The New Science of Politics

An Introduction

Eric Voegelin

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780226861142
• eBook ISBN: 9780226189970
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

A classic work of political theory by one of the leading political philosophers of the twentieth century

What Eric Voegelin attempts in The New Science of Politics is nothing less ambitious than a complete theory of humanity, society, and history. To build his theory, Voegelin draws on a breathtaking range of subjects from throughout history, including the Mongol Orders of Submission, the Behistun Inscription, and a controversy over an alter to the goddess Victoria in the Roman Forum. Addressing the access to truth afforded by myth, revelation, and philosophy, Voegelin then carefully contrasts each with gnosticism. The resulting book is a heady exploration of the development of European politics through the Western tradition and the ongoing importance of the inner quest for transcendent reality. =

NOTES

Introduction

1. The intellectual history of the first half of the twentieth century is extremely complex because it is the history of a slow recovery (with many trials that have ended in impasses) from the thorough destruction of intellectual culture in the late nineteenth century. A critical study of this process would be perhaps premature as long as the dust of the struggle is still flying; and, in fact, no such comprehensive study has hitherto been attempted. There exists, however, a recent introduction to contemporary philosophy which (in spite of certain technical shortcomings) demonstrates how much can be done even today; it is I. M. Bochenski’s Europäische Philosophic der Gegenwart (Bern, 1947). In his interpretation the author is guided by the two mottoes on the title-page of his book—Marcus Aurelius’ “The philosopher, this priest and helper of the Gods” and Bergson’s “Philosophy, too, has its scribes and pharisees.” The various philosophies are ranked according to their value as ontologies, from the lowest to the highest, under the chapter headings of “Matter,” “Idea,” “Life,” “Essence,” “Existence,” “Being.” The last chapter, on the philosophies of being, deals with the English and German metaphysicians (Samuel Alexander, Alfred N. Whitehead, Nicolai Hartmann) and the Neo-Thomists. The first chapter deals with the lowest-ranking philosophies, from the bottom up with Bertrand Russell, neo-positivism, and dialectical materialism.

Chapter 1

1. Aristotle Politics 1280a7 ff.

2. Plato Republic 358e-367e.

3. Magna Carta, chap. 12.

4. Writ of Summons to a ‘Colloquium’ of Merchants (1303), in Stubbs, Select Charters (8th ed.), p. 500.

5. Summons of the Archbishop and Clergy to Parliament (1295) in Stubbs, op. cit., p. 485.

6. Summons to the Parliament of Lincoln (1301), in Stubbs, op. cit., p. 499.

7. Fortescue, The Governance of England, ed. Plummer (Oxford, 1885), chaps, i and ii.

8. Fortescue, De laudibus legum Anglic, ed. S. B. Chrimes (Cambridge, 1942), chap. xiii.

9. Fortescue, The Governance of England, chap. viii.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid., chap. 3; also De laudzbus, chap. xiii.

12. Pauli Historia Langobardorum (Hanover, 1878), I, 14.

13. Ibid., p. 20.

14. Ibid., p. 23.

15. For a survey of the problem see Alfred Dove, Dcr Wudaintritt des nationakn Prin?ips in die Weltgeschichtc (1890) (in Ausgewdhlte Scbnjten [1898]).

16. Maurice Hauriou, Précis de droit constituttonnel (2d ed., 1929).

Chapter 2

1. L. W. King and R. C. Thompson, The Sculptures and Inscriptions of Darius the Great on the Rock of Behistun (London, 1907), § LXIII, p. 72.

2. Ibid., § LIV, p. 65.

3. Ibid., § LVIII, p. 68.

4. The Persian original and a French translation of this letter are to be found in Paul Pelliot, Les Mongols et la papauté (“Revue de l’Orient Chrétien,” 3^e série, Vol. III [1923]). The passage in parentheses is taken from a Latin version of the same letter, published in Cronica Fratris Salimbene, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH, SS, XXXII, 208. The extant Mongol documents are collected and edited in Eric Voegelin, The Mongol Orders of Submission to European Powers, 1245–1255 (“Byzantion,” Vol. XI [1941]).

5. From the Edict of Kuyuk Khan in Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale Qs.L, 1474), Book XXXI, chaps. 51, 52; Voegelin, op.cit., p. 389.

6. Voegelin, op. cit., pp. 404 ff.

7. Karl Jaspers,Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (Zurich, 1949), pp. 18 ff.

8. Henri Bergson, Les deux sources de la morale et de la religion (Paris, 1932), passim, esp. pp. 287 ff.

9. Plato Republic 368c-d.

10. Ibid. 492b.

11. Ibid. 435e.

12. Ibid. 544d-e.

13. Ibid. 382a.

14. Pbilosophos and philodoxos distinguished (ibid. 480).

15. Plato Pbacdrus 278d-e; cf. the complex of Heraclitean fragments B 35, B 40, B 50, B 108.

16. St. Augustine Civitas Dei viii. 1.

17. Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics 1113a, 29–35.

18. Ibid. 1176a, 17 ff.

19. Aristotle Politics 1286b, 8–21 and 1302a, 2.

20. On the evolution of the meaning of psyche see Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers (Oxford, 1947), esp. chap, v; and Bruno Snell, Die Entdeckung des Geistes: Studien zur Entstehung des europdischen Denkens bei den Gnechen (Hamburg, 1948).

21. Plato L...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title Page
• Epigraph
• Foreword, 1987
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Contents
• Introduction
• I. Representation And Existence
• II. Representation And Truth
• III. The Struggle For Representation In The Roman Empire
• IV. Gnosticism—The Nature Of Modernity
• V. Gnostic Revolution—The Puritan Case
• VI. The End Of Modernity
• Notes
• Index