VOEGELIN -- RESEARCH NEWS
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Volume III, No. 5 October 1997
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In this issue:
1. _VOEGELIN -- A Voice of the Cold War Era...? A COMMENT
on a Eugene Webb review_, by Maben W. Poirier.
2. _The language of political diagnosis: Voegelin's portrayal
of social decline_, Geoffrey L Price.
3. _Bibliographic Update No. 7_.
Note that in line with the policy set for submissions to VOEGELIN--
RESEARCH NEWS, the editors also have submitted their pieces to an
anonymous referee for assessment.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE: Unfortunately, because this is an electronic piece, I
have not been able to place diacritical characters over the appropriate
letters in non-English words. Please bear with this inconvenience.
MWP
_A COMMENT on a Eugene Webb review_.
VOEGELIN -- A Voice of the Cold War Era...?
Reviewing Michael Franz's work _Eric Voegelin and the Politics of Spir-
itual Revolt: The Roots of Modern Ideology_, in Volume III no. 1 of
this newsletter, Professor Eugene Webb invites us to revisit a number of
themes that are central to Voegelin's thinking. In this short piece, I
would like to focus attention on two of the themes which Webb mentions,
and to argue that in each case we may and indeed must take a stance dif-
ferent from that which he advocates, if we are not to relegate Voegelin
to the status of a barely relevant oddity from a former age.
In the introduction to his review, Webb affirms that "...Voegelin [is] a
voice of the Cold War era." He proceeds to discuss at some length his
grounds for this assertion, namely, the problems he finds associated
with Voegelin's faulty understanding of gnosticism. These introductory
statements are recalled at the end of the review, where Webb questions
the appropriateness of Voegelin's polemical style _in the world in which
we live_. He specifically queries the value of "...Voegelin's tendency
to characterize thinkers he disapproved of as 'ideologists' and 'spiri-
tually diseased.'" Echoing Franz, Webb tells us that this was a ten-
dency which often led Voegelin to shun what would have been more desir-
able: a sustained refutation of the thought of these thinkers. This,
Webb informs us, was because Voegelin "...viewed their error as delib-
erate rather than as a serious attempt to understand...," ...which, by
contrast, is what Professor Webb presumes that in most instances it was.
At a later point in his review, Webb also wonders whether Voegelin was
correct when he assigned "...moral culpability for unsound theoriz-
ing...". For his part, Webb certainly acknowledges that "ideas have
consequences, and [we are] responsible for the consequences,...". How-
ever, he also makes clear that in his judgement, the era of the Cold
War, when it may have been appropriate to assign culpability for flawed
ideas, is over. It belongs to the past. A new age has dawned and--in
Webb's estimate--a different, and presumably less polemical, approach is
now demanded.
Now, this reading of Voegelin's approach to the thought of others gives
rise to an interesting question: Is what Webb points out as a feature
of Voegelin's work, and considers inappropriate, truly a function of the
times in which Voegelin wrote? Or, is there something else involved
here, something of moment, which Webb has incorrectly identified as a
matter of period and of style? The question is indeed crucial: on the
first alternative, there would be little left to Voegelin's scholarship,
other than the concerns of a dated intellectual from a bygone and out-
moded era.
Perhaps the best way for us to elucidate the point in the space allotted
us is to recall the central theme of another Plato scholar of the cen-
tury, namely, Michael Polanyi, the Anglo-Hungarian physical chemist and
philosopher of science.
Amongst philosophers of science and epistemologists, Polanyi is remem-
bered for his claim that knowing the truth (as best one can every know
the truth) is not the product of the implementation of what many main
stream philosopher of science view as methodologically correct proce-
dures. Nor is it, as many of us are brought up to believe, the result
of "disinterested" rational discourse amongst intelligent participants
in debate, as goodwilled as some or all of these participants may be.
