Cabbalistic Cinema -Part 3

Robocop and the Aesthetics of Tragedy  

by  Eric G. Wilson

Eric Wilson is Professor of English at Wake Forest University. He has written a number of books, including the critically acclaimed Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy (2008). His most recent book is My Business Is to Create: Blake's Infinite Writing (2011).  We offer here the 2nd Chapter from his Secret Cinema: Gnostic Vision in Film. New York: Continuum (2006). It appears with permission. This excerpt is presented in two sections of three parts each.

Tragedy  à la James Joyce

Even if Blade Runner contains elements of tragedy and comedy, it ultimately offers a vision beyond suffering and laughter alike, a still point unmoved by the turning world. Can a trag­ic golem film achieve similar stillness?

In calling Robocop a tragedy, I do not have in mind Aristotle's Poetics; I am think­ing of James Joyce's revision of the classic theory in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916).

In the novel, Stephen Dedalus develops a theory of tragedy. Though he agrees with Aristotle's idea that tragedy raises terror and pity in the audience, he believes that the philosopher did not sufficiently define the terms. This vague­ness has kept Aristotle's theory from demonstrating how tragic terror and pity affect the audience.

Voegelin in Munich
-Part 3

by Barry Cooper and Jodi Bruhn

Professor Cooper is the author of numerous books and essays in political science and has edited several volumes of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin. Jodi Bruhn is the editor of Vol 13 and also translator of Vols 8, 13, and 32 of The Collected Works. These recollections appear in Chapter 3 of Voegelin Recollected–Conversations on a Life, University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri, 2008.

A Demanding Teacher

friedemann büttner:   Peter Opitz was writing his habilitation on the process of the reformulation of order in China from the first reactions to the Europeans through various stages.

And we had discovered that there were very similar stages of intrusion and reaction in China and the Middle East. So, we held a joint seminar dis­cussing the parallels of social and political change.

We were standing in the hall and talking, and Voegelin walked by and stopped and said, "What are you talking about?" And we said, "Well, it's about our seminar." "What's the semi­nar about?" And we told him. Then he said, "But you are not supposed to waste your time with seminars, you are supposed to write your theses."

Beneath the Southern Cross

Machiavelli

or The Demonic Confusion –Part 2

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.

The Scandal of Machiavelli

At the risk of jumping to conclusions before having enunciated the problem, it is necessary to point out immediately this astonishing phenomenon: one of the first philosophical icons of Modernity is an author that Modernity itself admits not to understand.

Once laid out in writing, his ideas were neither forgotten nor limited to generating other ideas: they transfigured themselves into aspirations and acts, they inspired coups and revolutions, they founded nations and political regimes; but in the sum total we do not understand them.

I ask the reader to keep this observation in mind, to which we will return in due time. For now, let us see how the confusion began.

A Night in Heidelberg —Part 1

Letters from Voegelin on Heidegger

by  Myron Moses Jackson

Myron Jackson is a PhD student in philosophy at Southern Illinois University. His thesis explores Ironic American Exceptionalism and the Myth of the Open Self. His master's thesis explored Eric Voegelin's interpretation of natural law. His biographical notice may be found HERE. This study is presented here in two parts.

The Nazi Factor

In surviving letters we can often find those candid expressions that  help us complete a portrait of the writer. 

Such is the case with the publication of the thirtieth volume of the Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Selected Correspondence, 1950-1984 (2007).¹ It presents aspects of Voegelin that will help us gain a fuller understanding of him as a man, a man who even at times resorted to what he termed a “peasant roughness.” ²

Of particular interest are the references to Martin Heidegger and his fundamental ontology. The letters contain Voegelin’s most detailed remarks assessing the influence and success of Heidegger’s work, which work is often seen to be marred by his early enthusiasm for Hitler’s regime.

Recovering Reality

An Interview with Eric Voegelin –Part 1

In 1973 Eric Voegelin was interviewed by Peter Cangelosi, associate editor of the New Orleans Review, and by John William Corrington, novelist, critic, poet, and former editor-at-large of the NOR.  The interview  originally  appeared in the New Orleans Review, No.2 (1973) under the title “Philosophies of History: An Interview with Eric Voegelin.” In 2003  Bill McClain and Paul Caringella corrected several transcription uncertainties. It appears here with permission. We present it in two parts.

new orleans review:   Dr. Voegelin, what would you consider to be your major contribution to human knowledge?

eric voegelin:   Well, I have my doubts about the use of the term contribution. It smacks a bit of the progressivist con­ception that there is an advance in the history of mankind, and that everybody makes his contribution to it. Not that I doubt that there is any such continuity. But I doubt very much that my work can be categorized as a kind of contribution to anything.

The original meaning of science and of philosophy, of course, is that each has a purpose in itself and is not a contribution to anything at all. Purposes which are ultimate have no further purpose. They fall into the quite purpose­less activity of exploring the structure of reality.