May 9, 2009

We were stopped in traffic.  The rear window of the car ahead displayed an oversized sticker in two colors— stylistically reminiscent of the dramatic kiosk posters from the German political wars of the late  '20's and early '30's.  This one showed the face of Barack Obama.  Beneath it was the one word: HOPE.  We have often thought of this arresting image since then but it was not until we read part 8 of David Walsh's Guarded by Mystery that things fell into place and we were able to think about the Obama political phenomenon—perhaps even understand it.  Mr. Obama is promising something that every human being must have and have in full measure: HOPE.

As David Walsh makes plain, postmodernity is not the new realm of freedom but instead a gloomy place filled with failed aspirations: aspirations for satisfaction from material and technical advances and aspirations for happier people through more just laws and compulsory social virtue.   Being offered now is the hope for salvation of this physical world (please join the mystical body of ecology), the salvation of the citizenry through happy work, generous leisure and ample medical care, and freedom from international strife through an intelligent approach to foreign affairs (after the endless earlier stupidities).   The American people wanted HOPE and that is what they bought.  But why?  Because the Republicans offered them no hope? That is not quite true. The Republicans offered the continuation of prior policies which might be called  medium hope.  But the electorate (well, 52.9% of the electorate) wanted great hope.  Why? Because, as David Walsh points out, man's nature seeks the transcendent and when his religion fails him he wanders in despair until he finds new hope.  Obama is Salvator et Redemptor generis humani—for awhile yet. The nation is on an expensive drunk and will have quite a headache in the morning.

March 19, 2009

This morning we begin David Walsh's meditation, Guarded by Mystery. We expect to serialize it over about a dozen weeks.  This book was chosen because it had an immediate impact on one of our staff, who felt it brought a springtime breeze into a wintry spiritual pilgrimage.  By arrangement with the publisher, we will have available at VoegelinView up to three segments at any one time.

We are delighted to announced that Glenn Hughes has agreed to serve as poetry editor at VoegelinView. He plans to offer us a new poem each week, beginning tomorrow and each Friday thereafter.  The choices will be his own, including both new work and select classics.  We have also asked him to show us more of his own work from time.   

March 17, 2009

This is proving to be an interesting week.  We began the week with a new essay by Max Arnott.  Today we begin with the first of our commentary columnists,  Nathan Harter.  We call his column Clearings in the Forest after the title of one of his books.

And then On Thursday we will begin David Walsh's superb meditation Guarded by Mystery.

We are also more than pleased to announce that Beverly Jarrett has agreed to join us as a member of our Board of Advisors.  As one of our other Advisors wrote, "This is VERY good news.  At least there will be one person who knows what is going on...."

March 9, 2009

We celebrate this morning our first month!  It has seemed like a week or perhaps like a year, depending on whether we have been quaffing praise or putting out the fires that seem to start unexpectedly at the worst possible times.  But we are beginning to learn the job and a certain routine is beginning to steady things.  Our Rock is Bill McClain, who understands the intricacies of programming and regularly performs mysterious operations, one of which is termed a "cron job" that protects the site against natural and man made disasters.

March 5, 2009

We are publishing in four parts the Barry Cooper and John von Heyking essay comparing George Grant's and Eric Voegelin's views on the US. We managed to publish part three before part two!  That little error required the greater or lesser cooperation of four people!  We have rectified things by combining parts two and three together in the right order.

Tomorrow we offer a poem by Glenn Hughes, who carries several arrows in his quivver,  not all of them philosophy-tipped!

And Max Arnott will be back with us again!

March 2, 2009

We have started to rearrange the VoegelinView layout to better reflect our content and the areas we feel should be emphasized.  We are trying to achieve a less cluttered look, too.  The changes may take some time since we are learning as we go along, so be patient with us!

February 26th, 2009

Today we start  " 'A Cow is Just a Cow': George Grant and Eric Voegelin on the United States."  Our thanks to Barry Cooper and

John von Heyking who could have as easily found an old established journal to showcase their fine study on Canadian

philosopher George Grant.  We will bring it to you in four installments over the next two weeks.  Our Canadian readers will already have some opinion about Grant.  We suspect that for most others, his life and thought will be terra incognita. The authors use Eric Voegelin as the compass on their journey, which will be of great help to those readers already familiar with Voegelin's life and thought.