Knowing the truth, Polanyi contends, is the consequence of reasoning
that is profoundly "interested" and biased. Indeed, at the deepest or
essential level, it is a function of _who one is_, Polanyi tells us, and
_who one is_, is the result of one's having appropriated, and one's
continuing to make his or her's, a particular "habit of being," if I may
be permitted to borrow a phrase from the American short-story writer
Flannery O'Connor. In short, coming to the knowledge of the truth about
a particular matter depends not upon our capacity to manipulate, in some
_un_committed fashion, explicit concepts and ideas, but upon our having,
over time, allowed ourselves to become so familiar and so intimate with
the subject-matter referred to and identified by these concepts and
ideas, that we might say of it, and of us, that _it has become us and we
it_. It resides so deeply within us that we find it impossible, or
almost impossible, to say where it stops and we begin. It is part and
parcel of our _maniere d'etre_, ...no doubt a serious and yet rewarding
case of _deformation professionnelle_.(1) Viewed from a slightly dif-
ferent perspective, we might say that knowing the truth about a subject
is a consequence of our having permitted this subject's ordinary and
more arcane features to _dwell in us_, such that we can say of ourselves
that we know more (because we know at the level of habit and corporally)
about the issues involved than we can speak or make explicit. It is
upon this deep-seated awareness, _that has become us_, that we, as indi-
viduals, draw when we make the truth of something transparent, and thus
available to our fellow human beings to see and know explicitly. Evi-
dently, it is also important to recognize here that no _maniere d'etre_
is absolutely adequate, in the sense of not being susceptible of im-
provement. But, of course, some _manieres d'etre_ are better than
others. It is all a matter of judgement and degree.
By contrast to the person whose "habit of being" is, in some way,
schooled, the person who speaks from a recognizably deficient, and per-
haps even obviously defective experiential repository of awareness in a
defined area of scholarship or practice, is, according to Polanyi, more
or less prevented from knowing the truth in that area, because he or she
is more or less crippled in his or her _maniere d'etre_. The point here
is that the limitations involved in one's failure to recognize truth are
not strictly intellectual and cerebral. They are personal and experi-
ential, in the sense that they are the consequence of a less than rich,
and sometimes impoverished, "habit of being." Fortunately, in most
instance, this crippling is not willed, and so, we adjust to it. We
tolerate it. No, we do more than tolerate it. We enter into debate with
and even challenge these deficiencies of being, in the expectation that
because they are not willed, there is hope for redress. After all, the
challenging of unintended deficiencies is fundamentally what a good
education is about. But what if this is not the case? What if the
deficiencies are more willed than unwilled, more intentional than unin-
tentional, more deliberate than involuntary? What then? As we know
well, there are situations where this is the case amongst intellectuals.
In such situations, we cannot proceed as though the deficiencies were
unintentional, intellectually honest, and hence susceptible of remedy by
convincing argumentation and other conventional means. They are not; and
we simply have to recognize this. These deficiencies are _willed_
partial visions representing themselves as desirable and more complete
visions, ...half-truths, partial truths and ideologies, pure and simple,
masquerading as genuine truths, because fundamentally their authors
really do know them to be inadequate, while they try to hide it from the
rest of us. Of course, the point here is that we are not dealing with
the deficiencies of a person who is open to the experiential. Rather, we
are dealing with the deficiencies of one who has deliberately closed
himself off to life in the interest of pursuing an illusory certitude,
while, at the same time, knowing, to the extent to which he or she is
alive at all, that that sort of certitude is not possible. Still more to
the point, we have to identify those who "reason" this way for who they
are, _because we judge them to be unworthy of serious exploration in the
area in which they claim expertise, since their ignorance is knowingly
cultivated and willed_.
The point of interest for us here is that the truth of this theory of
knowing does not vary with whether an age is more or less polarized
and ideological, more or less influenced by the ethos of the "Cold War."
