recall that the very first premise of Aquinas’ entire argument was that there is in fact actual motion that we witness within the cosmos: (P1), +M. So, if we were to conjoin (C3) with (P6), (P7), and (P8), then (as Aristotelian term logic vividly shows) we would derive a result that precisely contradicts the reality manifest to the senses in (P1) as the obvious existence of ordered motion; i.e., we would derive this conclusion (which is a stark contradiction of +M): +E–E+I–I+(–F)–(–F)+(–M) = +(–M). Therefore, the generation of the contradiction must be traced back to a false premise, which is in fact what the problem with (P6) is. But recall that (P6) can be read as the logical expression of cosmological empire’s compact conception of divine order as an entirely intramundane phenomenon. With such a (P6), we would have a purely intra-cosmic generation of order, by an infinite regress of causality to wherever we arbitrarily or mythically decide to trace the divinely self-moving points of origin. That is, we would trace them arbitrarily or mythically to points of origin that would have located the divine as being entirely internal to the cosmos: i.e., as parts of that divinely ordered cosmos. But what the logic of Aquinas’ formalized proof now brings to the fore is just how logically untenable this compact conception is. By explicitly formalizing Aquinas’ argument, we may still make vivid how the transcendent could nonetheless be glimpsed, at least provided that we proceed to discern a more carefully differentiated analysis of the intramundane. If (P6) is taken and understood in the false sense that underlies cosmological empire’s selfconception, then we have an inconsistent and absurd argument (which generates the contradiction we just saw above); but if we can find a true meaning for (P6), then we can use it to prove the existence of a God not yet conceived of in cosmological empire: i.e., a God who is divinely transcendent. We need only to glimpse that, while (P6) may be construed, on a more differentiated analysis, to refer exclusively to intramundane realities, it is (P7) and (P8) that differentiate, in contrast, a transcendent notion of a First Unmoved Mover (F). This permits us to draw not just a valid conclusion, but in fact a sound one: (C4) “There is a first mover.” 22 This follows quite simply from taking (P1) and (P8) together for a modus tollens inference:

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(P1) +M ≡ (P1) –(–M) (P8) –(–F)+(–M) (C4) –(–F) ≡ (C4) +F That is, (C4) establishes that it is the case that there exists a First Unmoved Mover, at least if we understand the premises in a more differentiated manner than is possible on the worldview of cosmological empire. How may we attain this more differentiated understanding? Consider how we might admit (P6) as a true premise. We would need to restrict its meaning so that it cannot be taken (as the worldview of cosmological empire would take it) to extend its description of an infinite regress to include the divine as a part within the cosmos. That is, we could admit (P6) as true, provided we take its meaning to extend only to intramundane causal realities that are not divine, even though we could extend its meaning beyond any per accidens causality to any non-divine source of per se causality. (For example, a man using a stick to push a rock is the per se cause of the rock’s movement, whereas the stick is the per accidens cause.) In other words, (P6) only needs to be taken to describe the case entailed by any per accidens intramundane causality, or any non-divine per se intramundane causality. But then, on the basis of that precisely understood and carefully restricted sense of meaning for (P6), we have just what is required to generate Aquinas’ differentiated notion of a divine cause who transcends the cosmos and who is the divinely transcendent source of that cosmos. In his analysis, Pawl makes this insight of Aquinas into a definition of God that happens as (C5), as if a definition could thereby constitute a final “conclusion” that articulates (C5), “That first mover is the thing that everyone takes to be God (definition).” 23 But this step of the argument should not be taken as a “conclusion” (C5) that simply restates what happened in (C4) by using a biconditional definitional equivalence to restate that conclusion. Rather, it should be explicitly articulated as its own premise (P9), which defines clearly the transcendent notion of “First Unmoved Mover” (F) that has already been previously deployed by the argument in its understanding of the meaning of (P7) and (P8). In (P7) and (P8), the First Unmoved Cause (F) was articulated in contrast to the purely intramundane conception of causal interaction in the cosmos that was expressed in (P6). To be sure, we may recall that the mistake made by cosmological empire’s compact symbolizations, which conflate the transcendent God with the immanent cosmos in an undifferentiated fashion. But what Aquinas’ argument brings out, by contrast, is the need to view (P7) and (P8) as speaking of a Prime Mover (F) who transcends a purely intramundane nexus of causality and who transcends any mythical conception of the divine as an internal part of the cosmos. For a God who is a part is not really a God. Only a God who is pure actuality itself may be understood as equivalent to a First Unmoved Cause (F). Therefore we must define this technical notion

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F, as a highly differentiated philosophical gloss on the deeper meaning of the undifferentiated notion of “divine,” the non-technical notion that can be found even in the compact symbolizations of cosmological empire, but whose truest meaning is illuminated by a more differentiated articulation: (C4) +F (P9) –F+G (C5) +G (P10) –G+D (C6) +D Recalling that F=“that which is moved by a first actual mover that is itself unmoved,” we further define G=“that which is moved by God” and D=“God exists,” and thus the more differentiated line of reasoning expressed above can be rendered in English as: (C4), “There actually exists that which is moved by the First Unmoved Mover”; (P9), “If something is moved by the First Unmoved Mover, then it is being moved by God”; (C5), “There actually exists that which is moved by God”; (P10), “If there actually exists that which is moved by God, then God actually exists”; (C6), “It is the case that God actually exists.” Note the line of reasoning proceeds by explicitly distinguishing the actuality of God from the actuality of anything else that exists. The highly differentiated insight of Aquinas in his First Way is that everything actual is in motion, at least to this extent: the way in which it depends on the unrestricted divine actuality to actualize its own potency. Thus any creature, as a blend of potency and actuality, which is thereby not God, can receive its actuality from anywhere else, from any other creature, in some kind of intramundane causal interaction. But what all these intramundane causal actions presuppose is the ultimate source of actuality itself, the First Unmoved Mover, who himself contains no admixture of potency, and who therefore is the necessarily transcendent condition upon which the internal movements of the cosmos depend. A further analogue, with the historiogenetic delusions of cosmological empire, 24 also suggests itself. As the historiogenetic speculations of the imperial substitutes hubristically offer their own empires in place of a fully divine conception of transcendence, 25 we may glimpse their unintentional parody of Aquinas’ First Way. The unmoved mover of history is falsely conflated with the cosmological empire itself, especially as embodied in its imperial persona, be it a pharaoh or some other ruler who rules others but is not himself ruled. Such is the intramundane imitation of the truly transcendent: ruling, but not being ruled. The Thomistic differentiation, however, elegantly distinguishes the metaphysical asymmetry between potency and actuality, in order to unmistakably distinguish the wholly independent and transcendent source of actuality from

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the wholly dependent cosmos. This insight, which so reverently differentiates the transcendent Creator from all of creation, may also serve to illuminate how the other modes of empire distinguished by Voegelin are intramundane parodies of the Second through Fifth Ways of Aquinas. That this is so is unsurprising, since all of Aquinas’ ways of demonstrating the actuality of the transcendent God depend on the insight of the First Way about potency and actuality. In our opinion, the other ways assume the soundness of the First Way, which moves from purely physical premises to a metaphysical conclusion (and thereby reasons only on the basis of our present actual universe), but they extend the First Way’s insight about transcendence into all possible universes, by following the guiding thread of causality, as each subsequent Way proceeds to contemplate the truth about any possible universe’s dependence on God according to one of Aristotle’s four causes: the Second Way contemplates cosmic dependence on the transcendent God as its First Efficient Cause; the Third Way contemplates cosmic dependence on the transcendent God as the first actual condition for the possibility of that distinctively non-divine dimension of creation known as material causality; the Fourth Way contemplates cosmic dependence on the transcendent God as its First Formal Cause; and the Fifth Way contemplates cosmic dependence on the transcendent God as its First Final Cause. 26 Recall that the meaning of the First Way was to discover God in a contemplation of cosmic dependence on the transcendent God as its First Actual Cause (with no admixture of potency, since the dimension of potency would make him an intramundane part of the cosmos, as in the speculations of cosmological empire). Accordingly, we may see analogues of similar causal emphases in each of Voegelin’s types of empire. In Voegelin’s ecumenic empire, the actual emphasis on unlimited expansion of imperial power though conquest corresponds to the emphasis in Aquinas’ Second Way on efficient causality being abstractly expanded into the causal configurations within any possible universe. The absurdity of such imperial pretensions within history, which cast off the modest (by comparison) self-conception of cosmological empires, were the impetus for philosophical insights into transcendence, such as those attained by Aristotle and Aquinas and others in the style of the natural theology which we have just discussed in detail with the First Way. Just as the ecumene is for Voegelin a philosophically “miserable symbol,” 27 it nonetheless gave rise to the most sublime philosophical insights, such as the insight into divine transcendence which we have just painstakingly differentiated from its compact predecessor in the cosmological empires. Thus, the ecumenic empire is, with respect to the contemplation of transcendence in the Second Way, an even more absurd and unrestrained intramundane mirror of attempted divine immanentization, more so than was the cosmological empire’s comparatively more restrained pretension.

