Ethics and Politics:  Sciences for the Mature

Politics in the narrower sense of nomothetics [constitution-making science] intends to teach the lawgiver how to create the institutions that will inculcate the ethical excellences in the citizens. Assuming for the moment that such a science of means for the desired end can be successfully developed, there remains the great question whether the desired end is valid in itself and whether we should invest any efforts in its realization.

The value of nomothetics depends on the validity of the prudential science of ethics as developed by Aristotle. What if somebody should challenge the truth of the Aristotelian propositions concerning excellences? What if he should advance an alternative catalogue of goods to be realized in society? If, for instance, we should make a rising standard of living the supreme value to be realized, the governmental institu­tions favoring the realization of this end would diverge widely from the standards developed in Politics VII and VIII. In brief: Aristotle has to face the famous "That's What You Think!"

America: a Spiritually Decapitated Rational Apparatus?

Eric Voegelin reviewed many books between the year 1923, when he was only twenty-two, and 1955, when his horizons became occupied with the project of Order and History. Sixty-five reviews are collected in  Selected Book Reviews, CW Vol 13, translated and edited by Jodi Bruhn and Barry Cooper.

In the following review extract, Voegelin showed his personal knowledge of the United States following his two years of study at Columbia,  Wisconsin, etc.  It is also noteworthy that at the time of this review he was still a single man living in an independent Austria and occupied with pre-totalitarian issues.  After he had found refuge in the U.S. some eight years later, he showed little interest in publishing critiques of a flawed America.

The Ugliness of Intellectual Fraud:
The Case of an Apologist for Communism

Eric Voegelin reviewed many books between the year 1923, when he was only twenty-two, and 1955, when his horizons became occupied with the project of Order and History. Sixty-five reviews are collected in CW  Vol 13, Selected Book Reviews, translated and edited by Jodi Bruhn and Barry Cooper. In some respects the following review is typical. Things that can be praised are praised and mention is made of underlying principles of political science which determine the selection of materials. In this particular review Voegelin has also chosen to show the slight-of-hand techniques of a dishonest intellectual. This review might also be taken to suggest a cautionary note concerning contemporary political thought.

Professor Schuman has written a comprehensive volume on Soviet politics that will remain the representative treatise for quite some time to come. An introductory part, subtitled "A Book of Origins," deals with Marxism and its penetration into Russia, with the back­ground and career of Lenin, the history of the Russian Communist movement, and the victory of the revolution, and with those factors of Russian history that still are determinants in the period of Soviet rule. The principal part, "A Book of Peace and War," presents Soviet political history, the development of institutions, and the policies, both foreign and domestic, from the victory of the October Revolu­tion to the end of the Second World War. The concluding part, "A Book of Prospects," deals with the outlines of post-war politics as far as they have become visible and with the probabilities of internal development and foreign relations of the Soviet Union in the future.

The amount of material digested in these more than 600 pages is enormous; and every one who wishes to inform himself on any as­pect of Soviet politics (with the exception of economic problems and institutions, which are excluded from treatment) will do well, as a first approach, to consult this volume.

It was not the purpose of the author, however, to present a piece of original research; the scope of the volume reflects rather the inten­tion "to see steadily and to see whole the total fabric of Soviet poli­tics, from the barbarian migrations to the Changchun Railway Co., from Marx in the British Museum to the Soviet Intelligentsia, from peasant rebellions to collective agriculture, from Portsmouth and Brest-Litowsk to Potsdam and Lancaster House." This plan, rather of encyclopedic synthesis than of intensive monographic study, does not, however, prevent the author from treating certain aspects of Soviet constitutional life, to which he draws specific attention (xv), with a thoroughness surpassing earlier attempts.

Sartre's Facticity of Existence and the Cartesian Deformation

Well, existence is not a fact. If anything, existence is the nonfact of a disturbing movement in the In-Between of ignorance and knowledge, of time and timelessness, of imperfection and perfection, of hope and fulfillment, and ultimately of life and death. From the experience of this movement, from the anxiety of losing the right direction in this In-Between of darkness and light, arises the inquiry concerning the meaning of life. But it does arise only because life is experienced as man’s participation in a movement with a direction to be found or missed; if man’s existence were not a movement but a fact, it not only would have no meaning but the question of meaning could not even arise.

The connection between movement and inquiry can best be seen in the case of its deformation by certain existentialist thinkers. An intellectual like Sartre, for instance, finds himself involved in the conflict without issue between his assumption of a meaningless facticity of existence and his desperate craving for endowing it with a meaning from the resources of his moi. He can cut himself off from the philosopher’s inquiry by assuming existence to be a fact, but he cannot escape from his existential unrest.

The Preservation of Democracy

Part 3  The Obligation of Promises

[This is taken from a paper delivered in November, 1939, two months after the outbreak of World War II. Voegelin's descriptions of the actions and attitudes required for democracy to survive at that time are just as valid today. This excerpt appears in three parts.]

 The promises of Hitler that he would be finally satisfied when just this last demand should be granted are highly interesting in another aspect. After the creation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, British statesmen realized that something might be wrong with Hitler's promises. They did not know exactly what, and they do not seem to know yet, but at least they found a pattern to cover it: Hitler lies, he lies habitually, pathologically.

The case is not as simple as that. A lie, we may say for the purpose of this paper, is a statement known to be untrue by the man who utters it, who nevertheless makes it with the intention to have it appear true.

Now, first, it is not quite certain that the statements and promises made by Hitler and broken later were always lies subjectively when made. He may have been at the time of making them in a state of auto-suggestion which made him sincere. However, this is a minor point for our present problem. The more interesting one is that the National Socialist movement has developed a theory of truth, most amply elaborated by Alfred Rosenberg, to the effect that truth is what is useful to the German people.