Voegelin Recollected—Recollected

by Jodi Bruhn

Jodi Bruhn interviewed those who studied with Eric Voegelin during his ten years in Munich (1958-1968). Over a ten month period she met the people who recalled what had happened 30 to 40 years earlier. Her work became chapter 3 in Voegelin Recollected–Conversations on a Life , (University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri, 2008).

"Kommen Sie doch herein . . ."

It was July of 1999 when I left Munich the first time. One afternoon two weeks before leaving, I stood at the doorstep of a Jungendstil apartment in Schwabing, ringing the doorbell of a man I’d never met. There was no answer. I rang again.

A frail female voice finally responded, “Ja?” I had an appointment with her husband, I explained in a German that was passably fluent by this time. He knew I would be coming; I wished to speak to him about Eric Voegelin.

After a long pause, the buzzer bid me up. I mounted two flights of creaking stairs to be greeted by a shuffling woman in a day coat and house slippers. She admitted me into the adjacent apartment, which she described as the “atelier.”

This room was unlike most I’d seen at such meetings, with heavy green velvet curtains drawn, strewn with curios: a marble bust in one corner, a stuffed duck on the mantelpiece, an immense glass coffee table cluttered with mannequin body-parts, an Oriental lounge, a large, well-stocked bar, some Persian vases, assorted photographic paraphernalia.

The room was filled with what Germans would call Ramtsch, but it was quality Ramtsch. This junk had the aura of a déclassé aristocrat.

from the Crow's Nest

THE OTHER 

Islam and September 11th, 2001

Originally published in October of 2001

Posterity may know we have not loosely through silence permitted things to pass away as in a dream. —Richard Hooker

After the murderous events of September 11th, 2001, there was an immediate reaction in which people wanted to retaliate against Muslim Arab nations, since, after all, this was an attack worse than Pearl Harbor and therefore we needed to declare war and punish the enemy. "Arab" is used advisedly because there was no thought of attacking, for instance, Indonesia or Turkey, non-Arab Muslim nations.

But the reaction in favor of massive retaliation was only momentary and was replaced almost immediately by a determination to capture or kill the conspirators and their protectors. Such a restrained reaction is, as far as memory serves, the first time when a massive murderous act is not responded to with a reprisal on a similar scale. This restraint may exist in part from the memory of murderous bombing of civilians by the US and British air forces in World War II, by the knowledge that for the last fifteen years or so, cruel events often end up on video tape, and lastly, one would hope, that the President of the United States, in fact, lives the Christian life that he openly espouses.

So who are these people who committed suicide and mass murder? Do they represent a radical fringe of Islam? Why did they do it? Is there a solution? I am not an Arabist or scholar of Islam but I needed to come to some conclusions on this like everyone else in order to cope with the disaster and draw closer to God because of it.

Beneath the Southern Cross

Mr. Rorty and his Fellow Animals

by Olavo de Carvalho

Olavo de Carvalho is a Brazilian philosopher and an exponent of Aristotle and Eric Voegelin. He presently lives in the United States where he writes and teaches. His commentaries fill several volumes. The following is taken from O Imbecil Coletivo (The Collective Imbecile), and was translated into English by Pedro Sette Câmara. His latest book is Maquiavel, ou a Confusão Demoníaca, a study of Machiavelli.

"Error speaks with a double voice, one proclaiming the false and the other denying it; it is a dispute of yes and no, called contradiction . . . Error is condemned, not by the mouth of the judge, but ex ore suo."

 —Benedetto Croce       

 

"Philosophy originated from the attempt to escape to a world in which nothing changed. Plato, who founded this field of culture we today call 'philosophy', believed the difference between past and future to be minimal." Thus begins the full-page article Mr. Richard Rorty published in Folha de São Paulo on March 3, 1994.¹

Well, when I started working in journalism, more than thirty years ago, such a paragraph would be mercilessly cut off at the copydesk. They also would not miss the opportunity to send the author a note such as follows: "But how, smarty boy, could Plato so anxiously desire to escape to a world of changeless stability, since in this world itself he did not see any big difference between past and future?"

Today, flagrant nonsense like this is printed as a deep manifestation of philosophical thought, and nobody from the copydesk is there to say that that is not acceptable even as would-be journalism..

from the Crow's Nest

 Money, Books, and Amazon

by Fritz Wagner

For some months now, we have been linking a few of our book ads to amazon.com. We recently learned that Amazon would pay VoegelinView a referral fee for sales made as a result of visits from VoegelinView. 

The University of Missouri Press, which publishes most of the books we advertise, does not object to something that is likely to result in increased sales of their books. We also think that readers who shop online would likely rather deal with Amazon than with individual publishers. Our Board of Advisors has offered encouragement.

Since VoegelinView operates at an annual deficit, any income is welcome.

We have made arrangements with Amazon and are now designated a "sales associate." We are converting our "click-thru" ads to take the reader directly to the page at amazon.com where the book is sold.

One other benefit: the referral fee is paid even if the reader buys something other than a book. If you decided to buy a flat screen PC monitor or a home theatre TV from Amazon, we would get the fee, providing you got to amazon.com from VoegelinView and made the purchase during the same visit. 

So our authors benefit, our publishers benefit, and you help VoegelinView at the same time. It sounds almost too good to be true. It probably is too good to be true. But we will give it a try and see what happens. And please buy your next major appliance at amazon.com after using us as a portal to get there!    

—May 25, 2011