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In Voegelin’s orthodox empires, we find highlighted the dimension of just what the intramundane constitution of the body of an empire might be. It is a spiritual notion of the material that is at issue, similar to the unseen nature of “potency” in Aristotle and Aquinas, for whom “potency” names something known indirectly by the mind and never directly by the senses. This concern for “right thinking” about the empire’s invisible material dimension corresponds to the concern of Aquinas in the Third Way to show how any material causality is, in its nature as potentiality, necessarily dependent on a higher mode of actuality with less potential. Ultimately, this contemplation of necessary dependence, which is a consequence of the asymmetry between potentiality and actuality that was discovered in the First Way, is also going to end with the Unmoved Mover who is the absolutely First Necessary Cause. In the same way, the concern of orthodox empire is also to explore, in history, the necessity of its political self-conception as a kind of “hylomorphic” entity composed of sacred political form (i.e., the rulers with their sacrum imperium) and its corresponding material embodiment (i.e., the extent of what is to be ruled, as corpus mysticum). 28 The distinctively national forms of Voegelin’s national empires are, by contrast, more manifest to the senses, and so the emphasis in national empires is on the other half of the “hylomorphic” political empire: namely, the most gloriously visible and distinctively differentiated higher form animating the terrestrially embodied ruling power. This too is a kind of intramundane mirror of Aquinas’ Fourth Way, in which the colonized domains that are being ruled are subsumed under the higher domain of the imperial nation that becomes their ruler. Whereas Aquinas’ Fourth Way terminates in the perfectly transcendent God (who is pointed to by all maximal modes of actual intramundane perfection), the drama of national empire makes a mockery of this insight, by relocating transcendent form within the person of the monarch who stands for the sacred land of the nation. This monarch colonizes other lands as the ruler who can bring them into a political existence with an allegedly higher mode of political actuality, or so the mythical inversion of the transcendent insight reasons. As for Voegelin’s totalitarian empires, the emphasis is on the extension of what is ruled in the most ruthless manner possible, as not just new terrestrial territory is to be colonized through imperial expansion (as with warring national empires), but rather also imperial expansion extends even into the realm of the mind. Mental terrain is the new dimension of conquest demanded by totalitarian empires, as they seek to extend their immanentization of the eschaton into mind-dependent domains where previous empires did not proceed methodically. Their methodical procedure for the expansion of ruling dominance is akin to that premise in the Fifth Way of Aquinas that identifies divine transcendence as the very power capable of directing absolutely everything, including those parts of the cosmos that do not even have

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minds: “beings in nature are directed by something that has cognition and intelligence.” 29 The delusion of totalitarian empires is that they can take the place of such a divinely ordering providence. All human beings are then conceived of as being subject to the rulers of the totalitarian empire in every possible way, including even their thoughts. The totalitarian rulers conceive of themselves as possessing the requisite “cognition and intelligence” to direct absolutely everything in such a godlike way. But the contrast with Aquinas’s reasoning is clear, since only a transcendent mind is capable of such action in order to rule the cosmos in a beneficial way. By contrast, the totalitarian empire is an intramundane travesty of such transcendent beneficence. At very worst, it is a malevolent and demonic inversion of the goodness bestowed upon creation by its creator. We have only suggested here an outline of the ways in which Voegelin’s recognition of the five types of empire can be seen to be definitive. If they in fact correspond to five archetypal ways of contemplating the truth about divine transcendence (which we have argued Aquinas did attain by means of an emphasis on highly differentiated causal analysis), then Voegelin’s declaration that “the age of empire is coming to its end in our own time” is not only highly plausible, but of great historical significance. For what it means is that any future attempt at empire can only be a variation on each of the already attempted types of empire. As we have argued, these types may be characterized as exclusively intramundane attempts to arrogate the transcendent causal power of God to the terrestrial world of empire. Their historical efforts to do so are all variations on the fundamental delusion of cosmological empire’s prototypical symbolization, which failed to differentiate the asymmetry between actuality and potency (which is itself the pertinent metaphysical analogue to the perennial political concern with ruler and ruled). That Voegelin’s historical studies were so perceptive as to yield a differentiation that corresponds with such integrity to the metaphysical bases of transcendence is yet one more reason to admire his work and to emphasize its enduring value. In sum, we may see historiogenesis, Voegelin’s intramundane discovery, as emblematic of the consistent historical failures of human beings to fully appreciate their dependence on the First Unmoved Mover, who should himself be best understood as the one true God under whom “the meaning of universal order as the order of history . . . has come into view” (CW 11, 155). It has been our goal in this chapter to show how this Voegelinian vision of providence must be understood in light of the classic argument given in Aquinas’ First Way for the nature of divine transcendence. For it is in Aquinas’ rigorous premises that we discern the indispensable differentiations of that primary divine transcendence from its secondary intramundane operations. In Voegelin’s terms, we have sought here to become more attuned to

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that classic “spiritual exodus,” by which may always seek to raise ourselves out from the oppression of any terrestrial empire. 30 NOTES 1. Eric Voegelin, “World Empire and the Unity of Mankind,” in Published Essays, Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 11, Ellis Sandoz, ed. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 155. Hereafter CW 11. 2. John von Heyking, “Post-9/11 Evocations of Empire in Light of Eric Voegelin’s Political Science,” in Enduring Empire: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics, David Tabachnick and Toivo Koivukoski, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 185–214. 3. For a sense of the essential scholarly debates about the Five Ways, see first the skeptical analyses of Anthony Kenny in The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence (New York: Routledge, 1969). For more sympathetic treatment, see the conventional views of John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), as well as the more quirky treatment by Christopher F. J. Martin, Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), especially 132–206. Our own views are closer to Edward Feser’s analytic reading in Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (London: Oneworld Publications, 2009), as well as in The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008), and in what seems to be his stealthily updated versions in Five Proofs of the Existence of God (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017). Our greatest interpretative debt, however, is to Benedict Ashley, The Way toward Wisdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). 4. Voegelin’s letter to Donald R. Ellegood (July 21, 1960), in Thomas A. Hollweck and Paul Caringella, eds., “Editor’s Introduction,” in What Is History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 28) (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), xi–xxxii, at xiii. 5. For details, see Christopher S. Morrissey, “Hesiod and Historiogenesis: Eric Voegelin’s Discovery of a Millennial Constant,” in Semiotics 2012: Semiotics and New Media, Karen Haworth, Andrea Johnson, and Leonard G. Sbrocchi, eds. (Ottawa: Legas, 2013), 111–18. 6. Heyking, “Post-9/11 Evocations,” 200–204. 7. Ibid., 184–86. 8. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.2, a.3. In this chapter, we quote throughout the translations of Alfred J. Freddoso, available at his University of Notre Dame website: https:// www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summa-translation/TOC.htm. We also make use of the formalizations of Aquinas’ arguments as reconstructed by Timothy Pawl, “Aquinas’ Five Ways,” in Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy, Michael Bruce and Steven Barbone, eds. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 9–17; also available online at http:// ir.stthomas.edu/cas_phil_pub/1. Pawl has even more detailed consideration of the arguments in “The Five Ways,” in The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 115–34. 9. Pawl, “Five Ways,” 12. 10. For extended discussion of the techniques of Aristotelian term logic analysis, see Christopher S. Morrissey, The Way of Logic (Nanjing: Nanjing Normal University Press, 2018). Our own efforts at original term logic versions of Aquinas’ Five Ways are inspired by the perceptive analyses of Paul Weingartner, God’s Existence: Can It Be Proven? A Logical Commentary on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2010), whose reconstructions in modern symbolic logic are even better than the more well-known versions in Joseph M. Bochenski, O.P., “The Five Ways,” in The Rationality of Theism, Adolfo García de la Sienra, ed. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 61–92. For critical perspectives on Weingartner, see Stephen L. Brock’s review of Weingartner in The Review of Metaphysics 65:3 (March 2012): 693–95; M. Paolini Paoletti’s review of Weingartner in Philosophical News 3 (September 2011): 229–33, also at http://www.academia.edu/1471683/; and Timothy Pawl’s review of Weingart-

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ner in The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 3:1 (2011): 243–48. It is beyond the scope of this paper to respond to any of the critical remarks about Weingartner’s symbolizations, toward which we are however more sympathetic, since we believe extended term logic analyses do in fact vindicate Weingartner’s main interpretive insights. 11. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.2, a.3. 12. Ibid. 13. Pawl, “Five Ways,” 12. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. 16. Heyking, “Post-9/11 Evocations,” 185–86. 17. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.2, a.3. 18. Pawl, “Five Ways,” 12. There is a typographical error on Pawl’s page here, as he incorrectly numbers this premise as (P5), when in fact the preceding premise was already labeled (P5): “If it is not possible for something to move itself to be F, then if something is moved, it is moved by something else.” So I renumber the next premise correctly as (P6), and similarly with the premises that are to follow. 19. Pawl, “Five Ways,” 12. Again, Pawl incorrectly numbers this premise as (P6), due to the previous error that led to his numbering of two different premises as (P5), and so we correct this premise to be numbered as (P7). 20. Not to confused with the F defined earlier above (as part of M, P, A, and S); e.g., as F=“being ordered.” 21. Pawl, “Five Ways,” 12. Again, Pawl incorrectly numbers this premise as (P7), due to the previous error that led to his numbering of two different premises as (P5), and so we correct this premise to be numbered as (P8). 22. Ibid. Again, Pawl incorrectly numbers how this conclusion (C4) is following from (P1) and (P7), due to the previous error that led to his numbering of two different premises as (P5), and so we correctly show this conclusion (C4) as following from (P1) and (P8). 23. Ibid. 24. Cf. Heyking, “Post-9/11 Evocations,” 186. 25. Morrissey, “Hesiod and Historiogenesis,” 111–18. 26. Cf. Christopher S. Morrissey, “‘The Great Visible God’: Socrates, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas on the Way from Nature to Nature’s God,” in Distinctions of Being: Philosophical Approaches to Reality, Nikolaj Zunic, ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 83–102; and Christopher S. Morrissey, “Aquinas’s Third Way as a Reply to Stephen Hawking’s Cosmological Hypothesis,” Études maritainiennes—Maritain Studies XXVII (2011): 99–121. 27. Voegelin quoted at Heyking, “Post-9/11 Evocations,” 188. 28. Heyking, “Post-9/11 Evocations,” 189–93. 29. Pawl, “Five Ways,” 17: (P3), “If beings in nature act for the sake of an end, then beings in nature are directed by something that has cognition and intelligence.” 30. Heyking, “Post-9/11 Evocations,” 188.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Available at https://www3.nd.edu/~afreddos/summatranslation/TOC.htm. Ashley, Benedict. The Way toward Wisdom (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). Bochenski, Joseph M. O.P. “The Five Ways.” In The Rationality of Theism, Adolfo García de la Sienra, ed. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 61–92. Brock, Stephen L. “Review of Weingartner.” The Review of Metaphysics 65:3 (March 2012): 693–95. Feser, Edward. Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide (London: Oneworld Publications, 2009). ———. Five Proofs of the Existence of God (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017).

