Merely a Matter of Time

A Letter to G. H. Müller 

January 27, 1978

 

Dear Mr. Mueller:

Your letter, dated Fall 1977, has been lying unanswered on my desk.1 The reason: I am not really able to contribute much to your suggestions. But I do not want to appear impolite and uninterested. Why everything is not working with the Society [International Society for the Study of Time]2 as it should has been said very well by you yourself.

On the one hand, the Society should be a forum for the reconstitution of philosophizing in the scope of the Aristotelian horizon. (This has my most sincere agree­ment.) On the other hand, the Society has been limited to just one category, to Time, something that does not signify an independent entity and that prevents the horizon from being filled in.

I cannot speak about “time” and exclude eternity from the meditation. And you yourself, on page 3, listed alternatives (Consciousness, Truth, Life, etc.) that are not alternatives, but are part of the matter under discussion.

One would thus have to distinguish between the use of the word “Time,’ in order to give the Society a name (for this is a very suitable word) and the subject matter with which the society is to concern itself.

For how does one speak about Time without the problems of consciousness, of truth, of reality (aletheia in the classical sense), of being, etc. becoming acute within the inquiry?

If Time is viewed as an “object” with which the Society has to preoccupy itself, to the exclusion of the problems belonging to the subject matter, this can only lead to disasters, some of which already occurred at the last meeting.

As an example: I am currently working on two studies, one on “Beginning and Beyond” as the fundamental symbols in the history of consciousness, and another one on “Wisdom and the Magic of the Extreme.” Both would in my opinion belong to the Society’s subject matter; both would encounter a lack of understanding from the positivist wing, if not open hostility.

And the Society seems to be moving in the direction of positivist restriction of the subject matter. So much for my reserve and the question what my place is in this Society.

I remember with pleasure our conversations in Alpach.  With best wishes,

Always yours,

Eric Voegelin

 

Notes

1. Original in German. Professor Gert Müller taught at the Mathematical Insti­tute of the University of Heidelberg.

2. International Society for the Study of Time. Voegelin had been asked to organize the section “Time and Culture” at the society’s first conference in Oberwolfach in the Black Forest in 1969. This is where he delivered “On Hegel–A Study in Sorcery.” After the 1976 meeting in Alpbach, Voegelin requested that he be removed from the board of advisers of the society.

 

This excerpt is from Selected Correspondence 1950-1984 (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin 30) (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999)

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Eric Voegelin (1901-85) was a German-born American Political Philosopher. He was born in Cologne and educated in Political Science at the University of Vienna, at which he became Associate Professor of Political Science. In 1938 he and his wife fled from the Nazi forces which had entered Vienna and emigrated to the United States, where they became citizens in 1944. He spent most of his academic career at the University of Notre Dame, Louisiana State University, the University of Munich and the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. More information about him can be found under the Eric Voegelin tab on this website.

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