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Showing 1 - 16 of 16 matches in All Departments
Eric Voegelin, one of today's leading political theorists and author of the contemporary classic "The New Science of Politics," here contends that certain modern movements, including Positivism, Hegelianism, Marxism and the "God is Dead" movement, are variants of the Gnostic tradition of antiquity. He attempts to resolve the intellectual confusion that has resulted from the dominance of gnostic thought by clarifying the distinction between political gnosticism and the philosophy of politics. Highly provocative, this book is essential reading for students of modern politics, philosophy, and religion.
"Thirty-five years ago few could have predicted that "The New
Science of Politics" would be a best-seller by political theory
standards. Compressed within the Draconian economy of the six
Walgreen lectures is a complete theory of man, society, and
history, presented at the most profound and intellectual level. . .
. Voegelin's work] stands out in bold relief from much of what has
passed under the name of political science in recent decades. . . .
The New Science is aptly titled, for Voegelin makes clear at the
outset that a 'return to the specific content' of premodern
political theory is out of the question. . . . The subtitle of the
book, An Introduction, clearly indicates that The New Science of
Politics is an invitation to join the search for the recovery of
our full humanity."--From the new Foreword by Dante Germino
Philosopher C.S. Morrissey adapts Hesiod's two great works,
"Theogony" and "Works and Days," taking into account the poet's
essential meditative insights that paved the way for the subsequent
achievements of Greek philosophy, most notably of Plato, and
thereby gave a distinctive shape to all of Western philosophy.
"Theogony" recounts the genesis of the first generations of the
Greek gods and recollects how Zeus used both force and persuasion
to establish his cosmic reign of justice. "Works and Days" tells
the story of the origin and ordination of human beings within this
cosmos and their perennial struggle to win order from disorder in a
world overwhelmed by harsh sorrows and injustice. In the wake of personal adversity and suffering, Hesiod was
inspired by the Muses to sing out against the untruth of society
and to disclose the truth about justice in the cosmos. "Theogony,"
which won him his laurels in a poetic competition, begins by
telling of how the Muses chose him as an individual vessel of
inspiration, to be a rival to Homer and the old myths with a newer
vision of the struggle for justice among the gods. In "Works and
Days," Hesiod includes these autobiographical details within a
reflection on the two-fold role of competition in life: "the bad
strife" is visible everywhere in the manifold forms of universal
disorder, although "the good strife" is part of the struggle to
maintain order in the wake of chaos and the primeval void. These new translations are contextualized with a foreword by
distinguished philosopher Roger Scruton and text by the late
philosopher and historian Eric Voegelin, who argues the magnitude
of Hesiod's influence on Greek philosophy and Western history, and
how his sublime contribution to literature has formed a signal
bridge between myth and metaphysics.
In The Later Middle Ages, the third volume of his monumental History of Political Ideas, Eric Voegelin continues his exploration of one of the most crucial periods in the history of political thought. Illuminating the great figures of the high Middle Ages, Voegelin traces the historical momentum of our modern world in the core evocative symbols that constituted medieval civilization. These symbols revolved around the enduring aspiration for the sacrum imperium, the one order capable of embracing the transcendent and immanent, the ecclesiastical and political, the divine and human. The story of the later Middle Ages is that of the "civilizational schism" -- the movement in which not only the reality of but the aspiration for the sacrum imperium gradually disappeared. His recognition of this civilizational schism provides Voegelin with a unique perspective on medieval society. William of Ockham, Dante, Giles of Rome, and Marsilius of Padua all emerge in Voegelin's study as predecessors to modern thought; each turns to personal authority and intellectual analysis in an attempt to comprehend the loss of the sacrum imperium. Yet the story of the later Middle Ages does not merely revolve around disintegration. Voegelin recognizes the emergence of the constitutional political tradition as the most positive development of this period. His study of the English political pattern is matched only by his unique perspective on the German imperial zone. The Later Middle Ages is at once a brilliant examination of medieval society and a remarkable predecessor to Voegelin's study of the modern world, beginning with the Renaissance and the Reformation.
In 1924, not quite two years after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna, Eric Voegelin was named a Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fellow and thus given the opportunity to pursue postdoctoral studies in the United States. For the next twenty-four months, Voegelin worked with some of the most creative scholars in America and at several of the country's great universities, an experience that undoubtedly influenced his scholarly and personal perspectives throughout his life. A more immediate result was the publication in 1928 of "On the Form of the American Mind, " the young philosopher's first major work, in which his acute perceptions and analyses combine with a conceptual vocabulary struggling to find its own coherence and form.Voegelin begins his inquiry into the form of the American mind with a complex discussion of the concepts of time and existence in European and American philosophy and continues with an extended interpretation of George Santayana, a study of the Puritan mystic Jonathan Edwards, a presentation on Anglo-American jurisprudence, and a consideration of the historian, economist, and political scientist John R. Commons (Voegelin was particularly interested in Commons' views on the mental, political, social, and economic aspects of democracy in modern urban and industrial America). Although admitting that this diversity of themes seems only loosely connected," Voegelin demonstrates the actual overall unity of these various subjects: each concerns linguistic expressions of a theoretical nature. Analysis of "On the Form of the American Mind" indicates that Voegelin integrated the approaches of "Lebensphilosophie" into what Georg Misch called the "philosophical combination of anthropology and history," which characterized contemporary trends within the discourse of the "Geisteswissenschaften" and finally resulted in a theoretical paradigm of philosophical anthropology. Jurgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper provide access to this brilliant study with their two-part introduction. The first part considers "On the Form of the American Mind" in the context of methodological debates ongoing in Germany at the time Voegelin was writing the book; the second describes Voegelin's American experience and compares his work with similar studies written during the post-World War I period.
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