21 Facts About Eric Voegelin

Eric Voegelin was born in Cologne, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna, where he became an associate professor of political science in the law faculty.

Eric Voegelin spent most of his academic career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich and the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

Eric Voegelin's parents moved to Vienna in 1910, and he eventually studied at the University of Vienna.

Eric Voegelin taught at various universities before he joined Louisiana State University's Department of Government in 1942.

Eric Voegelin remained in Baton Rouge until 1958, when he accepted an offer by Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat to fill Max Weber's former chair in political science, which had been unoccupied since Weber's death in 1920.

Eric Voegelin returned to the United States in 1969 to join Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace as Henry Salvatori Fellow.

Eric Voegelin published scores of books, essays, and reviews in his lifetime.

Eric Voegelin wrote the multi-volume Order and History, which began publication in 1956 and remained incomplete at the time of his death 29 years later.

Eric Voegelin left many manuscripts unpublished, including a history of political ideas, which has since been published in eight volumes.

Eric Voegelin is more interested in the ontological issues that arise from these experiences than the epistemological questions of how we know that a vision of order is true or not.

The truth of any vision is confirmed by its orthodoxy, by what Eric Voegelin jokingly calls its lack of originality.

Eric Voegelin often invents terms or uses old ones in new ways.

For example, Eric Voegelin used Hans Urs von Balthasar, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Jonas.

Eric Voegelin perceived similarities between ancient Gnosticism and modernist political theories, particularly Communism and Nazism.

Eric Voegelin identified the root of the Gnostic impulse as alienation, that is, a sense of disconnection from society and a belief that this lack is the result of the inherent disorder, or even evil, of the world.

The primary feature that characterizes a tendency as gnostic for Eric Voegelin is that it is motivated by the notion that the world and humanity can be fundamentally transformed and perfected through the intervention of a chosen group of people, a man-god, or men-Gods.

When Eric Voegelin uses the term gnosis negatively, it is to reflect the word as found in the Manichaeism and Valentinianism of antiquity.

Eric Voegelin was arguing from a Hellenistic position that good gnosis is derived from pistis and that the pagan tradition made a false distinction between faith and noesis.

Eric Voegelin identified the root of the Gnostic impulse as alienation, and a belief that the disconnection is the result of the inherent disorder or even evil of the world.

Eric Voegelin was not interested so much in what religious dogmas might result in personal salvation but rather a recovery of the human in the classical sense of the daimonios aner.

Later, at an informal talk given at University College, Dublin, Ireland in 1972, Eric Voegelin suggested the Soviet Union might collapse by 1980 because of its failure to succeed in its domestic commitments and external political challenges.