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———. The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (South Bend: St. Augustine’s Press, 2008). Heyking, John von. “Post-9/11 Evocations of Empire in Light of Eric Voegelin’s Political Science.” In Enduring Empire: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics, David Tabachnick and Toivo Koivukoski, eds. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 185–214. Kenny, Anthony. The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence (New York: Routledge, 1969). Martin, Christopher F. J. Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997). Morrissey, Christopher S. “Aquinas’s Third Way as a Reply to Stephen Hawking’s Cosmological Hypothesis.” Études maritainiennes—Maritain Studies XXVII (2011): 99–121. ———. “Hesiod and Historiogenesis: Eric Voegelin’s Discovery of a Millennial Constant.” In Semiotics 2012: Semiotics and New Media, Karen Haworth, Andrea Johnson, and Leonard G. Sbrocchi, eds. (Ottawa: Legas, 2013), 111–18. ———. “‘The Great Visible God’: Socrates, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas on the Way from Nature to Nature’s God.” In Distinctions of Being: Philosophical Approaches to Reality Nikolaj Zunic, ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013), 83–102. ———. The Way of Logic (Nanjing: Nanjing Normal University Press, 2018). Paoletti, M. Paolini. “Review of Weingartner.” Philosophical News 3 (September 2011): 229–33. Pawl, Timothy. “Aquinas’ Five Ways.” In Just the Arguments: 100 of the Most Important Arguments in Western Philosophy, Michael Bruce and Steven Barbone, eds. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). ———. “The Five Ways.” In The Oxford Handbook of Aquinas, Brian Davies and Eleonore Stump, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 115–34. ———. “Review of Weingartner.” The European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 3:1 (2011): 243–48. Voegelin, Eric. What Is History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 28), Thomas A. Hollweck and Paul Caringella, eds. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). ———. “World Empire and the Unity of Mankind.” In Published Essays, Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vol. 11, Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 134–55. Weingartner, Paul. God’s Existence: Can It Be Proven? A Logical Commentary on the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas (Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag, 2010). Wippel, John F. The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000).

Chapter Nine

Eric Voegelin’s 1944 “Political Theory and the Pattern of General History” An Account from the Biography of a Philosophizing Consciousness Nathan Harter

In 1944, the American Political Science Review published a short essay by Eric Voegelin titled “Political Theory and the Pattern of General History”— subsequently reprinted in The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. 1 In it, Voegelin set forth a critique of existing histories of political ideas, claiming that they were outdated and built on a faulty premise that there can be such a thing as a history of political “ideas.” The significance of this essay depends in part on its place within the trajectory of his career as a scholar that stretched from 1928, with the publication of his first book, to his death in 1985. It would also help to appreciate what this essay might have meant within the context of his life story, for it signals the frustration that led to a phase or episode of disorientation lasting for several years. We now know that on the other side of that bleak episode in 1951, Voegelin would announce at the Walgreen Lectures how he had reconceived his purpose—an event that opened out onto a burst of productivity and put him on the cover of Time magazine. 2 But all of that was to come later. This chapter will begin by introducing Voegelin’s purpose at the time of writing the article, between 1939 and 1944, and then it will explain the wearying biographical context, since this period was critical to Voegelin’s intellectual development. One way of characterizing this period in Voegelin’s intellectual life can be depicted in a threefold schema recently set forth by phenomenologist Anthony Steinbock regarding a similar sequence in the life of Edmund Husserl. The parallels are instructive. The chapter then will 191

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use that threefold schema to organize Voegelin’s article in more detail, citing concrete examples, before it concludes by suggesting a number of implications of his experience for scholars in the twenty-first century. A. VOEGELIN’S PURPOSE IN WRITING THE ARTICLE After the Anschluss in 1938, Voegelin and his wife Lissy had narrowly fled the Gestapo and made their way west, landing in America, where the professor tried to secure some kind of employment at several universities before settling down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1942. Largely to establish his credentials in a new land, he agreed in 1939 to undertake a major project: to surpass the standard textbook on the history of political ideas completed not long before by George Sabine. Voegelin is reputed to have been hard working and conscientious, with strict standards. His output through the years would prove to be more than impressive, especially given the impeccable quality of his work. So as 1939 turned toward 1944—while much of Europe fell under Fascism or Communism and the world convulsed with war—he made the new textbook a priority. The story of Voegelin’s efforts on what would become known as the History of Political Ideas has been told elsewhere more than once, twice by Voegelin himself 3 and at length by two of his better known expositors, Thomas Hollweck and Ellis Sandoz. 4 Voegelin’s correspondence adds further evidence about what was transpiring during those years. 5 Part of his preparation was differentiating his ongoing work from existing texts, and this preparation in particular served as the basis for the 1944 article. The Sabine textbook was not only the standard at the time, but Voegelin himself routinely assigned it for one of his main courses (CW 34, 61). 6 What he writes in the 1944 article fits the evidence that he was beginning to recognize two basic limitations of the project as he had originally conceived it. Each of these limitations contributed to his mounting frustration. First, Voegelin had to master and then incorporate an enormous influx of research that had been accumulating since Sabine’s publication, with more coming out the longer it took him to finish. In August of 1941, Voegelin had written to his editor (namely, Fritz Morstein Marx): “I am faced by the fact . . . that the current histories . . . are some thirty or forty years behind the monographic literature on political ideas” (CW 29, 278). More specifically, regarding the Sabine text, he wrote that “not a single chapter in his book is based on monographs which have appeared since 1910 . . .” (CW 29, 278). Not only were there already new studies out there on topics Sabine had addressed, but there were also many new topics for Voegelin to add. Access to research in other languages added to the burden, and for Voegelin there was no question he had to learn these languages, such as Hebrew and Chi-

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nese. 7 The more he uncovered, however, the more he had to push a likely completion date further and further into the future. In addition, the original plan to submit a 250-page textbook had to be scrapped. There was just too much to cover. Because of this change in scope, the publisher (McGraw-Hill Book Company) withdrew from the project. By 1944 another publisher (the Macmillan Company) came forward to agree to a book series (CW 29, 413). Nevertheless, there was a period of time when its prospects for publication were doubtful. As it happens, the materials for this project were only posthumously published by the University of Missouri Press as eight separate volumes in the Collected Works (vols. 19–26). Much of that material was also cannibalized for the five-volume master work Order & History (volumes 14–18), so the sum of Voegelin’s labors was even larger before he re-configured those portions. Looking at the project from the vantage point of 1944, therefore— even though he had been conducting research already for five years—Voegelin foresaw a massive amount of work ahead. In fact, the stress of the effort was already taking a toll. He had only recently fled his homeland impoverished and tried to start over. In 1940, Voegelin wrote to Talcott Parsons at Harvard that this project was his “main work” (CW 29, 241). The next year, in May, he disclosed to Parsons that the project had become a “strain physically” (CW 29, 269). Then in August he reported to his publisher at the time how exhausted he felt (CW 29, 280). The article itself admits that, if done properly, the project would require “the cooperative efforts of a great number of scholars” (CW 29, 163). In short, the first limitation was that the materials to incorporate into a new textbook far exceeded what Voegelin had originally anticipated. The volume of work threatened to overwhelm him. The second limitation would prove to be more disturbing to someone of Voegelin’s temper. He recognized that the conceptual apparatus he was intending to use for the project was inadequate. For one thing, a chronology of political ideas from one era to the next would have to extend much further into the past 8 and also include materials that political scientists had frequently ignored, such as religious texts and mythology (CW 34, 62f.). Furthermore, a unilinear model was no longer feasible given the multiple parallel histories that could not be linked together as though it were all just a single trajectory toward a fixed point. Different peoples in different parts of the world ordered themselves in different ways and used very different languages to explain themselves (CW 19, 233). 9 At an even deeper level, Voegelin ultimately rejected the conception of a history of political “ideas” in the first place. 10 It did not make sense, for reasons he would describe elsewhere. He was losing confidence that ideas can be studied historically. The question logically arose: what would be the conceptual apparatus to take its place? At the time, Voegelin did not know.

