Autobiographical Reflections

In June of 1973 Ellis Sandoz went to Eric Voegelin's home in Palo Alto, California to help record his reminiscences about his life and work. These reminisicences were eventually published as Autobiographical Reflections and later included in Vol 34 of the Collected Works. It was agreed that a stenographer would take down everything Voegelin said and that a tape recorder would be employed as a backup. Over a period of days Voegelin recalled the past. The tape recordings altogether run for about eleven hours and were subsequently used to check the accuracy of the stenographic record. 

Last year the Eric Voegelin Institute made the recordings available to the public on its website.  Because Voegelin was, in fact, dictating to a stenographer, his speech was slow and deliberate, with long pauses, and listening was difficult.  We have cut out the long pauses, so that the rate of speech approximates normal conversation. This also has the effect of reducing the length of the recordings by about half.  There are twenty-two recordings altogether and we will try to present them here on a regular basis.   

Part 1- Vienna's  Intellectual Horizon

Ellis Sandoz introduces the recording. Occasionally one hears the stenographer ask for clarification and Voegelin then spells a word. Some of these have been omitted to maintain the flow of the presentation. Voegelin discusses his experiences at the University of Vienna in the 1920's and the important scholars he was exposed to during this formative period in his life, among them being Ludwig von Mises, Joseph Schumpeter, Heinz Hartmann, Hans Kelsen and Othmar Spahn.

The University and Society

Once again our thanks to Fr. Brendan Purcell of Dublin, who has made available to us this Eric Voegelin lecture which was originally recorded on tape and later preserved on compact disk.It's full title is  "The University and the Order of Society" and is a recording of a lecture probably given in the Summer of 1970 at Stanford University, located in Palo Alto, California, during its summer session. This lecture never found its way into The Collected Works, perhaps because of its sometimes topical nature. 

The lecture runs for about 40 minutes and we have divided the lecture into four parts which will be  offered every few days. This lecture runs for about 40 minutes.  We have divided the lecture into four segments and will offer them every few days. There is some loss of sound quality because of transfer from large .wav files to compact mp3 files but it is less of a problem than the previous recording.
If you don't see the player on the lower right, you should see a button. Click on the  button and the player will appear. Choose the segment you want to hear.     

Introduction and Part 1

Voegelin begins by considering Robert Nisbit's analysis of the breakdown in discipline at the university level following the student unrest from 1968 forward. He begins with Plato's "every society is man written large" and Plato's description of the purpose of education which still applies today: a therapeutic function to help young people resist spiritual and intellectual disorder.

Part 2

The purpose of education is to turn the young toward the truth. Everything that is wrong should be taught in the university, but as a type of wrong, not as a competing opinion. .Anyone teaching in a university who propagates an opinion without criteria for truth is an intellectual crook or mountebank.

Part 3

One example of what is important and should be taught in the university: if you read book 2 of Plato's Republic, you will see why societies cannot be based on contractual consent.
The university should try to counterbalance a society's tendency toward disorder, but instead, the university is merely an information purveyor. The teacher must content himself by helping students, some of whom may one day affect society for the better.

Part 4

In this final part it seems obvious that Voegelin is not yet finished with his argument when the recording ends. Some of his observations: If a university were merely a microcosm of society it would be as rotten as the society in which it existed. One underlying problem is that high school students are not properly prepared. The teacher association is politically corrupt and questions about it are taboo because too many politicians depend on it.

Man in the Cosmos

Our thanks to Fr. Brendan Purcell of Dublin, who has made available to us an Eric Voegelin lecture which was originally recorded on tape and later preserved on compact disk.It is entitled "Man in the Cosmos" and is a recording made at Emory University in Atlanta, in 1967, on the occasion of Voegelin's delivering the annual Candler Lecture.  This represents the first part only of what was later published as "The Drama of Humanity" found in Volume 33 of the Collected Works. The lecture runs for about 70 minutes and we have broken the lecture into eight segments.  There is some loss of sound quality because of transfer from large .wav files to compact mp3 files.
If you don't see the player on the lower right, you should see a button. Click on the  button and the player will appear. Choose the segment you want to hear.     

Introduction and Part 1

The introductory speakers are not identified. The Irishman is not Fr. Brendan Purcell —who did not even know of Voegelin in 1967! (Note Voegelin thanks his close friend, Gregor Sebba.)
In part one, Voegelin Characterizes modern man as a fundamentalist who is alienated. He points out that original experiences have been lost leaving only dogmas, and men such as James and Bergson have tried to recapture these experiences.

Part 2

Deculturation is most dangerous in the West because there is no ancient Myth to fall back on.  Ideologists throw out the past. The four areas of original experience are Myth, philosophy, revelation and mysticism.

Part 3

The sound quality is uneven in this part. Voegelin is walking back and forth between the podium and the chalk board. In this part he considers the terms "immanent" and "future," the apolcalyptic personality, progress, the nature of time, and the flow of presence.

Part 4

The "matter and form" analysis works for an object such as a table but not for "man." Man shows both stable features and changing processes so it is better to talk about "Humanity," by which Voegelin means man in the mode of understanding himself in relation to God, world, and society.

Part 5

The actual content of consciousness appears when man becomes aware of the Divine ground and his relationship to it.  When the Divine ground is decapitated, you are left with imminant man. "Cosmos" is a late Greek term.  The gods are part of the cosmos and were never "supernatural"—a scholastic term carried over to the enlightenment. "Myth" is that body of symbols that was found adequate to express the experience of the cosmos.

Part 6

Voegelin offers a catalog of the types of myth. He emphasizes that there is no such thing as a "myth of eternal return" in ancient civilizations. Nor is there any cyclical history. Linear history can be found. There is also skepticism and speculation in the form of myth.

Part 7

Eric Voegelin gives as an example of the dynamics of order between the gods, the ruler and the people, from the ruler's perspective: Queen Hatshepsut proclaims the return of the flow of order by restoration of the gods after the Hyksos invasion of Egypt is defeated.

Part 8

 Eric Voegelin concludes with his discussion of the ancient Egyptian commoner who disputes with his soul whether or not he should commit suicide. "The friends of today do not love." There is no "philia politike."

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