Establishing True Community in Philia Among Students: Teaching The Eric Voegelin Reader
For I saw it was impossible to do anything without friends and loyal followers; and to find such men ready to hand would be a piece of…
The Misery and Greatness of Liberal Democracy
Eric Voegelin is one of those thinkers many have heard of but few have closely read. That’s understandable; reading certain passages of the German professor can clog…
Eric Voegelin Studies: A Conversation with Charles Embry
What did "Don't immanentize the eschaton!" really mean? Richard M. Reinsch II of Liberty Law Talk interviews Charles Embry about Eric Voegelin and his, along with Glenn…
Eric Voegelin’s Search for Order
No creature in all of creation has it as difficult as do humans. Being flesh as well as spirit, humans share in the natures of both the…
Eric Voegelin’s Gnosticism
In my previous essay, “Eric Voegelin: A Primer,” I had the privilege to offer a brief sketch of this German intellectual’s life and thought. In this essay,…
Eric Voegelin: A Primer
Of all the major non-leftist thinkers of the twentieth century, Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) remains, perhaps, the most difficult to understand. While some of his ideas simply pop…
Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich
Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich. Eric Kurlander. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. Reading Eric Kurlander’s Hitler’s Monsters awoke my memory…
Where is God in Suffering?
Where is God in Suffering? Brendan Purcell. Veritas Publications, Dublin, 2016. The apparent injustice of bad things happening to good people—as well as the reverse—has for…
The Elements of Leadership: Might, Measure, and Meaning
The philosopher Eric Voegelin labored for many years in relative obscurity until his death in 1985. Even now his disciples are drawn largely from conservative academe, which…
The Burkean Tradition of Strauss and Voegelin
Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin were scholars in the field of political philosophy, yet they did not have an explicit political teaching. They studied the great political…
The Restoration of Tradition
The position this essay will attempt to illustrate, if not demonstrate, is that once lost or weakened the tradition of a society can be restored only by…
Eric Voegelin’s Redemption of Modernity
Political theorists, like literary and social theorists, occupy a kind of twilight zone in relation to philosophy. Their disciplines are at once empirical and philosophical, an indeterminate…
Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-Speaking World
Carl Schmitt and Leo Strauss in the Chinese-Speaking World: Reorienting the Political, Kai Marchal and Carl K.Y. Shaw, eds. Lanham, Lexington Books, 2017. Carl Schmitt and…
Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy and The Drama of Mankind
Nearly two decades ago there appeared the first three volumes of Eric Voegelin’s exemplary quest for a theoretically intelligible order of history (Vol. I, Israel and Revelation; Vol.…
Eric Voegelin on Order, History & Gnosticism
Eric Voegelin, one of the greatest minds of our times, died on January 19, 1985. We stand in awe, admiration, and affection as we now try to…