Religiile politice

by Eric Voegelin, Bogdan Ivașcu (Traducere & studiu introductiv)

„Originală, profundă, menită să dăinuie, opera lui Eric Voegelin stă mărturie pentru efortul de a afla resursele ultime ale diverselor forme de misticism politic. Alături de Raymond Aron, Voegelin a demistificat religiile politice moderne, calificându-le drept încercări de a imanentiza eshatonul, deci de a şterge distincţia dintre ceea ce ţine de regatul imanent şi ceea ce defineşte imperiul transcendent. Oricine vrea să înţeleagă gramatica ezoterică a comunismului şi pe cea a fascismului şi substratul lor gnostic trebuie să citească lucrările lui Voegelin.“ (Vladimir TISMĂNEANU)

„Există epoci care interpelează stabilitatea conceptelor filozofice şi filozofi care depăşesc percepţia comună despre istorie şi timp. Eric Voegelin face parte din ultima categorie de gânditori, profund marcaţi de hecatombele secolului XX. Căutând să înţeleagă fascinaţia populară pentru extremism, el se îndreaptă spre rădăcinile nevăzute ale ororilor naziste şi comuniste. Făcând pentru prima oară cunoştinţă cu publicul român, Religiile politice de Eric Voegelin arată echilibrele fragile ale modernităţii europene. Pentru a neutraliza patologiile utopiei totalitare, e nevoie ca simţul etic al indignării şi precizia analizei conceptuale să întâlnească o sensibilitate teologică. Opunând lumina spirituală oricărei bezne colectiviste, Eric Voegelin ne vorbeşte ca martor curajos, erudit comentator şi îndrăzneaţă călăuză.“ (Mihail NEAMŢU)

Genres: History

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1938

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

[Pavel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although later Voegelin himself described this treatise, exploring forms of political order from Akhenaton to National Socialism, as unsufficiently differentiated, it already contains ideas he elaborated in his following works. In contrast to prevailing political science, Voegelin is well aware we cannot understand these phenomena without taking into account the spiritual dimension of human beings.
For me, there are two crucial insights: Many modern political movements, even if they proclaim themselves to be secular and atheistic, have in fact common roots in the spehere of religious. For the religious is to be understood not only as relating to the Church or to the great redemptive religions, but as existential experience of our relation to the Beyond, the sacred, which we can try to realize in many different types of being, including nature, mankind, a great person or the Führer.
And the second, when our experience of reality is ordered around such inner-worldly center, it produces a symbolic system “filled with the spirit of religious agitation and fanatically defended as the ’right’ order of being.” It hides everything else, and above all God. But humanizing the divine bears catastrophic consequences.
Just let me quote two passages in which Voegelin expressed the ideas with unbeatable clarity:
“Men can let the contents of the world grow to such an extent that the world and God disappear behind them, but they cannot annul the human condition itself. This remains alive in each individual soul; and when God is invisible behind the world, the contents of the world will become new gods; when the symbols of transcendent religiosity are banned, new symbols develop from the inner-worldly language of science to take their place.”
“It is dreadful to hear time and again that National Socialism is a return to barbarism, to the Dark Ages, to times before any new progress toward humanitarianism was made, without these speakers even suspecting that precisely the secularization of life that accompanied the doctrine of humanitarianism is the soil in which such an anti-Christian religious movement as National Socialism was able to prosper.”

[Const. CCR · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Facufigueroa_ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finalmente lo terminé. El último libro de este 2024, el más denso y el más—en mi humilde opinión— sublime. La tesis de Voegelin es sencilla pero compleja: el problema fundamental de la filosofía es la experiencia de la trascendencia. Esta experiencia de la trascendencia se acompleja frente a un intento desesperado de alterar el orden del ser por parte de los movimientos gnósticos de masas que precisa, a la vez, de la alteración del mundo para cumplir su proyecto de alterar la constitución del ser por medio de la acción humana. Voegelin rastrea al gnosticismo como una actitud siempre insatisfecha y que busca abolir el orden del ser. Los movimientos gnósticos de masas van desde el cristianismo(en un primer intento) pasando por el psicoanálisis hasta el positivismo y el marxismo. El intento de apropiar y alterar el orden del ser en el caso de Marx especialmente se da cambiando las condiciones materiales y sociales que posibilitan la auto alienación humana, el ser y el “novus hominen” se realiza solo allí en el reino de la libertad. El hombre nuevo de Marx es dios mismo, en Nietzsche en cambio el superhombre es la muerte del hombre mismo en el intento de pasar de lo mundano a lo trascendente ya que la alteración de la naturaleza humana implica su erradicación según Voegelin. También esto último explica que la expansión cultural y social de los movimientos gnósticos provocó la «inmanentización» de la esperanza salvadora y resultó fundamental para que el hombre y la sociedad se apropiaran de los rasgos y el lugar que usualmente era reservado a la transcendencia. También Voegelin señala que el Gnosticismo de comte y de otros pensadores como Kant fueron caracterizados como Apocalipsis que contuvieron sus propias revelaciones y “demonios”, en el caso de el positivismo el demonio es la metafisica, en el caso de Kant es el “instinto” y así sucesivamente. El libro es excelente por donde se lo mire, pero para el que no está formado es ir a morir con este libro.

