Between Gnosis and Anamnesis — European Perspectives on Eric Voegelin Gilbert Weiss In the following, the focus will be on the German reception of the work of Eric Voegelin. Nevertheless snapshots from Austria, Italy, France, Poland and the Czech Republic will be presented. Germany In a 1998 German introduction to his work, Eric Voegelin is presented by the author as an “unknown known” thinker.' This seems indeed an adequate description of the status quo of his reception in the German intellectual world although in the course of the last ten years the emphasis has probably shifted a little from the “unknown” to the “known.” The very fact that his name can be found in the rather popular philosophy /theory introductory series of the Junius publishing house is also an indicator for this shift. Several reasons are responsible for the growing interests in his work: (1) the editorial activities of the Eric Voegelin Archive in Munich under the direction of Professor Peter J. Opitz. With the Occasional Papers Series, the archive has created an international forum of Voegelin studies; furthermore, the Periagoge Series, published with the well-noted Wilhelm Fink publishing house and edited by Opitz, made available important parts of the Voegelinian oeuvre which had either been out of print for a long time or not been translated into German. (2) Since 1989, the general intellectual climate has become more open to approaches transcending the antagonistic scheme of left and right; at the same time, the idea has been growing that, in spite of all the differences, National Socialist and Marxist-Communist totalitarianisms share some common pathological roots. (3) Also since 1989, the historization of postwar Germany and its 1, Michael Henkel, Eric Voegelin zur Einfiterung (Hamburg: Junius, 1998)754 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS intellectual-political development—the old Bundesrepublik—has facilitated a general recollection of intellectual positions of the past not so commonly known anymore. (4) Finally, in the age of an increasingly brutal capitalism and a global pop-culture functioning as the secular high religion of this capitalism the general disappointment about modernity has not gone; on the contrary, theoretical approaches offering a substantial criticism of the disposition of the modern mind—like Voegelin’s—are becoming attractive again. All this shall not mean that Eric Voegelin has become a popular figure in the German discourse, at best it has strengthened the “known” vis-a-vis the “unknown.” Moreover, what is “known” is not Voegelin’s oeuvre as such but only a very small—and probably not even the most representative— part of it, namely the gnosticism thesis and the concept of “political religions.” Up to today, Voegelin is discussed almost exclusively in this context which is at the same time the context of the so-called secularization debate meaning the debate on the characterization and evaluation of modernity represented— mainly—by the names of Karl Léwith, Jacob Taubes and Hans Blumenberg. Both Taubes’s Abendliindische Eschatologie (1947) and Lowith’s Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (1949; German translation 1953) had discovered a secularized eschatological structure at the heart of modern philosophy of history as presented by writers like Hegel, Marx, and Comte. In this perspective, the process of secularization basically meant the transformation of the Christian transmundane virtues of hope and faith into the modern—very mundane—belief in progress. Salvation became a historical- revolutionary goal. As a consequence of this secularization thesis, political modernity could no longer be understood without profound theological knowledge. Of course, this point was already emphasized in the writings of Max Weber, Carl Schmitt, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, and others Although both Taubes and Léwith principally agreed on this secularization perspective, they had quite different opinions on how this development was to be judged. To sharpen the contrast: Léwith, following the Stoic’s nec spe nec metu, was skeptical against all eschatology—before as well as after secularization; for Taubes,GNOSIS AND ANAMNESIS 75S for Taubes, eschatology before as well as after secularization was something good; he considered it necessary for a critical perspective on the world as it is, that is, for change and variation. In other words, in the first case through secularization nothing becomes bad that had not been bad before it (Lowith), and in the second case something good does not get worse through secularization, at the most it gets better (Taubes).? Eric Voegelin, although sharing the general secularization thesis, introduces a different position in the 1950s. In identifying an immanentist eschatology as the gnostic nature of modernity, he does not—like L6éwith—criticize eschatology per se but rather the immanentization. Unlike Taubes, he clearly condemns this immantization as a “pneumopathological” deformation. So for Voegelin, secularization indeed makes all the difference, and that is of course also why Voegzlin is much more critical of modernity as such than the two others with whom he was not only in personal contact in America but also corresponded extensively about theoretical issues.? That secularization makes all the difference was also the starting point of the theoretically most demanding reaction to Voegelin’s gnosticism thesis, namely Hans Blumenberg’s book on Die Legitimitiit der Neuzeit (1966).