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The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 16: Order and History, Volume III, Plato and Aristotle

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The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 16: Order and History, Volume III, Plato and Aristotle The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 16: Order and History, Volume III, Plato and Aristotle Dante Germino, Editor University of Missouri Press the collected works of ERIC VOEGELIN VOLUME 16 ORDER AND HISTORY VOLUME III PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 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 Poli- tics; and Science, Politics, and Gnosticism 6. Anamnesis 7. Published Essays, 1922– 8. Published Essays 9. Published Essays 10. Published Essays 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 And Other Late Unpublished Writings 29.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 andRevelation II. The Worldof the Polis III. Plato andAristotle 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., andJohn C. Jacobs Jr. for support providedatvarious stages in the preparation of this book for publication. A special thanks for support goes to the Charlotte andWalter Kohler Charitable Trust. The University of Missouri Press offers its grateful acknowledgment for a generous contribution from the Eric Voegelin Institute. THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ERIC VOEGELIN VOLUME 16 ORDER AND HISTORY VOLUME III PLATO AND ARISTOTLE edited with an introduction by DANTE GERMINO universityof missouri press columbia and london Copyright © 2000 by The Curators of the University of Missouri University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201 Printedandboundin the UnitedStates of America All rights reserved 54321 0403020100 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Voegelin, Eric, 1901– Order and history. p. cm. — (The collectedworks of Eric Voegelin; v. 16) Originally published: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1956–1987. With new introd. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 3. Plato and Aristotle / edited with an introduction by Dante Germino. ISBN 0-8262-1250-6 (v. 3 : alk. paper) 1. Civilization—Philosophy. 2. Order (Philosophy). I. Germino, Dante. 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 PrintedLibrary Materials, Z 39.48, 1984. Designer: Albert Crochet Typesetter: BookComp, Inc. Printer andbinder:Thomson-Shore, Inc. Typeface: Trump Mediaeval Contents Editor’s Preface ix Editor’s Introduction 1 Preface 43 Part One. Plato 1. Plato andSocrates 57 2. The Gorgias 78 3. The Republic 100 4. Phaedrus and Statesman 189 5. Timaeus and Critias 224 6. The Laws 269 Part Two. Aristotle 7. Aristotle andPlato 325 8. Science andContemplation 347 9. The Science of the Polis 369 10. On Types of Character andSkepticism 413 Index 429 This page intentionally left blank Editor’s Preface The text of this new edition of volume III of Eric Voegelin’s Order and History is the same as that of the first edition published by the Louisiana State University Press in 1957, except for the silent revision of occasional minor stylistic idiosyncracies and typograph- ical errors. I have been unable to bring myself to change Voegelin’s predilection for “on principle” to the standard usage of “in principle,” however, because this peculiarity and other idiosyncracies that do not standin the way of clarity form part of the book’s charm. Thus, every effort has been made to leave the text as Voegelin himself left it. For example, I have refrained from adding more recent publications about Plato andAristotle on the groundsthat it is impossible to know which of the many secondary works published since then Voegelin himself wouldhave chosen to includein his notes hadhe livedto revise the editionhimself. The principal change is the addition of an introduction by myself, which is the result of my own interaction with the work, for forty years my most esteemedcompanion in teaching andthinking about the co-founders of political theory. There remains only the pleasure of thanking the following: Ellis Sandoz, both for his invitation to undertake this assignment and for his invaluable advice; Jonathan Rice of the Alderman Library, Uni- versity of Virginia, for compiling the reviews discussedandforother expert bibliographical assistance; andmy friendsandfellow schol- ars in political theory who readthe introductionandcommented on it: Professors Timothy Collins, Meindert Fennema, Benedetto Fontana, ManfredHenningsen, Thomas Hollweck, AndreasKinneg- ing, George Klosko, Jeffrey Miller, Athanasios Moulakis, Chaiwat Satha-Anand, Thomas W. Smith, Kenneth W. Thompson, and Arjo ix editor’s preface Vanderjagt, none of whom is implicated in what I say or how I say it, which indeed goes against some of the advice of some of them. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Finally, my thanks go to Beverly Jarrett, editor-in-chief of the University of Missouri Press, andJane Lago, managing editor, for making an editor’s job a happy one. Voegelin is fortunate indeed to have the greater part of his Collected Works publishedby this distinguished press, dedicated to the highest standards. Dante Germino Amsterdam December 1998 x PLATO AND ARISTOTLE This page intentionally left blank Editor’s Introduction The present volume, andin particular the part on Plato, is of all Eric Voegelin’s books this author’s favorite. In it, Voegelin succeeded almost single-handedly in rescuing Plato from the hands of the anachronists, who had judged him “according to a foreign code of conscience,” to employ the words of Auden’s great tribute to Yeats. Faculty andstudentssubjectedto mistranslations of such key terms as ariste politeia as “ideal state” and of misunderstandings of philosophia to mean the equivalent of ideology were suddenly freedfrom their entrapment, providedtheywere preparedto take Voegelin seriously, as I know from a lifetime of teaching many of them have been. During the forty years I have taught the history of political theory, this book has been my constant companion, andso I feel deeplyprivilegedto write the introductionto a new edition of it. In it, I devote primary attention to Plato, upon whom Eric Voegelin lavishedfar more attention than on Aristotle. This does not imply that I think the Aristotle chapters unimportant, for one wouldbe hard-pressedtofinda more succinct anderudite treatment of both the Nicomachean Ethics andthe Politics in the scholarly literature. I begin with a brief attempt to situate Voegelin’s reflections on Plato, publishedin 1957 as volume III of Order and History, in the context of his New Science of Politics and, above all, of what since then became the entirety of his opus magnum. Doing so shouldaid us in better understanding volume III itself and also in grasping the extraordinary place held by the great Athenian in Voegelin’s philos- ophy of orderandits relation to history. The secondpart contains as detailedacommentary on the book here being republishedas the economy of this introduction permits. A third, brief section 1 editor’s introduction considers Voegelin himself in “the Platonic position”—to employ his own words. The final part is a discussion of some leading reviews of the book. I. Plato in Voegelin With the publication, in 1952, of his Walgreen lectures at the Uni- versity of Chicago under the title of The New Science of Politics, Voegelin alreadyhadindicatedtheunique place of Plato andAristotle in the history of political theory. Indeed, they were its co-founders, with Plato claiming both chronological andsubstantive primacy. Thus, it was Plato who discovered the “anthropological principle” according to which the polis is man written large to exist in tension with the cosmological principle of the myth (society is the cosmos written small). Plato is credited with having for all time driven a “wedge . into the idea that society represents nothing but cosmic truth. A political society . will have to be an ordered cosmion, but not at the price of man.”1 Two other important points concerning the interpretation of Plato were adumbrated by Voegelin in the New Science: first, that Plato didnotintendto present “a philosophy of man” among others, but concretely to engage in “the exploration of the human
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