Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics

Collected Works of Eric Voegelin #6

by Eric Voegelin, Gerhart Niemeyer (Translator), M.J. Hanak (Translator)

Volume 6 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin offers the first translation of the full German text of Anamnesis published in 1966. The previous English edition, translated by Gerhart Niemeyer, focused largely on the sections of Anamnesis dealing directly with Voegelin's philosophy of consciousness. It omitted some of the extensive historical studies on which the philosophy of consciousness was based. To properly understand Voegelin's work, however, it is essential to give equal weight to the empirical as well as the philosophical aspects. This complete version of Anamnesis captures the full integrity of his vision. It is at once scientific, in the sense of fidelity to the demands of historiographic scholarship, and philosophical, in exploring the significance of the texts for the meaning of human existence in society and history.

Anamnesis is a pivotal work within Voegelin's intellectual odyssey. Alone among Voegelin's books, it reveals an author looking back and taking stock of his growth rather than customarily forging ahead into new regions and new problems. This critical work is both a recollection of Voegelin's own development, reaching back even to his infant memories, and a demonstration of the anamnetic method as applied to a wide range of historically remembered materials.

Written as more than just a collection of essays, Anamnesis is the volume in which Voegelin works out for himself the reconceptualization of what Order and History, and by definition his central philosophical approach, is going to be. By revisiting his previous work—a departure from Voegelin's usual scholarly habits—he found at last the literary form for the kind of empirical philosophical meditation that had long absorbed his labors.

Parts I and III contain biographical and meditative reflections written by Voegelin in 1943 and 1965, respectively. The first part details the breakthrough by which Voegelin recovered consciousness from the current theories of consciousness. Part III begins as a rethinking of the Aristotelian exegesis of consciousness, and then expands into new areas of awareness that had not come within the knowledge of classic philosophy. Between these two meditative selections are eight studies that demonstrate how the historical phenomena of order gave rise to the type of analysis which culminates in the meditative exploration of consciousness.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

448 pages, Hardcover

Published August 30, 2002

About the author

German-born American political philosopher. He taught political theory and sociology at the University of Vienna after his habilitation there in 1928. While in Austria Voegelin established the beginnings of his long lasting friendship with F. A. Hayek. In 1933 he published two books criticizing Nazi racism, and was forced to flee from Austria following the Anschluss in 1938. After a brief stay in Switzerland, he arrived in the United States and taught at a series of universities before joining Louisiana State University's Department of Government in 1942. His advisers on his dissertation were Hans Kelsen and Othmar Spann.

Voegelin remained in Baton Rouge until 1958 when he accepted an offer by Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität to fill Max Weber's former chair in political science, which had been empty since Weber's death in 1920. In Munich he founded the Institut für Politische Wissenschaft. Voegelin returned to America in 1969 to join Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace as Henry Salvatori Fellow where he continued his work until his death on January 19, 1985. He was a member of the Philadelphia Society.

Reviews

[S]

Voegelin has a section in here about phronēsis (begins on pg. 61 in the essay "What is Right by Nature?"), my beloved philosophical term that, if you care to know {two seriously loaded philosophical terms in this context; also, I don't mean for that to sound rude, like, 'you probably don't care to know, but need to for your life to be better,' but, rather, 'I need a pause between the former thought to next one'}, I'm using as a sort of rope out Heidegger's thoughtpath (because it's dangerous in there: I feel like I could spend my whole life trying to figure out exactly what and how Heidegger meant, and then end up in a situation where all I can do is write about a Nazi that a) nobody trusts philosophically, and b) nobody can easily talk about unless they've lowered themselves into the Heideggerian water, and I pretty much only know one person who I can talk to about that (I'm thinking about you, Jon, my friend).

Voegelin, in contrast to Heidegger, hated Nazi ideology and saw the whole Nazi-social issue in the Germanic sphere as a blight of reason. Additionally, Voegelin has the benefit of being clear, or, transparent is probably a better word: he takes pains to explain the reasoning behind his stipulative language; in H. you just get the sense that he's been thinking more than talking to other people about his thinking, so he has all these pet phrases and terms that he doesn't care much to explicitly define: I don't want to red flag H. on this, it's just that Voegelin wanted to be understood; H. didn't care.

Also, whereas Heidegger, in his own circulambatory way, calls for a history of the relationship of Language and Being, Voegelin actually dug into the sources and started writing one. Derrida, I believe, would have liked one of these too, but neither writer (D. and H.), {and I can't say this with any authority, only half-baked scholarly intution} had the fortitude and fear of civic decay that Voegelin possessed. Or maybe Voegelin didn't have kids while the other two did, whatever that might imply. Another thing is that Voegelin had to leave Europe and come to America. Something else, Voegelin was best friends with Schutz, who also had to flee Nazi Europe.

I don't know, guys. I think Voegelin is a great writer and very intellectually nimble. I've been reading his Anamnetic Experiments, which are little entries about moments in his childhood where he developed an insight into the relationship between nature and his consciousness: and they are, let me tell you, really cute and charming, like a Miyazaki movie. So now, Voegelin has pretty much endeared himself to me forever.

[Anderson Paz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nesse livro, Voegelin trata de sua filosofia da consciência: recordação do desenvolvimento e aplicação do método anamnético. Ele explora a psiqué relacionando história e dimensão existencial. Sua premissa é platônica: a ordem humana na sociedade e história se origina na ordem da consciência.
A partir disso, Voegelin investiga a ordem da consciência por meio da recordação. Em seguida, ele trata da experiência noética na história. Por fim, ele discute sobre a ordem da consciência enquanto busca do fundamento da realidade.
Nesse livro, Voegelin muda seu método de busca da ordem: de história da política para investigação da ordem da consciência no entremeio. Logo, esse é um livro importante para o pensamento voegeliniano.
Contudo, a estrutura do livro não ajuda. Trata-se de uma organização de vários artigos de Voegelin ao longo do tempo. Ele busca por meio de vários materiais - como os símbolos civilizacionais antigos até o império mongol, a discussão sobre natureza e ser na antiguidade grega, o processo da consciência com críticas à fenomenologia, ideologias como distorções da consciência - chegar a compreensão da ordem da consciência no tempo. Então, é um livro difícil de compreender porque os caminhos para sustentar a premissa são confusos.