February 23st, 2009

Today we begin the fourth and last part of the Irish Dialogues.  We feel most fortunate to have been able to offer them to the public for the first time.  And how excited those young men were:

JD I wish—Is this being recorded?
BP We have it on tape—
JD This is tremendously important.  This is tremendously important [!].

Again our thanks to Fr. Brendan Purcell for bringing us this gift!

February 21st, 2009

Below is an excerpt from the Collected Works on English common sense philosophy.  By and large most people are not even aware there is such a thing.  Voegelin writes:

"Still, the Anglo-Saxon world is no longer an island. The contemporary penetration of our public scene by the concoction of Hegel-Marx-Freud, on top of an undigested progressivist Enlightenment, can spell disaster also for America—incalculable in its dimensions, because intellectual resistance cannot fall back on an established discipline of thought, but must move in such dubious wash-out modes as 'traditionalism' and 'conservatism.'"

Do recent events in the US portend such a disaster?  As Mark Twain once wrote, "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated."

February 18th, 2009

Tomorrow we start part three of the Irish Dialogue:

Voegelin  is fully aware of the possible consequences of his work:  "I was on the point of saying I am in politics too: my problem in politics is to survive in a world in which corrupt politicians determine public events.  Because you can get killed in the process and I don’t feel obliged to get killed by idiotic politicians."

He takes us through the several elements that make up "second realities" with an emphasis on "systems" and violence: "You get the conception that the saving work, the opus, is a system: a system as the salvation of mankind and of your own existence.  So the system takes the place of the work of art and the laboratory experiment.  So we have a last phase, probably, because you can’t go further than death: the magic of violence."

February 16th, 2009

Today we start the second of four parts of the Irish Dialogue.

We are slowly learning to handled the Joomla Content Management System which renders pages in dynamic HTML (DHTML) instead of plain old HTML.  In DHMTL the articles are kept in one place, the article formatting styles are kept in a second place, and the layout of the pages with the headings, columns, footers, etc. is kept in a third.  They all come together when you click on something.  It is supposed to make things much simpler for us once we climb the learning curve.  We'll see!  One of the little challenges is to make the URL titles look like HTML so they can be read and remembered.  Left to themselves they are long strings of obscure abbreviations.  If you spot a bad one, let us know.

February 15th, 2009

Why bother to philosophize when you are ignored? Voegelin gives the answer in Part 2 of the Irish Dialogue beginning tomorrow: "The philosopher is the servant of the gods, and he has to be the servant of the gods even if society around him is going to hell!"

February 14th, 2009

More information is now available on the Toronto 2009 Eric Voegelin Society meeting.  Travel arrangements are discussed at the APSA website linked at the lower right under "Voegelin Related."

We will be presenting excerpts from The Collected Works on a regular basis.The second excerpt is featured below.


February 12th, 2009

This morning VoegelinView publishes something special: a conversation with Eric Voegelin recorded in Dublin, Ireland in 1972. Our contributing editor, Brendan Purcell, taped the conversation which appears in the form of questions and answers.  You will find here some unique Voegelin insights as well as new expresssions of familiar ideas.  It is a gem and we are most grateful to Fr. Purcell!

We are also starting up the evforum online. We don't know much about the software yet, so be patient while Jack Elliott and Myron Jackson familiarize themselves. There is already a question posted that needs an answer. Register and join in!

Our contributors are sending in their curricula vitae.  We will post them as soon as we can get to them.

February 7th, 2009

Today we inaugurate VoegelinView.  Below you will find a message from Dr. Ellis Sandoz in which he expresses his hopes for our success.  On the left, you will see that a number of scholars and readers of Eric Voegelin have already offered their help.  If you would like to contribute to VoegelinView as a writer, an editor, or a technical assistant, please let us know. Email us This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

We have also begun a new version of the old listserv. We call it evforum online.  The old listserv will continue for the present. You can get to evforum online by clicking the menu button at the top of the page.  Please feel free to register and begin posting. Members of the evforum who wish to post here will need to take a moment and register.

You will notice that we are featuring book ads for a number of works written by Voegelin scholars.  We will expand the listings as time goes on.  We also plan to run reviews and notices of books that may be of interest to our readers.

In addition to new articles every week, we will run a quotation from The Collected Works.

The Editors We hope it will remind us of what we are about and recall to us the standard of writing and thought that inspired us in the first place.