Rereading Order and History (Eric Voegelin) Klaus Vondung
Rereading Order and History (Eric Voegelin) Klaus Vondung
Rereading Order and History (Eric Voegelin) Klaus Vondung
Order and History, 5 vols. = The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, vols. 14-18 by Eric
Voegelin; Maurice P. Hogan; Athanasios Moulakis; Dante Germino; Michael Franz; Ellis Sandoz
Review by: Klaus Vondung
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 11, No. 1 (Summer, 2004), pp. 80-94
Published by: Springer
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RereadingEricVoegelin'sOrderandHistory
7. Ibid.,p. 24.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.,p. 19.
10. See especiallyIsraelandRevelation,
pp. 48, 52, 89-90;TheWorldof the Polis(= Orderand
HistoryII),pp. 67-90.
11. TheWorldof thePolis,p. 67.
12. IsraelandRevelation,p. 19.
"pioneer and stimulating mind who challenges continuous research and thinking,
refutation,contradiction,as well as approval."16
We encounter a similar mixture of criticism and appreciation with respect to
Voegelin's analysis of Israel. In an early review, H. H. Rowley had criticized that
Voegelin accentuated "paradigmatichistory" while neglecting "pragmatic history"
and he warned that "it is important to establish how far the history is reliable in a
work which is devoted to Orderand History."'7This criticism is still maintained in
recent biblical theology and Jewish thought, as for instance by BernhardW. Anderson
and Moshe Idel, as well as by Maurice P. Hogan in his introduction to Israeland
Revelation.And in a way similar to Machinist's and Assmann's critique, Moshe Idel
criticizesVoegelin's "marginalizationof ritual".In his view, ritual, in interrelationship
with myth, played a much more importantrole in the "generaleconomy of Judaism"
than Voegelin recognized.18In addition, recent archaeological,historical, and philo-
logical research suggests that the history of pre-exile Judaism is even more character-
ized by "pluralisticsymbolization"than Voegelin admitted and, in Anderson's view,
this "is also evident in the Bible".19
Although biblical studies have moved in new directionsduring recent decades, as
Hogan states in his introductionto vol. I, biblical hermeneutics,for all its new methods
and approaches, "still needs a philosophy of history such as Voegelin presents."20
Thus Voegelin's study is still important because of its philosophical perspective on
what makes Israel exceptional:that in Israel a breakthroughto a more differentiated
understanding of "the order of being of which the order of society is a part"occurred,
cast in the symbolization of the Exodus from the cosmological society of Egypt and the
revelation of the transcendentGod in the thornbushepisode, and that, in consequence,
Israeldeveloped an understandingof being a people with a 'history'in the presence of
the transcendentGod and thus createdhistory as a symbolic form of existence.
It was Voegelin's problem, and it remains one for many retrospectiveevaluations,
that he was an 'outsider' for orientalists, classicists, theologians, philosophers, and
historians who could point to shortcomings from their respective professional view-
points. Not very often do we find specialists who are able to combine their (justified)
criticism of Voegelin's handling of certain subject matters or particulardetails with a
congenial understanding of the theoretical approach and general importance of his
enterprise.Such a balanced evaluation is, however, presented by AthanasiosMoulakis
in his competent and highly informative introduction to vol. II of Orderand History,
TheWorldof thePolis.Again, as in Voegelin's treatmentof the older civilizations in vol.
philosophy on the soul of the individual as the center of experiencing the order of
being. In the Republic,Voegelin argued, Plato "issued the appeal of the Idea, and was
still bound to the polis through his hope for a response."Still, for Voegelin the Republic
was neither a 'utopian' vision nor a call for action, but an existential and political
paradigm. From the Phaedruson, however, Plato was "resigned to the fact that the
polis has rejected his appeal," the Phaedrusis "the manifesto that announces the emi-
gration of the spirit from the polis."24As Voegelin saw it, the turn away from deliber-
ating on the political order of the polis culminated in the Laws,where, instead, the
order of the individual soul becomes the centerof contemplation.
