Egalitarianism is movements within social and political philosophy that can be either foundational or distributional in nature. Foundational egalitarianism describes people as equal beings by nature; distributional egalitarianism justifies a distribution of economic goods, social opportunities, and political power among people so as to render them more equal in…

University of Calgary political scientist Tom Flanagan’s treatment of Friedrich Hayek raises important questions regarding Hayek’s fundamental understanding of politics and history. On the one hand, Hayek’s defense of liberty is based upon a Burkean appreciation of tradition and historical change. “Spontaneous order” has its own rhythms and causes…

“Rationalism,” in the sense meant in this essay, might be understood as the idea that abstract thought, deducing answers to questions from first principles, is always superior to “mere” tradition, custom, and practical know-how. In the first half of the twentieth century, this rationalist ideal dominated elite thinking. The…

The fascinating correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin raises more questions than it answers, if merely taken by itself.l To be sure, a number of extremely valuable debates arise between the two writers, especially in the letters of 1949 through 1951. Often, however, the exchange gives only straws…

Faith and Political Philosophy the Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934-1964. Peter Emberley and Barry Cooper, ed. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004. Eric Voegelin’s Dialogues with the Postmoderns Searching for Foundations. Peter A. Petrakis and Cecil Eubanks, ed. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2004.…

Eric Voegelin (1901-85) is often portrayed as one of the severest critics of modernity–its belief in human reason’s ability to understand and convey the fundamental structures of reality and its dismissal of transcendent teleologies as private and suspect beliefs. For Voegelin, modernity was a “Gnostic revolt” against reality: the…

Ted Morton and Rainer Knopff’s  2000 Charter Revolution and the Court Party was an academic blockbuster when it was published and stands today as one of the signal contributions to the debate about the institutional and cultural consequences of the Charter and the larger trajectory of Canadian constitutionalism. The…

For the past two hundred years or so, philosophers, sociologists, and political theorists who have been skeptical about the claims of modern scientistic or rationalistic epistemology have relied upon some version of the concept of tacit knowledge or one of its cognates to support an alternative account of the…

W. Julian Korab-Karpowicz’s Tractatus Politico-Philosophicus: New Directions for the Future Development of Mankind has been issued a new edition with a new introduction. Please see our review of it here.  

33rd International Meeting of THE ERIC VOEGELIN SOCIETY, 2017 American Political Science Association Meeting,August 31-September 3 San Francisco, CA   David Walsh, Meeting Director walshd@cua.edu   Dear Friends, This is our program as it currently stands.  Please continue to update me with any changes that become necessary.  At this…