Order and History (Volume 2): The World of the Polis

Order and History #2

by Eric Voegelin, Athanasios Moulakis (Editor)

Esta obra explora a antiga simbolização grega da realidade humana. Conduzindo os leitores desde as origens da cultura grega nas civilizações da Creta pré-homérica pela Ilíada e pela Odisséia, passando por Hesíodo e pelo surgimento da filosoia com os pré-socráticos Parmênides e Heráclito.

Genres: Philosophy, History, Nonfiction, Politics

488 pages, Hardcover

Published June 30, 2000

About the author

German-born American political philosopher. He taught political theory and sociology at the University of Vienna after his habilitation there in 1928. While in Austria Voegelin established the beginnings of his long lasting friendship with F. A. Hayek. In 1933 he published two books criticizing Nazi racism, and was forced to flee from Austria following the Anschluss in 1938. After a brief stay in Switzerland, he arrived in the United States and taught at a series of universities before joining Louisiana State University's Department of Government in 1942. His advisers on his dissertation were Hans Kelsen and Othmar Spann.

Voegelin remained in Baton Rouge until 1958 when he accepted an offer by Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität to fill Max Weber's former chair in political science, which had been empty since Weber's death in 1920. In Munich he founded the Institut für Politische Wissenschaft. Voegelin returned to America in 1969 to join Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace as Henry Salvatori Fellow where he continued his work until his death on January 19, 1985. He was a member of the Philadelphia Society.

Reviews

[Leandro Lara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Como é excepcional ver o desenrolar dos eventos que culminaram com o Salto no Ser dado por Platão e Aristóteles.

[Norman Styers · Rating 5 out of 5]

As fine an analysis of pre-Socratic Greek thinking as you will find. Voegelin's programmatic statement is that "the order of history emerges from the history of order," and his series of books tries to trace how human societies have understood their order. The first volume examines the Israelites. This one looks at the Hellenes. The next discusses Plato and Aristotle. All highly recommended.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The World of the Polis, Volume 2 of this series of five, is a very well done analysis of the thinking and circumstances in Greece from Homer to Plato. Vogelin sees the unfolding of historical process as explorations for better civil order, and he makes the case. I read it mainly for the history. Voegelin does get into the weeds of philosophy for a few dozen pages that interested me not at all, but those are easily skimmed.

You get a taste of Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides (and others), and you may thereby be tempted to try those three if you haven't already. Touched on are the Minoans, Mycenaeans, the Bronze Age collapse, the Trojan War, the Persian War, and the Peloponnesian Wars.

His first volume, Israel and Revelation, also was excellent. The third volume is Plato and Aristotle. Archiv.org has all volumes and much else by Voegelin for free.

From his Wikipedia entry: "According to Ellis Sandoz, Voegelin may well be America's leading philosopher, and is rightly compared with the premier minds of our century and, perhaps, of the millennia. Thomas Altizer has said that Order and History 'may someday be perceived as the most important work of Old Testament scholarship ever written in the United States,' adding that it is noteworthy that it was written by a political scientist and philosopher."

[Mohammad Sherzad]

good book