Eric Voegelin — A Biography
This texts will briefly present the biography of Eric Voegelin based on the work “Autobiographical Reflections,” published in 2008, in which he offers a historical and biographical context of his motivations, based on the development and articulation of his ideas in several fields of knowledge.
Born in Cologne, Germany, on January 3, 1901, and died in California, United States, on January 19, 1985, Erich Hermann Wilhelm Voegelin established himself as a multidisciplinary intellectual, as many of his ideas were developed from politics, history, the nature of consciousness, and the divine presence. Voegelin studied at the University of Vienna in Austria and became a professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Law. However, before this period, specifically between 1919 and 1922, Voegelin had the opportunity to study works of different natures, such as the Pure Theory of Law by Hans Kelsen and the works of Ludwig Von Mises and Joseph A. Schumpeter.
The development of his ideas originated from his curiosity in studying works from different fields. As an optional subject, he studied eight years of Latin, six of English, and two of Italian. Due to the historical context, he also had the opportunity to study, first-hand, Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in 1917. Furthermore, the works of Karl Marx, such as Capital, also influenced him, albeit for a short period.
However, one intellectual who profoundly impacted Eric Voegelin’s ideas was Max Weber. Voegelin himself explains Weber’s influence at specific points: (a) his essays on Marxism established Voegelin’s rejection of Marxism as an ideology; (b) Weber’s last lectures made it clear to Voegelin that ideologies do not constitute science and that ideals do not replace ethics; c) the importance and scope of Weber’s comparative studies. Voegelin describes Weber as a mystical intellectual who “saw the promised land but was not allowed to enter.”
Weber, as well as the founder of Sociology, Auguste Comte, had a strong influence on his thinking. In addition to them, Voegelin was attracted to the studies of Hans Kelsen due to his analytical rigor. Kelsen not only wrote the Pure Theory of Law but also designed the Austrian Constitution of 1920, in addition to being a member of the Constitutional Court. This does not mean that Eric agreed with all of them; on the contrary, he differed from Kelsen not due to his theories but despite ideological differences regarding divergent sources of Political Science, more specifically in the Pure Theory of Law, as it constituted a neo-Kantian methodology.
In 1938, Eric Voegelin was fired from his job by the Nazis due to his opposition to Hitler’s ideas and thus emigrated to the United States. He went on to teach at Harvard University in the Department of Political Science. It was from 1942 onwards that he developed his most important works: The New Science of Politics (1952) and the first three volumes of Order and History: Volume I (Israel and Revelation), Volume 2 (The World of the Polis), and Volume 3 (Plato and Aristotle).
Eric Voegelin writes about the importance of a circle of individuals such as Stefan George Kreis and Karl Kraus. The former was a German poet who opened doors for Voegelin to get to know the work of Stéphane Mallarmé. The latter allowed Voegelin to deepen his critical understanding of politics and the role of the press in disuniting German and Austrian societies, preparing the ground for National Socialism.
During this period, Voegelin began to reflect on the importance of working with language:
“Ideologies destroy language, since, having lost contact with reality, the ideological thinker begins to construct symbols no longer to express it, but to express his alienation from it. Transposing this simulacrum of language and restoring reality by restoring language was the work not only of Karl Kraus, but also of Stefan George” (p. 39).
Voegelin was attracted to Hans Kelsen’s studies because of the rigor of his analyses. Kelsen not only developed The Pure Theory of Law, but also drafted the Austrian Constitution of 1920 and served as a member of the Constitutional Court. However, the biographer diverged from Kelsen due to ideological differences in the work “Pure Theory of Law”. The differences between the two were based on different sources of political science.
In fact, political events were a fundamental stimulus for Eric Voegelin to delve deeper into his studies. According to Voegelin, the rise of the communist revolution in Russia made the Marxist current an important topic for a political scientist.