[Joe]

This is a curious book. It marks the transition from the young scholar Erich Voegelin to the more seasoned thinker who burst on the political science scene in the 1950s. The book is a bilingual text; but, and this is very unusual (in my experience, at any rate), the German text, in its entirety, follows the English translation, in its entirety. The only reason I can think of is that the publisher did it to cut down the number of pages. What! How? The German text is printed in a smaller typescript. And therefore takes less pages than the translation. I prefer seeing the original and the translation on facing pages. I assume most readers do too. Another annoyance is that there is no index, I do not understand how thoughtful nonfiction books, meant for a studious audience, get printed without indexes.
As said, this is an early work by Voegelin, the culmination of his work on the threat of authoritarian regimes throughout the thirties. This book was first published in 1939. It is probably best to read this book before one reads his "Science Politics Gnosticism" and "The New Science of Politics" because it will show the trajectory of his thought. (Well, to the mid-late 1950s, at any rate.) It is a quick read (I read it on a snowy afternoon), at 80 or so pages it is really an essay. I didn't see any mention of the term 'gnosticism', but he does mention Joachim and his tripartite division of history. I was also surprised that there is no mention of Varro and his 'civil theology' in this book. That too has to wait till the fifties.

Since this book is out of print, I include the table of contents:
Introduction, Barry Cooper
Translator's Preface, T.J. DiNapoli, E.S. Easterly III
Preface
1. The Problem
2. Akhenaton
3. Hierarchy
4. The Leviathan
5. The Temporal Community
6. Epilogue
Source Notes
Die Politischen Religionen

As I said, there is no index, and I should add that the source notes are barely adequate at a tad over two pages and 10 books. I told you, it is an essay. The introduction by Cooper is good, and a must for readers new to Voegelin. It was a bit too biographical for my tastes. But that is a quibble, I am sure many readers will find this interesting. But I did enjoy Cooper's brief remarks regarding the importance of symbolism. This "self-speaking phenomena" (A postmodern like Bataille would likely call this 'inner experience') is an important thread in Voegelin that must not be overlooked. This "self-interpretation" always needs to be taken into account. But how? Cooper says, "One does so by paying close attention to meanings as they are understood from the inside or imaginatively."

The most telling image (symbolism) in this book (in my estimation) is world-immanent (secular) apocalypse; that is, the oft-promised political transformation of human society into a 'heaven on earth'. Our author, of course, is opposed to this. Each chapter discusses this transformation of the transcendent into the immanent, in a given era. The story unfolds from ancient Egypt through the middle ages to Hobbes and then our secular (temporal) world. The Source (the One, God) withdraws but the glow of Its Glory remains in Human Institutions. The rise of modern science has a hand in this. "The methods of science become the generally applicable forms for study of the world's content." You and I are among this 'content'. Why is this a problem? Don't the modern political ideologies promise the amelioration of the human condition? Oh yes indeed. But in filling up the world with objects and forces meant to satisfy and satiate, something was lost:
"Men allow the world content to grow to such a proportion that the world and God disappear behind it, but they cannot eliminate the problematics of their own existence. It lives on in each human soul, and when God has become invisible behind the world, then the things of the world become new gods. (p. 59)"

Now the administration of things by our utopian bureaucracies is based on scientific judgments rather than any holy scripture. This too is new. The promise of eternal Life in a next-worldly heaven is replaced by the activity of secular progressivism to improve humanity in this world; all that while pointing the way for others. Under the new dispensation, the secular utopia is always in the future. Sacrifices today earn the individual ...absolutely nothing. "The formula is radically collective, so radical in fact that Kant expressed astonishment, vis-à-vis his own formulation, that man does not profit from his activity for the collectivity..."
But Kant is an Enlightenment Liberal. Voegelin says that, "Kant's revelation is humane - other prophets of the [secular] apocalypse confine their symbolism to a particular community." (By 'humane' our author means that Kant is a universalist, not an advocate of some particular group.)

