Eric Voegelin (January 2, 1901 – January 19, 1985) was born in Germany and lived there until he fled to the United States with his wife during the Nazi invasion. He spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He wrote many books including Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (1968), The Science of New Politics (1952) and his great 5 volume work entitled Order and History.

James Joyce & Aesthetic Gnosticism

By |2019-09-10T16:34:40-05:00February 4th, 2017|Categories: Catholicism, Eric Voegelin, Literature, Philosophy|Tags: |

The kind of freedom people speak of today is more likely than not something more than emancipation from political tyranny. It is freedom from social custom, from tradition, from the created order, freedom from God. And for this troubling illusion, we may in part thank James Joyce… The plight of the artist in the modern [...]

How Should Conservatives Respond to President Trump’s Nationalism?

By |2019-08-22T11:22:31-05:00January 30th, 2017|Categories: Donald Trump, Eric Voegelin, Leo Strauss|

Whether or not President Trump is successful with a principled nationalistic agenda or with a more pragmatic one, more traditionally-oriented conservative intellectuals must do some serious thinking, either acceding to nationalism or pragmatism or finding a new story… Donald Trump is nothing if he is not forthright. In his Inaugural Address, the President could not [...]

On Classical Studies

By |2019-08-27T16:41:26-05:00October 16th, 2016|Categories: Classical Education, Classics, Eric Voegelin, Featured, Liberal Learning, The Imaginative Conservative, Timeless Essays|

Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Eric Voegelin as he explores the importance of studying the classics. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher A reflection on classical studies, their purpose and prospects, will properly start from Wolf’s definition of classic philology as the study of man’s nature as it has become [...]

The Restoration of Tradition

By |2020-04-02T23:37:43-05:00September 5th, 2016|Categories: Civilization, Eric Voegelin, Philosophy, Tradition|

Civilization itself—tradition—falls out of existence when the human spirit itself be­comes confused. Civilization is what man has made of himself. Its massive contours are rooted in the simple need of man, since he is always incomplete, to complete him­self. The position this paper will attempt to illustrate, if not demonstrate, is that once lost or weakened [...]

On the Deaths of Plato and Eric Voegelin

By |2017-07-31T23:48:05-05:00August 28th, 2016|Categories: Books, Christianity, Eric Voegelin, Featured, Fr. James Schall, Plato, Socrates, Timeless Essays|

Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords readers the opportunity to join Fr. James Schall as he contemplates the similarities between the death of Plato and the death of one of Plato’s more recent scholars, Eric Voegelin. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher But there is another sort of old age too: the tranquil and [...]

What Shaped Eric Voegelin’s Thought?

By |2022-02-23T11:09:07-06:00April 27th, 2016|Categories: Christianity, Conservatism, Eric Voegelin, Featured, History, Western Civilization|

IV Eric Voegelin’s affection for the Hellenic, Judaic, and Christian heritages can be easily documented. They are the crucial strands in the forming of his thought. Yet the matter goes deeper than that. Subtly, but irrefutably, in the corpus of his writing, Christianity emerges as the preeminent achievement of the Western experience. For example, Voegelin [...]

The Conservative Thought of Eric Voegelin

By |2022-02-23T11:13:42-06:00April 21st, 2016|Categories: Aristotle, Christianity, Conservatism, Eric Voegelin, Featured, Plato, St. Augustine|

Eric Voegelin was born in Cologne, Germany in 1901. Receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1922, he served on the law faculty of that institution. To escape the Nazi regime, he came to the United States in 1938. Subsequently, he taught at Harvard University, Bennington College, the University of Alabama, and Louisiana State [...]

Eric Voegelin’s Gnosticism

By |2016-03-28T10:39:17-05:00February 16th, 2016|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Christianity, Culture, Eric Voegelin, Featured, Friedrich Nietzsche|

In my previous essay, “Eric Voegelin: A Primer,” I had the privilege to offer a brief sketch of this German intellectual’s life and thought. In this essay, I would like to explore one of Voegelin’s three most important ideas: his critique of Gnosticism. As in the previous essay, I am drawing heavily upon the fine [...]

Eric Voegelin: A Primer

By |2021-08-12T02:19:16-05:00February 1st, 2016|Categories: Bradley J. Birzer, Eric Voegelin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Hope|

On my religious position, I have been classified as a Protestant, a Catholic, an anti-semitic, and as a typical Jew; politically, as a Liberal, a Fascist, a National Socialist, and a Conservative; and on my theoretical position, as a Platonist, a Neo-Augustinian, a Thomist, a disciple of Hegel, an existentialist, a historical relativist, and an [...]

The Burkean Tradition of Strauss and Voegelin

By |2016-02-22T08:37:44-06:00January 12th, 2016|Categories: Conservatism, Edmund Burke, Eric Voegelin, Featured, History, Leo Strauss, Philosophy|

Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin were scholars in the field of political philosophy, yet they did not have an explicit political teaching. They studied the great political philosophers of the past in order to learn lessons that might become living truths for us today. But Strauss and Voegelin did not write political treatises defending a [...]

Eric Voegelin’s Redemption of Modernity

By |2016-01-09T23:42:03-06:00January 10th, 2016|Categories: Eric Voegelin, History, Modernity, Philosophy|

Political theorists, like literary and social theorists, occupy a kind of twilight zone in relation to philosophy. Their disciplines are at once empirical and philosophical, an indeterminate status compared to the strictly autonomous unfolding of philosophy. Yet it is by virtue of this difference of perspective that they may have something to contribute to philosophy. [...]

Eric Voegelin: Meditation as Antidote to Gnosticism

By |2015-12-30T08:27:00-06:00December 30th, 2015|Categories: Christopher Morrissey, Eric Voegelin, Literature|

“The death of the spirit is the price of progress. Nietzsche revealed this mystery of the Western apocalypse when he announced that God was dead and that He had been murdered. This Gnostic murder is constantly committed by the men who sacrifice God to civilization. The more fervently all human energies are thrown into the [...]

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