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Collected Works of Eric Voegelin #34
Autobiographical Reflections
The thirty-fourth volume of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin consists of Voegelin’s Autobiographical Reflections , reprinted from the 1989 edition with additional annotations; a glossary of terms used in Voegelin’s writings, illustrated with examples from throughout the Collected Works ; a volume index; and a cumulative index. The last covers the entire edition, apart from The History of Political Ideas, which has its own index, and volumes 29 and 30, the Selected Correspondence , which are at present not published.
The glossary lists, defines, and illustrates from the author’s writings many of the key terms employed, paying particular attention to the Greek terms. The cumulative index supplies a more comprehensive access to the contents of the entire Collected Works. Together, the glossary and index systematically include names, subjects, ideas, writings, and terms, making this culminating volume an indispensable help for any serious study of Eric Voegelin’s oeuvre.
The glossary lists, defines, and illustrates from the author’s writings many of the key terms employed, paying particular attention to the Greek terms. The cumulative index supplies a more comprehensive access to the contents of the entire Collected Works. Together, the glossary and index systematically include names, subjects, ideas, writings, and terms, making this culminating volume an indispensable help for any serious study of Eric Voegelin’s oeuvre.
592 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 1989
11 people are currently reading
145 people want to read
About the author
Eric Voegelin
99 books182 followersGerman-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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
April 1, 2021
"From my personal experience with various ideologists of a Hegelian or Marxist type, I have the impression that a good number of men of considerable intellectual energy who otherwise would be Marxists prefer to be Hegelians because Hegel is so much more complicated. This is a difference not of any profound conviction but of what I would compare to the taste of a man who prefers chess to pinochle."
February 16, 2017
Eric Voegelin é um GÊNIO!
May 23, 2021
Modelo esplêndido de vida intelectual. Encorajador até a medula, o livro mescla momentos da trajetória intelectual e pessoal do Voegelin. Certamente a melhor introdução ao pensamento do Filósofo.
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September 10, 2021I got around to listening to this after talking to Jim Jatras who spoke about Voegelin's work on Friday. I wasn't there for the talk, since it was for specific attendees (students), but gnostic technocracy came up in conversation at the bar that night.
One of the things that was interesting in the beginning was the idea that German intellectuals were basically shut off from around the mid 20th century to today. When I think about German/Austrian people today, so many seem perfectly demoralized, deracinated, and divorced from any thought from their people prior to that cutoff. I remember, for example, hearing Hans Hoppe say that he was worried about him being German when he met Rothbard. That's actually a surprising admission, since Hoppe isn't exactly pathetic and scared of conflict.
So much came to be put under Anglo intellectuals/elites to the exclusion of so many others anti-meritocratically. Since Mises and FA Hayek came up: you can see a great example of that in the imposition of JM Keynes's nonsense being foisted upon us when Austrian School thinkers "lost the debate". Keynes, who had certain tastes in his private life (not the mainstream history one you're thinking), just so happened to support the agenda of the regime he lived under. What are the odds....
One of the things that was interesting in the beginning was the idea that German intellectuals were basically shut off from around the mid 20th century to today. When I think about German/Austrian people today, so many seem perfectly demoralized, deracinated, and divorced from any thought from their people prior to that cutoff. I remember, for example, hearing Hans Hoppe say that he was worried about him being German when he met Rothbard. That's actually a surprising admission, since Hoppe isn't exactly pathetic and scared of conflict.
So much came to be put under Anglo intellectuals/elites to the exclusion of so many others anti-meritocratically. Since Mises and FA Hayek came up: you can see a great example of that in the imposition of JM Keynes's nonsense being foisted upon us when Austrian School thinkers "lost the debate". Keynes, who had certain tastes in his private life (not the mainstream history one you're thinking), just so happened to support the agenda of the regime he lived under. What are the odds....
May 26, 2018
"Um novo quadro na história está se desenhando. A penetração conceitual das fontes é a tarefa do filósofo de hoje; os resultados de sua análise devem ser comunicados ao público mais amplo e, se vem a ser ele um professor universitário, também aos estudantes. Essas tarefas de rotina - manter em mente os problemas, analisar as fontes, comunicar os resultados - são ações concretas mediante as quais o filósofo participa do movimento escatológico da história e se conforma na prática platônico-aristotélica da morte." [Cap. 27]
Esse livro te joga no núcleo do pensamento Voegeliano, então se poderia dizer que ao mesmo tempo que é um livro introdutório é também muito profundo. Nele também se mostra como um homem, quando acredita em suas potências, pode alcançar coisas imagináveis para os mais vulgares. Para se ter uma idéia, Voegelin tinha fluência em 3 idiomas (Alemão, Inglês e Francês) e dominio na leitura de outros tantos (Latim, Grego, Italiano, Russo, Chinês, etc.).
