The Politics of Faith and the Politics of Skepticism - Part 2

by Elizabeth Campbell Corey

Elizabeth Campbell Corey is Assistant Professor of Politics in the Honors Program at Baylor University. More information is available at her department website. She is the author of Michael Oakeshott on Religion, Aesthetics, and Politics, 2006, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, from which the following excerpts are taken. This appears with permission and is the second of two parts.

The Politics of Individuality

In a series of lectures Oakeshott gave at Harvard in 1958, now published as Morality and Politics in Modern Europe, he casts the faith/skepticism dis­tinction in the terms of collectivism versus individuality, even going so far as to call these categories (as he does faith and skepticism) "the poles of the modern European political character." Collectivism postulates a common good that is chosen by government for the individuals who compose a society. This good is "preferred above all other possible con­ditions of human circumstance" and is believed "to be at least the em­blem of a 'perfect' manner of human existence."²² In other words, it is the politics of faith.

The politics of individuality, on the other hand, springs from an en­tirely different conception of the role of government. Indeed, it has no "vision of another, different and better, world," but takes its bearings from observation of "the self-government practiced . . . by men of pas­sion in the conduct of their enterprises." It calls not for great concentra­tions of power, but for an authoritative "ritual" that can minimize the chances for great collisions between individuals. The government is thus merely "custodian" of this ritual, called "law." Government's functions, on this reading, are to minimize circumstances in which violent colli­sions of interest are likely to occur. It provides redress for those who have been wronged, maintains sufficient power to carry out its functions, and protects itself and its subjects from foreign threat.²³ But unlike collec­tivism, the government of individuality is not in the business of generat­ing grand visions that would guide an entire people.

from  The Northern Lights

The Genealogy of Islamic Terrorism

Part 4

by Barry Cooper

Professor Cooper is the author of numerous books and essays in political science. He is the editor of several volumes of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. This essay appears as Chapter 3 in New Political Religions, or An Analysis of Modern Terrorism, University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri, 2004. This is published with permission of the publisher and appears in five parts.

Indeed, generally speaking, the history of Islam prior to and during al-Wahhab's lifetime [1703-1787] was one of spiritual decline and political humilia­tion. The large topic of the decline, or at least the decentralization, of the Ottoman Empire has been debated at great length both inside and outside the empire, starting in the sixteenth century. Much of the discus­sion has centered on the changing balance of power between the empire and the new states of the West, rather than between Istanbul and other Muslim states.

From the battle of Lepanto in 1571 until the time of al-Wahhab, Ottoman power was, if not in retreat, then certainly undergo­ing reconfiguration in the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Crimea, southern Ukraine, and Hungary. At the same time, British, Dutch, and Portuguese ships were trading into the gulf. In the Ottoman homeland, these de­velopments generated an extensive political literature dealing not just with themes of decline but also of religious reform.⁵³ For al-Wahhab, as for many other less successful reformers, the answer to political decay was a salafist restoration of the virtue and piety of the pristine early days.⁵⁴ As with all such movements, including those that have emerged from Judaism and Christianity, al-Wahhab's salafism was defined more by what he sought to destroy than by what he sought to build.

"One of My Permanent Occupations"
Eric Voegelin as Literary Critic —Part 1

by Charles Embry

Charles Embry is Professor Emeritus of Political Philosoohy at Texas A&M-Commerce. He is editor of Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin: A Friendship in Letters, 1944-1984. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2004. The material that follows is taken from his The Philosopher and The Storyteller: Eric Voegelin and Twentieth-Century Literature. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2008. This appears with permission and is presented in three parts.

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The occupation with works of art, poetry, philosophy, mythical imagination and so forth, makes sense only if it is conducted as an inquiry into the nature of man.  ~ Eric Voegelin to Robert B. Heilman

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There are many reasons for writing a book that relies upon the philosophical work of Eric Voegelin for the interpretation of modern literature. Not the least of these is Voegelin's own understanding of the nature of his work and vocation. In a letter dated December 19, 1955, he wrote to his friend Robert B. Heilman, the English literature scholar and literary critic:

Your letter of Dec.11th came just in time this morning, for I wanted to write you today anyway to thank you for the delightful review of Critics and Criticism. It had thrown me into a mood of indecision, because your refined politeness left me in doubt whether I should not read the volume, because literary criticism is after all one of my perma­nent occupations. (AFIL, letter 57, p. 142)¹

Eric Voegelin considered literary criticism one of his permanent occupations because of the necessity that confronted him as he worked toward the preparation of what he intended as his first major work in English — The History of Political Ideas.

Radical Alienation in Western Civilization

and the Modern Apocalyptic Mood

[In Western civilization] there is nothing on which one can fall back. As distinguished from a Greek civilization or Egyptian civilization, there is no archaism, for instance, possible in the Western civilization because Western civilization has no archaic period. There is no such thing in Western civilization as, for instance, the late Egyptian period, in which one can fall back on the sculpture and art forms of the third millennium B.C. And you cannot fall back on the Vikings; they are just too remote from any developed civilization.

Thus, from the early beginnings to the present, there is no internal coherence in Western civilization. But when you have an acculturation process of this kind, the deculturation process, with the resultant disorder, is considerably more dangerous than periods of disorder in other civilizations that have connections with an original mythical order. . . .