Thus, Plato's work for Voegelin had not only meaning for the "historyof order",
but also existential meaning. There was a greater distance between Plato's (and
Aristotle's)works and the order of the surroundingsociety than there had been in the
cosmological societies and even in Israel between the creatorsof symbolic order and
the pragmaticorder of society. Whereasthe revelatory "leap in being" in Israelconsti-
tuted the historical existence of the chosen people in the present under God, the
breakthroughof the parallel differentiationof philosophy brought to consciousness
the divine order of being that might also extend into society and history, but has its
center in the soul of the philosopher. The lasting existential meaning of - especially -
Plato's philosophy is clearly shown by Voegelin's placing himself in a "Platonicposi-
tion"with respect to the ideological and political corruptionof his own time.25
For both volumes II and III,Voegelin took advantage of the pioneering studies of
BrunoSnell, WernerJiger, and FrancisM. Cornford,and departed from their views in
essential points, as was his custom even when he was influenced by, and in general
accordancewith, brilliant scholarship.In comparisonwith Aristotle, Plato clearly had
pivotal importance for Voegelin, as shown not only by the respective internalpropor-
tions of vol. III, but also by the recurrenttreatment of Plato in volumes IV and V.
Voegelin's presentation of Aristotlewas more in accord with the academicscholarship
of his time than his understanding of Plato. He was indebted to a high degree to
WernerJiger's book on Aristotle (which is now considered to be outdated in many
respects).26For Voegelin Aristotle was the 'theoretician',while Plato seemed closer to
the motivating experiences of symbols. It was mainly Voegelin's persistent search for
the interrelationshipbetween experiencesand symbolization, I think, that earned him
raised eyebrows, to say the least, from certainPlato scholars,apart from his "occasion-
ally shooting from the hip", as Dante Germinonicely put it in his introductionto Plato
andAristotle.27The "noetic"dimension of experiences,as Voegelin called it, was not to
be separated from the motivating experiences in the field of politics and society; this
was demonstrated in particularin the central chapter on the Republicwith Voegelin's
interpretationof the "way up" and the "way down" as symbols with existential as
well as political meaning.28Again, we have to rememberthat Voegelin was after all a
political scientist;Carl J. Friedrichput the accent correctlywhen in his review of 1958
he judged that Voegelin's "discourseis politicaltheoryin the highest sense."29
1,988a10f.;988b 4-5.
34. Metaphysics,
"Symbolsof OrderandHistory?"
35. CarlJ.Friedrich, (above,n. 29),p. 11.
36. Someof the critiquesfroma Christianviewpointarepresentedin the Introductionto The
EcumenicAge(= OrderandHistoryIV),p. 18-19,note41.TheyincludeFrederick
D. Wilhelmsen,
"ProfessorVoegelin and the ChristianTradition,"in: id., ChristianityandPoliticalPhilosophy,
Athens,GA:Universityof GeorgiaPress,1978,pp. 195-196,201,205;BruceDouglass:"The
PoliticalScienceReviewer
Breakin Voegelin'sProgram," 7 (1977),p. 14;GerhartNiemeyer:
"EricVoegelin's Philosophy and the Dramaof Mankind,"ModernAge 20 (1976),p. 34.
37. TheEcumenicAge,p. 45..
"was untenable because it had not taken proper account of the important lines of
meaning in history that did not run along lines of time."38The task could not be to
construct the meaning of history, as so many philosophies of history had tried to do,
but to trace and analyze the events where meaning in history had been experienced
and symbolized.39In consequence,the analyses of TheEcumenicAge do not, as in the
preceding volumes, follow a general chronologicalline, but move "througha web of
meaning with a plurality of nodal points" and with several "dominantlines of mean-
ing" reachingfrom cosmological civilizations up to modem times.4AThis complicated
compositionof the book does not make for easy reading.
A decisive stimulus for Voegelin's change of concept was the analyticalclarifica-
tion of a symbolism for which he coined the name "historiogenesis".He presented his
analysis of this type of speculation in great detail in the first chapter of vol. IV.41By
'historiogenesis',Voegelin meant a fourth type of cosmological symbolization,in addi-
tion to cosmogony, theogony, and anthropogony, a type of myth that constructed a
'course'of history running from Gods via heroes to dynasties and kings and that could
be found in several cosmological societies. Proposing this type of speculation meant a
certainrevision of the 'compactness'Voegelin had ascribedto the cosmological societ-
ies. On the other hand, the idea of a unilinearhistory apparentlywas not, as Voegelin
had previously assumed, engendered by the differentiating events that led to the
conception of history in Israel and later in Christianity,but turned out to be a cosmo-
logical symbolism. Consequently,he had to registerthe persistenceof a 'cosmological'
type of speculation up to the modem philosophies of history of the 18th and 19th
centuries (with different content, but the same structure),which raised the question:
"Whatexactly was modem about modernity?"42This was a majorreason for Voegelin
himself not to fall into the trap of historiogeneticspeculation in his own philosophy of
history.