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And so began a period of what he called “black reflections,” 11 which lasted for many years while he continued the labor of catching up on all of the latest materials. In the midst of these struggles, Voegelin wrote to his editor (dated August 4, 1941) alluding to the motivation for “Political Theory and the Pattern of General History.” He wrote: “I have given considerable room to argumentative support of the results and to explanations why the ‘accepted’ picture of leading thinkers is not correct” (CW 29, 279). Voegelin wanted to explain why the existing textbooks and the models on which they were based were inadequate. Only then could he explain in what respects his forthcoming project would be different (CW 29, 278). With this in mind, the essay reads like a catalog of complaints—an indictment of sorts based on his increasing dissatisfaction, especially with the works of Paul Janet (the second edition of which had been published in 1872), William Dunning (1902), and George Sabine (1937). What Voegelin was offering in this brief article back in 1944 was a history of the history of political ideas. The history of political ideas is needlessly foreshortened, he wrote, and probably makes more sense as multiple, parallel and intersecting streams, many of which have yet to be studied or had been discarded by his predecessors, for one reason or another. Even within each civilization (e.g., Near Eastern, Greek, Middle Ages), there is a kind of rise and fall or life-span, 12 so that you could not depict a civilization as a static thing, as though there are simply Greek ideas or Egyptian ideas. Also, the existing textbook materials emphasize the great theoretical systems (e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Thomas), despite the fact that these elaborate systems were not actually evocative in their era (to the extent that they ever were). 13 That is to say, ordinary folks and their leaders tended to operate according to a different and probably less coherent set of ideas. The great theories were anomalous, elaborate, and solitary responses to what people around them believed. A history of political ideas should probably include the ideas that actually prevailed. Furthermore, phases of transition such as revolution and migration can be valuable for our understanding of political ideas, yet his predecessors had not included them. Voegelin predicted that the task of correcting for these limitations would require more than one person to complete and in principle would never end. He even identified neglected authors and monographs that in his opinion should be consulted going forward. In any case, the unilinear model had to go. The scope of what constitutes a political idea had to be expanded. The phases between civilizations deserve their own scrutiny. Even at a civilization’s height, however, there would be various movements and migrations that turn out to be relevant.

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B. VOEGELIN’S EXPERIENCE OF DISSATISFACTION The work of a scholar develops over the course of a long career, broadening or deepening—or shifting altogether, even to the point of repudiating what had gone before. There is a risk in taking any one part of the whole body of work without situating it somehow into the larger trajectory. Situating that part into its context might help readers understand better the flow of his work. What was antecedent? And how did it contribute to publications that came later? In that sense, there is what we might call a chronological context for a paper such as “Political Theory and the Pattern of General History.” That chronological body of work occurs within another context—a biographical context about the life of the scholar. What was going on at the time a particular piece was being written? How does the course of that scholar’s life help us, many years later, to see it somehow as a response to what is not being said? Although some interpreters choose not to consider the author’s biographical context and instead restrict themselves to the text itself, Voegelin himself was not one of those. Barry Cooper, who interviewed a range of people familiar with the life of Eric Voegelin, agreed “to insist on the historical contextualization or the relation of the real life of the authors of these texts” (VR, 209). 14 In other words, he adopted Voegelin’s practice as a scholar in writing about Voegelin himself (VR, 1–9). The gradual unfolding over time, the recollecting—or as David Walsh put it, “a reactualization of the path that has been traversed” has merit beyond a “mere summary of the destination.” 15 Voegelin himself wrote about “the biography of philosophizing consciousness” (CW 6, 84). The bare language on the printed page, such as a book or article, will have emerged out of concrete and very particular experiences. For Voegelin himself, then, what were these experiences? Episodes of disorientation or crisis in the life of the author can be especially instructive. Friends and family may have been bewildered at the time or even alarmed. There has been some research into what are labeled creative illnesses, 16 as well as evidence from neuroscience about fallow periods being integral to the creative process. 17 Those of us reduced to examining only the publications of an author might encounter a telling gap or absence before some breakthrough when the work resumes, probably in a new direction and at a new level of sophistication. Such was the period when Voegelin wrote the article of interest to us. In reminiscence, many years later Voegelin referred to his “period of indecision, if not paralysis . . . with mounting problems for which I saw no immediate solutions” (CW 34, 64). When he was eighty-two years of age, Voegelin actually referred to this period as “the crash”—a more dramatic turn of phrase that two of his expositors doubt was actually descriptive of how it had come about (CW 33, 442). Hollweck and Sandoz argue that the process was more gradual than he seemed to remember. 18 Yet his wife also

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used quite graphic language, calling it “a hard time, the hardest time of our lives when he went through that”—which is a remarkable claim given their experiences of World War II, the Anschluss, exile to a new country, and several serious medical threats (VR, 177). Perhaps we can use Voegelin’s own advice about consulting the author’s experiences in order to place the 1944 article into such a context. In an unpublished introduction to the project that was to vex him so much, written in 1940, Voegelin wrote about the state or condition of someone who would become (in his words) disenchanted with the rational language surrounding the evocation of some particular political order and instead wonder what to do about it. Later, Voegelin would write about this experience in different terms: “Every thinker who is engaged in the quest for truth resists a received symbolism he considers insufficient to express truly the reality of his responsive experience.” 19 This can be seen to describe Voegelin’s state of mind back in 1944 with regard to the received “symbolism” by Janet, Dunning, and Sabine in their search for a history of political ideas. In response, therefore, what does one do with such discontent? In the unpublished introduction to his History of Political Ideas, dated 1940, Voegelin cited Étienne de La Boétie (1530–1563) as an example of how dissatisfaction can lead to a kind of revolt against the way things are. Sometimes, in desperation, the dissatisfied will “shade off into the twilight of an ideology” or some imagined utopia or even a rejection of political order altogether in a version of anarchy. Each alternative has its attractions to the disaffected, yet Voegelin held out hope for the theorist who—in response to the experience—“reaches . . . a certain degree of detachment and is able to take a larger view of the political process. . . .” (CW 19, 232). Such a theorist, no longer held in thrall to a prevailing taboo, will eventually come into conflict with the residual power of the dominant symbols. Voegelin was thinking in terms of a trajectory from (a) evocative ideas bringing forth an order, to (b) gradual dissatisfaction here and there, that possibly leads to (c) theoretical postures, until (d) even theory runs into its limits while the order collapses or disappears. 20 In response, Voegelin would aspire to create a new and more satisfactory symbolism. The experience of being dissatisfied was to inform Voegelin’s writing all the way to his uncompleted, deathbed composition that has come down to us as volume V in Order & History, titled In Search of Order. 21 Published in 1987, the manuscript addresses the reflective distance necessary to undertake a quest for truth in resistance to the prevailing order (CW 18, 38–39). That reflective distance allows a theorist to seek a vantage point, a “source of criteria by which the truth of the quest is to be judged” (CW 18, 26–27). It is not the case that the theorist resists the truth per se. Instead, for the sake of truth, he or she resists the prevailing order that fails at some level to conform

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to the truth (CW 18, 49–54). The 1944 article sets forth Voegelin’s resistance. It seems plausible that this sequence of dissatisfaction, reflective distance, and quest for truth describes Voegelin’s frustrations between 1943 and 1951. He was struggling to disentangle himself, in more ways than one, from the existing “order,” and so the process began with a critique or rejection of the symbols being used to evoke that order. Perhaps it can be said that the 1944 essay represents Voegelin’s effort at confronting the existing symbols in his chosen field of study and judging them inadequate, even if at the time he was uncertain about what to put in their place. In conclusion, Voegelin exhibits here a part of what it means to exercise reflective distance, in search for a more precise and encompassing truth, so that readers might constitute themselves as a social field in resistance (especially in an era of disintegration) and possibly open themselves to undergoing the recurring quest for meaning—as indeed he would do professionally, for another forty years. C. A THREEFOLD SCHEMA Eric Voegelin had been an astute critic of the works of Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), expressing considerable respect for his efforts in phenomenology, going so far as to say about his essay on “The Crisis of European Sciences” 22 that Husserl’s “command of the material is masterly,” his presentation clear, analysis completely successful, such that “this essay is the most significant achievement of epistemological criticism in our time” (CW 6, 45f.). The interest in Husserl dates all the way back to his very first book in 1928. 23 Voegelin developed a fairly extensive array of arguments against what Husserl had been doing, 24 but he came at them from a position of respect and considerable study. Thus, it would not be fair to say that Voegelin rejected Husserl altogether, any more than one could say that Voegelin was in any sense an acolyte. Neither one nor the other was the case. We might instead call his posture “critical engagement.” I mention this in order to explain that despite this critical engagement with the work of Husserl, what Voegelin was doing in the 1944 article “Political Theory and the Pattern of General History” bears a striking resemblance to something Husserl had also been doing from within phenomenology. We have Anthony Steinbock (1998; 2003) to thank for arranging this into a three-part schema, as it pertains specifically to the work of Husserl. 25 We can then overlay that schema onto Voegelin’s article and find a remarkable correspondence—a correspondence without evidence of any causation, I might add. First, I should like to offer a condensed version of Steinbock’s

