• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 15: Order and History, Volume II, The World of the Polis Athanasios Moulakis, Editor University of Missouri Press the collected works of ERIC VOEGELIN VOLUME 15 ORDER AND HISTORY VOLUME II THE WORLD OF THE POLIS projected volumes in the collected works 1. On the Form of the American Mind 2. Race and State 3. The History of the Race Idea: From Ray to Carus 4. The Authoritarian State: An Essay on the Problem of the Austrian State 5. Modernity without Restraint: The Political Religions; The New Science of Politics; and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism 6. Anamnesis 7. Published Essays, 1922– 8. Published Essays 9. Published Essays 10. Published Essays, 1940–1952 11. Published Essays, 1953–1965 12. Published Essays, 1966–1985 13. Selected Book Reviews 14. Order and History, Volume I, Israel and Revelation 15. Order and History, Volume II, The World of the Polis 16. Order and History, Volume III, Plato and Aristotle 17. Order and History, Volume IV, The Ecumenic Age 18. Order and History, Volume V, In Search of Order 19. History of Political Ideas, Volume I, Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity 20. History of Political Ideas, Volume II, The Middle Ages to Aquinas 21. History of Political Ideas, Volume III, The Later Middle Ages 22. History of Political Ideas, Volume IV, Renaissance and Reformation 23. History of Political Ideas, Volume V, Religion and the Rise of Modernity 24. History of Political Ideas, Volume VI, Revolution and the New Science 25. History of Political Ideas, Volume VII, The New Order and Last Orientation 26. History of Political Ideas, Volume VIII, Crisis and the Apocalypse of Man 27. The Nature of the Law, and Related Legal Writings 28. What Is History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings 29. Selected Correspondence 30. Selected Correspondence 31. Hitler and the Germans 32. Miscellaneous Papers 33. Miscellaneous Papers 34. Autobiographical Reflections and Index order and history I. Israel and Revelation II. The World of the Polis III. Plato and Aristotle IV. The Ecumenic Age V. In Search of Order editorial board Paul Caringella Jürgen Gebhardt Thomas A. Hollweck Ellis Sandoz The Editorial Board offers grateful acknowledgment to the Earhart Foundation, Liberty Fund, Inc., Robert J. Cihak, M.D., and John C. Jacobs Jr. for support provided at various stages in the preparation of this book for publication. A special thanks for support goes to the Charlotte and Walter Kohler Charitable Trust. The University of Missouri Press offers its grateful acknowledgment for generous contributions from the Earhart Foundation and from the Eric Voegelin Institute in support of the publication of this volume. THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ERIC VOEGELIN VOLUME 15 ORDER AND HISTORY VOLUME II THE WORLD OF THE POLIS edited with an introduction by ATHANASIOS MOULAKIS universityof missouri press columbia and london Copyright © 2000 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printed and bound in the United States of America All rights reserved 54321 0403020100 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Voegelin, Eric, 1901 Order and history. p. cm.—(The collected works of Eric Voegelin ; v. 15) Originally published: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1956– 1987. With new introd. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: — v. 2. The World of the Polis / edited with an introduction by Athanasios Moulakis. isbn 0-8262-1283-2 (v. 2 : alk. paper) 1. Civilization—Philosophy. 2. Order (Philosophy) I. Moulakis, Athanasios. II. Title. cb19.v58 2000 901—dc21 99-053537 ⅜ϱ ™ This paper meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984. Designer: Albert Crochet Typesetter: BookComp, Inc. Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typeface: Trump Mediaeval Contents Editor’s Introduction 1 Preface 53 Introduction: Mankind and History 67 Part One. Cretans, Achaeans, and Hellenes 1. Hellas and History 93 2. The Cretan and Achaean Societies 120 3. Homer and Mycenae 135 Part Two. From Myth to Philosophy 4. The Hellenic Polis 181 5. Hesiod 195 6. The Break with the Myth 234 7. The Aretai and the Polis 254 8. Parmenides 274 9. Heraclitus 292 Part Three. The Athenian Century 10. Tragedy 317 11. The Sophists 341 12. Power and History 406 Index 449 This page intentionally left blank THE WORLD OF THE POLIS This page intentionally left blank Editor’s Introduction The text first published by Louisiana University Press in 1957 has been reset to agree with the format of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Consequently the pagination is different. Otherwise the text is unchanged, except for minor corrections: I replaced unfamiliar forms of ancient names, such as “Ovidius” or “Rhodus,” with standard English forms such as “Ovid” and “Rhodes.” In all cases I adopted a single variant of a name, e.g., “Knossos” or “Dionysos,” throughout. I sought to rectify the solecisms that crept into some of the transliterated Greek. Minor idiosyncrasies of usage have been corrected. I did not otherwise presume to tamper with the style of a book that the author himself had seen through the press. 