No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Eric Voegelin's Contribution to Contemporary Political Theory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
Some fifty years ago, Douglas Ainslie wrote of Benedetto Croce: “I can lay no claim to having discovered an America, but I do claim to have discovered a Columbus.” Eric Voegelin, today at the height of his career as a political philosopher, scarcely needs to be discovered; he is regarded as a Columbus in the realms of the spirit by many concerned with the the oretical analysis of politics. But in the political science profession he has been more often ignored or systematically misunderstood than read for what he has to teach. Among those according an indifferent or hostile reception to Voegelin are many who, bewailing the recent “decline” of political theory, might have been expected to welcome the appearance of a thinker meticulously pointing the way to the recovery of political theory as a tradition of inquiry. The basic reasons for this curious reception will be alluded to in the course of this essay. The major objective, however, is to isolate the key elements in Voegelin's political theory and to give some indication of his general position in contemporary political science. Hopefully, the result will be to further the understanding of his work and the appreciation of his achievement.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1964
References
* The greater part of this research was completed during a leave of absence made possible by grants from the Rockefeller Foundation and Wellesley College.
1 Introduction to Croce's, Aesthetic (London, 1909), p. xvGoogle Scholar.
2 Indeed, at the 1960 convention of the American Political Science Association, a panel was set aside for the discussion of his magnum opus, Order and History. This is a rare distinction for a living political philosopher.
3 The present time is a propitious one to evaluate Voegelin's contribution to contemporary political theory because, although the fourth and fifth volumes of Order and History are as yet unpublished, the main themes of his analysis have been expounded and the Voegelinian corpus has now attained considerable proportions. His published writings include ten books and at least fifty-five articles and essays. A complete bibliography of his works is in the Voegelin, Festschrift (03, 1962)Google Scholar.
The writer has also been able to consult two hitherto unpublished writings of ProfessorVoegelin, , available at the Institut fuer Politischen Wissenschaften at the University of MunichGoogle Scholar. One is a mimeographed copy of a lecture which he delivered at Munich and Notre Dame in 1961 entitled “Debate and Existence.” The other is the typescript of a small treatise entitled The Nature of Law. In addition, during the 1961 summer term at Munich I had the opportunity to hold a number of valuable conversations with Professor Voegelin and to hear his lectures and seminar presentations. I am most indebted to him for these courtesies.
4 Voegelin, , unpublished lecture on “Debate and Existence,” p. 13Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., p. 17.
6 Hebrews 11:1–3 (New English Bible).
7 In a profound sense, Voegelin transcends both the “fideist” and “rationalist” positions in contemporary Protestant and Catholic political thought. Cf. my article, “Two Types of Recent Christian Political Thought,” Journal of Politics, XXI, 08, 1959Google Scholar, for a discussion of the two approaches. In no sense can Voegelin properly be termed a Barthian fideist; the experience of faith is to prepare the way for the work of reason, and faith that does not issue in rational knowledge (that is, in philosophy) is inadequate. In this connection, the assertion of Jean Meynaud that Voegelin writes from a “purely doctrinal” and “confessional” viewpoint is an absurdity. Introduction a la science politique (Paris, 1959), p. 11Google Scholar.
8 The New Science of Politics (Chicago, 1952), p. 122Google Scholar.
9 “Debate and Existence,” p. 7.
10 Voegelin's, attack on “systems” and system-building in philosophy runs through all his writings, but note especially the interesting articles “Philosophie der Politik in Oxford,” Philosophische Rundschau, I (1953/1954), 23, ff.Google Scholar, and “Religions-ersatz,’ Wort und Wahrheit, XV (1960), 55, ffGoogle Scholar.
11 Bergson, Henri, Introduction to Metaphysics (New York, 1912), p. 40Google Scholar. Bergson explained that such a metaphysics is difficult to achieve because the “normal” tendency of human thought is to be guided by a practical rather than a theoretical orientation; therefore, thought naturally seeks to come to reality via preconceived concepts rather than to derive its concepts from reality.
