Academic literature on the topic 'Eric Voegelin'

Resumo: O presente artigo debate a recepção brasileira das obras do filósofo e cientista político Eric Voegelin. Atento ao movimento iniciado em 1979 com a publicação de A nova ciência da política, o texto apresenta a recepção editorial e o teor geral das obras do pensador traduzidas ao português no Brasil. Concomitante ao recenseamento da bibliografia primária, a investigação examina a bibliografia secundária, identificando a curvatura crítica inicial da recepção brasileira da obra de Voegelin, situada entre as reflexões filosófica de Lima Vaz sj e sociológica de Guerreiro Ramos.Abstract: The present article discusses the Brazilian reception given to the work of the philosopher and political scientist, Eric Voegelin. Attentive to the movement that started in 1979 with the publication of The new science of Politics, this text presents the academic reception as well as the general contents of the author’s work which was translated into Portuguese and available in Brazil. In addition to the listing of primary works, this research examines the secondary bibliography in order to identify the initial critical perspective of Voegelin’s reception in Brazil, situated between the philosophical reflexions of Lima Vaz and Guerreiro Ramo’s sociological considerations.

This article examines three important texts in which Eric Voegelin discusses the Christian Faith. While it is true that one finds no personal confession of faith in Voegelin's works, one nevertheless finds there an extraordinary openess to the experiential truth expressed in Christian Symbols.

Eric Voegelin thought his “paradox of consciousness” was “the key to all his other works,” but no one has yet explored it as such a key. “participation” is the central term in Voegelin's philosophy, and the “paradox of consciousness” reveals the paradox of participation: a participant-partner is simultaneously a part and the whole (albeit in a perspective) of a reality of consciousness, like a marriage, a polity, or the cosmos.

The paper offers an attempt at an introduction to the political theory of Eric Voegelin, the political scientist, philosopher and social scientist, whose thought has been increasingly recognized in both the USA and Europe ever since shortly after his death in 1985. It explores the political dimension of Voegelin’s thought from a purely secular point of view, but could also be helpful to those looking to find a religious meaning in politics.

The problem of understanding political foundings is situated at the nexus between political philosophy and political science. This thesis rethinks founding by asking both the philosophical question of how political order comes into being, and the political science question of how to understand particular founding moments. These two questions stimulate and structure a dialogue between the works of Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt and Eric Voegelin. The approach of founding in all three has a common starting point: they begin from ordinary experience and outline a political science that is mindful of the phenomenality of political life. I show that Strauss’s return to ordinary experience is partial. By limiting political life to the normative claims raised in it and submitting them to philosophical judgment, Strauss moves too quickly beyond political phenomena. His account of founding, as a consequence, vacillates between understanding particular founding acts and conceiving the perfect founding moment in abstract thought. Arendt’s work decisively shifts the problem on the side of practical understanding. Yet, her ontological account of action as appearance subtly displaces her concern for understanding historical actions. I move away from approaching historical foundings as a mode of appearing in the world, by recovering an account of action as experience. On that basis, I suggest a hermeneutics of experience which approaches foundings in light of the quest for meaning. With Voegelin founding is recovered as a symbol that exists only in the quest of understanding. Founding occurs in the experience of struggle to restore a reality that has become symbolically opaque. This experience is shared by the philosopher and the political actor; therefore to understand moments of founding requires the interweaving, and not separation, of political philosophy and political science. At the end, the quest of understanding founding moments is neither derivative, nor preparatory, but encompassing the philosophical question of how order comes into being.

