The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 28
What Is History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings
Edited with an Introduction by Thomas A. Hollweck and Paul
Caringella
This volume contains the most significant pieces of unpublished
writing completed by Eric Voegelin during an important time of
his career. Spanning the period from the early 1960s to the late
1970s, these selections supplement the body of work Voegelin
published after the appearance of the first three volumes of
Order and History in 1956 and 1957. The five texts
included here are "What Is History?" "Anxiety and Reason," "The
Eclipse of Reality," "The Moving Soul," and "The Beginning and
the Beyond." In their introduction to the volume, Thomas A.
Hollweck and Paul Caringella place these writings in their proper
context and discuss the ways in which they reveal clues to the
evolution of Voegelin's thought.
In "What Is History?" Voegelin considers the development of a
transcendent structure of history while simultaneously rejecting
the notion that history can have a universal meaning. "Anxiety
and Reason" focuses on Voegelin's critically important theory of
historiogenesis, which links events in pragmatic history with
legendary and mythical events leading back to the beginning of
the cosmic order. In "The Eclipse of Reality," Voegelin presents
a critique of modernity by analyzing the work of Sartre,
Schiller, Comte, and others. "The Moving Soul"--a "thought
experiment" inspired by a remark Henry Margenau makes in The
Nature of Physical Reality--attempts to reformulate the
connections between physics and myth. The most important of these
essays is "Me Beginning and the Beyond." Here Voegelin meditates
on the universality of experience formed by the tension of
existence under God.
Publication of these previously unpublished writings will enable
scholars to trace the genesis of many of the concerns that
occupied Voegelin during a period in which the conception of his
main work was undergoing frequent and perhaps fundamental
changes.
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 Editors
Thomas A. Hollweck is associate professor of Germanic languages
and literatures at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Paul Caringella, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at
Stanford University, served as assistant to Eric Voegelin during
the final six years of Voegelin's life.
1990. 296 pp. 6 x 9. ISBN 0-8071-1603-3. $39.95s.
The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin
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