It is a general theory of knowledge that Polanyi advanced, ...a theory
that has continuing relevance, and is true irrespective of the times and
the customs of an era. And so the implementation of this theory of
knowledge does not vary either. Knowing the true and the real is always
deeply rooted in the personal, and entails what is personal in both its
emergence and its failure to emerge. It is true that in an environment
that is attentive to the need to foster experientially based knowledge,
the task of reaching out to others who are genuinely deliberative is
usually easier, because the roots of unknowing are less deep. But, even
under these circumstances, the climate of the times does not forestall,
in an absolute sense, the possibility that we may encounter a "will-
fully" closed spirit, since ideological thinking is not a respecter of
eras. Nor is it only political in character as the expression "Cold War
era" seems to imply. Ideological and experientially "blinkered" visions
come in a variety of forms and challenges us at different levels. We
are increasingly cognizant of this in this era of dogmatic relativism
following hard upon the heels of scientism.
Now, if I understand Voegelin correctly, he is in broad agreement with
Polanyi's epistemology. This is not to say that he based his theorizing
on Polanyi's thought. I see no explicit evidence that he did. In fact,
I am rather inclined to believe that he may not have read Polanyi, since
I recall no mention of Polanyi's name in any of Voegelin's writings.
Yet, the emphasis that Voegelin placed on experiential openness as the
basis of knowledge goes a long way towards demonstrating the filiation
between the two. And so, like the Plato scholar Polanyi, the Plato
scholar Voegelin knew that concern for the truth is more than a product
of disinterested cerebration, and the entertainment of error likewise.
Both are deeply rooted in the personal, and as a consequence, _in a very
profound sense, we are the authors of our vision and of our blindness_.
Hence, Voegelin's use of words like "ideologist" and "spiritually dis-
eased" to describe the writings of leading contemporary thinkers is not
a matter of style related to era. It is a way of drawing attention to
the _ultimately willed character and personal origins of someone's fail-
ure to know_. When employing these terms to describe the thought of
someone, Voegelin is recognizing, and, by implication, asking us to rec-
ognize, that the error that is present in the thought of the other is
not innocent or unintentional. It is error that is rooted in a defi-
ciency at the level of the other's "habit of being," or general "open-
ness to experience," and it can only be corrected by a reform willfully
undertaken by that individual and designed to amend his or her "habit of
being." In other words, reform takes place through conversion (_peria-
goge_) from a closed to an experientially open soul and not simply
through cerebration. No disinterested rational discourse will suffice
when it is a matter of overcoming _willful_ ignorance. Willful igno-
rance, like the pursuit of knowledge and the truth, is chosen and is
personal, and so the terms "ideology," "ideologist," and "spiritually
diseased" are appropriate when describing the production and identity of
certain individuals.
And so, faulting Voegelin for not treating error, on what was at times a
monumental scale, as nothing more than a product of disinterested rati-
ocination gone awry or well-intentioned miscalculation, misses the whole
point of Voegelin's argument. Such error is precisely not a consequence
of well-intentioned miscalculation by people who always want the best
for the rest of us, and it can never be that, for one who argues that
scientific truth cannot be pursued from a strictly instrumentalist per-
spective. The fact is that Voegelin viewed many of his "opponents" as
either knowingly and positively evil individuals, or boring dilettantes
because they failed to appreciate that the root of truth and error is
not to be found in abstract reasoning, but in a person's "habit of be-
ing." And generally the dilettantes, the majority to be sure, were all
too true to type to be really interesting from an intellectual per-
spective. Many were more interesting as expressions of particular mod-
ern, and sometimes not so modern, pathologies rooted in their _maniere
d'etre_ as well as that of the age, than as expressions of well-inten-
tioned individuals whose instrumental reasoning power had deserted them
momentarily.