1. The Style of aMilitantAuthor Voegelin was sensitive to matters of language, perceiving in the use of words an index of intellectual clarity and rectitude.1 He was, moreover, as one who had worked arduously to fashion an 1. On the need to oppose the “destruction language,” a symptom and cause of “false consciousness,” see Eric Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, ed. Ellis Sandoz (1989; available Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 17, where he acknowledges the influence of the Stefan George circle and its efforts to “regain” the German language, and of Karl Kraus, whose analysis of the decay of language is central to his Kulturkritik. More explicitly on Kraus’s insight into the concomitant destruction of the social fabric as conducive to the rise of leaders representative of its decay, the emergence of mass movements and the atrocities that must follow, see p. 50. For degraded language as an unsuitable tool of analysis, being itself in need of being subjected to critical analysis—equivalent to Francis Bacon’s notion of idols—see Autobiographical Reflections, 93. One could easily multiply references to Voegelin’s concern with the deformation of language and the need to develop the intellectual apparatus to deal with it. 1 editor’s introduction instrument of scholarly expression in a language not his own, un- derstandably resentful of supercilious, dismissive criticisms of his English. He sought competent advice and took pride in the approval and encouragement he received from distinguished American men of letters such as Cleanth Brooks. Yet even sympathetic readers found Order and History “heavy going” and “not written for relaxation by the fireside.”2 Others protested what they considered Voegelin’s persistent “use of tech- nical vocabulary which is neither clear in itself, nor adequately elucidated by the author.”3 In an extensive and constructive re- view, that goes a long way toward explaining Voegelin’s true pur- pose, Gerhart Niemeyer addressed “the peculiar—and very great— difficulties of communication between Voegelin and his readers.”4 These go beyond the use of ugly neologisms or “Teutonic” infe- licities of style.5 Niemeyer correctly identified Voegelin’s manner of inquiry as unusual in the current practice of social science, and deliberately contrary to the dominant contemporary climate of opinion. On this reading, Voegelin was an embattled thinker, engaged on developing, against the inertia of received language, a critical vocabulary by means of which to analyze and, as far as is in the power of scholarship, help overcome the crisis of his time. It was to be expected, then, that the objects of his criticism would be resistant to his message. In this sense, the “problem of communication between Voegelin and his readers is itself a problem of political order.”6 This is what Voegelin described as the “Platonic position” of the thinker moved to aquest for true order by the 2. Charles W. Schull in Social Science 34 (1959): 54, qualifies his praise for Voegelin’s “clear language” and “sustained and lucid” style. R. L. Shinn, Saturday Review 41 (March 8, 1958): 27. 3. Robert Ammerman in Journal of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 19 (11958): 540. Norman W. Porteous, English Historical Review 75 (1960): 288–89, writes “not easy reading.” One could multiply the examples. 4. Gerhart Niemeyer in Review of Politics 21 (1959): 588–97, 594. 5. Victor Ehrenberg in Historische Zeitschrift 187 (1959): 369–73, 373: “ugly abstract words, reminiscent of sociological jargon, such as civilizational, imma- nentization, dilemmatic.” H. H. Scullard in History 44 (1959): 34: “heavy reading,” “frequent use of ugly words and jargon.” C. A. Robinson in American Historical Review 63 (1957–1958): 939–41: “a style that is unnecessarily difficult.” John Angus Campbell discusses the significance of Voegelin’s work “as it touches the deep ambiguities of the word as a force of order and disorder in the individual society” but characterizes him as “a major Teutonic scholar” of “Beethovenesque or Wagnerian vehemance [sic] and pathos”: Quarterly Journal of Speech 68 (1982): 80–91, 80, 91. 6. Niemeyer, Review of Politics, 594. 2 editor’s introduction experience of disorder.7 In the introduction to volume I of Order and History he writes: “The movement towards truth starts from man’s awareness of his existence in untruth.”8 His personal reaction to the ideological climate of his time is an equivalent of Plato’s critical opposition to the corruption of Athens. Plato thus becomes emblematic of all genuine philosophical endeavor. Dante Germino embraces and discusses the “Platonic position” in his introduction to the next volume of Order and History, Plato and Aristotle.9 It suffices here to point out the pivotal importance of Plato in Voegelin’s philosophy of history and in his interpretation of the Greeks in particular.

Load more

  488

Copy Link