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schema, before attempting to examine the extent to which it fits what Voegelin was doing. 26 1. STATIC, GENETIC, AND GENERATIVE PHENOMENOLOGY Steinbock starts out with the assertion that Husserl began his researches seeking the simplest and then building toward the more complex, not unlike Descartes. 27 The simplest in his opinion is the phenomenon. What is this experience? How does reality present itself to you? What constitutes the reality that presents itself to you? In response to such questions, then, you will describe it, emphasizing its elements and the specific configuration of these elements into a structure to which you give a name. Steinbock tells us that Husserl later changed his approach, however, arguing that the object itself (such as a chicken, tree, or leader) is actually an abstraction from the concrete reality we experience. We first encounter the flux, the gestalt, as a concrete experience, and only then learn to differentiate items from each other, sorting them. In other words, Husserl went from a “methodological prejudice” for simplicity to a different approach. 28 He got to this new approach by recognizing that the object one encounters—whatever it is—implies an encompassing reality. This is not to say that you cannot conduct an analysis of an object and devise what Husserl called a static model. You may. But what seems logically prior is a genetic model, implied by two things: first, everything we experience has a cause, which insinuates an origin or genesis; second, as we conduct an analysis of that object, we ourselves experience the passage of time, using our powers of remembrance and anticipation as we go about noticing one aspect and another. We have direct access to the dynamics of life, even as we try to make sense of our world. In fact, wrote Husserl, “consciousness is inconceivable without retentional and protentional horizons.” 29 It would be foolish as a question of method to begin with the object itself and presuppose it exists in this form forever, unchanged, while we too exist without changing. He wrote that “every lived-experience . . . demands its ‘background,’ a horizon . . . ” 30 One of the hints that impressed Husserl was that we often identify an object, such as a sandwich, and catalogue its elements, which implies smaller objects such as bread and meat and cheese. But what are the elements of the bread and the meat and the cheese? Science teaches us that this process of subdividing continues beyond our capacity to see with the naked eye, as we learn to separate the reality we experience into smaller and smaller building blocks, through molecules to atoms and from there, who knows? Something

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prior brought this particular assemblage of building blocks into this shape and texture. The object we experience as a phenomenon is less of a unitary thing and more of a structure. When you see a sandwich, then, you infer a process by which it becomes a sandwich. These “structures” have a history. They come from somewhere, and they go somewhere. We have to know there is a causal chain that brought the structure into being. “Phenomenology of genesis then is the phenomenology of the original or primordial becoming in time.” 31 In short, Husserl interjected an awareness of the passage of time as rudimentary. To understand a structure, we need to understand where it comes from. A structure is inextricably linked to its past (and its future). Scholars are to describe a before and after, or as Husserl called them “sequences of particular events in the stream of lived-experience.” 32 This imagery of the stream suggests a linear flow. Instead of a simplistic sequence of one thing after another, Husserl described “a stream of a constant genesis; it is not a mere series, but a development.” 33 This is to say that the sequence has a logic. A rooster does not suddenly become a tractor. The changes are not random. We do not live in chaos. A person may not always know the pattern at work in any particular situation, but you trust that there is one. You can study these patterns of flow profitably. In this way, you discover a “process of becoming.” 34 Steinbock was not finished in his description of Husserl’s development, for he detected another turn later in his career toward a third method, an even more basic reality. Steinbock calls this a generative phenomenology—to be distinguished from genetic phenomenology. This third, encompassing method retains an emphasis on the time dimension of becoming, and since the names for these two methods are so similar (“genetic” and “generative”), it would be best to differentiate them with care. How is generative phenomenology different from genetic phenomenology? Genetic phenomenology begins at the present, looking backward and forward, projected in both directions. We stand as it were on a bridge over a river, looking upstream and downstream, until the watercourse bends out of sight in each direction. 35 We cannot occupy a point that includes both the bubbling spring where it begins in the highlands and the lazy delta where it empties out into the sea. We work from a single vantage point and notice the flow from one direction toward another. That is an awareness of the river’s genesis. A generative phenomenology, on the other hand, extends further— beyond what you can see from a single vantage point. Standing there, you may assume that around the bend the river flows toward you and around the other bend on the other side it flows away. It does not spring out of nowhere just as it comes into view and then suddenly stop just because you cannot see it any more. You as the observer have your limits, to be sure, but it would be

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foolish to assume that your limits are the limits of the reality you wish to understand. In other words, to understand the time dimension in all its fullness, you need two things: you need a historical record from before your time and you need other people who occupy different vantage points along the flow. Gradually, Husserl came to recognize the contributions of other points of view, even if the move complicated his original methods. Phenomenology is not about what you can know from a single point of view. This includes what Steinbock calls the “geo-historical, cultural, intersubjective, and normative.” 36 In other words, Husserl expanded the scope in several directions. The structure you wish to study is not a solitary thing on a solitary line of development, like a subway station on the eastbound line. It is an intersection of many lines, in both directions. It is a physical incident, with physical antecedents and consequences, but it is also a psychological incident, a social incident, an economic incident, and so forth. These lines or dimensions are interwoven, compact, a single reality that collaboratively we have to sort, without ignoring their interdependence, since you cannot understand any one of them in isolation. Husserl spoke of “the becoming of historically intersubjective phenomena.” 37 That river we were talking about is a geographical feature of the landscape, to be sure, participating in an extended terrain and climate, but it is also a route for water traffic (such as a venue for canoeing or barge traffic), a source of food for fishermen, a threat in times of flooding, a symbol to poets, a political boundary, and more. So we can focus our energies on examining a single episode, or a lifetime, or the founding and collapse of entire “homeworlds,” from different, complementary perspectives. Each has its place. But then here is its limitation: it can be done only from within a particular homeworld. 38 One cannot step outside of the context one is trying to describe, for there is no point from outside of it. You are in it. Even if you consult books and gather all of your friends, you are all entirely within this largest of contexts. You cannot escape the homeworld. One has two possibilities, therefore, when confronted with this limitation. One can discover within the process of studying something that which has not been noticed before. In that way, a scholar can make a fresh contribution. Steinbock calls this disclosure. You find novelty in a preexisting flow by bringing it to consciousness. “Hey, did anybody notice this . . . ?” The other possibility, which Steinbock examines in great detail elsewhere, is revelation, an otherworldly transcendence. 39 In conclusion, Steinbock adds one further lesson about these various methods. How is it that Husserl made his way from one method to another? What is the pattern for making these disclosures? For perhaps they have their own structure. The critical experience is an encounter with a limit. An historian, for example, quits researching because the relevant documents are de-

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stroyed in a fire or a remote tribe succumbs to epidemic. Whatever the limit that you encounter, you can see it as a closed door, which in one sense it is, but it can also be seen as an opportunity to look in new, creative ways. The limits themselves have what Steinbock calls “moral invitational force.” 40 In any case, these limits can be generative, if you see things in the right way. 2. THE SCHEMA APPLIED TO “POLITICAL THEORY AND THE PATTERN OF GENERAL HISTORY” Voegelin examined the prevailing texts in the history of political ideas and found them wanting. His criticism, as set forth in the 1944 article, can be arranged into the three-part schema described by Steinbock. We might say, in language borrowed from Steinbock, that at this point in his career, Voegelin encountered a limit. In this article published in 1944, Voegelin was describing the nature of this limit. First, a static model would identify the elements and describe the relationships among them. According to Voegelin, his predecessors had neglected many elements of a history of political ideas. Also, they rarely tried to explain the relationship among the political ideas they did include. Voegelin claimed that “the independent parallel histories of non-Western making were simply overlooked” (CW 10, 158). As of 1944, for example, experts knew more about Near Eastern pre-classic civilizations as well as the Hellenistic period following Aristotle (CW 10, 163). Dunning, for instance, makes it possible to ignore the fact that “a good deal of Western political thought is deeply rooted in the Mesopotamian, Persian, and Israelite prehistory” (CW 10, 161). Not only that, but “an integration of the Far Eastern body of thought . . . is not attempted” (CW 10, 160). Voegelin explicitly declined to multiply examples, such as “the great complexes of the Byzantine, Islamic, and Jewish medieval . . . histories” (CW 10, 167). He added that “the Middle Ages slipped into the category of the ‘Dark Ages’” (CW 10, 158). “The most serious gap,” he asserted, “is probably the omission of the Joachitic and Franciscan spiritual literature” (CW 10, 166). Also, “[i]t is forgotten today that not all humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries swallowed without resistance Greco-Roman antiquity as the linear prehistory of the Renaissance” (CW 10, 158). Going further, Voegelin wrote, “The linear pattern had to be qualified by insight into the internal cyclical structure of civilizational histories” (CW 10, 159). Speaking more broadly, then, without some account of “the unfolding of a pattern of meaning in time,” all you do get is a “chronological encyclopedia” or a catalog of “every scrap of an idea, whether integrated into a scientific system or not” (CW 10, 160–61).

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One concern he shows about Dunning’s 1901 publication is the book excluded materials unless they pertain to the idea of a state “as distinguished from the family and the clan. By this restriction he is enabled to eliminate from the field the ideas of primitives . . . ” (CW 10, 161). By focusing on the more developed theories (e.g., Plato and Aquinas) that had been written down, such a study will not have “depart[ed] entirely from the literary expressions of theory . . . to interpret the theoretical content of institutions themselves if no other source is available” (CW 10, 161). In short, the existing literature did not include all the necessary pieces and did not integrate what they do include into a coherent whole. Second, a genetic model would explain the historical context. According to Voegelin, his predecessors failed to explain the historical context for the political ideas they did include, despite claiming to attach their history of political ideas to a history of politics per se. To the extent that they did explain the historical context, they did not go far enough. For example, Voegelin alleges that they did an inadequate job explaining the influences of Near Eastern civilizations (including Israel) and the Teutonic peoples of Europe. 41 Voegelin asks, what about “periods of political crisis [in which] problems of spiritual disintegration and regeneration . . . come to the fore”? (CW 10, 164) A thorough history of political ideas must include, in his words, “the phenomena of rising communities” largely because they set the context for the more developed theories to emerge later (CW 10, 164f.). Voegelin mentions in this regard the treatment of the Middle Ages: the histories of political ideas existing at the time neglected the rise of institutions that during the Reformation eventually merged the sacrum imperium with what we know today as the nation-state (CW 10, 166). Voegelin suggested that a history of political ideas is “subordinated for its pattern to the structure of political history” (CW 10, 161, 163). But which structure? There are many possible structures. Even once Sabine made it clear that he wished to subordinate his work to the structure of history, he was unclear what that structure might be. Voegelin stated that “we possess . . . a knowledge of political history far surpassing the knowledge of a generation ago” (CW 10, 163). Thus, it was time for an update. That is, even if one aspires to set the context for a history of political ideas, one must command the latest thinking about such contexts. Third, a generative model would not only extend the timeline into the indefinite distance, as far as the available records would allow, but it would also disclose the many different strands of a history of ideas, such as the role of mythology and religion. According to Voegelin, his predecessors stop short in their reach into the past, largely because they did not have access to materials that had become available in the years since, even though that does not excuse their general neglect of mythology and religion. 42