It was primarily for these reasons that Voegelin viewed ignorance as
culpable. When one spends a good part of one's life knowingly or half
knowingly distorting one's "habit of being," whatever error results from
this misguidedness is culpable error to one degree or another. Indeed,
it has to be culpable error, ...not in the sense that Professor Webb
understands it, but in the sense that one is responsible for having led
oneself into error. The willful cultivation of crippling habits is not
without consequence, and one is responsible for the consequences as they
play themselves out in oneself, as one is also responsible for the cul-
tivation of habits that liberate. Of course, it is also true that ideas
have consequences, and that we may be responsible for their consequenc-
es, in the sense that Professor Webb remarks. But that is a very dif-
ferent matter from the issue that was of concern to Voegelin when he
spoke of ignorance as culpable. For example, one might want to hold
Lysenko responsible for the consequences of his ideas on two different
levels; _one_, because of the terrible repercussions that they had on
the study of genetics in the Soviet Union, as well as for the devasta-
tion they caused Soviet agriculture, and the resultant starvation of
untold numbers of people, and _two_, because the inadequacy of his ideas
was a direct result of a personality flaw, which need not have existed,
but which had to do with Lysenko's willful rejection of the true and the
real, in the interest of maintaining a partial vision and an ideological
outlook. Untruth at this level is the result of more than just well-
intentioned but poor calculation. It is a consequence of a moral fail-
ure of major proportions, and as there is no era when it will be possi-
ble for us to say that finally we are exempt from such failings, there
is no era when it will be inappropriate for us to identify them for what
they are.
In conclusion, I return to Professor Webb's views. I maintain that he
has seriously misread the significance of Voegelin's use of words like
"ideology," "ideologist" and "spiritually diseased" when he reads sees
these words as instances of poor manners, and if not poor manners, then
poor style in an age when we are encouraged to think that our opponents
are, first and foremost, honest with themselves and well-meaning. This
misreading leads Webb to characterize Voegelin as a dated cold-warrior:
and that in turn unfortunately leads him to sidestep the central issue
in all of this, which is the centrality to Voegelin's thought of his
philosophical anthropology and his theory of consciousness.
In short, I believe that if Professor Webb is serious in the points he
makes, then he has obviously had a profound change of mind about who
Voegelin was, and indeed about what human identity is, for what he re-
commends is nothing less than the complete denaturing of both.
M.W. Poirier, Concordia University, Loyola Campus, MONTREAL, Quebec
--------------
NOTES
1 Polanyi relates knowing to being in the title of his article "Knowing
and Being," which appeared in the journal _Mind_ in 1861, as well as in-
directly in the many references he makes throughout his writings to the
phenomenon of _indwelling_. In addition, his principal collaborator,
Marjorie Grene, who frequently knew what Polanyi meant as well as any-
one, and is said to have helped Polanyi put his epistemological thinking
in order, entitles her anthology of Polanyi articles _Knowing and Be-
ing_: _Essays by Michael Polanyi_ (1969). But the most telling remark
that Polanyi himself makes about the relationship of knowing to human
being comes in the 1964 Preface to the Harper Torchbook edition of
_Personal Knowledge_: _Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy_, where he
very explicitly states: "All understanding is based on our dwelling in
the particulars of that which we comprehend. Such indwelling is a
participation of ours in the existence of that which we comprehend; it
is Heideggar's _being-in-the-world_." In other words, all understanding
is a function of indwelling, and indwelling is being-in-the-world or
_maniere d'etre_. And so, Polanyi's epistemology is very definitely
more than just an epistemology. It is also an ontology.
====================================================
_The language of political diagnosis:
Voegelin's portrayal of social decline_
Geoffrey L Price
In the context of the current debate about Voegelin's use of
strongly polarized language, this note examines passages in his
correspondence where equivalent points are put to him directly, and
he defends his analysis.
In his article "The World of Homer" (_Review of Politics_ 15
(1953): 491-523) Voegelin maintains that
"The Homeric poems are not concerned with causes and effects on
the level of pragmatic history but with the phenomenon of decline
itself. His Achaean society is disordered insofar as on
decisive occasions the conduct of its members is guided by
passion and desire rather than by reason and the common good.
The blinding through passion, the _ate_, is not the cause of
disorder; it is the disorder itself" (492).