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The theory of participation developed by the dialectical science assumes the ontological meaning of the intermediate conceptually called by the ancient tradition of metaxy philosophy. In contemporary times the debate on the concept of property got an epistemological relief according to the reflections made by the philosopher and political scientist Eric Voegelin. The author s interpretation of the work scaled its ontology prioritized by the political substance of the human, which finds in the intermediate causal nexus of its participation in the other dimensions of the being (daimon, cosmos and society). After examining the mutual participation within the community of the being the thesis presents the problems of the modernity of metaxy, which highlighted in contrast with the gnosis, puts the term via historiogenesis the tension between truths. The victory of a representation of the truth culminated in a history of order, explained since the representative experiences of archaic Greek tradition as myths (Hesiod) and rites (Dionysus). The route of the investigation enhances the history, the criticism of positivism and the differences brought to light through the development of archeology, a fact that made possible the specific treatment of experiences that are retroactive to the noetic period. The hypothesis of ontological plethora of finite being is confirmed following the logic of the identical and different, unfolded into its continuities and discontinuities ranging from the evocative and transcendent character of symbols to the present intentionality in the philosophies of Anaximander and Heraclitus
A teoria da participação elaborada pela ciência dialética, pressupõe o sentido ontológico do intermediário, conceitualmente chamado pela tradição antiga da filosofia de metaxy. Na contemporaneidade o debate sobre as propriedades do conceito adquiriu relevo epistemológico em função das reflexões efetuadas pelo filósofo e cientista político Eric Voegelin. A exegese da obra do autor dimensionou sua ontologia primada pela substância política do humano, que encontra no intermediário o nexo causal de sua participação nas demais dimensões do ser (daimon, cosmos e sociedade). Após o exame da participação mútua no interior da comunidade do ser a tese apresenta a problemática da modernidade da metaxy, que realçada no contraste com a gnose, coloca a termo via historiogênese a tensão entre verdades. A vitória de uma representação da verdade culminou numa história da ordem, explanada desde as experiências representativas da tradição grega arcaica como os mitos (Hesíodo) e os ritos (Dionísio). O trajeto da investigação valoriza a história, a crítica ao positivismo e as diferenciações vindas à luz através do desenvolvimento da arqueologia, fato que tornou possível o tratamento específico de experiências que retroagem ao período noético. A hipótese da superabundância ontológica do ser finito foi confirmada segundo a lógica do idêntico e do diferente, desdobrada em suas continuidades e descontinuidades que vão desde o caráter evocativo e transcendente dos símbolos até a intencionalidade presente nas filosofias de Anaximandro e Heráclito