Non-Universal Secular Apocalypticism
Regarding this particularism, which had the temerity to be reborn after (or during) the frigid bourgeois dawn of secular universalism, we find that each of these earthly Utopias come with an Enemy to obliterate.
"Each of the apocalypses in European history has created its Devil symbolism too. We have already spoken about the Catholic Church as the Satan corresponding to the Leviathan (of Hobbes). Kant's Devil is human instinct. Fichte sketched Napoleon as the monstrous figure of Satan. Religion and metaphysics belong to the positivist apocalypse as Evil; the bourgeois to the proletariat; the minority, above all the Jews as the 'opposing race' to the select racist apocalypse. (p. 61)"
It would thus seem that there is no earthly heaven without a corresponding hell. Note that Kant's universalism shines forth in this last quote too. His 'devil' is universal, not particular; irrational instinct dwells in each of us.

The common feature is that each of these examples of modern apocalypse cum utopianism understands itself to be scientific. (At least in the sense of philosophy or social science.) At this point Voegelin notes a tendency in secular apocalypticism that I found particularly interesting ...and disturbing. He calls the above 'apocalypses' naive. Why? Because "they claim in good faith the character of scientific judgments for their theses." They could be wrong, but they are honestly trying to understand our common social world. But, according to our author,
"Beginning in the middle of the 19th century and emanating from Marxism, criticism of the Apocalypse under the title of the examination of ideologies became ever more radical. (p. 62)"
The examiners of Ideologies intended to show that these (other) positions were formed by interested parties, and thus not scientific or universal.

Myth
Shouldn't this scientific attitude recognize that these various apocalyptic symbolisms are themselves unscientific due to their politico-religious roots? Yes, but that does not happen. "Rather the symbol is retained in consideration of its value to unite the masses, even though it is scientifically inadequate. A conscious apocalypse takes the place of a naive one." (I found myself at this point thinking of what might best be termed political myths, and thus I wondered if our author had in mind the earlier work of Pareto, Mosca, and above all, Sorel.) Our author tells us that these myths are tolerated because they are useful. They unite the masses. All of this, arguably, can be still (at least vaguely) Marxist, or at least marxisant.

There is another step to take. The Nazis are the first to take it.
"...there develops in the second phase a new concept of truth - Rosenberg's concept of so-called organic truth. We already find the beginnings in Hobbes' thesis that a teaching which disturbs the unity and the peace of the Commonwealth cannot be true. The theory is then further developed into the interpretation, that that which promotes the existence of the organically closed temporal community of a people is true. Knowledge and art, myth and mores are true when they are in the service of the populace united by race. (p. 63)"
In this manner myth, politico-religious myth, is removed from scientific investigation. Indeed, it (i.e. politically useful propaganda) becomes the final arbiter of 'scientific' (god help us!) truth.

The mythic collectivity, of whatever stripe, replaces the old religiosity. There the religious person worked his way towards the rewards of the next life. In our secular world he works towards a utopian future he knows he will not see. In our author's estimation, this is an extraordinary development. Before one was promised eternal life; now one is merely promised continuing membership in the particular collectivity one was born in. (In the case of racially defined collectivities. There are also secular collectivities that one can join.) Sufferings and sacrifices of course remain, and for them one gains ...absolutely nothing, except the right to continue enduring them. That perfectly ordinary people have accepted this is amazing.
I found myself here wondering if the success of these modern (and late or post-modern) secular apocalyptic movements to be but a blip in the history of civilization, doomed to be swallowed up by some new religious wave.

In Closing
He who knows how to scientifically unmask ideologies also knows how to compellingly create them. He knows this because the knowledge used in unmasking can be also used for the exact opposite purpose. In this manner, secular social science itself has become complicit (I would argue it inevitably becomes complicit) in the 'mythification' of our modern(secularized) social world. (Propaganda, for instance, has made use of the investigations of social psychology for this purpose.)
Today, no one searches for Truth. One searches for the 'truth' that justifies ones cause.

