from The Collected Works

Freedom of Conscience -Part 1

 

St. Thomas Aquinas and Liberty of Conscience

 

The humanists may well be right if they do not follow the classical philosophers in developing principles based on the bios theoretikos, or Christian thinkers into a conception of politics orientated toward the sanctification of life. But this question can be answered only through a closer study of their argument. I shall proceed by analysing in some detail their position with regard to a theoretically central problem, to the principle of liberty of conscience . . . .

 

We may appropriately start from the final judgment passed by [Mr.A.P.] D'Entrèves on the politics of Saint Thomas. When Mr.D'Entrèves proceeds from his impeccable account to an evaluation, he arrives at the following conclusions: "We find that the matters which the State is supposed to leave to the Church are precisely those which the modern man has struggled for centuries to secure against the interference of Church and State alike: such as the pursuit of truth and the worship of God according to his conscience. There is no room for religious freedom in a system which is based on orthodoxy." "Medieval intolerance . . . was a thorough, totalitarian intolerance."

"One of My Permanent Occupations"
Eric Voegelin as Literary Critic-Part 2

by Charles Embry

Charles Embry is Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy at Texas A&M-Commerce. He is editor of Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, 1944-1984. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. The material that follows is taken from his The Philosopher and The Storyteller: Eric Voegelin and Twentieth-Century Literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. This appears with permission and is presented in three parts. 

Voegelin's Criticism of Henry James's

The Turn of The Screw

A third significant statement regarding literary criticism origi­nated in the Heilman-Voegelin correspondence and culminated with the publication in 1971 of a postscript to a letter first written by Voegelin in 1947. Voegelin's analysis focused on The Turn of the Screw by Henry James as a response to a critique that Heilman had published of a Freudian interpretation of the novella.⁸ In his postscript, Voegelin raised the twin issues of the "dustiness" of the symbols in James's story and the consequent necessity that a valid literary criticism must be firmly based upon a critical-existential assessment by the critic. These issues led to a conversation between Donald E. Stanford, editor of the Southern Review, and Voegelin.

 

After Stanford completed work on the issue in which both Voegelin's original letter on James's The Turn of the Screw and the newly written postscript appeared, Stanford and his wife visited the Voegelins at their home in Palo Alto.

THE GROWTH OF THE LIBERAL SOUL

by David Walsh

Chapter One:  The Crisis of Liberal Politics

Part 5

David Walsh is professor of politics at Catholic University of America. He is the author or editor of many books; he is editor of three volumes of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. His Guarded by Mystery has been serialized here at VoegelinView in its entirety. His most recent book is The Modern Philosophical Revolution: The Luminosity of Existence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. The Growth of the Liberal Soul is available from the University of Missouri Press and appears here with permission. "Crisis of Liberal Politics" appears here in five parts.

Tumbling Liberal Defense  (concluded)

The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism - Part 2

by Elizabeth Campbell Corey

 

Elizabeth Campbell Corey is Assistant Professor of Politics in the Honors Program at Baylor University. More information is available at her department website. She is the author of Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics, 2006, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, from which the following excerpts are taken. This appears with permission and is the second of two parts.

The Politics of Individuality

 

In a series of lectures Oakeshott gave at Harvard in 1958, now published as Morality and Politics in Modern Europe, he casts the faith/skepticism dis­tinction in the terms of collectivism versus individuality, even going so far as to call these categories (as he does faith and skepticism) "the poles of the modern European political character." Collectivism postulates a common good that is chosen by government for the individuals who compose a society. This good is "preferred above all other possible con­ditions of human circumstance" and is believed "to be at least the em­blem of a 'perfect' manner of human existence."²² In other words, it is the politics of faith.

 

The politics of individuality, on the other hand, springs from an en­tirely different conception of the role of government. Indeed, it has no "vision of another, different and better, world," but takes its bearings from observation of "the self-government practiced . . . by men of pas­sion in the conduct of their enterprises." It calls not for great concentra­tions of power, but for an authoritative "ritual" that can minimize the chances for great collisions between individuals. The government is thus merely "custodian" of this ritual, called "law." Government's functions, on this reading, are to minimize circumstances in which violent colli­sions of interest are likely to occur. It provides redress for those who have been wronged, maintains sufficient power to carry out its functions, and protects itself and its subjects from foreign threat.²³ But unlike collec­tivism, the government of individuality is not in the business of generat­ing grand visions that would guide an entire people.