Anamnesis: On the Theory of History and Politics (Volume 6)

Collected Works of Eric Voegelin #6

by Eric Voegelin, Gerhart Niemeyer (Translator)

Originally published in German in 1966, Anamnesis was first available in English in 1978. The translated version includes Voegelin's "Reason: The Classic Experience," as well as a new first chapter that was written by Voegelin especially for this translation.

Anamnesis pulls together those materials that focus most sharply upon the development of Eric Voegelin's philosophy of consciousness. Voegelin is considered one of the most influential and profound philosophers of our time and has had an enormous impact on contemporary intellectual life.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

240 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 1990

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.