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Voegelin faults Dunning for “disentangling” political ideas from other fields of study, such as ethics, theology, and law (CW 10, 161). A concrete example of this is the neglect of Christianity’s extensive literature on the idea of “the mystical body of Christ (2000, p. 165)” which shaped political thought in Europe for a millennium. Voegelin wrote, “It will not do to eliminate from the field of political theory the theory of the community within which the structural political problems arise . . .” (CW 10, 165) D. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY Voegelin’s struggle to write a history of political ideas is instructive for the twenty-first century in a number of ways. The most obvious, perhaps, is its contribution toward an academic understanding of the development of Voegelin’s thinking, as it blossomed later in such master works as Order & History. Voegelin scholars can trace his progress, as it were, through this troublesome phase. For another thing, subsequent attempts to write a textbook (or any compendium) on the history of political ideas would have to account for Voegelin’s words of caution. This includes consulting the most recent scholarship possible, incorporating political ideas from around the globe, going beyond the dominant systems of thought by Plato, Aquinas, and Rousseau to reach ideas in actual practice, drawing insight from periods of history when ideas themselves were in transition, paying due respect to the political import of mythology and religious materials, and so forth. As Voegelin himself forewarned, such an undertaking will require contributions from many people; it is simply too large for any one person. 43 And to the extent his successors do make the attempt, students can use Voegelin’s indictment of earlier textbooks to judge more recent ones for themselves. This might serve as a useful classroom exercise today for courses on the history of political thought. Also, Voegelin’s article exemplifies the practice of setting forth with some fairness the position one wishes to critique. He demonstrates a familiarity with the work of his predecessors, while at the same time demonstrating his familiarity with materials that would be useful to make improvements. Voegelin shows how one might proceed by gaining knowledge of the literature, before presuming to make a similar attempt. Many students (and not a few of their instructors) sometimes neglect this task. In a similar vein, Steinbock’s three-part schema can be made useful in many fields of study and can be included in classroom instruction, as students transition from static understandings through genetic understandings to generative understandings of their particular subject matter, whatever it happens to be: i.e., themselves, their world, and the encompassing reality in which they participate. The schema, as set forth here, is certainly a simplifi-

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cation of a more complex process, yet students of a certain age might benefit from its relative facility. A broader implication for scholars in any field of study has to do with the manner in which Voegelin met and struggled to overcome the limits in his discipline, for one has to recognize those limitations and articulate them clearly before searching for a superior method. In that sense, Voegelin serves as an exemplar of the quest for truth. As such, his subsequent meditations on the process by which one conducts that quest would apply to any field of study and not just to a history of political ideas. Despite his remembrance of that earlier phase of his career as a strain, a crisis, a period of paralysis, a crash, and possibly the hardest time of his life, full of black reflections, he eventually made his way forward, with a combination of diligence toward the work and a spirit of openness. NOTES The author wishes to thank Michael Harvey and Benjamin Lynerd for helpful comments. 1. Eric Voegelin, Published Essays 1940–1952 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 10), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana University State Press, 2000), 157–67. Hereafter CW 10. Barry Cooper’s excellent summary of the article in nearly as long as the article itself. Refer to Barry Cooper, Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 335–42. 2. Anon, “Journalism and Joachim’s Children,” Time (March 9, 1953): 57–61. 3. For example, Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 34), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 89–95. Hereafter CW 34; The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers 1939–1985 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 33), William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004). Hereafter CW 33. 4. Thomas Hollweck and Ellis Sandoz, “General Introduction to the Series,” in History of Political Ideas, Volume I: Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 19), Athanasios Moulakis, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 1–47. 5. Especially Eric Voegelin, Selected Correspondence 1924–1949 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 29), Jürgen Gebhardt, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009), 203–413. Hereafter CW 29. 6. It is probably telling that none of his exam questions for that course was ever based on Sabine. Barry Cooper and Jodi Bruhn, eds., Voegelin Recollected: Conversations on a Life (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008), 189. Hereafter VR. 7. In 1973, he remarked that “one cannot deal with materials unless one can read them.” CW 34, 39. Toward the end of his life, he took an interest in megalithic cultures, Neolithic art, and other stone age artifacts as symbolizations of order. VR, 16–21. 8. For example, CW 33, 222; Eric Voegelin, History of Political Ideas, Volume I: Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 19), Athanasios Moulakis, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 236. Hereafter CW 19. 9. Years later, Voegelin would trace the origins of the unilinear model (which he was to abandon) back to ancient Sumeria. CW 33, 229ff. But he claimed to have begun to question the model as early as 1926. CW 34, 32. 10. For example, CW 34, 63; Hollweck and Sandoz, “General Introduction to the Series,” 20. A number of books are still being published as the history of an idea, as for example (in no

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particular order): Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Mitchell Duneier, Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016); Christopher J. Lebron, The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Edmund Fawcett, Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014); Shiraz Maher, Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present (New York: Penguin, 2012); Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Vincenzo Ferrone and Elisabetta Tarantino, The Enlightenment: History of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015); Isaiah Berlin and Henry Hardy, Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). 11. Hollweck and Sandoz, “General Introduction to the Series,” 29. 12. At the time, Arnold Toynbee had not yet completed A Study of History. 13. This does not mean that the work of these philosophers had no significance. Voegelin himself credits Plato, to cite the most obvious example, with having enduring significance for Western civilization. Eric Voegelin, Order and History Volume III: Plato and Aristotle (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 16), Dante Germino, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000); Eric Voegelin and Brendan Purcell, “The Irish Dialogue with Eric Voegelin (Part I),” VoegelinView, February 17, 2009. Available at https://voegelinview.com/ the-irish-dialogue-with-eric-voegelin-pt1/. Accessed April 23, 2018. 14. This contextual approach is set forth by Mark Bevir. Mark Bevir, “The Contextual Approach,” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy, George Klosko, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 11–23. 15. David Walsh, “Introduction,” in Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 6), M. J. Hanak, trans., David Walsh, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 5. Hereafter CW 6. 16. Henri Ellenberger, “The Concept of Creative Illness,” Psychoanalytic Review 55:3 (1963/1968): 442–56. 17. Tara Swart, Kitty Chisholm, and Paul Brown, Neuroscience for Leadership (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015). 18. Hollweck and Sandoz, “General Introduction to the Series.” 19. Eric Voegelin, Order and History Volume V: In Search of Order (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 18), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 53. Hereafter CW 18. 20. Many years later, Voegelin would go into greater depth and precision about these thoughts, as for example in Published Essays 1966–1985 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 12), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), 95–133. 21. Barry Cooper (1999) identified as two of Voegelin’s lifelong concerns what he called the range of evidence and intelligible units of analysis, each of which we can see were adjudged by Voegelin to be inadequate in the work of his predecessors. 22. Reprinted in Edmund Husserl, The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, David Carr, trans. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970) 23. Eric Voegelin, On the Form of the American Mind (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 1), Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper, eds. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1995). 24. See generally, for example, David Levy, “Europe, Truth, and History: Husserl and Voegelin on Philosophy and the Identity of Europe,” in International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Eric Voegelin, Stephen McKnight and Geoffrey Price, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 59–83; David Walsh, “Voegelin and Heidegger: Apocalypse without Apocalypse,” in Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition: Explorations in Modern Political Philosophy, Lee Trepanier and Steven McGuire, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2011), 166–91; Peter Petrakis, “Voegelin and Ricoeur: Recovering Science and Subjectivity through Representation,” in Eric Voegelin’s Dialogue with the Post-