Developing his argument, Voegelin examines the anger of Achilles in
the _Iliad_, and the fruitless attempts by Phoenix his old educator
to bring him to reason. Achilles' deep-seated wrath, penetrated only
by the death of his friend Patroclus, profoundly disturbed the order
of existence for those he lived and fought with (493-503). But that
disturbance was only an episode in the greater context of a war that
had been caused by the fatal attraction of Helen. Why had the quarrel
not been resolved earlier? To understand this, Voegelin studies the
scenes with Paris and Helen, concluding that
"Homer uses these scenes quite deliberately for the purpose
of characterizing the disordered sentiments through the ranks of
the constitutional hierarchy.
...
Paris and Helen are the gap in the Trojan order through which
a dark force of destruction pours in, as Achilles was the gap in
the order of the Achaeans" (507).
A copy of this article was sent by Voegelin to Mrs Elizabeth de
Waal, then living in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England. She had
followed Voegelin's work since the period in Vienna when both had
been members of the study circle around Othmar Spann, and she had
detailed knowledge of how narrowly Voegelin had escaped from Austria.
In a letter of 23 July 1938 written to him at the hotel in Zurich
which he had succeeded in reaching, she writes
"Es ist buchstaeblich wahr, dass ich, seitdem ich Ihren
Brief bekam, allnaechtlich von dem schrecken Traume, den
Sie und Lissy durchgemacht haben muessen. Gott sei dank haben
Sie noch einen Schutzengel gehabt. Ich zittere zu denken, was
sonst geschehen waere. Wenn nur jetzt auch Lissy gut
herauskommt. Ich teile Ihre Sorge um sie und hoffe Tag um Tag zu
hoeren, dass sie bei Ihnen ist."
"It is absolutely true, that since I received your letter, I
have been up through the night over the terrible dream, of what
you and Lissy have been through. Thank God you still had one
guardian angel. I shudder to think what might have happened
otherwise. If only now Lissy can get through safely. I share
your concern for her, and every day I hope to hear that she
has reached you."
During the war, Mrs de Waal describes the war situation within
England, and the tension that isolation from the Netherlands was
causing to her husband and his Dutch family. During and after the
war, Voegelin sent her copies of work in progress: sections of the
_History of Political Ideas_, and the articles "Plato's Egyptian
Myth" (_Journal of Politics_ 9 (1947): 307-24) and "The Origins of
Scientism" (_Social Research_ 15 (1948) 462-94).
On receiving "The World of Homer," Mrs de Waal reacted critically
to the style in which it was written. In her letter of 3 February
1954, after enquiries concerning Voegelin's health in the aftermath
of surgery, and news of the T.L.S. review of _The New Science of
Politics_, she continued:
"When I say I was immensely interested in your `World of
Homer,' that is to be taken quite literally. I confess I had
never thought much about the political and ethical significance
of the epics nor had my reading chanced on any of the
interpretations which, I infer from your article, are accepted
as to their place in the cycle of antique civilizations. I have
been given quite a lot to think, and to read about. Your
detailed interpretation is also very fascinating and throws new
light on many phases of thought and expressions. The only
quarrel I have with you is about the tone in which you write.
Why are you so contemptuous and derisive about Homer's heroes?
In all their human frailty, shortcomings and even moral
turpitude, they and their surroundings are surely clad in the
dignity of great poetry, and do not deserve to be spoken of like
a gang of bandits or the inmates of a thieves kitchen. You call
Achilles `a healthy _specimen_,' as if he were a dog or a head of
cattle; Priam `the royal gentleman,' as if he figured in a
musical comedy piece; Penelope's suitors are constantly referred
to as `rotters,' as if they were members of a gang of thugs. By
this contemptuous and if I may say so, inappropriate language -
of which I have only given a few instances that have stuck in my
mind, but which prevails throughout the essay - I feel that you
do less than justice to your theme, and you debase Homer to the
level of one of the less reputable popular newspapers. It is a
pity. - you are rather inclined to use this tone when you are
disputing a point with an author with whom you do not agree. I
have noticed it in the `Science of Politics,' and I think it
weakens the argument (apart from being unpleasant,) but you have
never applied it to your subject matter as you do here.
