Published Essays: 1940-1952

Collected Works of Eric Voegelin #10

by Eric Voegelin, Ellis Sandoz (Editor)

Published Essays, 1940-1952, includes some of Eric Voegelin's most provocative and interesting essays. Containing his first publications after he fled Vienna and settled in the United States following Hitler's annexation of Austria, this volume provides eyewitness commentary on the rise of National Socialism from the first days of World War II onward. A major study entitled "Growth of the Race Idea" presents a masterful summary of the two volumes on that subject Voegelin first published in 1933. A related essay of wide interest is entitled "Nietzsche, the Crisis, and the War." Another facet of Voegelin's thought incorporated within this volume of the Essays is his extraordinary analysis of the diplomatic correspondence conducted between the Western powers, the papacy, and the Great Khans, whose breathtaking expansion of the Mongol Empire for a time threatened to extinguish Western civilization itself and resulted in a two-century domination of Russia. Another major study is "The Origins of Scientism," an illuminating analysis of the grounds of much of modern philosophy and of all modern political ideologies. There are also surveys of the state of political theory in the late forties, penetrating studies of utopian thought with essays on Thomas More and Goethe, and a concluding essay that explores the intricacies of "Gnostic Politics"—a familiar theme from Voegelin's contemporaneous New Science of Politics. This volume of published essays shows Eric Voegelin at his most accessible best.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 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.