Eric Voegelin Quotes
Eric Voegelin was a German-American political philosopher whose work ranged from political theology to a vast philosophy of history. After the publication of his Political Religions in 1938 made his position in Vienna untenable, he fled to the United States and spent most of his career at Louisiana State University and at Notre Dame. The quotes below are attributed to Eric Voegelin, organized by topic.
Eric Voegelin on Death
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“The death of the spirit is the price of progress.”
Eric Voegelin (1987), The New Science of Politics: An Introduction , ISBN 0226861147 , p. 131
Eric Voegelin on God
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Attributed to Eric Voegelin:
“The truth of existence is the experience of the divine ground.”
Eric Voegelin on Justice
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“One can hardly engage in a serious study of medieval Christianity without discovering among its ‘values’ the belief in a rational science of human and social order and especially of natural law . Moreover, this science was not simply a belief, but it was actually elaborated as a work of reason.”
On Max Weber's omission of medieval Christianity
Eric Voegelin on Love
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“Philosophy springs from the love of being; it is man's loving endeavor to perceive the order of being and attune himself to it. Gnosis desires dominion over being; in order to seize control of being the Gnostic constructs his system. The building of systems is a gnostic form of reasoning , not a philosophical one.”
Eric Voegelin (1999), Science, Politics, and Gnosticism in The Collected Works, Vol. 5: Modernity Without Restraint , edited by Manfred Henningsen, ISBN 082621245X , p. 273.
Eric Voegelin on Nature
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“Christ is the head of the corpus mysticum, which includes all men from the beginning of the world to its end. He is not the president of a special-interest club .”
Eric Voegelin (1999), The Collected Works, Vol. 31: Hitler and the Germans , edited and translated by Detlev Clemens and Brandon Purcell, ISBN 0826212166 , p. 200.
Eric Voegelin on Politics
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Attributed to Eric Voegelin:
“Order in society is the reflection of order in the soul.”
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Attributed to Eric Voegelin:
“Modern Gnosticism is the attempt to immanentize the eschaton.”
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Attributed to Eric Voegelin:
“Reason itself is a force in the constitution of human community.”
Eric Voegelin on Time
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“The course of history as a whole is no object of experience ; history has no eidos , because the course of history extends into the unknown future.”
Eric Voegelin (1987), The New Science of Politics: An Introduction , ISBN 0226861147 , p. 120 -
“The order of history is the history of order.”
Wikiquote
Eric Voegelin on Truth
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Attributed to Eric Voegelin:
“Symbols are the means by which existential experience is communicated.”