Will you forgive me for saying this? I presume on our old
friendship for the liberty of making this criticism, and because
I would wish many readers for your most significant ideas, and I
wish these readers to enjoy them, without that feeling of
distaste and slight sickness aroused by the slangy expressions
in which they are presented. But then, perhaps Americans like
that sort of language; I'm afraid we don't over here."
Voegelin replied quickly, writing from Baton Rouge, Louisiana on
11 February 1954. He opened by acknowledging the force of the
criticisms:
"Thanks for [your] kind letter of February 3rd. I hasten to
answer it, in order to assuage all sorrows that I would take your
criticisms (or any criticisms which you ever have to offer) in
ill [_sic_]. Of course not; on the contrary, I am grateful for
it, especially when it concerns my style which I know all
too well leaves much to be desired.
Hence I acknowledge the justice of your remarks with regard
to slangy expressions, especially since I am also aware of this
defect, and I am doing best in the revision in which I am engaged
at present to eliminate such sores if I can catch them. There
will be no `Healthy specimen' or `rotter' in the book-form of
the History."
In the event, when the article was incorporated into chapter 3 of
_The World of the Polis_, Voegelin did not moderate his terms:
Achilles remains a "healthy specimen" (p.85), and the suitors of
Penelope are still described as "rotten" (p.99). However, the
real point of substance is that which is developed in the next
paragraphs of his reply.
"Not so sure am I about the justice of your remarks about the
`tone' of contempt with regard to Homeric heroes. While `rotter'
is slang and should not be used when speaking of the suitors, I
cannot be blind to the fact that for Homer they are `dogs.'
(Also the adjective is used which is difficult to render in
English. In the German translations it reads `huendische Freier'
and `huendische Weiber,' when Penelope speaks of the women of
her household who side with the `dogs'). Homer is very careful
to distinguish between the social rank of suitors when speaking
as a narrator (they are always the `noble suitors') and their
moral quality which appears when Odysseus or Penelope speak of
them, that is, the persons who have to `suffer' from the
discrepancy between social rank and moral stature.
That happens to be the problem of the social and political
crisis; and the hero is the `sufferer' who in the end restores
order by a mass slaughter of the `dogs'.
The same difficulty arises with regard to Priam. You
complain that he is spoken of as if he were a farcical figure in
a musical comedy. I am not so sure that precisely this
impression was intended by Homer. If we trust the Greeks who
[sc. were] somewhat closer to the epics than we are, and perhaps
took them more seriously and not only as great poetry, we must
consider the attitude of Herodotus. (At least I must consider it
in the context of my `History'[sc. of Political Ideas]).
Herodotus does not believe that Helen was ever in Troy, but
that she was stranded in Egypt and there retained by the
Egyptians for return to her husband. His reason is the following:
It cannot be assumed as within the realm of possibility that any
government would let its city go to destruction for no other
reason than the one given by Homer: that the old king wants to
feast his eyes daily on the presumably attractive lady and does
not want to miss her. For a Greek with as large an intellectual
horizon as Herodotus, Priam was so farcical indeed that he was
implausible. He presumes that the Achaeans conducted the war
against Troy because they did not believe the assurances of the
Trojans that Helen really was not there at all.
Furthermore, I have to take into account that Plato wants to
banish Homer from his _Politeia_ for precisely the reason which
you adduce in his favor in your letter: the great poetry of
Homer throws the golden veil of his magnificent verse around
persons and actions which are contemptible, and thereby may
induce acceptance of the standards of morality of the persons
thus glorified.
I can understand quite well that you [sc. do] not like to
see Homeric heroes in an unheroic light. (You are not the only
critic who has expressed dismay at their treatment). But I hope
you will see that the matter is not simple for, because I have
to consider the Homeric heroes in the light in which they were
seen by the Greeks -- not in the light in which they are seen by
contemporary readers. It will require a very judicious weighing
of the `tone' if I want, on the one hand, not to fall into
slang, and, on the other hand, not to falsify the intentions of
Homer and the sense in which his work was understood by such men
as Herodotus or Plato.