* Blumenberg picks up the idea of the nexus of modernity and gnosticism. Moreover, he regards it one of the “most significant” approaches to modernity, and as the one with the “most revealing implications.”> Nevertheless, he turns the thesis precisely to the opposite: “Modernity is the 2. See also Odo Marquard, “Aufgeklarter Polytheismus—auch eine politische Theologie?” in Der Fizrst dieser Welt. Carl Schmitt und die Folgen, ed. Jacob Taubes (Munich et al: Wilhelm Fink / Ferdinand Schoningh, 1983), pp. 77-84. 3. Voegelin’s position, by the way, first entered the German arena in a cut version, as it were, thatis through two essays published in periodicals: “Gnostische Politik,” in Merkur (1952) and “Philosophie der Politik in Oxford,” in Philosophische Rundschau (1953/54, translation of “The Oxford Political Philosophers” published in Philosophical Quarterly, April 1953). The New Science of Politics (1952) was translated into German only in 1959. With regard to the extensive correspondences between Voegelin, Lowith and Taubes see Eric Voegelin Papers, Boxes 24.4 and 37.10, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, California. 4. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. R. M. Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). 5. Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimitit der Neuzeit. Emeuerte Ausgabe (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), p. 138.756 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS overcoming of gnosticism”; or rather itis the “second overcoming of gnosticism” after the first in the Middle Ages had not succeeded.’ Modernity, for Blumenberg, represents the “self- assertion of man” vis-a-vis the “theological absolutism” of the late Middle Ages. He argues that, although many modern concepts and theorema indeed fill out the vacancy left by the disappearance of God, they do this only in a functional sense; their substance, however, is neither theological nor pseudo-theological. Finally, Blumenberg rejects the concept of secularization as “illegitimate” since, as historical category, it undermines the essential independence of modernity. To him, there is no substantial continuity between biblical-theological eschatology and modern- philosophical eschatology; accordingly, there is not something like a “transformation” from the one into the other either. Modernity makes all the difference. In the German debate, Blumenberg became known as the defender of the independence of modernity. Léwith, Taubes, and Voegelin were attacking this independency. Since the latter, however, was not only attacking the independency but rather modernity itself (because of the fundamental pneumatic difference he sees between biblical-Christian and modern-immanentist eschatology), he assumed the role of the true antimodernist among the three, so to speak. In January 1967, Jacob Taubes tried to organize a meeting between Voegelin, Blumenberg, and himself (a “Dreier-Gesprach”). Voegelin as well as Blumenberg reacted positively to this idea. In the end, however, the meeting did not take place because Blumenberg—after having finished his book— felt too exhausted and needed “some distance from this work,” as Taubes reports in a letter to Voegelin.” Both Léwith and Taubes responded to Blumenberg’s book in various ways. Voegelin did not respond—mainly for two reasons: (1) he was about to leave the German academic scene again and 6. Ibid. 7. Taubes to Voegelin, 6 January 1967, Eric Voegelin Papers, Box 37.10, Hoover Archives. 8, See, for instance, Karl Lowith, “Besprechung des Buches Die Legitimitit der ‘Neuzeit von Hans Blumenberg,” Philosophische Rundschau 15 (1968): 195-201; and Jacob Taubes, “Der dogmatische Mythos der Gnosis” (1971) in J. Taubes, Vo Kult zur Kultur. Bausteine zu einer Kritik der historischen Vernunft (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1996), pp. 99-113.GNOSIS AND ANAMNESIS 157 go back to the United States, and (2) he had already gone further in his research — beyond the debate about historical categorization and classification toward an “anamnetic” approach to history. The same year Blumenberg’s book came out, Voegelin published his Anammnesis.° When, at the Seventh German Congress of Philosophy in 1962 in Minster, Blumenberg introduced his criticism of “secularization” as historical category for the first time, Voegelin presented his Eternal Being in Time, a meditative-exegetic approach to “historical processes of exodus, exile and return as figurations of the tension of being between time and eternity.””