David Walsh

Written by David Walsh

David Walsh is the Chair Board Member of VoegelinView, President of the Eric Voegelin Society, and Professor of Political Science at Catholic University of America. He is the author of a three-volume study of modernity: After Ideology: Recovering the Spiritual Foundations of Freedom (Harper/Collins, 1990), The Growth of the Liberal Soul (Missouri, 1997), and The Modern Philosophical Revolution: The Luminosity of Existence (Cambridge, 2008). His latest book is Politics of the Person and as the Politics of Being (Notre Dame, 2015).

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James Schall was a great teacher.  He had a natural ability to connect with everyone he met, especially the students who were readily drawn into his own excitement of learning.  A conversation with Jim Schall was always a lively event.  You never knew where it was going to lead, as he was capable of leaping across great intellectual chasms.  That…

“Live not by lies,” was the advice that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (born December 11, 1918) gave his compatriots when they asked him how to stand up to the crushing might of the Soviet Union.  He did not seek an open confrontation with the regime.  Neither resistance nor violence could succeed in the face of a remorseless killing machine.  Individuals would simply…

The discovery and publication of John Rawls’s senior thesis can be compared to the impact of the early writings of Karl Marx. It was only with the appearance of the latter that readers could gain an appreciation of the humanist roots of Marxian thought that, in its mature formulation, was centered more narrowly on economic theory. A similar pattern applies…

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 status compared to the strictly autonomous unfolding of philosophy. Yet it is by virtue of this difference of perspective that they may have something to contribute to philosophy. The problem, however, is that…




Like all great books, Israel and Revelation defies categorization in terms of genre.  It is neither a work of biblical criticism nor an account of political ideas.  At the same time, it is clearly not intended as a confessional or a theological guide to Sacred Scripture.  Some element of all three genres are admittedly present but the combination eludes specific…

We share the sadness of the family of Beverly Jarrett at her recent passing.  All members of the Voegelin community are deeply in her debt for the contribution she made to the publication of the Collected Works.  It stands as a fitting testament to Beverly’s four decades of work in scholarly publishing.  Beginning as a copy editor at Louisiana State…