12 The term “philosopher” has been and continues to be so ridiculously misused that the Aristotelian word may be preferable. As Voegelin points out, Plato formulated the symbol “philosopher” (or lover of wisdom) in contradistinction to “philodoxer” (or lover of opinion): “We have philosophers in English but no philodoxers. The loss is … embarrassing, because we have an abundance of philodoxers in reality, but all of them are referred to as philosophers. … [Thus] we call philosophers precisely those persons to whom Plato as a philosopher was in opposition.” Order and History (Baton Rouge, 1957), III, 65Google Scholar. Readers of James Reston's column in the New York Times will notice the frequent abuse of the terms philosopher and philosophical (thus we have a “philosophical” question at a Presidential news conference, Nixon's “philosophy” of labor-management relations, etc., etc.).
13 Ethics (Thomas, J. A. K. trans.), Bk. X, 7Google Scholar.
14 Harvard, William C., “The Method and Results of Political Anthropology in America,” Archiv fuer Rechts-und Sozialphilosophie, XLVII (1961), 395–415Google Scholar, at 413. Some of Strauss's followers continue to make the same error. Cf. especially Berns, Walter, Freedom, Justice, and the First Amendment (Baton Rouge, 1958)Google Scholar.
15 Note the review of Order and History by Moses Hadas in the Journal of the History of Ideas, XIX (1958), 444Google Scholar. The review contains the following charming sentence: “One wonders whether the ‘institution that wishes to remain unnamed’ which Professor Voegelin thanks for material aid in each of his Prefaces was aware of the nature of his work, and one remembers a remark attributed to a notable patron of the institution which Professor Voegelin serves [at the time, he was on the faculty of Louisiana State University]: ‘Sure, we'll have fascism in this country, but of course we'll call it something else.’ Leap in being?” Karl Jaspers also turns into a fascist in the course of the Hadas review. One of the enormous difficulties besetting rational communication among scholars at the present time is that many people cannot recognize a philosopher when they see one. As one who has spent several years studying Fascism, let me assure Professor Hadas that Voegelin's philosophy and Fascist ideology have nothing whatsoever in common.
16 Order and History, II, 283.
17 As if there can be any science of politics without a theory of elites! It is not that we shall have either an elite theory or no elite theory; the question is whether we shall have a philosophically sound or an ideologically debased elite theory.
18 Cf. Voegelin's, article “Machiavelli's Prince: Background and Formation,” in the Review of Politics, XIII (05, 1951)Google Scholar, for some keen insights into the thought of the much-maligned Florentine. In his unpublished treatise on The Nature of Law, Voegelin has written of conscience: “Conscience … can be defined as the act, or acts, by which we judge, approvingly or disapprovingly, our conduct in the light of our rational moral knowledge. Conscience in this sense is not infallible.” It can err either because the facts of the matter requiring our action are not sufficiently known, or because conflict of obligations is difficult to resolve, or because “moral obtuseness and spiritual perversion” will produce false judgments.
19 The philosopher also labors to increase the ranks of those who devote themselves fully to the life of noetic reason — of those who will become philosophers. However, he recognizes the unlikelihood that the bios theoretikos will be followed by more than a small minority in a technologically oriented civilization. Hopefully, their impact as members of the cultural elite who contribute to the intellectual formation of those who hold the reins of existential power will be greater than their numbers.
20 Order and History, I, 440.
21 Ibid., 337.
22 In “Nietzsche, the Crisis and the War,” Journal of Politics, VI (05, 1944)Google Scholar, Voegelin credits Nietzsche with having made a proper empirical assessment of the nihilistic character of “massy” existence (while rejecting, it need scarcely be added, Nietzsche's solution for “overcoming” the nihilism).
23 Order and History, II, 227.
24 Ibid., III, 209.
25 Ibid., II, 187.
26 The Nature of Law, p. 82.
27 Voegelin, , “La société industrielle a la recherche de la raison,” in Aron, R., ed., Collogues de Rheinfelden (Paris, 1960), pp. 44Google Scholar ff., pp. 53–54.
28 As with individual character types, it is possible to arrange societies on a scale of excellence and one of the functions of political science is to survey the various types of existing societies and categorize them according to their relative worth vis-á-vis the paradigmatic model. For Voegelin, it is societies, not forms of government, that are primary. A well-ordered society will produce a satisfactory form of government, but the reverse cannot happen.
