The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 23

History of Political Ideas, Volume V
Religion and the Rise of Modernity

Edited with an Introduction by James L. Wiser

Examining the emergence of modernity within the philosophical and political debates of the sixteenth century, Religion and the Rise of Modernity resumes the analysis of the "great confusion" introduced in Volume IV of History of Political Ideas. Encompassing a vast range of events ignited by Luther's Ninety-Five Theses, this period is one of controversy, revolution, and partiality.

Despite the era's fragmentation and complexity, Voegelin's insightful analysis clarifies its significance and suggests the lines of change converging at a point in the future: the medieval Christian understanding of a divinely created closed cosmos was being replaced by a distinctly modern form of human consciousness that posits man as the proper origin of meaning in the universe.

Analyzing the most significant features of the great confusion, Voegelin examines a vast range of thought and issues of the age. From the more obvious thinkers to those less frequently studied, this volume features such figures as Calvin, Althusius, Hooker, Bracciolini, Savonarola, Copernicus, Tycho de Brahe, and Giordano Bruno. Devoting a considerable amount of attention to Jean Bodin, Voegelin presents him as a prophet of a new, true religion amid the civilizational disorder of the post-Christian era. Focusing on such traditional themes as monarchy, just war theory, and the philosophy of law, this volume also investigates issues within astrology, cosmology, and mathematics.

Religion and the Rise of Modernity is a valuable work of scholarship not only because of its treatment of individual thinkers and doctrines influential in the sixteenth century and beyond but also because of its close examination of those experiences that formed the modern outlook.

About the Author

Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was one of the most original and influential philosophers of our time. Born in Cologne, Germany, he studied at the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of political science in the Faculty of Law. In 1938, he and his wife, fleeing Hitler, emigrated to the United States. They became American citizens in 1944. Voegelin spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. During his lifetime he published many books and more than one hundred articles. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin will make available in a uniform edition all of Voegelin's major writings.

About the Editor

James L. Wiser is Vice President of Academic Affairs at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Political Philosophy: A History of the Search for Order and Political Theory: A Thematic Inquiry.

1998. 280 pp. 6 x 9. Index. ISBN 0-8262-1194-1. $42.50s.

History of Political Ideas

Series Editor, Ellis Sandoz

I. Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity
Edited by Athanasios Moulakis

II. The Middle Ages to Aquinas
Edited by Peter von Sivers

III. The Later Middle Ages
Edited by David Walsh

IV. Renaissance and Reformation
Edited by David L. Morse and William M. Thompson

V. Religion and the Rise of Modernity
Edited by James L. Wiser

VI. Revolution and the New Science
Edited by Barry Cooper

VII. The New Order and Last Orientation
Edited by Jürgen Gebhardt and Thomas A. Hollweck

VIII. Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man
Edited by David Walsh

The eight volumes of History of Political Ideas comprise Volumes 19-26 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin.

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