Nathan,

Please do not waste a cent on the Cole book. I got it through interlibrary loan. There is no reason to mince words here since I wasted my Saturday reading it a couple weeks ago: It is trash, not a scholarly work. How the book got published at all is a mystery to me.

Some of the minor irritations for example: Cole doesn't break down any of the three lengthy chapters with subheadings. A thesaurus was not consulted (there is no reason to use the word visceral 6 or so times in the space of a page and a half). One should not try to write another book in the footnotes as Cole does. The most egregious example is pp. 169-174 which is one long footnote.

Major faults: Laziness: Cole is not up to date with work on Voegelin. Cole couldn't be bothered to notice that Ellis Sandoz' most recent book is not the Politics of Truth. Cole was not even aware that his book was not the first book length critique of Voegelin (as it is falsely billed) until the manuscript was about to go to press. That footnote about Hans Kelsen's book is further proof of Cole's sloth. Kelsen's Reply to Voegelin was published in 2004, Cole's publication date was 2008. The worst manifestation of Cole's inattention is seen with regard to Voegelin's work. There is no evidence from the book that Cole is familiar enough with Voegelin's writings to talk about them intelligently (he states in the preface that Voegelin's theory of consciousness will not be discussed--though this is probably also an ideological move). Instead, all Cole can do is make some reference to Voegelin and introduce quotes which are supposed to convince the reader that Voegelin is wrong.

Flawed logic: Cole's logic in critiquing Voegelinians is as follows, these guys are sycophants who copy Voegelin, so whatever I say to combat them goes equally for Voegelin as well. Voegelin is also going to be labelled a conservative no matter what Voegelin may have said or written to the contrary. His "followers" are also all conservatives--the existence of Voegelinians who are not conservatives is not possible due to Cole's ideological blindness.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Regards,

Patrick Johnston