Esse livro te joga no núcleo do pensamento Voegeliano, então se poderia dizer que ao mesmo tempo que é um livro introdutório é também muito profundo. Nele também se mostra como um homem, quando acredita em suas potências, pode alcançar coisas imagináveis para os mais vulgares. Para se ter uma idéia, Voegelin tinha fluência em 3 idiomas (Alemão, Inglês e Francês) e dominio na leitura de outros tantos (Latim, Grego, Italiano, Russo, Chinês, etc.).
May 1, 2020
Excelente introdução ao pensamento de Eric Voegelin. É inspirador ver sua dedicação ao estudo e à busca da verdade. A ascenção do nazismo foi um empecilho na sua jornada mas seu exílio foi um daqueles males que vem para o bem, propiciando um terreno fértil para seu pensamento se desenvolver.
Este livro é indicado para despertar interesse em suas outras obras.
Este livro é indicado para despertar interesse em suas outras obras.
August 14, 2016
Voegelin is one of the intellects I steer by. I think about the Michael Mann book I'm reading, and all the careful citations and end-of-chapter bibliographies, and I think: Mann and Tainter, who are doing important work with material history and the physical-economic conditions of civil emergence and collapse, their scientific studies: how do they compare to the near-mystical erudition of Voegelin? These are different spheres of historical understanding, and it becomes difficult for me to decide if one contains the other. Mann and Tainter are concerned about liberty and survivability: Voegelin is urged onward by an ultimate meaning of the ideologies we experience today. He takes the Christian Revelation seriously, as well as civil order.
Voegelin is called a political scientist, but I believe what was important to him was the actual pulse of the Western Soul, insofar as we can say there is a West and it has a soul. He is considered conservative, I believe, because he was not engaged in any intellectually corrosive or radically critical polemics: he was was trying to carry the research of man, humanity, human society further forward and deeper inward.
In my imagination, which is its own storehouse of personal theories which I can't claim have any scholarly significance beyond my own understanding, I imagine Voegelin as the diachronic reflection of Lonergan's synchronic image, or vice versa.
Voegelin is called a political scientist, but I believe what was important to him was the actual pulse of the Western Soul, insofar as we can say there is a West and it has a soul. He is considered conservative, I believe, because he was not engaged in any intellectually corrosive or radically critical polemics: he was was trying to carry the research of man, humanity, human society further forward and deeper inward.
In my imagination, which is its own storehouse of personal theories which I can't claim have any scholarly significance beyond my own understanding, I imagine Voegelin as the diachronic reflection of Lonergan's synchronic image, or vice versa.
January 24, 2019
"The nominalism which is the dogma that has separated from experience, and which, therefore, cannot be controlled by experience, has become the publicly dominant form in the West." -Eric Voegelin
Eric Voegelin was a towering intellect, with wide-ranging, vast erudition. This book crackles with insight because of the amount of work and thought that has come before it. I am ever grateful to Joanne Tetlow for leading me through readings of a number of Voegelin's brilliant philosophical and historical volumes years ago.
Voegelin was both opposed to national socialism and democratic socialism and communism. At one point he was a democratic socialist but he grew out of that. Regarding communism and democratic socialism, he makes the pointed, summative observation that moralistic ends do not justify immoral means, and ultimately the expropriators of those they deem the expropriators are responsible for the human misery they cause. This is very pertinent with many youths today supportive of ignorant notions about socialism. Socialism and communism are prime evidence that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; that besides good intentions you need facts, knowledge, truth, and rigor; and that a good intention doesn't justify an immoral means. I would like to read more about why Voegelin left democratic socialism. Although a frank critic of Communism, he nevertheless made friends with Communist students as a teacher. He said he well remembered one night when one of these students told him with tears in his eyes that when they came to power they would have to kill him.