° In other words, at the time when Blumenberg was starting to develop his monumental criticism of the secularization thesis, Voegelin had more or less left these questions of classification behind, and aimed ata deeper level of historical consciousness or rather unconscious. He had become aware that, beyond history as an external process, the true “field of history” is the “soul of man.”" Basically, the Anamnesis volume was not received or even noted by the German public. Voegelin was already labeled as an obscure figure identifying modernity as gnostic deformation, that is, the antimodernist counterpart of the modernist Blumenberg, so to speak. Since Voegelin himself did not enter into the debate again, he did not do much to correct this picture. He remained identified with the gnosticism thesis. On the other hand, Voegelin without doubt loved to provoke, and he must have known what he got into with his fundamental criticism of modernity. The political labeling as a conservative, or even as a “cold warrior” against Communism was to be expected in a certain sense. Consider the following exarrples of reception: Micha Brumlik in his book Die Gnostiker (1995) claims that Voegelin’s gnostic characterization of modernity is absurd because it condemns everything which in some form can be attributed to political and intellectual modernity. In the same passage Voegelin is characterized as a “mentor of today’s American 9 E. Voegelin, Anamnesis. Zur Theorie der Geschichte und Politik (Munich: Piper, 1966). 13. Ibid., p. 279, ILE. Voegelin, On Character and Scepticism, p. 104, Eric Voegelin Papers, Box 56-60 ‘History of Political Ideas), Hoover Archives. 12. Micha Brumlik, Die Gnostiker. Der Traum vor der Selbsterlésung des Menschen (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1995), p. 297.758 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS Neo-Conservatism.” Albrecht Kiel, in a comparative study on Carl Schmitt and Eric Voegelin, goes even further; he distinguishes between Voegelin as a “political adviser” and Voegelin as a “historian.” For the author, both dimensions are equally important for “understanding” Voegelin’s work. Finally, he states—in all seriousness—that “it would be of particular interest if Ronald Reagan’s notion of the Soviet Union as the ‘realm of the evil’ canbe traced back immediately to Voegelin.”“ Already in 1984, Richard Faber claimed that “Voegelin’s heros are called J. K Dulles and R. Reagan or C. Weinberger.” Throughout his book, he hopes to unmask Voegelin’s true character of a “Gnostic Anti-gnostic.”"* Faber was also member of the Taubes discussion group on “Religionstheorie und politische Theologie.” This group published in the early 1980s three volumes on the subject. In the second volume, entitled Gnosis und Politik (1984), Faber proceeded to describe Voegelin’s gnosticism thesis as a “polit(olog)ical strategy” against Communism and the Western “left.” The essay ends by pointing again to Voegelin as a “cold warrior” performing the “role of an inquisitor in the style of Senator McCarthy.” As a whole, this editorial volume is—needless to say—framed by the “dispute Blumenberg vs. Voegelin on the interpretation of modernity.” The editor Taubes correctly summarizes the general reception of this “dispute” when writing in the Introduction: “Eric Voegelin’s attack on the legitimacy of modernity was too extensive, his gnosis formula was too general to hold. So it is not surprising that, in general, Blumenberg’s theses have been more convincing.” If Voegelin was referred to at all in the 1970s and 1980s it was mostly in the context just described—at least outside the circle of his former Munich students. Within this circle the reception of his work was naturally quite different. As a teacher he had an enormous 13. Albrecht Kiel, Gottesstaat und Pax Americana: zur Politischen Theologie von Carl Schmitt und Eric Voegelin (Cuxhaven: Junghans, 1998), p. 95. 14. Ibid, p. 97. 15. Richard Faber, Der Prometheus-Komnplex. Zur Kriti der Polit-Theorie Eric Voegelins und Hans Blumenbergs (Wiirzburg: Kénigshausen und Neumann, 1984), p. 56. 16. Ibid., p. 67. 17. Richard Faber, “Eric Voegelin. Gnosis- Verdachtals polit(olog)isches Strategem,” in Gnosis und Politik, ed. J. Taubes (Munich et al.: Wilhelm Fink/ Ferdinand Schéningh, 1984), pp. 230-248, at p. 248. 18. Jacob Taubes, “Binleitung,” in Taubes, Gnosis und Politik, p. 10. 19. Ibid.GNOSIS AND ANAMNESIS 759 influence on his students—not so much as regards the contents of specific positions but as regards the scientific methodos. This influence might be compared with the influence Max Weber once had on Voegelin himself. In other words, what the students primarily adopted from Voegelin was not some specific concepts like political religions, gnosis or anamnesis but rather the self-understanding “that one cannot be a successful scholar in the field of social and political science unless one knows what one is talking about. And that means acquiring the comparative civilizational knowledge not only of modern civilization but also of medieval and ancient civilization, and not only of Western civilization but also of Near Eastern and Far Eastern civilizations.”” This attitude resulted in an impressive number of material studies and monographs published in the late 1960s and early 1970s within the List Hochschulreihe: Geschichte des politischen Denkens (History of political thinking) and edited by the former Voegelin students Jiirgen Gebhardt, Manfred Henningsen, and Peter J. Opitz." It is important