Voegelin argued that one of the indispensable virtues in a man of science was Intellektuelle Rechtschaffenheit, which we can translate as intellectual honesty. The social sciences, particularly the humanities in general, are areas of activity that require an honest intention on the part of the student to examine the structure of reality, and ideologies — such as positivism, Marxism or National Socialism — build unsustainable edifices that are incompatible with science.
Another reason for Voegelin’s distancing himself from ideologies is the destruction of language. One example he gives is the concealment of the premises of Hegel and Marx. Voegelin wrote that their premises were wrong.
At a certain point in his life, Voegelin began to study Chinese language and its symbols based on some of his work involving Chinese political institutions. He read the classic works of Lao-Tsé and Confucius, and learned that
“Existential representation is always the central core of successful government, regardless of the formal procedures that elevate existentially representative government to its position” (p. 103).
This existential representation consists of the symbolization of government as the representative of divine order in the cosmos. According to Voegelin:
“Nothing has changed in this fundamental structure of the political order, not even in modern ideological empires. The only difference is that the god has been replaced by an ideology of history, now represented by the government invested with its revolutionary function” (p. 104).
Eric Voegelin revives the concept of “anamnesis,” which can be translated as “reminiscence” or “remembrance.” He brings it from Plato and creates an unusual synthesis with William James, author of Does Consciousness Exist? (1904), by showing that the horizon of human consciousness, in a concrete situation, will only open up to the divine if it recovers the true meaning of its past (p. 113).
The author also expands on the concepts of order and alienation. Regarding the first, he argues that it is the structure of the reality experienced by man, as well as the harmony between man and an order not fabricated by him, that is, the cosmic order.
Regarding the second, he writes (p. 118):
“Systems like Hegel’s, for example, are systematizations of a state of alienation; it is inevitable that they culminate in the death of God, not because God has died, but because there has been a rejection of divine reason in the egophanic revolt.”
The egophanic revolt consists of an attitude that makes the epiphany of the ego the fundamental experience, eclipsing the epiphany of God in the structure of Christian consciousness.
Voegelin also published a major work titled Order and History. Regarding its development, the author maintains that it started with three hypotheses: a) that there are ideas; b) that ideas have a history; c) that a history of political ideas would need to reconstruct the journey beginning with classical politics and extending to the present moment. According to Voegelin, ideas are of immense importance because “they are responsible for deforming both the truth of experiences and their symbolization” (p. 121).
Teaching was perhaps Eric Voegelin’s longest profession. He taught for 50 years to various students with different worldviews. Furthermore, he founded a Political Science Institute in Munich, which was a huge success.
Regarding the motivations behind his work, Voegelin writes that they have political origins and that anyone well-informed and intelligent like him, and who has lived through the history of the 20th century since the end of World War I, eventually finds themselves surrounded, even suffocated, by the dominance of ideological language (p. 140).
In this regard, Voegelin proposes a large and arduous solution:
“The best way to reconnect with reality is to turn to thinkers of the past who have not yet lost it or were engaged in recovering it” (p. 140).
“Recovering reality, rescuing it from the distortion it has undergone, requires a great deal of work. It is necessary to rebuild the fundamental categories of existence, experience, consciousness, and reality” (p. 143).
Aristotle was the first philosopher to perceive one of the fundamental problems of philosophy, according to Eric Voegelin: the constancy of experienced reality. According to Voegelin (p. 160):
“In his later years, Aristotle became increasingly fascinated by myth as a source of wisdom, for this form of expression can sometimes be more encompassing than the structures of reality. (…) The most important consequence of this insight is the understanding of certain processes in history.”
Eric Hermann Wilhelm Voegelin was a great and multidisciplinary intellectual. “Great” due to the importance, depth, and reach of his ideas and writings. “Multidisciplinary” because he tirelessly studied various areas of knowledge, such as politics, history, the nature of consciousness, and the divine presence.
REFERENCE
VOEGELIN, Eric. Reflexões Autobiográficas. São Paulo: É Realizações, 2008.
