Concepts of Nature: Ancient and Modern. R.J. Snell and Steven F. McGuire, eds.. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016.   The word, “nature,” is a broad term, often used ambiguously due to the long history of debate over its possible meanings.  The ambiguous use of the term derives, too, from…

The Political Discourse of Carl Schmitt: A Mystic of Order. Montserrat Herrero. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.   Montserrat Herrero is Associate Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Navarra, Spain. In the vast and growing scholarship about Carl Schmitt, Herrero’s book provides a new and insightful interpretation…

I. Guénon, Voegelin, and the Modern Crisis The concupiscent subject’s response to the Siren Song of the ecumene, to conquer and possess it, qualifies as Voegelin’s privative exodus in at least two senses. Pragmatically, the conqueror in going forth leaves home; he generally leaves it, moreover, with the cream…

I. Introduction: The Diadochic Kingdoms No area of Western history is quite as recondite as that of the Diadochic empires, the successor-kingdoms that sprang up in the wake of Alexander the Great’s meteoric campaigns (334 – 323 BC) to subdue Asia under militaristic Hellenism.  Educated people know that the…

This is the second of a series of essays that will explore what prominent thinkers and philosophers can teach us about today’s public multiversity, the modern university with its many colleges, departments, and other administrative units that play multiple functions and roles in our society. This essay was originally…

Tilo Schabert’s wonderfully vivid description of Eric Voegelin’s work habits and his life in Palo Alto brings back many memories of my own during the years when I lived in Plato Alto, 1975-76, and the years following that initial time, when I was either spending my summers there or…

Every religious tradition offers a soteriology – its own version of salvation called by whatever name – perhaps spiritual liberation as in the Hindu moksha or enlightenment as in the Buddhist samadhi. It claims to have exclusive possession of the one true “solution” to the human predicament, with the…

God: An Autobiography as Told to a Philosopher.  Jerry L. Martin.  Doylestown, PA: Caladium Publishing Co., 2016.   God an Autobiography is a book of 360 pages divided into eleven chapters. It is prefaced by a four page account of “The Beginning” in which Jerry Martin (hereafter, JM) tells…

Let us begin our inquiry with the following datum: The human experience of the Divine Reality has often, though not always, been an encounter with a personal God, a God who is a Person. – Yahweh speaks directly to Abraham and Moses, Samuel and Jeremiah and others. – Jesus…