to keep these material studies and their follow-ups in mind when talking about the marks Voegelin left in German discourse. During his time as teacher in Germany one event, it seems, was of particular importance for the relationship with his students, namely the lectures on “Hitler and the Germans” held at the University of Munich in the summer semester of 1964. For his students, these lectures became “the great moment of their German education because, up to that point, they had met nobody telling them the truth in such an unvarnished way”—as Manfred Henningsen reports” Henningsen adds that if Voegelin had published these lectures in the 1960s—a contract had already been signed — his reception in Germany would have taken quite a different direction; he probably would not have gotten the image of an obscure antimodernist but rather that of a critical intellectual. But, as a matter of fact, the lectures were not published, so this is pure speculation 20. E. Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989), p. 13 21. For an overview of these studies see Geoffrey Price, “Eric Voegelin: A Classified Bibliography,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 76/2.(1994): 160-172. 22, Manfred Henningsen, “Eric Voegelin und die Deutschen,” Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift fiir Europiisches Denken 8/48 (1994): 728. 23.A translation of the lectures is published now within The Collected Works of Eric Veegelin. See E. Voegelin, Hitler and the Germans, trans, ed. and intro. Detlev Clemens and Brendan Purcell, vol 31, Collected Works (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1999).760 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS From the beginning of the 1990s onwards, increasing interest was being devoted to Voegelin’s ideas again. Particularly, one of his earlier concepts, namely “political religions,” was receiving wide spread attention. The reason for this—as previously mentioned—lays on the one hand, on the changing general political situation; and on the other hand, on the reissuing of Voegelin’s work from 1938 by Peter J. Opitz.” Parallel to this, other important texts such as The People of God and the Autobiographical Reflections also appeared. They served as very helpful introductions to Voegelin’s work. Other publications included a new edition of The New Science of Politics as well as an edited volume by Opitz that contained selected correspondences on the New Science.* These publications certainly provided a good basis upon which to reexamine Voegelin’s work. However, one cannot hide the fact that the “colossus” within his work, namely Order and History, still awaited translation. As a consequence, a repetition of the unsatisfactory situation of the 1950s and 1960s was pre- programmed to a certain degree. That is, Voegelin is mainly associated with his “smaller” writings that, as a rule, polemicize and make radical claims. These claims, however, are not or only barely comprehensible because the understanding is predicated on having access to the original historical studies. Since these studies do not exist in translated form, the reader remains skeptical against Voegelin’s daring thoughts or, even worse, rejects them. with a shake of the head.” With respect to the “Political Religions,” yet a more discomforting problem surrounded the reception: The claim made 24. E. Voegelin, Die Politischen Religionen, ed. Peter J. Opitz (Munich: Wilhelm Fink/Periagoge, 1993). 25. E. Voegelin, Das Volk Gottes. Sektenbewegungen und der Geist der Moderne, trans. Heike Kaltschmidt and ed. and intro. Peter J. Opitz (Munich: Wilhelm Fink/ Periagoge, 1994); and Autobiographische Reflexionen trans. Caroline Kénig and ed. and intro, Peter J. Opitz (Munich: Wilhelm Fink/Periagoge, 1994), 26. E. Voegelin, Die Neue Wissenschaft der Politik. Fine Einfithrung, ed. Peter J. Opitz (Munich: Alber, 1991); Eric Voegelin, Alfred Schutz, Leo Strauss, Aron Gurwitsch, Briefwechsel iiber “Die Neue Wissenschaft der Politik,” ed. Peter J. Opitz (Munich: Alber, 1993). 27. This situation will change now that, under the direction of Prof. Opitz, the translation and editing processes of Order and History have been started. The first volume will come out in 2001.GNOSIS AND ANAMNESIS 761 in 1938 that totalitarian movements could be understood as inner worldly religions with redemption entitlements was even at the beginning of the 1990s considered useful and original. The description of quasi-religious mechanisms of filling symbols like nation, race or class with “sacred substance” in order to “affectually bind the masses”** was considered all the more plausible due to the conspicuous rise in worldwide religious-political fundamentalism. Because of this, Voegelin’s claim was willingly taken up by some and was often transformed in less original theoretical contexts. In this way, his concept began to take on a life of its own and surfaced in a number of rather dubious publications. The effect was the following: these dubious publications offered critics the welcomed. opportunity to disavow not only the ways in which Voegelin’s concepts had been readopted but also the concepts themselves. Let us take a short look at some