Voegelin discusses the influence of Karl Kraus on himself and many of his generation of scholars. He commends Krauss's penetrating analysis of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis and says he captures the state of the society in Germany, a state of devastation intellectually and morally, which was the precondition for the rise of a man like Hitler. I note as an aside that modern sex change surgery and ideas shaping transgenderism and transvestites arose in the Weimar Republic, and, interestingly, may have increased during the time the Nazis were in power. Josef Mengele did forced sex change experiments on boys in Auschwitz. I'd like to read some works by Kraus, perhaps starting with In These Great Times: A Karl Kraus Reader.
Voegelin had long been an outspoken opponent of national socialism, but when the western democracies stood by as Hitler invaded Austria, he was so disgusted that for two hours he contemplated joining the national socialists. Instead he immediately began applying for immigration.
Voegelin's prose often had limpid lines such as the following which capture such a great deal, it seems to me: "The nominalism which is the dogma that has separated from experience, and which, therefore, cannot be controlled by experience, has become the publicly dominant form in the West." He is not the only one who marked and opposed this spirit of abstraction in modernity. Similarly, Gabriel Marcel begins his book Man Against Mass Society by characterizing the dynamic in his philosophy as being one of an untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction. He aims to show that that "the spirit of abstraction is essentially of the order of the passions" and conversely "it is passion, not intelligence, which forges the most dangerous abstractions." (pg. 3). Some of Marcel's examples of this modern propensity for disconnected abstraction include 1) the talk of the brotherhood of man in the French Revolution: "But it is, of course, precisely the case that there is not and can not be any sense of brotherhood in abstraction. In this connection, indeed, nothing could be more deceptive and more full of lies than the formulations with which the great men of the French Revolution allowed themselves to be satisfied." (pg. 120), and 2) talk about the direction of historical progress and the saying of foes that they are "on the wrong side of history." He notes the ridiculousness of talk of "the direction of historical progress" and writes, "Such a phrase is not a thought, but only the simulacrum of a thought, since history is only an abstraction…the scandalous claim is that, to a scarecrow of this sort, we ought to sacrifice the fundamental liberties of the human person." (Pgs. 181-182). This reminds me of a phrase from one of Lionel Trilling's letters where he says he grows increasingly bored with the cultural criticism aimed at advancing Progress en masse. I think I distorted it.
Perhaps because of my immaturity I note and mentally file some of the strong language Voegelin would use at times such as, after discussing an intellectual problem with national socialism he added wryly (paraphrasing), "And then I also have a primitive objection to killing people for fun." He called Marx an intellectual swindler, called certain sycophantic scholars "intellectual pimps," and of course called the Nazis "murderous swine". When the Nazis invaded and took over Austria, Voegelin and his wife had to get out of Austria quickly. He recounted with some wry humor dealing with the Nazi party members sent to inspect his library for unapproved literature. Because Voegelin studied political science, he had copies of all of the major modern thinkers on the subject such as Marx as well as Mein Kampf and Nietzsche. He complained when the Nazi took his Marx and urged him to take his Mein Kampf as well so to make a more balanced impression.
He remarked in one place that he found in Common Sense philosophy what had been missing in German philosophy. This seems in keeping with the aim to be an empiricist and one whose understanding is controlled by experience rather than ideology and dogma.
Voegelin's work is vast in scope. He began with a history of ideas and then found the concept inadequate to the reality.
Voegelin commends the work of Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and others who he saw as spirited individuals breaking free of the cant to draw nearer to the ground of reality, out of love for truth.
I have high regard for Voegelin as a prodigious mind and one of the lucid wise men who saw through both the Nazis and the Socialists and Communists, unlike Sartre, for example. His work is fascinating and he aligns himself with similar percipience. I think listening to this book through twice reawakens in me a desire to search for and pursue truth and to be more wary of the drift of the world.
Eric Voegelin was a towering intellect, with wide-ranging, vast erudition. This book crackles with insight because of the amount of work and thought that has come before it. I am ever grateful to Joanne Tetlow for leading me through readings of a number of Voegelin's brilliant philosophical and historical volumes years ago.
Voegelin was both opposed to national socialism and democratic socialism and communism. At one point he was a democratic socialist but he grew out of that. Regarding communism and democratic socialism, he makes the pointed, summative observation that moralistic ends do not justify immoral means, and ultimately the expropriators of those they deem the expropriators are responsible for the human misery they cause. This is very pertinent with many youths today supportive of ignorant notions about socialism. Socialism and communism are prime evidence that the road to hell is paved with good intentions; that besides good intentions you need facts, knowledge, truth, and rigor; and that a good intention doesn't justify an immoral means. I would like to read more about why Voegelin left democratic socialism. Although a frank critic of Communism, he nevertheless made friends with Communist students as a teacher. He said he well remembered one night when one of these students told him with tears in his eyes that when they came to power they would have to kill him.
