from The Collected Works

Jesus and the Unknown God –Part 1

In the historical drama of revelation, the Unknown God ultimately becomes the God known through His presence in Christ.

This drama, though it has been alive in the consciousness of the New Testament writers, is far from alive in the Christianity of the churches today, for the history of Christianity is characterized by what is commonly called the separation of school theology from mystical or experiential theology which formed an apparently inseparable unit still in the work of Origen.

The Unknown God whose theotes was present in the existence of Jesus has been eclipsed by the revealed God of Christian doctrine.

Beneath the Southern Cross

Machiavelli

or The Demonic Confusion –Part 4

by Olavo de Carvalho

Olavo de Carvalho is a Brazilian philosopher and an exponent of Aristotle and Eric Voegelin. We present here in six parts his latest study, Maquiavel, ou a Confusão Demoníaca (Machiavelli, or a Demonic Confusion), in a special English translation made available to VoegelinView.

Machiavelli the Liar

If there seems to be something tortuous and dishonest about all this [ Machiavelli's flattering both the Republicans and the Prince], do not be surprised.

As we have seen, Machiavelli confessed:

I never say what I believe and I never believe what I say; and if it sometimes occurs to me that I say the truth, I conceal it among so many lies that it is hard to find it out.⁴¹

These words turn him into a living embodiment of the “liar’s paradox” and immediately put his reader at the center of the problem which I call “existential self-reference."⁴²

Is the confessed liar truthful in the moment of his confession or is he lying about all the other moments of his life? Has he led a life of lies or does he lie about the history of his life?

In these conditions, interpreters soon noticed that it was impossible to understand Machiavelli without uncovering the exact relation between the expressed meaning of his text and the unexpressed truth of his existence.

from The Collected Works

Why Do We Need Philosophy? –Part 2

A further typical feature in the early stages of the process of symbol­ization is man's awareness of the analogical character of his sym­bols.

The awareness manifests itself in various ways, corresponding to the various problems of cognition through symbols.

The order of being, while remaining in the area of essential ignorance, can be symbolized analogically by using more than one experience of partial order in existence. The rhythms of plant and animal life, the sequence of the seasons, the revolutions of sun, moon, and constel­lations may serve as models for analogical symbolization of social order.

The order of society may serve as a model for symbolizing ce­lestial order. All these orders may serve as models for symbolizing the order in the realm of divine forces. And the symbolizations of divine order in their turn may be used for analogical interpretation of existential orders within the world.

Chesterton (and the rest)

Chesterton as Journalist

by Max Arnott

In the 12 October 1929 issue of the Illustrated London News, G.K. Chesterton wrote:

. . . How much more melancholy is the condition of those, in modernised and rationalised Western communities, who have to go about conducting secretly the cult of the Great God Namse! How much more uncomfortable it is to call on Namse morning, noon, and night, and yet never be allowed to call him by his name! How miserable is our condition in industrial Europe and America, who dare not call on Namse as Namse, but have to call him National Welfare or International Peace or the British Empire or the New Republic, or Progress . . . .

Chesterton was commenting on some photos, provided to the November 1928 issue of National Geographic Magazine by Joseph F.C. Rock, of certain religious processions at the Choni monastery in Tibet. Namse is the Tibetan god of wealth, whose image was carried in solemn reverence, just ahead of the Tibetan god of hell.

Chesterton goes on to argue the advantages of making Namse official god of England.

The Crisis of Americanism–Part 6

by Juergen Gebhardt

Dr. Gebhardt is emeritus Professor at the Insitute for Political Science at the University of Erlangen-Nürenberg. He is the editor of the  final volume of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Selected Correspondence, 1924-1949.  We are featuring here Chapter 5 from his Americanism: Revolutionary Order and Societal Self-Interprestation in the American Republic, Louisiana State University Press, 1993. It appears here in multiple parts.  Parts 1 to 3 appeared here in 2010. It is reproduced here with permission.

The New Deal as Successful Salvage Operation

Roosevelt's principled political understanding of order resulted in the New Deal's confusing multiplicity of conceptual initiatives, ideas, and programs for institutional reform and the contradictory complexity of experiments and techniques for problem solving.

In the social context of the basic syndicalist structure, it was essential that the federal authorities proceed democratically in solving the power problems of industrial society in an "economic republic;" this method would supposedly guarantee that both social welfare and economic growth be preserved.

The economic republic had, in the words of the New Dealer A. A. Berle, "inte­grated the democratic process by which we operate our politics with vis­ible or indirect controls of the private decisions by which we work our economics."⁶⁴ In his attempt to describe the results of the New Deal, Berle certainly defined the intention of Roosevelt, whose close adviser he was.

This is not the place to discuss the six hectic years from 1933 to 1938 but only to note that the New Deal, despite considerable failures, was successful on at least one point: it salvaged for organized society the social field of consciousness that exemplified it.