On Belonging
I know that I am a derived reality, that I am not self-caused. I am not the “ground” of my own being. But what is, then? We…
On the Cosmos
Reality, if one includes past, present, and future, is a narrative completeness of meaning to which we spontaneously relate ourselves. This unity, this wholeness of all meaning,…
On Honesty
Almost two hundred years ago, Søren Kierkegaard wrote: “Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the…
Frederick “Fritz” Wagner: An Appreciation (Chip Hughes)
Fritz Wagner was a gracious friend and colleague who invited me from the beginning of VoegelinView to have my essays appear on the site. He was incisive,…
Hamlet, The Affective Roots of Decision, and Modernity
Hamlet is a play so rich in insight regarding human existence, so revelatory and reverberative, that Harold Bloom is justified in calling it a “poem unlimited."[1][2] All…
Equivalences of Experience, and Symbols of the Depth By Which Experience Lives
“Equivalences of Experience and Symbolization in History” (1971)[1] is, in my view, one of Eric Voegelin’s five most important stand-alone essays, along with “Immortality: Experience and Symbol”…
Roger Scruton’s The Face of God
The Face of God. Roger Scruton. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012. The Face of God, the most recent book by the prolific English philosopher Roger Scruton,…
T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets: A Pattern of Timeless Moments
First Impressions My first encounter with T. S. Eliot's masterpiece, the poem-cycle Four Quartets, took place when I was twenty years old. The conditions were unusually felicitous.…
Emily Dickinson and the Unknown God
Of American poets taught regularly in secondary education, the two most ill-served are Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson. Students are typically introduced to these poets through their…
From Big Bang to Big Mystery: Human Origins in Light of Creation and Evolution
From Big Bang to Big Mystery: Human Origins in the Light of Creation and Evolution. Brendan Purcell. New York: New City Press, 2012. Brendan Purcell’s From…
Voegelin’s Question of the Ground
Voegelin's notion of the differentiation of consciousness may be clarified by setting it off against what he considers to be the foundational structure of consciousness that does…
The Terror of History
History, to be precise about the term, is not everything that has ever happened, but the remembered and recorded past, the past judged worthy of reflection and…
Ezra Pound and the Balance of Consciousness
The most efficient way to approach Ezra Pound's artistic struggle with the problem of transcendence will be to use Eric Voegelin's philosophy of human existence and history…
David Walsh’s The Modern Philosophical Revolution: Glenn Hughes
I have learned more from this book, philosophically, than from any book in years. I do find its central hypothesis persuasive. And not only does it often…