selected publications. The respected political scientist Hans Maier, already in the 1960s a colleague of Voegelin in Munich, published a book in 1995 entitled Political Religions.” Although Maier does mention that Eric Voegelin and Raymond Aron coined the term in the 1930s, he apparently does not seem to find it problematic that he has taken over Voegelin’s original title. In regard to content, Maier’s “Concepts of Dictatorship Comparisons” stand clearly above most of the other applications of Voegelin’s concept mainly because of the strict comparative perspectives that are made. In 1996 and 1997 he also published two editorial volumes with various substantial articles on the subject. In the 1996 volume, furthermore, we find an excellent article by Dietmar Herz that convincingly shows the close similarities between Voegelin’s approach and that of the French philosophy of the Renouveau Catholique, especially Jacques Maritain." 28. Voegelin, Politische Religionen, p. 53. 29. Hans Maier, Politische Religionen. Die totalitiren Regime und das Christentum (Freiburg et al.: Herder, 1995). 30. Hans Maier, ed., “Totalitarismus’ und ’Politische Religionen’. Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs (Paderborn et al : Ferdinand Schoningh, 1996); Hans Maier and Michael Schafer, eds., ‘Totalitarismus’ und ‘Politische Religionen’. Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs. Band 2 (Paderborm et al.: Ferdinand Schéningh, 1997). 31. See Dietmar Herz, “Der Begriff der ,Politischen Religionen’ im Denken Eric Voegelins,” in Maier,’ Totalitarismus,’ pp. 191-209.762 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS The Viennese religious scientist Michael Ley published in 1997, together with Julius H. Schoeps, an edited volume on Der Nationalsozialismus als politische Religion (Nationalsocialism as political religion) and a collection of his own essays on political religions.” Both books are examples of the inadequate and unoriginal application of Voegelin’s concepts. Ley combines in the simplest of ways National Socialism and the Revelation of St. John: “Modern religions—especially nationalist-racist thinking and as a consequence National Socialism—have their roots of origin in the Revelation of St. John.” Quotations from St. John are given a one-to-one correspondence with the “apocalypse” of the twentieth century. This shows that the author understands very little of both St. John’s Revelation and the twentieth century. Naive causal constructions replace what Voegelin used to call “Symptomzusammenhange” (symptom relationships) precisely to avoid causal simplifications. The difference between “Strukturverwandtschaften” (structural relations) and content relations is simply ignored—not to speak of the fact that some things had happened between the first and twentieth century that might be relevant for the analysis of modern political totalitarianism. Through such simplifications, as Micha Brumlik claims in a review, the present state of philological-text science is not at all taken into account In addition to this, it is especially annoying that sociological contexts are merely ignored. These shortcomings appear throughout most of the articles of the volume edited by Ley and Schoeps. In sum, one can notice, at best, “a sterile repetition of that which could, in this way or another, already be read from Voegelin.”* That, on the other hand, there does not exist much knowledge about Voegelin can be seen in a contribution by Philippe Burrin in which the Protestant Voegelin is referred to as an “Austrian Catholic.”** 32. Michael Ley and Julius H. Schoeps, eds., Der Nationalsozialismus als politische Religion (Bodenheimn: Philo, 1997); Michael Ley, Apokalypse und Moderne. Aufsiitze zu politischen Religionen (Wien: Sonderzahl, 1997). 33. Ley, Apokalypse, p. 124. 34. Micha Brumlik, “Glaubige Hingabe und starker Staat: Zu den Chancen einer, Religionspolitologie,” Neve Ziircher Zeitung, 13/14 October 1997, pp. 50-51 35. Ibid. 36. Philippe Burrin, “Die politischen Religionen: Das Mythologisch-Symbolische in einer sikularisierten Welt,” in Ley and Schoeps, Der Nationalsozialismus, p. 169.GNOSIS AND ANAMNESIS 763 These inadequate applications cause harm to the reception of Voegelin’s work. As Brumlik’s previously mentioned comments have already illustrated, publications like Ley’s are interpreted as the results of the “Voegelin School.” In a further step, these dubious results of the “school” are then transformed into a “dubious school,” which in turn translates into a “dubious Voegelin.” At the end of Brumlik’s discussion a “manichean existentialist Voegelin” remains, who finds himself in good company though—next to the “erratic late Gnostic Taubes.”” One incidentally also finds a large affinity between the “Taubes School”—and here in particular Richard Faber—and the concept of political religions. In 1997, Faber edited a book with the title “Political Religion—Religious Politics.”