from the Crow's Nest
Reflections on Toronto-Part II
Slouching toward Toronto to be Bored?
by Fritz Wagner
I was surprised to learn in Toronto that some Voegelin scholars expressed their sense that Voegelin studies has “had its day” and that it is time to move forward to a present time in which we must deal with problems Voegelin never faced. In fact, after one such post-panel comment from a member of the audience, we heard from somewhere a quiet but clear “Hear! Hear!”
Are these people onto something? Is there an elephant in the room that everyone is ignoring? Perhaps in some ways, yes.
That favorite term for the devout and mechanical follower, a term popularized by Voegelin, “epigone,” comes to mind. For how many years can you type the word “metaxy” without numbing yourself into indifference? And, as was made evident in Toronto, there is a rather widespread uncertainty about the continued usefulness of the term “gnosticism,” the signature concept used in Voegelin’s break-through to public awareness in his 1952 The New Science of Politics. Furthermore, Mathias Riedl pointed out in his presentation that new historical evidence has undone the image of Joachim of Fiora, upon which Voegelin relied, in mapping out his ideas of modern gnosticism.
Lastly, there was a general celebration of David Walsh’s new book, The Luminosity of Existence, which Brendan Purcell, in his paper read by Michael Franz, characterized as fit to take its place as an equal, alongside Voegelin’s magnum opus, Order and History.
So where does this lead? My own reflections have led me to a number of observations. First, there is the old guard, the people who were actual students of Voegelin. They were mostly graduate students who spent a good deal of time with him. They have, to paraphrase Voegelin’s remark about Christianity in a secular culture, Voegelin’s own enthusiasm for truth about the depth and breadth of existence imbedded “in the very creases of their skin.” But in five or ten years, they will be silent. I count myself in this group.
The “middle managers,” if one might describe them as such, seemed to me to be the people who suggested a restlessness, while the youngest don’t yet fully know what the issues are.
Let me suggest some possibilities::
1. We move toward adulthood with thousands of ideas competing for our attention, our adherence and devotion. We are thrown about in a tossing sea. We must find land. Something steady. There is only so much time. We can’t examine everything ourselves. We must set our priorities. What must we do and who must we be? Whom shall we trust? Let us say we grew up as Christians. Now it seems hard to sustain. How do we do that? We grew up with natural science solving every problem, or so it seems. Does it really do this? If we wish to read philosophy where do we start? What do we skip? How much time do we spend on the Greeks, the Medievals, the Moderns? What is the relationship between thought to action, to political action? Should thought be systematic? Is our present time the culmination of meaning in history placing us in a position of authority? Can human nature be modified by training or education? Can government be improved to the point that human frailty is irrelevant?
These are the sorts of questions that Voegelin addressed with a passionate concern for the well-being of the student. He characterized himself as leading the life of a curé de lâme, a caregiver of souls. These questions and their answers are what draw the young to reading Voegelin. So one of the reasons, perhaps the only important reason, for continuing Voegelin studies is to help the young in their intellectual and spiritual formation.
2. Although a student may be helped in his formation by reading Voegelin, that fact does not necessarily lead him or her to become a Voegelin scholar, as such. I myself became a lawyer and I would have to say Voegelin never came up once in all my years of practice! But for those who go on to lead the life of a teacher and scholar, there will be at least two paths open to him: the first is teaching and writing about Voegelin’s life and work. Now writing about Voegelin is where we may be approaching the end of an era—from exhaustion of subject matter—if we wish to write creatively and not merely transmit knowledge to the next generation. I strongly suspect that the “murmurs” heard in Toronto originated in this feeling of “I need to move on to something new.”
Another path is to do one’s scholarly work without invoking Voegelin at all. I haven’t read David Walsh’s The Luminosity of Existence yet (We expect to present plenty of commentary here at VoegelinView starting soon.), but if it bears more than a passing resemblance to his earlier books, one can say that Voegelin doesn’t come into it in the sense of quotes and footnotes, and yet on many pages one realizes that without Walsh's reading of Voegelin over many years, these words couldn’t have been written. For one thing, at least in past books, Walsh eschewed Voegelinian technical vocabulary, which really is a kind of shorthand that must be memorized. The avoidance of this technical vocabulary makes Walsh's thought more accessible to the general reader. (From the little I have read from his new book, Walsh finds redemptive value in the work of some who Voegelin discarded, and exudes a general sense of intramundane hope now that the 20th century totalitarianisms are dissipated; gone is Voegelin's sense of Augustinian watching and waiting.)
Voegelin himself would have been the first to remind us that concrete results from the social and historical sciences are always subject to refinement by new research and understanding and so we must not cling to particular formulations or findings. For instance, Professor Riedl shows persuasively that Joachim was not a gnostic even though Voegelin used him as an archetypical gnostic in working out his explanation for modernity. Yet that does not invalidate the conclusions Voegelin drew from comparing the common spiritual illnesses found in the instances of the Puritans, or the French revolutionaries, or the positivists or Marxists or Communists or Nazis or fascists—the same symptoms occurring in new manifestations into the present and presumably continuing indefinitely into the future. (But will David Walsh allow this? We will see.)
Voegelin studies, writing, and teaching will stand or fall on their own merits. We can’t popularize them or make them attractive in terms of power and influence.(That is the exclusive preserve of the Straussians!) We make no claims for tomorrow or ten years from tomorrow. For today, we can help equip those who seek understanding in both its philosophical and its spiritual dimensions.
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Short takes:
• Richard Avramenko was asked how it was to go from teaching at Georgetown in Washington, D.C. to the University of Wisconsin at Madison. In fact, I asked him, “How is life on Lake Monona?” He replied with a very satisfied grin, “Life is easy.” He described the paved biking trails, the boating and swimming and the beauty. He seemed as fit as a track athlete so it must be true! I was born in Wisconsin and spent six years in Madison so perhaps I took it all too much for granted. It is so nice to talk to someone who is not restless in his current appointment!
• When you have arrived for a tour of purgatory, what do you do if your Virgil gets sick? Max Arnott was present on the first day, Thursday, but by that night he was in the emergency room of the hospital and was then admitted with a serious bout of influenza. The Friday night party at his home was nixed, and of course we no longer had a personal guide. We did have Max's thoughtful two part essay on what to do and see in Toronto which we had printed off from VoegelinView and brought with us. Not really the same thing. Max took several more days to recover but is fine now. He strongly recommends a flu shot. Nasty variety this year. 
Some final comments in a few days. Part I can be read HERE.
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