Dans le chapitre du Contrat social consacré à la mort du corps politique, Rousseau rappelle que cette mort est « la pente naturelle et inévitable des Gouvernements les mieux constitués ». En effet, poursuit-il, « si Sparte et Rome ont péri, quel État peut espérer de durer toujours ? Si nous voulons former un établissement durable, ne songeons donc point à le rendre éternel ». Malgré l’avertissement de Rousseau, la tendance à rendre l’ordre politique éternel semble être un phénomène constant, jusqu’à nos jours. En témoigne l’idée d’une « fin de l’histoire » résultant de l’alliance du capitalisme et de la démocratie libérale, ou d’un modèle occidental se comprenant comme la réalisation du seul but de l’histoire, à laquelle ne s’opposeraient que des puissances « retardatrices ». À travers ces phénomènes se manifeste une « politique du temps », un discours de légitimation de l’ordre politique donnant un sens politique à sa dimension temporelle.Compris de cette manière, le problème que pose la « politique du temps » ne peut être abordé par une critique limitée à ses derniers avatars, telle la thèse de la fin de l’histoire. Il est au contraire nécessaire de remonter à la racine du problème, c’est-à-dire à la place qu’occupe cette question au sein du rapport entre temps et politique. Si la politique du temps s’avère aussi tenace, c’est en effet parce qu’elle s’inscrit dans un questionnement intrinsèquement lié à l’ordre politique, confronté à la nécessité d’assurer son « être-dans-le-temps ». La politique du temps répond à cette nécessité par une politisation du temps et de l’histoire pouvant conduire, dans sa forme extrême, à une éternisation de l’ordre politique, qui prétend alors englober la totalité du temps, du passé au futur.Compte tenu de la persistance de cette conception temporelle de l’ordre politique, de même qu’il ne suffit pas de limiter la critique à ses avatars actuels, de même serait-il impropre de la diriger contre sa seule forme extrême, dans la mesure où ce sont précisément certains discours proclamant la fin des idéologies qui tendent à reproduire aujourd’hui les structures de la politique du temps. Par conséquent, ce n’est qu’en abordant dans son ensemble le problème formé par la atemporalisation du politique et la politisation du temps qu’il est possible d’attaquer à la racine ce type de discours de légitimation, sous toutes ses formes.Pour mener à bien ce projet, deux objectifs complémentaires, correspondant aux deux fils directeurs de l’analyse, sont traités en parallèle. D’une part, nous proposons de systématiser la question du temps politique afin de montrer les grands traits communs aux phénomènes qui s’y rattachent et quelles directions s’ouvrent à la critique. Le second axe de lecture met l’accent sur les œuvres d’Eric Voegelin et de Karl Löwith en tant qu’elles apportent une contribution décisive tant à la systématisation du problème que, surtout, à son dépassement.Notre hypothèse de départ est que Löwith et Voegelin eux-mêmes sont conscients de la relation problématique entre temps et politique et cherchent, par l’intermédiaire de la dimension temporelle, à aborder un problème politique dont l’importance s’explique non seulement par la situation historique à laquelle ils sont directement confrontés, mais aussi par sa valeur systématique intrinsèque, en tant qu’il représente une évolution de la conception du politique. Tous deux sont convaincus de la nécessité de surmonter le nihilisme et l’absence de toute fondation durable en tant que tels, c’est-à-dire de surmonter la temporalisation radicale de l’ordre politique, mais également les tentatives visant à l’éterniser. C’est dans ce cadre que prennent sens leurs projets, qui cherchent à dissocier le politique et le temps et, en repensant leur relation, à éviter que tout point de référence permanent ne soit dissout par le cours du temps sans toutefois produire une éternité artificielle et absolue
In the chapter of the Social Contract on the death of the body politic, Rousseau emphasizes that its death is “the natural and inevitable propensity even of the best constituted governments”. Indeed, he continues, “if Sparta and Rome have perished, what state can hope to last for ever? If we want the constitution we have established to endure, let us not seek, therefore, to make it eternal”. Despite Rousseau’s warning, the tendency to make the political order eternal seems to be a pervasive phenomenon even in our time, as can be seen in the idea of an “end of history” that results from the combination of capitalism and liberal democracy, or in a Western model conceived as the realisation of the sole aim of history that only “delaying” powers would resist. These are examples of a “politics of time”, a concept that refers to a type of discourse contributing to the legitimization of the political order by giving a political meaning to its temporal dimension. Understood in this way, the problem of the “politics of time” cannot be addressed by focusing only on its recent developments, such as the “end of history” thesis, it is also crucial to understand these developments in the broader context of the relation between time and politics. Consequently, only a fundamental critique can put an end to the “politics of time”. The origin of the persistence of the “politics of time” has to be traced back to an essential problem that the political order is facing, namely the necessity to ensure its existence in time. The “politics of time” answers this problem by politicizing time and history, which can lead, in its most extreme form, to an eternisation of the political order that pretends to last for all time.Considering that this temporal conception of the political order is still widely present in many contemporary discourses, it would be insufficient to limit the critique to contemporary phenomena or to the extreme forms of the politics of time in modern ideologies, since precisely some proclamations of the end of ideologies tend to repeat the structure of the politics of time. It is therefore necessary to tackle the problem of the temporalisation of politics and politicisation of time as a whole. This is the only way to question the different occurrences of this kind of legitimising discourse.To achieve this, this study has two parallel aims. First, I begin by reconstructing a systematic account of the question of political time in order to highlight the main characteristics of the phenomena that are related to it. My second aim is to analyse Eric Voegelin’s and Karl Löwith’s works regarding their contribution to the systematisation of the problem, but first and foremost insofar as they offer an answer to it.Central to this work is the claim that Löwith and Voegelin not only develop a theory of the problematic relation between time and politics, but also defend a solution to tackle this problem. This problem, as they see it, is not restricted to their particular historical situation but remains of interest as an evolution of the concept of the political itself. Both Löwith and Voegelin are convinced that nihilism and the lack of any durable foundation must be overcome as such or, in other words, that it is necessary to overcome not only the temporalisation of the political order but also the attempts to “eternalise” it. The meaning and significance of Löwith’s and Voegelin’s projects appear clearly in this framework, as they can be seen as two attempts to dissociate the political from the temporal and, by reworking this relation, to prevent the relativisation of any durable foundation in the flow of time without, however, creating an artificial and absolute eternity