Volume VI of Voegelin's account of the history of Western
political ideas continues from the point reached in the previous
volume with the study of the mystic-philosopher Jean Bodin.
Voegelin begins with a discussion of the conflict between Bishop
Bossuet and Voltaire concerning the relationship between what is
conventionally identified as sacred history and profane history.
Bossuet maintained the traditional Christian position, the origin
of which may be traced to Saint Augustine's "City of God." Voegelin
shows, however, that while Bossuet may have been heir to an
adequate understanding of human existence, Voltaire drew attention
to a series of historical facts, such as the comparative size of
the Russian and Roman empires, the existence of Chinese
civilization, and the discovery of the New World, that could be
incorporated into Bossuet's account only with great difficulty or
not at all.
For the first time, the theoretical problem of the historicity
of evocative symbols of political order becomes the focus of
Voegelin's analysis. This major problem, which found a provisional
solution in the "New Science" of Vico, was intertwined with several
additional ones that may be summarized in terms of an increasing
closure toward what Voegelin calls the world- transcendent ground
of reality. Voegelin traces the consequences of the new attitudes
and sentiments in terms of an increasing disorientation in
personal, social, and political life, a disorientation that was
expressed in increasingly impoverished experiences and accounts of
history and of nature.
Vico represents the great exception to this decline in the
intellectual adequacy of modern political ideas and modern self-
understanding. Readers familiar with Voegelin's "New Science of
Politics" will find in the long, challenging, and brilliant chapter
on Vico and his "New Science" one of the major textual analyses
that sustained Voegelin's entire intellectual enterprise. Indeed,
the chapter on Vico, along with similarly provocative and
insightful chapters on Bodin and on Schelling in other volumes, may
almost be read as an element of Voegelin's own spiritual
autobiography.
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