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moderns: Searching for Foundations, Peter Petrakis and Cecil Eubanks, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 2004), 23–56. 25. See Anthony Steinbock, “Generativity and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology,” in The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, Donn Welton, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 289–325; “Husserl’s Static and Genetic Phenomenology: Translator’s Introduction to Two Essays,” Continental Philosophy Review 31:2 (1998): 127–52. 26. I credit Steinbock and not Husserl because he is the one to discern the schema in Husserl’s development. 27. René Descartes, “Rules for the Direction of our Native Intelligence,” in Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings, J. Cottingham and R. Stoothoff, trans. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 1–19. 28. Steinbock, “Husserl’s Static and Genetic Phenomenology,” 129; “Generativity and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology,” 301. 29. Steinbock, “Husserl’s Static and Genetic Phenomenology,” 136, 141. 30. Ibid., 143. 31. Ibid., 132. 32. Ibid., 135. 33. Ibid., 137. 34. Ibid., 147. 35. The metaphor suggestive of flow is mine and not Steinbock’s. 36. Steinbock, “Generativity and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology,” 292. 37. Ibid., 300. 38. Ibid., 316. 39. Here is the topic of greatest concern to Voegelin about Husserl’s phenomenology. See Anthony Steinbock, Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 319. 40. Steinbock, “Generativity and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology,” 320. Perhaps you cannot date the collapse of a civilization using its artifacts: maybe they have deteriorated or the location has been made off-limits by civil authorities. Nevertheless, perhaps you can deduce the date of its collapse indirectly by dating the disease that swept these people off the face of the earth, as described in Douglas Preston, The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017). 41. Voegelin does not know why Dunning would have claimed not to have enough information about the Teutonic tribes. Voegelin wrote, “The assertion was hardly true in Dunning’s own time.” If this would have been an inaccurate position to take in the late 1800s, “it is still less true today.” Ibid., 166. 42. From this three-part schema, one might be able to detect the significance of Voegelin’s brief childhood reminiscences in Anamnesis—about the relativity of spatial positions, the freighters that journeyed past his home on the Rhine, his own gliding on a boat past a ruined arch on a mountain, the romance of distant lands, the strange trajectory of Halley’s comet from out of (and back in to) an unseen void, the school book that presented history in a linear fashion, only backward, and the unseen cannons booming somewhere at the end of the world (CW 6, 84–98). What he returned to in these exercises, apparently, was a fascination with the implications of movement as a passage through consciousness, with something mysterious just beyond the horizon. He wanted to understand what constitutes his world, and not just the world of immediate experience but also out to fantastic distances, for which he developed an interest in the phenomenon of flow and our place within that flow. His reminiscences demonstrate a posture of openness to reality in several directions. Perhaps as a child Eric Voegelin was already attuned to a kind of generative phenomenology. By the same token, the three-part schema resembles what Voegelin in his very last book referred to as a plurality of middles (CW 18, 29–31). As Freud once observed, “What someone thinks he remembers from his childhood is not a matter of indifference; as a rule the residual memories—which he himself does not understand—cloak priceless pieces of evidence about the most important features in his mental development.” See Sigmund Freud, Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (Standard Edition), A. Tyson, trans. and James Strachey, ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1961), 35.

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43. More significantly, Voegelin cast doubt on the entire enterprise, shifting what it is that we are doing when we presume to study that history. But what he put in its place would come after 1944.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anon. “Journalism and Joachim’s Children.” Time (March 9, 1953): 57–61. Berlin, Isaiah and Henry Hardy. Political Ideas in the Romantic Age: Their Rise and Influence on Modern Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014) Bevir, Mark. “The Contextual Approach.” In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Political Philosophy, George Klosko, ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 11–23. Blyth, Mark. Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Cooper, Barry. Eric Voegelin and the Foundations of Modern Political Science (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999). Cooper, Barry and Jodi Bruhn, eds. Voegelin Recollected: Conversations on a Life (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008). Descartes, René. “Rules for the Direction of our Native Intelligence.” In Descartes: Selected Philosophical Writings, J. Cottingham and R. Stoothoff, trans. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 1–19. Duneier, Mitchell. Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an Idea (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016). Ellenberger, Henri. “The Concept of Creative Illness.” Psychoanalytic Review 55:3 (1963/ 1968): 442–56. Fawcett, Edmund. Liberalism: The Life of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). Ferrone, Vincenzo and Elisabetta Tarantino. The Enlightenment: History of an Idea (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). Freud, Sigmund. Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood (Standard Edition), A. Tyson, trans. and James Strachey, ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1961). Hollweck, Thomas and Ellis Sandoz. “General Introduction to the Series.” In History of Political Ideas, Volume I: Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 19), Athanasios Moulakis, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 1–47. Husserl, Edmund. The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology: An Introduction to Phenomenological Philosophy, David Carr, trans. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1970). Lebron, Christopher J. The Making of Black Lives Matter: A Brief History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Levy, David. “Europe, Truth, and History: Husserl and Voegelin on Philosophy and the Identity of Europe.” In International and interdisciplinary perspectives on Eric Voegelin, Stephen McKnight and Geoffrey Price, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997), 59–83. Maher, Shiraz. Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Mazower, Mark. Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present (New York: Penguin, 2012). Petrakis, Peter. “Voegelin and Ricoeur: Recovering Science and Subjectivity through Representation.” In Eric Voegelin’s Dialogue with the Postmoderns: Searching for Foundations, Peter Petrakis and Cecil Eubanks, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri, 2004), 23–56. Preston, Douglas. The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story (New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2017). Robin, Corey. Fear: The History of a Political Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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Steinbock, Anthony. “Generativity and the Scope of Generative Phenomenology.” In The New Husserl: A Critical Reader, Donn Welton, ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 289–325. ———. “Husserl’s Static and Genetic Phenomenology: Translator’s Introduction to Two Essays.” Continental Philosophy Review 31:2 (1998): 127–52. ———. Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). Swart, Tara, Kitty Chisholm, and Paul Brown. Neuroscience for Leadership (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015). Voegelin, Eric, On the Form of the American Mind (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 1), Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper, eds. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1995). ———. Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 6), M. J. Hanak, trans., David Walsh, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002). ———. Published Essays 1940–1952 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 10), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana University State Press, 2000). ———. Published Essays 1966–1985(The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 12), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). ———. Order and History Volume III: Plato and Aristotle (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 16), Dante Germino, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000). ———. Order and History Volume V: In Search of Order (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 18), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2000). ———. History of Political Ideas, Volume I: Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 19), Athanasios Moulakis, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1997). ———. Selected Correspondence 1924–1949 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 29), Jürgen Gebhardt, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2009). ———. The Drama of Humanity and Other Miscellaneous Papers 1939–1985 (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 33), William Petropulos and Gilbert Weiss, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004). ———. Autobiographical Reflections (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 34), Ellis Sandoz, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2006). Voegelin, Eric and Brendan Purcell, “The Irish Dialogue with Eric Voegelin (Part I).” VoegelinView February 17, 2009. Available at https://voegelinview.com/the-irish-dialogue-witheric-voegelin-pt1/. Accessed April 23, 2018. Walsh, David. “Introduction.” Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics (The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin Volume 6), M. J. Hanak, trans., David Walsh, ed. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002), 1–27. ———. “Voegelin and Heidegger: Apocalypse without Apocalypse.” In Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition: Explorations in Modern Political Philosophy, Lee Trepanier and Steven McGuire, eds. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2011), 166–91.

Index

African-American Studies, 59 Al-Banna, Hasan, 157 Alexander the Great, 82 Alien Act, 42 America, 5, 14, 15, 56, 62, 63, 121, 126; American constitution, 55 American culture, 48, 53, 57 American political institutions, 56, 69 American Revolution, 32, 41, 43, 54 American Revolutionary Era, 45 American South, 62–64 American. See America American Political Science Review, 191 Ammonites, 39 Amor Dei, 143 anarchy, 196 Anglo-Saxon, 91 Antichrist, 149 Anti-Federalist, 68 apocalypse, 4, 149, 151 Aquinas, Thomas, 174–186, 203 Arendt, Hannah, 142, 152, 153–156 Aristotle, 6, 49, 79, 80, 82, 144; on political friendship, 3; Aristotelian logic, 176–186 Saint Augustine, 143, 144, 146 Aurora, 42 Babylonians, 149, 174 Bacon, Francis, 75, 78–84; method of, 79, 81

Bailyn, Bernard, 41 Baker, Sir Ernest, 92 basket of deplorables, 64 Baxter, Richard, 36 Bavarian Academy for Political Education, 119 Bellah, Robert, 48 Bergson, Henri, 143 Berlin, Isaiah, 93 Bill of Rights, 65 bin Laden, Osama, 150, 162, 163 bios theoretikos, 75 Blasey-Ford, Christine, 66–67 Bloom, Allan, 58, 97 Bodin, Jean, 77, 102 Boston Gazette, 43 Britain. See England Brown University, 58, 59 Bruno, Giordano, 76, 77, 84 caliph, 147, 162 caliphate, 148, 149, 151; Abbasid caliphate, 149; Ummayad caliphate, 149, 150 Calvin, 99 Cambridge, University of, 164 Cartesian, 78 case law, 56 Catholic theology, 126 Catholicism, 57 The Celebrity Apprentice, 67 209

210

Index

Cemetery Ridge, 35 Charles II, 35 China, 7, 128 Chinese, 128 Christian, 1, 6, 14, 49, 54, 92, 97, 101, 105, 106, 119, 123, 126, 131, 143, 147, 149, 166 Christianity, 47, 56, 84, 102, 123, 146 Christian-democratic parties, 17 Churchill, Winston, 91 civic law, 119 civic virtue, 119 civil government, 120, 121, 122 civil theology, 98, 101, 104, 105 climate change, 86 Cold War, 117 Collingwood, R.G., 92 Columbus, Christopher, 82 common law, 119 Communism, 1, 4, 55, 120, 142; Communist revolution, 12 comparative political science, 118 comparative politics, 130 Comte, Auguste, 21, 76, 85 Comte, Charles, 14, 18 Confederate soldiers, Statues of, 62–63 conscience, 37 constitutional democracy, 123, 127, 129, 130 Constitution of Cádiz, 12 Copernicus, 76 Copernican system, 77 Cornell University, 58 Cortes, 12 cosmological empire, 173, 174, 175, 178, 179, 185 Darwin, Charles, 84–85 de Gaulle constitution, 120 Descartes, René, 198 Devil’s Island, 61 Dewey, John, 79, 124 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 101 Downer, Silas, 41 Dreyfus Affair, 61–62 Duty to Warn Conference, 67 egalitarianism, 95, 108 Egypt, 174, 178, 194