Voegelin discusses the influence of Karl Kraus on himself and many of his generation of scholars. He commends Krauss's penetrating analysis of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis and says he captures the state of the society in Germany, a state of devastation intellectually and morally, which was the precondition for the rise of a man like Hitler. I note as an aside that modern sex change surgery and ideas shaping transgenderism and transvestites arose in the Weimar Republic, and, interestingly, may have increased during the time the Nazis were in power. Josef Mengele did forced sex change experiments on boys in Auschwitz. I'd like to read some works by Kraus, perhaps starting with In These Great Times: A Karl Kraus Reader.
Voegelin had long been an outspoken opponent of national socialism, but when the western democracies stood by as Hitler invaded Austria, he was so disgusted that for two hours he contemplated joining the national socialists. Instead he immediately began applying for immigration.
Voegelin's prose often had limpid lines such as the following which capture such a great deal, it seems to me: "The nominalism which is the dogma that has separated from experience, and which, therefore, cannot be controlled by experience, has become the publicly dominant form in the West." He is not the only one who marked and opposed this spirit of abstraction in modernity. Similarly, Gabriel Marcel begins his book Man Against Mass Society by characterizing the dynamic in his philosophy as being one of an untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction. He aims to show that that "the spirit of abstraction is essentially of the order of the passions" and conversely "it is passion, not intelligence, which forges the most dangerous abstractions." (pg. 3). Some of Marcel's examples of this modern propensity for disconnected abstraction include 1) the talk of the brotherhood of man in the French Revolution: "But it is, of course, precisely the case that there is not and can not be any sense of brotherhood in abstraction. In this connection, indeed, nothing could be more deceptive and more full of lies than the formulations with which the great men of the French Revolution allowed themselves to be satisfied." (pg. 120), and 2) talk about the direction of historical progress and the saying of foes that they are "on the wrong side of history." He notes the ridiculousness of talk of "the direction of historical progress" and writes, "Such a phrase is not a thought, but only the simulacrum of a thought, since history is only an abstraction…the scandalous claim is that, to a scarecrow of this sort, we ought to sacrifice the fundamental liberties of the human person." (Pgs. 181-182). This reminds me of a phrase from one of Lionel Trilling's letters where he says he grows increasingly bored with the cultural criticism aimed at advancing Progress en masse. I think I distorted it.
Perhaps because of my immaturity I note and mentally file some of the strong language Voegelin would use at times such as, after discussing an intellectual problem with national socialism he added wryly (paraphrasing), "And then I also have a primitive objection to killing people for fun." He called Marx an intellectual swindler, called certain sycophantic scholars "intellectual pimps," and of course called the Nazis "murderous swine". When the Nazis invaded and took over Austria, Voegelin and his wife had to get out of Austria quickly. He recounted with some wry humor dealing with the Nazi party members sent to inspect his library for unapproved literature. Because Voegelin studied political science, he had copies of all of the major modern thinkers on the subject such as Marx as well as Mein Kampf and Nietzsche. He complained when the Nazi took his Marx and urged him to take his Mein Kampf as well so to make a more balanced impression.
He remarked in one place that he found in Common Sense philosophy what had been missing in German philosophy. This seems in keeping with the aim to be an empiricist and one whose understanding is controlled by experience rather than ideology and dogma.
Voegelin's work is vast in scope. He began with a history of ideas and then found the concept inadequate to the reality.
Voegelin commends the work of Thomas Mann, Albert Camus, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and others who he saw as spirited individuals breaking free of the cant to draw nearer to the ground of reality, out of love for truth.
I have high regard for Voegelin as a prodigious mind and one of the lucid wise men who saw through both the Nazis and the Socialists and Communists, unlike Sartre, for example. His work is fascinating and he aligns himself with similar percipience. I think listening to this book through twice reawakens in me a desire to search for and pursue truth and to be more wary of the drift of the world.