Apart from 'historiogenesis',Voegelin introduced some other new terms in The
EcumenicAge in order to create precise linguistic instruments for centralpoints of his
analyses, as, for instance, "egophany" for the revolt of the 'ego' against the divine
order of being that became luminous in 'theophanic'or 'hierophanic'events. The most
important term, however, which also became focal for Voegelin's subsequent philo-
sophical contemplations, was the Greek metaxy(between). Voegelin derived it from
Diotima's mythic tale about the birth of Eros and the discussion about love and the
spiritual man (daimoniosaner) in Plato's Symposium.43The word occurs there in the
description of man's existence between ignorance and wisdom, between deficiency
and plenitude, between mortality and immortality.44Now, 'between' is just an ordi-
nary preposition and one may question whether there is real textual evidence that
Plato himself charged this particularword with philosophical meaning, however fre-
quently it occurs. But it was a congenial stroke, I think, to capture with this simple
preposition what indeed was contemplated in Plato's dialogue: the 'in-between exist-
modern Gnosticism, or in the last century Ernst Bloch, who started out as an
apocalypticistand later on confessed to "revolutionaryGnosis."51
Apart from the quotation cited above, there are only a few remarks concerning
Gnosticism in vol. V. Instead of the title originally planned for the final volume of
Orderand History,The Crisisof WesternCivilization,the volume now bore the title In
Searchof Order,thus shifting the accent from the negative to the positive, as it were,
from the presentationand analysis of the disorder of the modern age to the existential
quest for truth concerningthe orderof being.
In Searchof Orderwas published posthumously as a fragment, it contained only
two major essays, The Beginningof the Beginningand ReflectiveDistancevs. Reflective
Identity.It seems that Voegelin had planned, at the time of completing TheEcumenic
Age and in the following years, to use some other articles and essays for vol. V,
published already during his lifetime or posthumously, like The Gospeland Culture,
Equivalences and Symbolization
of Experience in History,On Hegel:A Studyin Sorcery,The
Moving Soul, TheBeginning and theBeyond.59But certainly,he would have revised them
for inclusion in vol. V, and since he did not complete that task and since, towards the
end of his life, he apparentlyoften referredto the two essays mentioned above as the
core of volume V, the editor decided to include those two only. Nonetheless, the other
essays, in particularthe ones in the volume LateUnpublishedWritings,must be seen as
closely related to In Searchof Order.
In Searchof Orderrepresentednot a new 'break'with the preceding volume, but
again a change with respect to theoreticalapproach and method. In terms of 'genre', it
definitely was no longer an analyticalstory of the "historyof order",but a philosophi-
cal meditation on the "order of history" concerning the topics Voegelin had been
struggling with all the time: the beginning and the end of history; the 'course' of
history and meaning in history; the participatoryexistence of man and the tension of
existential reality; the experience of untruth and the search for truth concerning the
order of being as well as the order of the soul; the experiencesof transcendenceas the
heart of philosophizing and the endeavors to find adequate symbolic expressions for
their exegesis. The authors Voegelin dealt with in vol. V were now examples for his
own problem-orientedmeditations. It is, however, revealing that in his final volume
he returnsto Hegel, his main philosophicaladversary,as it were (nonethelessadmired
for his intellectual stature), and on the other hand to Hesiod, Parmenides and, above
all, to Plato.
A central problem discussed in vol. V is the question how the exegesis of the
experiences of existential tension in consciousness are adequately expressed in lan-
guage symbols, considering the fact that words necessarily have 'object character'
(Gegenstandsfdrmigkeit) and seem to refer to 'objects'.Thus, as Ellis Sandoz points out
Klaus Vondung
UniversitaitSiegen
FachbereichSprach-,Literatur-und
Medienwissenschaften- Germanistik