Belief vs Knowledge and Plato’s Tripartite Soul
Plato suggested that if a person were to be cut open a homunculus,[1] a lion and a many-headed beast would be revealed. These creatures represent the three…
Renew Your Membership
For the 2021 Eric Voegelin Society Meeting, please be sure to register at the American Political Science Association website. Also please remember whether you are becoming a…
Revitalizing Beethoven’s Music: The Legacy of Nikolaus Harnoncourt
“Beauty is on the edge of catastrophe.” —Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929-2016) When Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt passed away in March, 2016, at the age of 86, he…
“Christ on the Mount of Olives”: Beethoven’s Passion Oratorio
In 1802 Ludwig van Beethoven was gradually going deaf—a condition which would become complete about ten years later. While taking a rest in the countryside, he wrote…
Philosophy and Philosophy
In recent months, I’ve been reading books that — if I weave them together — bestow overviews of two major branches of philosophy: Analytic Philosophy and Continental…
Idolizing the Idea: A Critical History of Modern Philosophy
Idolizing the Idea: A Critical History of Modern Philosophy. Wayne Cristaudo. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2020. In Idolizing the Idea, Cristaudo explores the value that philosophy…
Outlandish Freedom
In Dr. Faustus, Thomas Mann identifies the inadequacies of thinking of freedom in terms of free will. The narrator describes the paradox of freedom as being only…
The Significance of “Public” in the Public Justice System
The alternative to public justice is private justice. Historically, private justice has included interminable feuds. A member of a family is killed or injured, the affected family…
Call for Papers: Cultural History and its (Political) Lessons for Cosmos + Taxis Journal
Cultural history serves many purposes, the ends of which we can hardly agree upon. The idea of this history as a form of cultural preservation—that is, the…
“Folk Psychology:” You are Buying into a Crazy Theory If You Use This Term
Folk psychology is the derogatory term used by physicalists for our normal natural language (e.g., English, Spanish, etc.) way of describing mental states and explaining why people…
The Chinese Room Thought Experiment by John Searle
John Searle introduced the Chinese Room thought experiment in 1980 order to give people a way to picture the difference between what computers are doing and the…
Please Support VoegelinView!
Devoted to the revitalization of teaching and understanding of Eric Voegelin’s work and the fundamental expressions of human civilization in culture, philosophy, education, science, and politics, VoegelinView…
The Mystique of Late Beethoven
“The music is not pretty or even attractive. It merely is sublime.” —Harold C. Schonberg From reading musical commentary, one can easily get the impression that…
Beethoven’s Apollonian Beauty
Musical aesthetics in the 19th and 20th centuries was heavily preoccupied with the twin concepts of the Apollonian and the Dionysian. The Apollonian stands for Apollo, the…
Why Is Beethoven So Popular?
Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven: These three composers are commonly judged the greatest in Western classical music. Few people would argue with this…