This volume contains selected correspondence written by Eric Voegelin during the period 1924 to 1949.The Editorial Board of the "Collected Works of Eric Voegelin" agreed from the beginning that a representative number of Voegelin's letters should complete the edition in an attempt to provide the reader with insights into Voegelin's intellectual life and into the fundamental experiences that went into shaping the growth of his personality. It was the board's aim to select material in accordance with the guidelines that Voegelin himself laid down as fundamental to a hermeneutical understanding of spiritual reality. Voegelin wrote that, in studying a thinker, one must try to elucidate the biographical ""radices "of philosophizing." He said that one must penetrate to the "experiences that impel him] toward reflection, and do so because they have excited consciousness to the 'awe' of existence." Voegelin made these remarks on the occasion of conducting anamnetic experiments, which reveal the motivational center of his own life. At the core of Voegelin's concept of political science is a noetic interpretation of man, society, and history that confronts the conception of order prevalent in the surrounding society with the criteria of the critical knowledge of order. From the 1930s onward, Voegelin labored to find a satisfactory self-reflexive explication of the principles of a contemplative understanding of human reality, one grounded in the spiritual experience of reason. Naturally, it is the published word that determines a thinker's scholarly stature. But Voegelin's letters also grant insight into the development of his thought; document the author's struggle with himself, the "telos "of his scholarship; and reveal an often involuntary conflict with his life-world. These letters shed light on an ongoing and open-ended thought process from which a multifaceted, sometimes apparently contradictory, work emerged. Because of the enormous number of letters that Voegelin wrote in his later years--now published in the second volume of the "Selected Correspondence "(Volume 30 of the" Collected Works")-- the editors agreed that these bookswould contain only letters "from" Eric Voegelin. While such a selection of letters cannot provide the completeness that the publication of both dialogue partners would provide, nevertheless they reveal Voegelin's ongoing reflection on human affairs. They reveal patterns of thought and their development in the atmosphere of intimate communication that personal and intellectual "elective affinities" produce, and they also disclose the silences that accompany such discourse. This volume is certain to interest all readers concerned with political theory and with better understanding of Voegelin's intellectual pilgrimage from his earliest academic years to his emergence as one of the most significant philosophers of our time.

This second volume of Eric Voegelin's miscellaneous papers contains unpublished writings from the time of his forced emigration from Austria in 1938 until his death in 1985. The volume's focus is on dialogue and discussion, presenting Voegelin in the role of lecturer, discussant, and respondent. "The Drama of Humanity" presents the Walter Turner Candler Lectures delivered in four parts at Emory University in 1967. This text, a small book in itself, addresses the themes of "The Contemporary Situation," "Man in the Cosmos," "The Epiphany of Man," and "Man in Revolt," providing the reader with a good introduction to Voegelin's later work. Another extensive text included in this volume is "Conversations with Eric Voegelin at the Thomas More Institute" in Montreal. These exchanges include lectures and discussions given by Voegelin between 1967 and 1976. A number of other sections offer insight into Voegelin's intellectual development over a period of forty years. These include the complete "Foreword" to the second edition of The Political Religions, which is published here for the first time; "Notes on T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets," the "Cycle Theory and Disintegrations," "What Is Political Theory?" "The Spiritual and Political Future of the Western World," "Notes on 'Civilization and Foreign Affairs, '" "Structures of Consciousness," "The Beyond and Its Parousia," and the 1983 "Responses at the Panel Discussion of 'The Beginning of the Beginning.'" Several lengthy excerpts from conference dialogues with other scholars are also included: "The West and the Meaning of Industrial Society," "Natural Law in Political Theory," and "The Human Being in Political Institutions." Volume 33 concludes withVoegelin's "Autobiographical Statement at the Age of Eighty-Two," his last public utterance on the course of his life and his life's work. By choosing dialogue as the focus of this volume, Petropulos and Weiss are able to show not only the extent to which Voegelin engaged in an exchange of ideas but also his abiding concern for the practical and theoretical conditions necessary in order for this exchange to take place.

This first of two volumes of Voegelin's miscellaneous papers brings together crucial writings, published for the first time, from the early, formative period of this scholar's thought. The book begins with Voegelin's dissertation on sociological method, completed under the direction of Othmar Spann and Hans Kelsen at the University of Vienna in 1922. It reveals an intimate knowledge of the writings of Georg Simmel and a skillful use of insights gained from Edmund Husserl's Logical Investigations and Ideas. The dissertation, and other smaller pieces written at this time, addresses problems that remained of great importance to Voegelin throughout his life: the relation of insight to language, the structure of the human being, and the human's spiritual center. They disclose both Voegelin's theoretical reference points during these early years, including the thought of Henri Bergson, Othmar Spann, Georg Simmel, and Edmund Husserl, as well the young scholar's remarkably independent approach to theoretical problems. Moreover, this volume includes a work that is fundamental to an understanding of Voegelin's theoretical development: his extended study on the ""theory of governance,"" written between 1930 and 1932. It follows the issues that confront political society to their roots in the soul and in the soul's relationship to the ground of being. The Theory of Governance and Other Miscellaneous Papers presents a meditative-exegetic study of texts from Augustine, Descartes, and Husserl, early examples of the meditations that became central to Voegelin's later work. Other essays included in this volume such as ""The Theory of Law"" and ""Political Science as Human Science"" develop these theoretical insights and refine Voegelin's methodological tools. This volume will be of interest to all scholars of the work of Eric Voegelin and of the refoundation of political philosophy in the twentieth century in general.