And now I only beg you not to take these explanations as
dogmatic on my part. I have simply stated reasons -- which are
open to be invalidated by counter-reasons. And I hope very much
to hear from you in the matter.
I enclose an article on the Oxford Political Philosophers
[sc. _Philosophical Quarterly_ 3 (1953): 97-114)]. You will
perhaps find it also contemptuous in tone. But you will find in
it also some explanations why sometimes a tone should be
contemptuous, and not be genteel under pretext of innocuous
`disagreement with other authors'. I just recall a phrase from
the author of the _Screwtape Letters_: It is advisable to keep
an open mind with regard to technical inventions, kitchen-
appliances and the like; to keep an open mind with regard to the
Ten Commandments is `moral imbecility'. There seems to be a
point where unequivocal expression of contempt is in
order; a point at which the pretext of amiable conversation about
intellectual matters with `colleagues' would be collaboration in
crime.
Well, let that be enough for today. I only wanted to answer
that particular question raised by you.
With all good wishes from both of us,
Yours most sincerely
[E.V.]"
In conclusion, may I remind readers of Voegelin that this use
and defence of Homer's moral understanding of the sources of
social and political decline is found not only in his reading of the
Trojan wars themselves, but that it forms the whole basis of the
treatment of order in Greek society in volumes 2 and 3 of _Order and
History_. His judgements on the limitations of the accounts of Greek
history in Herodotus and Thucydides, and the Homeric underpinning
of his own account, are presented in chapters 1, 3 and 12 of volume
2.
==================================
_Bibliographic Update no. 7_
Essays from the 1994 Manchester Conference
Essays on Voegelin in the 1995 Lonergan Workshop
Reviews and articles by Gregor Sebba
Portuguese edition of History of Political Ideas
Recent books, articles and reviews
Clifford, Craig. _The Tenure of Phil Wisdom: Dialogues_. Lanham,
Maryland: University Press of America, 1995.
Cooper, Barry. "Eric Voegelin's Analysis of the Deformation of
Consciousness in Voltaire." _Lumen_ 15 (1996): 37-55.
Gebhardt, Juergen. "The Vocation of the Scholar." In _International
and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Eric Voegelin_, edited by
Stephen A. Mc Knight and Geoffrey L. Price, pp. 10-34. Columbia,
Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1997.
Germino, Dante. "Voegelin's two portraits of Hooker and their
relation to the modern crisis." In _Richard Hooker and the
construction of Christian community_, edited by Arthur Stephen Mc
Grade, pp. 351-68. Tempe, Arizona: Mediaeval and Renaissance Texts
and Studies, 1997.
Harter, Nathan. "Eric Voegelin on the Authority to Lead." _Modern
Age_ 39 (1997): 21-27.
Hopkins, Jasper. "Interpretive Study [Includes detailed critique of
treatment of Nicholas of Cusa in Blumenberg, Hans. _Die
Legitimitaet der Neuzeit. 2nd edition. 3 vols. Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1973-76 / _The Legitimacy of the Modern Age_,
translated by Robert M. Wallace. Cambridge, Massachussets: MIT
Press, 1985." In _Nicholas of Cusa's Dialectical Mysticism. Text,
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--------- Archive Address: vax2.concordia.ca/~vorenews ----------
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Dr. M.W. Poirier | Dr. Geoffrey L. Price
Dept. of Political Science | Dept. of Religions and Theology
Concordia University | University of Manchester
Loyola Campus | MANCHESTER M13 9PL
7141 Sherbrooke Street W. | United Kingdom
MONTREAL, Quebec |
H4B 1R6 |
E-Mail: poirmw@Vax2.Concordia.Ca | E-Mail: g.price@manchester.ac.uk
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