Eric Voegelin is a towering figure in the intellectual landscape of the twentieth century. His work ranges from legal studies to philosophy, from historical studies to theology, from constitutional theory to literary studies, from a philosophical anthropology to a theory of empires. No one else in our time has, by scholarship, covered such a wide range of subjects. In this book, Voegelin's motives for this prodigious pursuit are spelled out. There was, first, the eclipse of reality brought about by the ideologies reigning supreme in the modern age and sharply diagnosed by him. Secondly, the atrocities committed by all those who wished to impose their false, 'second reality', as he called it, on all humankind. And, thirdly, his quest for truth, to resurrect all the lost knowledge, in its entire range, on the veritable form of human existence. While illuminating significant parts of his work, the interpretations brought together here bring to the fore the eminent role of Voegelin as a moral and political guide: throughout his life, he attracted generations of students as an outstanding teacher, and, now, through his writings, he speaks to us and the innumerable generations that will come after us, who face a very uncertain future. His voice strikes at times as a prophetic one. It is a merit of the contributions to this book that they convey, in various ways, this idea.
CONTRIBUTORS: Barry Cooper, James Greenaway, András Lánczi, Tilo Schabert, James R. Stoner, Jr., Árpád Szakolczai, Lee Trepanier, John von Heyking, David Walsh
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Reality, Lost and Found: Eric Voegelin as a Guide in and out of Trickster Land
ÁRPÁD SZAKOLCZAI
How can reality itself be lost? This is the puzzle evoked by the title of this conference and rendered explicit in the title of this paper.
Voegelin on Reality and Its Eclipse
This theme—the concern with reality, the realness of reality, the need to keep our sense of reality, and the increasing threats to this sense in the contemporary world—was a recurrent theme of Eric Voegelin’s work, prominent in some of his most important writings, though hardly ever as a main theme. It was present inThe New Science of Politics, as evidently any form of Gnosticism, modern or not, implies a rejection of the reality of the natural world. It was present inAnamnesis, especially in the long essay “What is Political Reality”. It was present in the lecture seriesHitler and the Germans, especially through the concern with “Second Reality”, taken from novels, especially Heimito von Doderer’sThe Demons. Of particular importance is Voegelin’s 1969 essay “Eclipse of Reality”: due to its title, which directly addresses the loss of reality; due to the occasion for which it was written, a memorial volume for his lifelong friend, Alfred Schutz, with a main theme of Schutz’s work being “multiple realities”, while Schutz was also a main interlocutor, through their correspondence, in discussions regarding the relevance of the modern Gnosticism thesis; due to its discussion of Jean-Paul Sartre, the most famous intellectual of the times, singling him out as an example for the deformation of “projecting an imaginary reality”, or a “Second Reality”;[1] and finally, due to its extensive and occasionally joint discussion of Comte’s positivistic sociology and Hegel’s philosophy, both being key examples for modern Gnosticism, according to Voegelin.
Important insights about the loss of reality are contained inAutobiographical Reflections, especially the pages from which the conference title was taken. The context is important and worthy of a few words. The conference call is from the title of a central section of the book, where Voegelin is offering the motivations for his work, culminating in a philosophy of history.[2] His work is rooted in the political situation, marked by a flood of ideological language, traced to the end of the First World War—though it is traced further back to 1870 and the “fantastic destruction of the German language” in the Imperial period.[3] This gives the proper meaning of philosophy, back to the times of Plato, as standing up against the dominant ideologies of the time, marked by “spiritually energetic people” who are “breaking out of the dominant intellectual group”. The examples listed, however, are not professional philosophers but novelists like George Orwell, Albert Camus, and Thomas Mann. They succeeded not on their own but by finding people who could be called “guides”, as the “most important means of regaining contact with reality is the recourse to thinkers of the past who had not yet lost reality, or who were engaged in the effort of regaining it”.[4] This includes a return to myths, where Voegelin singles out for attention the collaboration between Thomas Mann and Károly Kerényi, central for theJoseph novels. But it also implies a revisiting of classical philosophy, theology, ancient history, even archaeology—or, as two key sentences state: “Recapturing reality in opposition to its contemporary deformation requires a considerable amount of work. One has to reconstruct the fundamental categories of existence, experience, consciou
