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  • Two Theories of the Renaissance – Berdyaev’s and Spengler’s

    December 11, 2018

    In the Eighteenth Century, self-congratulatory pamphleteers and encyclopédistes, wanting to effectuate a break with tradition, extol their autonomy, and celebrate what they themselves named the Enlightenment, invented the tripartite historical construction of Antiquity – the Medieval Period – and Modernity.  Edward Gibbon and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel assume this…

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  • 2019 Eric Voegelin Society's Submission Reminder!

    December 10, 2018

    The deadline for submissions for the 2019 Eric Voegelin Society on August 29-September 1 in Washington D.C. is due January 15, 2019. Please submit your paper proposal and volunteer as a chair and discussant through the American Political Science Association submission system. The submission system is available here. More…

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  • Our List of Christmas Holiday Readings and Books of the Year for 2018

    December 10, 2018

    Brought to you by the friends of and contributors to VoegelinView!   Michael Henry (St. John’s University) Michael Walsh’s The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West Walsh her continues his effort to restore an appreciation for Western Civilization and counter…

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  • The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity

    December 9, 2018

    The Idol of Our Age: How the Religion of Humanity Subverts Christianity. Daniel J. Mahoney. New York: Encounter Books, 2018.   Machiavelli accuses Christians of un-civic softness. His attention distracted by Heaven, the Christian neglects reality on earth. Since material reality turns out to be the only kind Machiavelli…

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Superhero Ethics. Travis Smith. Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2018.
 
No doubt as soon as there were two superheroes, people asked the question “who would win in a fight?”
Much of the fun of debating “who would win in a fight” is listening to and giving thoughtful and nuanced arguments about the merits of one’s preferred superhero’s powers buttressed with examples drawn from…

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Thanks to Steven F. McGuire for organizing the symposium on John von Heyking's book, The Form of Politics: Aristotle and Plato on Friendship!
Please see the features below!
Joshua Bowman’s “Friendship and ‘Filthy’ Politics in Plato and Aristotle”
Carol Cooper’s “Contemplating Friendship”
James Greenaway’s “The Form of Politics as Friendship”
Rodolfo Hernandez’s “Aristotle and Plato on Friendship”
John von Heyking’s “’The Delicate Shimmer of Interlaced Rainbows’:…

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I thank Steven McGuire for organizing this symposium and Lee Trepanier for publishing it here on Voegelinview. Away from the friendships unfriendly that dominate the internet and social media, Voegelinview is an online forum for serious discussion open to anyone who wishes to participate. I am grateful to the contributors—Carol Cooper, Rudy Hernandez, James Greenaway, and Joshua Bowman— for taking…

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In The Form of Politics, John von Heyking directs his readers to the critical importance of friendship in the political thought of Aristotle and Plato. The title nicely captures the key finding of the book: true friendship between individuals was thought by Aristotle and Plato to provide an analog for the harmony that might be achieved in a political community.…

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John von Heyking’s analysis of friendship in The Form of Politics centers on the Greek concept of sunaisthesis, the triangle of perception and recognition that occurs when two friends, both interiorly oriented towards the good, are simultaneously “beholding the good while beholding one another beholding the good.”[1] Von Heyking argues that sunaisthesis, which is characteristic of Aristotelian “virtue-friendship,” is both…

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The Italian philosopher and statesman, Benedetto Croce, once wrote that, “politics and filth are so frequently identified in the ordinary conversation of people that the thoughtful person is rather puzzled by the situation. Why should politics, one of the fundamental activities of man, one of the perpetual forms of the human spirit, alone enjoy homage of such contemptuous language? We…

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Erich Hermann Wilhelm Vögelin was born in Cologne, Germany in January 1901, just as Western civilization was about to tear itself apart. He grew up in Vienna, the child of rather typical Protestant parents, and joined the Law Faculty at the University of Vienna before becoming a dedicated political science professor there. Because of his vocal opposition to the Nazis…

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In the English-speaking world political philosophy, as traditionally conceived, has been represented by Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Michael Oakeshott, and Eric Voegelin. While each of these four has made contributions to the various dimensions of philosophizing about man’s political existence, only Voegelin combines all the features characteristic of a great speculative philosopher: analytical and diagnostic, comprehensive and systematic, and prescriptive…

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The Incarnation is not an event in History; it’s an event in the Metaxy.
This statement lies at the core of the problem between Voegelin and many Christian students of his work. Had Voegelin been more aware of and appreciative of (Eastern) Orthodox theology he would have been able to cite numerous references to support this claim. The equivalences would have…

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