April 3, 2018
Another series of penetrating and erudite reflections that only serve to convince one how little one really knows about both the history, evolution and substance of political philosophy. Voegelin traces his own education in this book, which is stunning, simultaneously along with a sort of history of his thinking, which is intimating in its scope.
I believe some of his other books are going to turn out to be very important for our engagement with political issues in the twenty-first century, and this book is indispensable to placing each one of them (along with his main ideas) in context. The amount of scholarship and discipline this guy put himself through as a thinker is highly impressive. His devotion to undermining ideologies, in all of their duplicitous forms, is commendable. His life story, of how he stood up against National Socialism in Austria and then barely escaped over the border while the Gestapo was knocking on his door is a testament to his moral commitment. All in all, this is a very special book of memoirs from one of our greatest political thinkers.
I believe some of his other books are going to turn out to be very important for our engagement with political issues in the twenty-first century, and this book is indispensable to placing each one of them (along with his main ideas) in context. The amount of scholarship and discipline this guy put himself through as a thinker is highly impressive. His devotion to undermining ideologies, in all of their duplicitous forms, is commendable. His life story, of how he stood up against National Socialism in Austria and then barely escaped over the border while the Gestapo was knocking on his door is a testament to his moral commitment. All in all, this is a very special book of memoirs from one of our greatest political thinkers.
February 7, 2020
Voegelin é sem dúvida um dos maiores filósofos de todos os tempos. Nessa obra, ele apresenta seu percurso intelectual e os maiores problemas filosóficos e políticos por ele enfrentado. A ambientação de sua vida - Áustria, Alemanha, EUA - se deu em uma época de efervescência política e intelectual. Dialogou com tantos pensadores e temas que parece inacreditável que fosse possível tanta coisa em uma vida. Essa é a melhor introdução a sua vida e obra. Um autor que deveria ser estudado por todos aqueles, como dizia Voegelin, preocupam-se com honestidade intelectual.
September 6, 2022
This is the only autobiography I have ever read that I did not regret reading.
Not only are his life experiences an impressive testament to his capacity to deal with adversity, and his indomitable sense of humor, but the breadth of his researches takes the breath away.
Half autobiography, half treatis, he cannot help himself in writing not only his life experiences, but his intellectual journey as well.
An excellent and enjoyable testament to how much there is yet to learn.
Not only are his life experiences an impressive testament to his capacity to deal with adversity, and his indomitable sense of humor, but the breadth of his researches takes the breath away.
Half autobiography, half treatis, he cannot help himself in writing not only his life experiences, but his intellectual journey as well.
An excellent and enjoyable testament to how much there is yet to learn.
July 4, 2021
I am not a philosopher thus I only understood about a quarter of this book. So why 4 stars? What I understood was great and I believe those who are more philosophically educated would really like this book.
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November 8, 2023Audio book
Enjoyed many of the anecdotes. He must be one of the most well read men. I agree that no one can be a scholar of any given thinker or text without being able to read the original language: great scholars used to do this with regularity. What excuse do those of today have?
Enjoyed many of the anecdotes. He must be one of the most well read men. I agree that no one can be a scholar of any given thinker or text without being able to read the original language: great scholars used to do this with regularity. What excuse do those of today have?
August 3, 2024
Gems from Voegelin
An amazing collection of his most interesting thoughts and contributions to modern thinking and the basic elements of a sensible worldview that does not exclude the Hebraic or the Christian
An amazing collection of his most interesting thoughts and contributions to modern thinking and the basic elements of a sensible worldview that does not exclude the Hebraic or the Christian
May 18, 2018
Eu resumiria o livro da seguinte maneira: Ódio contra as ideologias.
July 1, 2020
One of Voegelin's more accessible works, although it assumes some acquaintance with his major works.
January 7, 2024
Solid autobiography of one of the great conservative thinkers of the 20th century. Need to read more of his books
April 26, 2015
Spent more time giving the who's who and chronological reviews of the events that impacted his life and less insight into his thoughts and beliefs but still an engaging read. The point that the ill impact of Hitler's antisemitism drove great Jewish minds out of Academia where they could of impacted society to honorable but less impactful lives in business really stuck with me and really made me wonder what if.
March 1, 2015
The intellectual life of this great political scientist described in this book is not only indispensable to those who want to become a political scientist themselves, but to anyone who wishes to understand the world we live in. The insights and lessons offered by Voegelin are instruments of self discovery and intellectual improvements. A must read!
May 29, 2009
really interesting
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews