Book Description
Faith and Political Philosophy consists of fifty-three letters between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, two of the most important political theorists in North America. In this correspondence, Strauss and Voegelin explore the nature of their similarities and differences, offering insightful observations about one another's work, about the state of the discipline, and about the influences working on them. The letters shed light on many assumptions made in their published writings, often with an openness that removes all vestiges of uncertainty. "It would be difficult to find a more profound and stimulating book covering the whole history and understanding of faith and reason in Western intellectual history."--Review of Metaphysics ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Faith & Political Philosophy
Great book.Very thought provoking. Arrived in good condition from this supplier.

Difference between the 1993 edition and the 2004 edition is:
"The first edition of this collection, published by Pennsylvania State University Press in 1993, contained a third section, which included several essays by scholars dealing with one or another aspect of the work of Strauss and Voegelin or with comparisons of their work. Partly for reasons of space and partly because the past decade of scholarly work would require significant revision of these papers to make them as useful today as they were then, we have omitted them from this edition." Introduction, 2004 Edition, p XXIII.

The 2004 edition only contains section 1, the correspondence between Strauss and Voegelin, and section 2, which consists of 4 essays - 2 by Voegelin and 2 by Strauss, and NO section 3. ...It would have been only sporting if this had been mentioned in the editorial remarks for the 2004 edition here on the Amazon site. And, to add insult to injury, if you click on the link 'look inside this book' (on the 2004 edition page) it shows you the index (of the 1993 edition) with the absent third section included! You are NOT getting, in the 2004 edition, essays by James L Wiser, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Stanley Rosen, Thomas J.J. Altizer, Timothy Fuller, Ellis Sandoz, Thomas L. Pangle and David Walsh. A pity - the Gadamer, Rosen, Altizer, Sandoz and Pangle pieces look quite interesting.

The collection of letters is well worth owning. I give only three stars because the absence of section 3 was never mentioned. ... Read more

Book Description
Hitler and the Germans provides a profound alternative approach to the topic of the individual German's entanglement in the Hitler regime and its continuing implications. This comprehensive critique of the Nazi period has yet to be matched. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Highly recommended for students of German National Socialism
Deftly edited by Detlev Clemsn (Assistant Professor, Institute of Political Science, Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany) and Brendan Purcell (Lecturer in Philosophy, University College, Dublin, Ireland), Hitler And The Germans is a selection of lectures by the late Eric Voegelin (1901-1985), a respected scholar and articulate critic of Hitler's regime in Germany. Professor Voegelin's intelligently written books drew the Nazi state's ire and forced him to leave Austria in 1938, barely escaping arrest by the Gestapo. Voegelin's seminal study of Germany's "descent into the depths", of the reprehensible crimes against humanity brought about by the Nazi regime (and the German people's allegiance to it), as well as the political and social fallout of the post World War II era, is both scholarly and personal. Hitler And The Germans is a fascinating and sharply observed perspective which is very highly recommended for students of German National Socialism. ... Read more

Book Description
This collection of essays endeavors to generate a dialogue between Eric Voegelin and other prominent twentieth-century thinkers and explore some of the more perplexing issues in contemporary political theory. Each essay rests on the underlying question: is it possible or desirable to construct or discover political foundations without resorting to metaphysical or essentialist constructs? The introduction focuses on the two nineteenth-century thinkers Nietzsche and Husserl, who have framed the debate about modernity and postmodernity; thereafter the book examines Voegelin's ideas as compared to those of other twentieth-century thinkers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

collected articles on little-known influential philosopher
"Voegelin's lifelong meditation on transcendence...led him to search repeatedly and consistently for appropriate symbolizations that provide an understanding of the ground of being without resorting to rigid and dangerous concretizations...We have called that a search for foundations without foundationalism." What this means is that the influential mid 20th-century philosopher Eric Voegelin searched for ways to stay in touch with the spiritual, historical, and existential fundamentals giving life substance, meaning, and direction without resorting to the extremes of dogma or totalitarianism. By his own experiences as an emigre from Europe threatened by Nazism and his philosophical interests growing out of them, he had a unique, and fertile, understanding of modernism's yearning for new, enriching dimensions of spirituality and for reliable, meaningful stability behind the era's new forms of politics such as Nazism and Communism and the delusions and conceits of modern individuals. Voegelin makes trenchant criticisms of these and other radical, misguided modernist creeds and styles. Gnosticism as arising in the modern era is one aberrant attempt to gain heightened spirituality he criticized especially. A philosopher, not a political scientist or social critic, Voegelin only rarely refers directly to specific errors and evils of modern culture. But one familiar with the contests of the modern world continuing into this day understands those which his work grapples with. The editors, both with Louisiana universities, collect five articles relating Voegelin's voluminous writings with other major late 19th-century and 20th-century philosophers and thinkers. The names Nietzsche, Ricoeur, Deleuze, and Husserl crop up in different essays. Classical sources of Voegelin's extensive works based on a few simple precepts are also discussed. The essays are rounded out with introductory and closing sections by the editors which provide biographical information on Voegelin and put the project of the book into perspective. The collected academic philosophical articles demonstrate the continuing relevance of Voegelin's thinking on the main, though often elusive, issues of modern culture, politics, and individual lives while also serving as an introduction to this philosopher whose influence continues to grow.

Student of Peter Petrakis
I have not yet read this book.However, Dr. Petrakis is a professor of mine.Based upon his keen intellect, wit, and encyclopedic knowledge, I predict this to be an excellent book. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume of The Collected Works contains essays published by Eric Voegelin between 1929 and 1933, the period between the publication of his first book, On the Form of the American Mind, and Hitler's rise to power, as well as Voegelin's two books analyzing the explosive race issues posed by National Socialism. The essays herein reflect the intellectual and political tumult of the period and their author's maturing grasp of political reality as he moved away from positivism and Kelsen's "Pure Theory of Law" toward a more refined and open philosophical stance. ... Read more

Book Description
Expanded and updated from the first edition published in 1978 by Louisiana State University Press. ... Read more

Book Description
This volume of The Collected Works contains essays that were published by Eric Voegelin from 1922 to 1928, the period immediately following his doctoral studies and including a two-year study trip to the United States. They trace his intellectual formation in the 1920s, which resulted in a critique of political science conceived of in exclusively legal terms, and a move toward one that examines the substratum of ideas and structures that provide the meaningful unit of a given political society. ... Read more

Book Description
This collection of letters exchanged between Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin records a friendship that lasted more than forty years. These scholars, both giants in their own fields, shared news of family and events, academic gossip, personal and professional vicissitudes, academic successes, and, most important, ideas. What began as simple exchanges after Voegelin moved to LSU soon grew into full-fledged correspondence-beginning with an eight-page letter by Voegelin commenting on Heilman's manuscript on Shakespeare's King Lear. These letters represent Voegelin's most prolonged correspondence with a native-born American scholar and provide readers with an insight into Voegelin as a literary critic. Readers will also appreciate not only Heilman's elegant style but also his efforts to clarify for himself the meaning and implications of Voegelin's developing philosophy. ... Read more

Book Description
The Politics of the Soul: Eric Voegelin on Religious Experience includes eight essays examining one of the most profound studies of religious experience to appear in the last century: that of the political philosopher Eric Voegelin. Voegelin is increasingly recognized as a political theorist of exceptional scope and erudition and the most important philosopher of his time since Toynbee,and his treatment of religious experience is a crucial part of his overall analysis of existence and history. This collection of essays by prominenet Voegelin scholars is the first book to explore the relevance of that analysis to the contemporary understanding of political theory,theology,history,and philosophy of consciousness,and as such it constitutes a significant contribution not only to Voegelin scholarship but to the current quest for theoretical foundations. ... Read more

Book Description
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. 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. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Fun Part:Conversations withEric Voegelin
This is a big book, running to 484 pages, including the index. This volume, together with Volume 32, is where the editors put materials that don't fit anywhere else. Some of the things included here:

1.CONVERSATIONS WITH ERIC VOEGELIN, from 1967, 1970, and 1975
at the Thomas More Institute in Montreal.It has been
circulating all these years in photocopy or photo offset
versions.It contains some of Voegelin's choicest comments, such
as his remarks on teaching evolution in the schools:

"You get some funny situations.In California now there is a
fight between literalists or providentialists, and biological
theorists.And you get in the textbooks bothGenesis and
Darwinian evolutionism as two "theories" of evolution.You see
what that really means?The fundamentalist theologians in
California (fundamentalism was well established there at the
beginning of the century) don't know what a myth is. They
believe it is a theory. They're in ignorance.

"And the biological theorists don't know that Kant has analysed
why one cannot have an immanentist theory of evolution.One can
have empirical observation but no general theory of evolution
because the sequence of forms is a mystery;it just is there and
you cannot explain it by any theory. The world cannot be
explained.It is a mythical problem, so you have a strong
element of myth in the theory of evolution.

"So both the theoretical evolutionists and the fundamentalist
theologians are illiterate.That level of illiteracy is taught
in the text books as "two theories"-neither one of which is a
theory. "
Myth as Environment p 307, 335

The publication of these three conversations was something of an
afterthought.There were four conversations originally and
the first was published in Volume 11 of the CW as "In
Search of the Ground."One can hope that all four conversations
will be reunited in a paperbackversion in the not-too-distant
future-perhaps with some other informal exchanges.

2.Then there is the question and answer period from the Boston
College conference from 1983 entitledTHE BEGINNING AND THE
BEYOND, chaired by Frederick Lawrence.It is here that Voegelin
makes his comment on the Eucharist:

"Parousia means presence, and you remember this presence by
speaking it out: Where the name of Christ is pronounced, there he
is present.But you have to be reminded you are in Christ, and
pronounce it right.It is quite possible that the formulation of
the Eucharist as 'in my remembrance' (which is anamnesis) of
which Paul speaks always evokes the double-meaning of the
remembering of recollection and of remembering in the sense of
establishing what the reality is to be."

Responses at the Panel Discussion of
"The Beginning of the Beginning", p 415, 427.

3.There there are the exchanges between Voegelin and "father of
the atom bomb"J. Robert Oppenheimer at the 1959Swiss conference
directed by Raymond Aron, "Colloques de Rheinfelden."Also
present: Michael Polanyi and Bertrand de Jounvenel.The chapter
is entitled "The West and the Meaning of Industrial Society:
Excerpts from the Discussion."What is not clear from these
excerpts is that it is pretty much Voegelin "contra mundum" 'though
Aron leans heavily his way. The paper Voegelin delivered at the
conference is found in Vol 11 CW under the title "Industrial
Society in Search of Reason."

4.The transcript of Voegelin's lecture, "Structures of
Consciousness," from the 1978 York University conference is
included.The lecture was videotaped and some have seen it in
this form.

5.In "Natural Law in Political Theory" (1963) we have exchanges
between Voegelin and his Doctor-Father Hans Kelsen.To
put it plainly, they disagree more than once.

6.In "Man in Political Institutions" we have Voegelin and a
distinguished group of colleagues exchanging views, including Alois Dempf andJürgen Gebhardt.

7.For the literary-minded there are Voegelin's notes on T.S.
Eliot's "Four Quartets."

8.The book concludes with the much-admired "Autobiographical
Statement at Age Eighty-two."

And there is more, but you will have to read the book.It is
one of the most inviting of the the Voegelin volumes.A genuine
delight.

I have put up on the web the table of contents:
http://www.fritzwagner.com/ev/cw/cw_33_contents.html

And the index, beautifully done as always by Linda Webster:
http://www.fritzwagner.com/ev/eric_voegelin_volume_index_list.html#33 ... Read more