(Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 33) University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Mo.

Reviewed by Fritz Wagner

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 both Genesis 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 paperback version 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 entitled THE 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 1959 Swiss 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 and Jürgen 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.

The table of contents can be found elsewhere on this site:

http://www.voegelinview.com/ev/cw/cw_33_contents.html

And here is the index, beautifully done as always by Linda Webster:

http://www.voegelinview.com/ev/eric_voegelin_volume_index_list.html#33

[This review was adapted from one that originally appeared at Amazon.com]