Thoughts
On a personal note I believe that late modernity has seen the proliferation of theoretical positions in the academy because secular universalism -of whatever stripe- is withering away as an effective political force. Academics need to be read; they either identify existing positions to modify or they attempt to concoct a new one by by identifying individuals (readers) who do not yet know they have something (allegedly) crucial in common. ...But all these positions seem to continually come with enemies to overcome.
The most remarkable thing that has happened in my lifetime has been the growing diminution of secular universalism as an effective force in History. This process is nowhere near complete, but I cannot identify countervailing forces strong enough to curtail the rout.
I find myself wondering if the methodologies and techniques of our thoroughly secular social sciences, now well versed in ideological manipulation, will eventually be put to work servicing non-secular (i.e., 'otherworldly') movements.

[Iftekhar Sayeed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erich Voegelin's inspired book ("masterpiece"would not do justice) appeared in April 1938 in Vienna, where the "National Socialist publishers did little for its distribution with the result that the treatise has remained almost unknown".

When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, he fled to Switzerland: he was on their hit list.

The book testifies to the lunacy of European thinking, not only during the time he lived through, but before, during the Enlightenment, when god was "decapitated", to use his expression. It is a fundamental mistake, he says, to group religion and state in two hermetically sealed compartments.

The book is not an easy read.

The reader is yanked back to ancient Egypt, during the time of the union of Upper and Lower Egypt (c. 3,100 BC). He underscores the union of religion and state under the Pharaohs, detailing the changes in royal worship vis-a-vis changes in location, conquests, stability...The crowning moment comes with the rule of Akhenaton and the first monotheism in history. Leaving the masses behind, he points out tellingly, led to the swift death of the new religion. Lesson: mass movements require mass religion.

The severing of religion and state, and their simultaneous unification, begins in Europe with the crusader Frederick II, who conquered - through tactful negotiations rather than military might - Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth. In March 1229, he crowned himself king of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He considered himself to be a new messiah, a new David. The god-man cometh.

Thomas Hobbes comes in for some sharp comments as the man who theorised the first secular state, albeit under God, but not under the Church. Hobbes's prince is the new Akhenaton, and God speaks only to him, though his subjects may, in seclusion and in private, commune with the Almighty. But the stage is set for the next act in the drama: the decapitation of God, making the state the be-all and end-all of human existence.

But that is clearly impossible: instead of "world-transcendent religions", modernity has created "world-immanent religions". When these religions are patently perceived to be unscientific, we have the "myth" - the frank acknowledgement of the falsehood of the world-immanent religion, but the glossing over the embarrassment for the sake of unifying the masses. The "comrade of the people" emerges, men like Hitler, Mussolini, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Mengistu Haile Mariam, Kwame Nkrumah....

"The engendering of the myth and its propagation through the newspapers and radio, through speeches and communal festivals, gatherings and parades, the planning for and the dying in war, are the intramundane forms of the unio mystica [mystical union]."

Although he mentions Ernst Junger, the reader is a little disappointed by lack of any analysis of nationalism, which, of course, fits perfectly well into the overall scheme. The last war seemed to concern him less than the coming one. But he does offer the invaluable observation:

"Temporal religiosity, that of the collectivity, be it mankind, the Volk, the class, the race, or the State, which is expressed as the Realissimum [the real thing], is a falling away from God."

In the German word "Volk", no doubt, is included the lunacy of linguistic nationalism.

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Voegelin’s treatment of the foundationally religious nature of collectivist movements provides context for understanding modern cultural currents. Written in 1938, Political Religions arose from his personal experience with National Socialist Germany and his study of other collectivist movements such as Marxism. Most of the work is an intellectual/philosophical/theological history of what he terms both “world-transcendent” and “world-immanent” religions. He takes great pains to unpack the similarities between these two forms of religion focusing on the categories/topics of “ekklesia,” “the apocalypse,” “symbolism,” and “faith.” While many Christians would object to his framing of Christian theology and Biblical passages, they can appreciate many of his conclusions. Voegelin bases his critique of secular collectivist political movements on the assertion that “when God has become invisible behind the world, then the things of the world become new gods” (p. 59). Movements such as National Socialism, Italian Fascism, and Marxism are forms of these new “gods.” Voegelin exposes the dehumanizing nature of such movements writing that they recognize “that hate is stronger than love, and for that reason, the unleashing of the aggressive instincts and the building of attitudes of hate are the means at one’s disposal for the realization of the community-goals” (pp. 63-64). This work provides the reader of 2020 with an immensely applicable critique of movements currently gaining increased influence.

[Constantin C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

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