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Eric Voegelin's Analysis of the Spiritual Roots of Political Disorder Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 1988 Ideology and Pneumapathological Consciousness: Eric Voegelin's Analysis of the Spiritual Roots of Political Disorder Michael Franz Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Franz, Michael, "Ideology and Pneumapathological Consciousness: Eric Voegelin's Analysis of the Spiritual Roots of Political Disorder" (1988). Dissertations. 2630. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/2630 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 1988 Michael Franz IDEOLOGY AND PNEUMAPATHOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS: ERIC VOEGELIN'S ANALYSIS OF THE SPIRITUAL ROOTS OF POLITICAL DISORDER by Michael G. Franz A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Loyola University of Chicago in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 1988 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes first to thank his parents, Margaret and George Franz, to whom this work is dedicated. It could not have been undertaken or completed if not for their encouragement. Special thanks are owed to Dean James L. Wiser, the director of the dissertation, for innumerable suggestions and forms of assistance since the inception of the project. The members of the dissertation committee, Professors John A. Gueguen, Richard s. Hartigan, and Thomas s. Engeman, have each made important contributions to my education and to this study. I am also grateful to the Arthur J. Schmitt Foundation for a fellowship which permitted a year of uninterrupted research. Stimulating environments in which to write were provided by three gracious and accomodating department chairmen: Dr. Alan R. Gitelson of Loyola University of Chicago, Dr. John R. Johannes of Marquette University, and Dr. William I. Kitchin of Loyola College in Maryland. For her boundless faith and continual support I thank my wife, Christina Franz. ii VITA The author, Michael Franz, was born on June 11, 1957, in Geneva, Illinois. Mr. Franz completed his secondary education in June of 1975 at Wheaton North High School, Wheaton, Illinois. He entered Illinois State University in 1975 and, after a period of study at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan, received the degree of Bachelor of Science from Illinois state in May, 1980. A series of tuition scholarships and research assistantships enabled him to complete the coursework and examination requirements of the Doctoral Program in Political Science at Loyola University of Chicago in August, 1985, with the degree of Master of Arts having been conferred in May of that year. Mr. Franz served as Lecturer in Political Science at Loyola University of Chicago from 1982 through 1985, and as Instructor of Political Science at Marquette University during the 1986-1987 academic year. He was appointed in July of 1987 to the position of Assistant Professor of Political Science at Loyola College in Maryland. His publications include, "The Impact of Taxes on Growth and Distribution in Developed Capitalist Countries: A cross-National Study," (with Claudio J. Katz and Vincent A. Mahler) American Political Science Review, Dec·ember, 1983. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . • . • . • • . • • . • . • • . ii VITA ....••.....•..••••...••...........•...••...•••.... iii Chapter I. THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF MODERNITY: NATURE AND LINEAGE. • . • . • . • • • . • . • . 1 II. THE ETIOLOGY OF PNEUMAPATHOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS. • . • . • . • . 3 7 III. A NEW HEAVEN AND A NEW EARTH .•••........•...... 105 IV. IDEOLOGY, CONSCIOUSNESS AND HISTORY ••......••.. 141 V. BEYOND THE AGE OF IDEOLOGY ......•••.•..•..•..•• 178 Bibliography I. WORKS BY ERIC VOEGELIN, 1922-1987 .••.••..••.... 226 II. WORKS ON ERIC VOEGELIN, 1929-1988 .......•.•.... 239 III. ADDITIONAL WORKS CONSULTED .......•......•..••.. 258 iv CHAPI'ER I THE POLITICAL CRISIS OF MODERNITY: NATURE AND LINEAGE The rise of political mass movements based upon comprehensive intellectual systems has been widely recognized as one of the most prominent features of nineteenth and twentieth century political history. The impact of such movements, along with their apparent novelty, has in fact led certain scholars to characterize the last 150 years as the "Age of Ideology. 111 Although the impact of ideological movements has indeed been great, and while the ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are certainly novel in important respects, the suspicion has persisted among many analysts of ideology that these movements cannot be understood simply as products of the political conditions or climate of opinion of the late modern period. Since ideologies such as Hegelianism, Marxism, fascism, progressivism and positivism continue to attract adherents long after the passing of the political conditions present during the lE.g., Henry David Aiken, The Age of Ideology: The Nineteenth Century Philosophers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957): Karl Dietrich Bracher, The Age of Ideology: A History of Political Thought in the Twentieth Century (New York: St. Martin's, 1985); Isaac Kramnick and Frederick M. Watkins, eds., The Age of Ideology: Political Thought 1750 to the Present (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1979). See also Eric Voegelin, Anamnesis (Notre Dame, Indiana, and London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), p. 146. 1 2 period of their development (and, some would argue, long after these ideologies have been decisively refuted), it is difficult to see how the generation and expansion of ideology can be explained by factors such as the events surrounding the advent of capitalism or the French Revolution or the breakup of feudal society. As a broader background seems to be needed in order to account for the diversity and persistence of ideological phenomena, much attention has been devoted to the "modern project" in general or to the various "waves" of modernity. Yet, in works such as Norman Cohn's The Pursuit of the Millennium, one can find reason to question whether the patterns of thought and activity typical of ideological movements can be contained even within the modern period as a whole. Cohn's analysis of the similarities between medieval millenarianism and modern ideological movements suggests that the movements of our age are not products of that age but, rather, manifestations of a pattern of psychic disorientation which may arise in widely varying cultural and political contexts. This line of thinking has been supported to some extent by sociological, anthropological and historical research, but finds its fullest and most competent theoretical expression in the work of Eric 3 voegelin. 2 In Voegelin's last writings the origins of ideological types of activism are traced not to modernity but to antiquity, and are explained as reactions not to particular circumstances but to the human condition itself. Voegelin's life-long effort to uncover the historical and intellectual roots of ideological activism was initiated by his early realization that "the academic institutions of the Western world, the various schools of philosophy, the rich manifold of methodologies, did not offer the intellectual instruments that would make the political movements ••. of Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, and racism, of constitutionalism, liberalism and authoritarianism ..• intelligible."3 A distinct and continuous theme running throughout Voegelin's voluminous writings is the argument that the proliferation of ideological movements is symptomatic of a deeper civilizational crisis. His career as a political scientist can be described as a search for (1) the wellsprings of the political crisis of modernity, (2) the analytical tools required to render it intelligible, and (3) sources for an appropriate therapy. While Voegelin's 2see esp. Sylvia L. Thrupp, ed., Millennial Dreams in Action: Essays in Comparative study (The Hague: Mouton, 1962), passim. 3voegelin, Anamnesis (1978), p. 3. 4 writings were by no means confined to the modern period, and although he was ultimately to find neither the cause nor the cure for the crisis within modernity, he frequently noted that his theoretical project as a whole should be understood as a response to "the spiritual disorder of our time, the civilizational crisis of which everyone so readily speaks."4 Given Voegelin's characterization of philosophy itself as "an act of resistance illuminated by conceptual understanding, n5 it is clear that an evaluation of his analysis of ideological phenomena must be central to any assessment of his stature as a political philosopher. As an introduction to Voegelin's analysis of the political crisis of modernity--and to the patterns of consciousness from which he believed the crisis has arisen --this chapter will be devoted to an examination of three central issues: ( 1) What is the nature of ideological consciousness? (2) Can equivalents of ideological consciousness be found prior to the so-called Age of Ideology, and, if so, what characteristics unite or distinguish these patterns of consciousness? (3) What are the psychological or experiential foundations of 4voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago:
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