Twentieth-century political philosopher Eric Voegelin is best known as a severe critic of modernity. Much of his work argues that modernity is a Gnostic revolt against the fundamental structure of reality. For Voegelin, “Gnosticism” is the belief that human beings can transform the nature of reality through secret knowledge and social action, and he considered it the crux of the crisis of modernity. As Voegelin struggled with this crisis throughout his career, he never wavered in his judgment that philosophers of the modern continental tradition were complicit in the Gnostic revolt of modernity. But while Voegelin’s analysis of those philosophers is at times scathing, his work also bears marks of their influence, and Voegelin has much more in common with the theorists of the modern continental tradition than is usually recognized. Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition: Explorations in Modern Political Thought evaluates this political philosopher—one of the most original and influential thinkers of our time—by examining his relationship to the modern continental tradition in philosophy, from Kant to Derrida. In a compelling introduction, editors Lee Trepanier and Steven F. McGuire present a review of the trajectories of Voegelin’s thought and outline what often is portrayed as his derisive critique of modernity. Soon, however, they begin to unravel the similarities between Voegelin’s thought and the work of other thinkers in the continental tradition. The subsequent chapters explore these possible connections by examining Voegelin’s intellectual relationship to individual thinkers, including Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Gadamer. The essays in this volume go beyond Voegelin’s own reading of the modern philosophers to offer a reevaluation of his relationship to those thinkers. In Eric Voegelin and the Continental Tradition, Voegelin’s attempt to grapple with the crisis of modernity becomes clearer, and his contribution to the modern continental tradition is illuminated. The book features the work of both established and emerging Voegelin scholars, and the essays were chosen to present thoughtful and balanced assessments of both Voegelin’s thought and the ideas of the other thinkers considered. As the first volume to examine the relationship—and surprising commonalities—between Voegelin’s philosophy and the continental tradition as a whole, this text will be of interest not only to Voegelin disciples but to philosophers engaged by continental modernism and all disciplines of political philosophy.

The rise of Asia in global affairs has forced western thinkers to rethink their assumptions, theories, and conclusions about the region. Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought brings together a mixture of established and rising scholars from both Asia and the West to reflect upon the political philosopher’s thought about China, Japan, Korea, Central Asia, and India. From Voegelin’s writings, readers will not only understand how Voegelin’s approach can illuminate the fundamental principles and issues about Asia but also what are the challenges and possibilities that Asia offers in the twentieth-first century. For those who want to move past the superficial commentary and clichés about Asia, Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought is the book for you.

"Readers intimidated or puzzled by Voegelin's often daunting prose will find Federici's volume, the fourth entry in ISI's Library of Modern Thinkers series, an invaluable guide to one of the twentieth century's most imposing - and most impressive - philosophical minds."--BOOK JACKET.

Science, Politics and Gnosticism comprises two essays by Eric Voegelin (1901-85), arguably one of the most provocative and influential political philosophers of the last century. In these essays, Voegelin contends that certain modern movements, including positivism, Hegelianism, Marxism, and the "God is dead" school, are variants of the gnostic tradition he identified in his classic work The New Science of Politics. Voegelin attempts to resolve the intellectual confusion that has resulted from the dominance of gnostic thought by clarifying the distinction between political gnosticism and the philosophy of politics.

During the course of his lifelong, wide-ranging reflections on history and philosophy, Eric Voegelin naturally was drawn to speculate on the nature of law. This volume consists of many of Voegelin's significant writings in this area, most notably the previously unpublished The Nature of the Law. Voegelin completed The Nature of the Law in 1957 while he was a member of the political science faculty of Louisiana State University and teaching a course in jurisprudence at the university's law school. In it he undertakes a philosophical analysis of the law to determine its nature, or essence, and comes to the conclusion that the law does not exist as a discrete entity but instead constitutes the structure of a society. The law, as Voegelin's analysis reveals, is not simply the command of a Leviathan handed down to others. Nor is it simply the result of a social compact among autonomous individuals or the expressed will of a majority securing its own self-defined, immediate worldly interest. It is rather a part of the order that a society discovers and specifies for itself in the effort to secure the common good. Thus laws and legal order have an integral relation with the society that declares them, for in declaring laws the society in some sense structures itself. Also included in this volume is Voegelin's detailed outline for the jurisprudence course he taught at LSU from 1954 to 1957. The outline was distributed to Voegelin's students but otherwise has not been published. In this outline Voegelin is concerned more with the criteria for legal order than he is with the nature of law. Voegelin also prepared for his jurisprudence course supplementary notes that are essentially a compact statement of his views on the law, and the editors have included those notes here. Finally, the book contains reviews, written by Voegelin in 1941 and 1942, of four books on legal science and legal philosophy.