Finally, it is clear that, at the same time as Voegelin was paying attention to the political events and realities of central Europe he was also deepening his understanding of philosophy. Hence his introduction of Augustine in the unpublished Herrschaftslehre of the early 1930s, or of Averroism and positivism in The Authoritarian State, neither of which—at least on the surface—would appear to be natural places for such discussion. His most lasting discovery from the miserable and unpleasant experiences of the 1930s was that the conventional notion of the history of political ideas, which saw in the modern world nothing but secularism, was almost entirely wrong. One could understand neither the truth of political reality nor of human being without also understanding the centrality of spiritual experience. The Political Religions was Voegelin’s first book where spiritual realities were central to his analysis. In this instance they were particularly malign spiritual realities. And then came his second exodus to America and his second sailing, The History of Political Ideas, which to my mind was Voegelin’s contribution to the Allied war effort. But that is another story.    

1. Chignola, “The Experience of Limitation: Political Form and Science of Law in the Early Writings of Eric Voegelin,” in Glen Hughes, Stephen A. McKnight, and Geoffrey L. Price, eds., Politics, Order and History: Essays on the Work of Eric Voegelin. (Scheffield: Scheffield Academic Press, 2001), 64. 

2. See for example, Andreas Krasemann, Eric Voegelin’s politik theoretisches Denken in den Früschriften. (PhD dissertation, University of Erfurt, 2002); or Manuel Wluka, Wert und Ordnung, Ethik und Recht bei Hans Kelsen und Eric Voegelin. (Fulda: Faculty of Theology, 2008). The most thorough treatment is Hans-Jorg Sigwart, Das Politische und die Wissenschaft: Intellectuell-biographische Studien zum Früwerk Eric Voegelins Voegelin im Wien: Frühe Schriften, 1920-1923 (Wintzburg: Konigshausen und Neumann, 2005). See also: Michael Ley and Gilbert Weiss, eds., 8 (Vienna: Passagen, 207); Michael Henkel, “Positivismuskritik und autoritärer Staat: Die Grundlagendebatte in der Weimarer Staatsrechtslehre und Eric Voegelins weg einer neuen Wissenschaft da Politik bis 1938,” Occasional Papers, XXXVI (Munich, Eric-Voegelin-Archiv, 2005; Deitmar Herz, “Das Ideal einer objektiven Wissenschaft von Recht und Staat: Zur Kritik Eric Voegelins an Hans Kelsen,” Occasional Papers, III (Munich, Eric-Voegelin-Archiv, 2002; Regina Braach, Eric Voegelin’s Politische Anthropologie (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2003).

3.  Mann to Voegelin, 18 December, 1938; HI, 24:11. The issue arose in a somewhat different form in the discussion between Thomas Heilke and Manfred Henningsen concerning the significance of Voegelin’s race books, which are discussed in chapter four of Beginning the Quest.

4.  See for example John Ranieri, Disturbing Revelation: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin and the Bible (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2009)

5.  Gebhardt, in Stephen A. McKnight and Geoffrey L. Price, eds., International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Eric Voegelin, (Columbia, University of Missouri Press, 1997), 10-34. We discuss the meaning of Wissenschaft, science, in a subsequent chapter.

6.  Barry Cooper, “Eric Voegelin, Empirical Political Scientist” in Cooper, The Restoration of Political Science and the Crisis of Modernity (Lewiston, Edwin Mellen, 1989), 271-82.

7.  Gebhardt, “The Vocation of a Scholar,” 31.

8.  Lawrence, “The Problem of Eric Voegelin, Mystic Philosopher and Scientist,’ 35-58.