29 The New Science of Politics, pp. 1, 78.
30 Order and History, I, 2.
31 Ibid., I, 129.
32 See Voegelin's, inaugural lecture at Munich, Wissenschaft, Politik, und Gnosis (Munich, Koesel Verlag, 1959)Google Scholar, for enlargement upon the theme of gnostic political thinkers as “swindlers.”
33 The New Science of Politics, p. 120.
34 Voegelin does not disparage knowledge of the phenomenal regularities in the sequence of historical events (indeed, he has a knowledge at this level of historical fact equalled only by Toynbee), but rather seeks to put them in their proper light as constituting only one level of the political process: “The ultimate constants of history cannot be determined by forming type concepts of phenomenal regularities, for historical regularities are no more than manifestations of the constants of human nature in their range of compactness and differentiation.” This position is in one way opposed to the “search for the phenomenally typical in the course of civilizations. For inevitably we must start with phenomenal regularities in order to arrive at the constants of human nature, as well as at the structural differentiation of the constant range of experiences; that is at the dynamics of human nature that we call history.” Order and History, I, 63.
35 Order and History, I, 127.
36 Ibid., I, 60.
37 Ibid., I, ix.
38 Ibid., II, 4.
39 Ibid., I, 5.
40 New Science of Politics, p. 78.
41 Cf. the relevant works of Hans Leisegang and Hans Jonas on the early history of this much-neglected intellectual phenomenon.
42 Voegelin has been vigorously attacked by various writers for characterizing liberalism as a manifestation of gnosticism. Actually, he displays a lively appreciation for the institutional achievements of modern liberalism (rule of law, elimination of the police state, etc.) and writes optimistically of the appearance of a revised liberalism, reinfused with the Christian substance, on the continent of Europe today. See his excellent discussion of the problems of defining liberalism in “Der Liberalismus und seine Geschichte,” in Forster, Karl, ed., Christentum und Liberalismus (Munich, 1960), pp. 13–42Google Scholar.
43 Voegelin, states in Wissenschaft, Politik und Gnosis that he now holds his earlier analysis of totalitarian movements as political religions — in Die Politischen Religionen (Stockholm, 1930)Google Scholar — to be inadequate because he failed to take this fact sufficiently into account.
44 The Nature of Law, p. 108.
45 New Science of Politics, p. 78.
46 Ibid., p. 79.
47 Cf. Strauss, Leo, in Storing, H. J., ed., Essays on the Scientific Study of Politics (New York, 1962), p. 326Google Scholar: “The new political science puts a premium on observations which can be made with the utmost frequency, and therefore by people of the meanest capacities. Thus it frequently culminates in observations made by people who are not intelligent about people who are not intelligent.”
48 The term “value-judgment” did not come into the philosophical vocabulary until the late nineteenth century (with the neo-Kantians). Classical ethics always spoke of “the good” which is, if you please, a very important “facet” or datum confronting the consciousness.
49 New Science of Politics, p. 64.
50 Ibid., pp. 64–65.
51 Where Voegelin offers the life of reason in attunement with transcendent being as the paradigmatic existence, Fromm posits the “spontaneous,” “free activity of the self” as the highest aim of life (spontaneity for what?). Where Voegelin refers to the experience of a possible perfection beyond time by grace, Fromm describes as a sign of “mental health” the “experience of the self as the subject and agent of one's powers” — that is, he embraces the possibility of man's self-redemption (p. 69). Where Voegelin speaks of transcendence as the symbol which indicates reality qualitatively distinct from intramundane being, Fromm makes transcendence into a power for man “to transcend the role of the creature … by becoming a ‘creator’” (p. 36). The “role of the creature,” moreover, cannot be “transcended“; it is an inescapable aspect of the conditio humana. Where Voegelin portrays man as homo viator, inevitably separated in the existential situation from the perfect fulfillment of his essence, Fromm holds out the promise of an illusionary end to “alienation” and the attainment of the “experience of union with another person, with all men, and with nature under the condition of retaining one's sense of integrity and independence” (p. 32). Where Voegelin recognizes the limits of politics, and the impossibility of creating an eternity in time, Fromm argues in the manner of Fourfer that by right social organization (the grouping of men into intimate, “communities of work”) we can end the disparities between rulers and ruled, make man fully autonomous, and so on. All page references in this note are to Fromm's, The Sane Society (New York, 1955)Google Scholar.