Einstein, Albert, 84 electoral college, 70, 120 England, 19, 95, 108, 120; English constitution, 55; English Revolution, 32, 42, 43; Restoration England, 35 The Enclyopedists, 85 The Enlightenment, 3, 84, 98, 146 English. See England entrepreneur, 125, 127–130 entrepreneurial economy, 129–130 Era of Good Feelings, 45, 46 Establishment Clause, 56 existentialism, 58–59 fallenness, 109 Fascism, 12, 22, 141; Italian Fascism, 18 Federalist, 42–43, 68 Federalist Papers, 48, 49 Ferdinand VII, 12 Ferguson, Robert, 36, 40 final solution, 57, 152 First Amendment, 64 First Austrian Republic, 120 Florida, 68 Florida Gulf Coast University, 59 France: liberalism in, 14, 19; French Jacobins, 42; French Revolution, 12, 32, 54; Reign of Terror, 12 Franciscan, 201 Freeden, Michael, 15 Galileo, 77 Gallup, 56 Gazette, 42 Gelasian system, 122 Gender and Sexuality Studies, 59 Germany, 15, 32, 54, 58, 70, 117, 126, 154; German Revolution, 54; German students, 55, 56, 58 Gestapo, 2 Gettysburg Address, 119 Glorious Revolution. See English Revolution gnosticism, 22, 55, 60, 70 The Goldwater Rule, 67 good society, 122, 123, 130 Gore, Al, 86 Grant, George, 92, 107 Gray, John, 22

Index The Great Awakening, 41, 46, 49 Greek, 143, 194 Green New Deal, 87 Green, T.H., 92

Joachim of Fiora, 146 Joachtic, 201 Judaism, 57 Judeo-Christian, 119

Hart, H.L.A., 93 Harvard University, 93, 193 Hayek, Friedrich, 2, 87 Hazony, Yoram, 6 Hebrew, 192 Heidegger, Martin, 58, 59 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, 12, 58 Heraclitus, 143 Hillsdale College, 94 Hitler, Adolf, 57, 120, 151, 161 Hobbesian. See Hobbes, Thomas Hobbes, Thomas, 35, 92, 97, 98, 103, 161 Homonia, 31, 33, 44, 49, 144 Hume, David, 107 Husserl, Edmund, 191, 198, 199, 200 Hurricane Katrina, 86

Kauffman, Walter, 58 Kavanaugh, Bret, 66, 70 Kierkegaard, Søren, 58 King, Martin Luther Jr., 104 Korea, 91

ideological. See ideology ideologue, 124 ideology, 4, 6, 7, 21, 26, 122, 124, 128, 141, 142, 145, 196 India, 128 Industrial Revolution, 14, 26, 54 industrial society, 120, 121, 126, 127 International Revolutionary Party, 158 intramundane, 173, 182 ISIS, 62, 150–152 Islamic, 201 Islamic caliphate, 5 Islamic radicals, 44 Islamic State. See ISIS Islamism, 141 Israel, 119, 149 Israeli, 38 Israelite, 201 Istvan, Zoltan, 86 Jefferson, Thomas, 79 Jephtha, 38–40 Jesus, 147, 149 Jewish, 61 Jews, 57, 61, 154 jihadism, 142, 147–150 jihadist. See jihadism

211

laissez-faire, 16, 91 Leibniz, 77, 84 Lenin, 142, 151, 158 LGBT movement, 59 The Liberales, 12 liberalism, 11–26, 95, 96; characteristics of, 11–26; comprehensive liberalism, 96; ideological nature of, 6; political liberalism, 96, 98, 101, 105 libido dominandi, 24 Lincoln, Abraham, 104 Locke, John, 14, 37–40, 41, 92, 97, 98, 103 Lockean. See Locke, John Logos, 2, 37, 122, 129 Louisiana State University, 2, 117 Ludwig Maximilian University, 117, 118 Luther, Martin, 99 MacArthur, Douglas, 69 Machiavellian, 100 macro-economic, 124 Mahdi, 149 Marxism, 54, 85, 104, 107, 118, 126 Marxist. See Marxism Marist-Leninism, 156 Marx, Karl, 32, 64, 99, 121, 124, 142 Maududi, Mawlana, 158 McKinnon, Catherine, 64–67, 68 Meade, George, 35 mercantilism, 19 Mesopotamian, 201 Middle Easterners, 5 Mill, John Stuart, 20 modernity, 75 Mongols, 149 Monroe, James, 42 More, Henry, 78 Mormonism, 57

212

Index

Mosaic Law, 119 Muhammad, 147, 149 Murad, Abdal Hakim. See Tim Winter Muslims, 6, 149, 164; Shia-Sunni schism, 149 National Socialism, 1, 4, 5, 12, 18, 22, 54, 55, 61, 118, 120, 126, 141, 142, 156 Napoleon, 12, 120 natural law, 12 natural rights, 43 Nazism. See National Socialism Neustadt, Richard, 69 New Left, 109 Newton, Isaac, 77, 78, 84 Newtonian Revolution, 76, 78 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 92, 99 Nixon, Richard, 94 North Vietnam, 94 Noetic. See Nous Nous, 2, 3, 37, 122, 124, 128, 129–130, 143, 144, 146, 166 Obama Administration, 44 Oxfordians, 92–93, 104, 106 Palm Beach County Circuit Court, 67 Pauline. See St. Paul St. Paul, 2, 106, 143, 166 Palmyra, 62 Parker, Samuel, 35, 36, 40 Parliament, 35 Persian, 201 phenomenology, 199–200 Pickett, George, 35 Plato, 79, 82, 94, 100–101, 143, 152, 203; Myth of the Puppet Player, 166; Noble Lie, 101; Periagoge, 2; Platonic, 76, 105; Platonic language, 95; Platonic method, 33 pluralistic society, 31 Ptolemaic system, 77 Princeton University, 102 Protestant Reformation, 12, 32, 91, 98, 126 Protestantism, 46, 57, 101, 102 prohibition of questioning, 32, 43, 44, 70, 75 Protestant, 35 Puritans, 120

Putnam, Robert, 48 Quran, 147 Qutb, Sayyid, 157–162 Rawls, John, 93–109; veil of ignorance, 94 reason, 2, 124, 143, 146 reflective equilibrium, 103 Reformation. See Protestant Reformation Republican, 42 Restoration Settlement, 35 revolution, 11 Révolution Permanente, 26 Robespierre, 151 Roosevelt, Franklin, 55, 87 Rosenstein, Rod, 68 The Royal Society, 85 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 79, 92, 124, 160, 161, 162, 203 Russian Revolution, 32 Sabine, George, 192, 194, 196 Sandoz, Ellis, 41, 46, 192 San Francisco, 44 Satre, 58 Schmitt, Carl, 99 scientism, 75–87 Second Great Awakening, 46 second reality, 60 Second Reformation, 54, 55, 56 secularization, 98 service sector, 124–125 sound knowledge, 54 Soviet Communism, 18, 141 Soviet Union, 5, 117, 118, 120, 121, 122, 158 Spain, 19 Spengler, Oswald, 141 Spinoza, 99–100, 103, 106 Strauss, Leo, 95, 100 Steinbock, Anthony, 191, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203 Steinle, Kate, 44 Stoicism, 105 Smollett, Jussie, 62 Sufism, 164–165 Supreme Court, 23, 55, 56 Switzerland, 2

Index Third Reich, 151 Time (magazine), 191 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 20, 49 toleration, 31 Tory, 41 totalitarianism, 32, 152–164, 173, 186 Toynbee, Arnold, 141 trade, 19 transcendence, 173, 176 transhumanism, 20, 85, 86 transhumanist. See transhumanism Trotsky, Leon, 18, 21 Truman, Harry, 69 Trump, Donald, 43, 49, 61, 67–70, 108 Trump supporters, 62 25th amendment, 68–70 Umma, 147 United Kingdom, 104 United States, 5, 17, 19, 117, 118, 120, 121, 126 University of Missouri Press, 193 University of Munich, 2

utopia, 196 Vietnam War, 94 von Humboldt, William, 126 Wahhabis, 148 Walgreen Lectures, 191 Warren, Elizabeth, 68 Washington, George, 45 Weber, Max, 2 Weimar Germany, 120 welfare state, 141 Whig, 41 Winter, Tim, 164–165 Woessner, Martin, 58 women’s studies, 59 World War II, 4, 75, 91, 93, 102, 108 Wycliffe, John, 119 xenophobia, 44 Yale University, 67

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About the Authors

David D. Corey is an associate professor of political science at Baylor University in Texas. He is author of The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues (2015) and, with J. Daryl Charles, The Just War Tradition (2012). Nathan W. Harter is a professor of leadership and American studies at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. He is author of Foucault on Leadership (2016), Leadership and Coherence (2014), and Clearings in the Forest: On the Study of Leadership (2007). Grant Havers is a professor of philosophy and political studies at Trinity Western University in Canada. He is author of Leo Strauss and AngloAmerican Democracy (2013) and Lincoln and the Politics of Christian Love (2009). Christopher S. Morrissey is a sessional instructor at Trinity Western University and on the Faculty of Philosophy at the Seminary of Christ the King, Westminster Abbey in Canada. He is translator of Hesiod: Theogony / Works and Days (2012). Scott Robinson is an assistant professor of political science at Houston Baptist University. He has published articles on John Locke and is currently working on a manuscript on Locke’s political theory. Scott Philip Segrest is an assistant professor of political science at the Citadel in South Carolina. He is author of America and the Political Philosophy of Common Sense (2010).

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216

About the Authors

Lee Trepanier is a professor of political science at Saginaw Valley State University and editor of the Lexington Books series Politics, Literature, and Film and the academic website VoegelinView. He is the author and editor of over twenty books, the latest being Tradition v. Rationalism (2018). David N. Whitney is an associate professor of political science at Nicholls State University in Louisiana. He is author Maladies of Modernity: Scientism and the Deformation of Political Order (2019).