** That no reference is made to Voegelin or his book of 1938 is not really surprising since, as shown above, Faber had already in 1984 passed Voegelin off with diverse strange attributes such as “authoritative liberal,” etc.” In light of Faber’s selection of this book title, however, the question of the honest use of terms comes up again. In the context of newer works on the topic of political religions, the most content-rich study has been written, without a doubt, by Claus E. Barsch.” Drawing on a stupendous amount of material, Barsch was able to decipher, step by step, the religious-symbolic constitution of National Socialistic ideology. By doing so, he particularly shows the mechanisms in construing the Deutsche Volk as an eschatological subject and its Fiihrer Hitler as a Messiah-like figure. In contrast to more sociological and cultural-historical approaches of recent years, like, for instance, Daniel Goldhagen’s, Barsch emphasizes the significance of the figure of Hitler again.*' What comes into the 37. Brumlik, Glaubige Hingabe, p. 51. 38. Richard Faber, ed., Politische Religion—veligidse Politik (Wiirzburg: Kénigshausen and Neumann, 1997) 39. Faber, Der Prometheus-Komplex, p. 67. 40. Claus E. Barsch, Die politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus. Die religiése Dimension der NS-Idealogie in den Schriften von Dietrich Eckart, Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg und Adolf Hitler (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1998} 41. See also Manfred Henningsen, “Hitler und die Deutschen. Uber Totalitarismus und politische Religionen,” in Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift fiir europiiisches Denken 12 (1999): 1194-98.764 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS focus is the inner connection between the various complexes of National Socialist ideology: Fiihrer, Reich, Volk, anti- Semitism. Finally, it is convincingly demonstrated that the Nazi eschatology of the Deutsche Volk is inextricably linked, a priori, to the annihilation of the Jews. The most noteworthy aspects of Barsch’s study are not so much his theses—the main arguments are not especially new—but the mountain of material that corroborates these theses. It is also a relief that Barsch does not attempt to explain National Socialism in its totality (here we would have had to point to the missing of sociological and historico-cultural aspects) but only the religious or quasi-religious dimension of NS ideology. Compared to the previously mentioned works, Barsch’s findings therefore seem much more plausible. On the whole, it is regrettable that the newly reawakened concern in the 1990s with Voegelin’s work was almost exclusively restricted to the concept of “political religions.” After all, it was one of his very early concepts and, as Dietmar Herz correctly said, a “precursor to the idea of gnosticism.”? The concept has very clear limitations and is in many cases more a slogan than a program. As Voegelin was reduced, in the 1950s and 1960s, mainly to his gnosticism thesis, he is now—paradoxically—identified with an even earlier concept, that of political religions. In this way, the core of his lifework remains underexposed; namely the large-scale reformulation of an epistemé politiké which, as a historical-phenomenological hermeneutic, integrates an immense amount of material. In doing so, symbolic systems are penetrated time and again and the underlying universal experiences are brought to light as well as their deformation through ideologies. This hermeneutic supplies the researcher with the subtly differentiated terminology of idea, evocation and sentiment in approaching political reality. It is important to remember that Voegelin is indeed a phenomenologist. His work stands in the post- 42. Herz, Der Begriff der politischen Religionen, p. 209. 43. See Jurgen Gebhardt, “Politische Ideengeschichte als Theorie der politischen Evokation,” in Politikwissenschaftliche Spiegelungen. Ideendiskurs— Institutionelle Fragen—Politische Kultur und Sprache, ed. Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Gisela Richter and Amo Waschkuhn (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998), pp. 15-33.GNOSIS AND ANAMNESIS 765 Husserlian phenomenological tradition in which one endeavors to overcome the Cartesian division between consciousness and world—a division that had still limited Husserl himself. Voegelin’s most notable achievement is probably the reuniting of consciousness and history as realized in the course of his anamnesis. This is conveyed in his fundamental expression: “The field of history is the soul of man.” Although Voegelin comes very close to the Hegelian project here, he remains bound to Schelling in that he does not operate with dialectical but with anamnetic reason. History remains open in the same way that consciousness constantly remains a concrete consciousness; it is always bound to the bodily, historical and social existence of a concrete individual. There are always two things that become visible from an anamnetic process: concrete experiences of an individual biography and also existential Grunderfahrungen, that is, universal experiences of the participation in something, which surpasses the immanent existence of the respective individual. Here, what becomes vital is what Voegelin called “experience of transcendence.” It is this term that, particularly in Germany, caused many misunderstandings and was met with strong resistance. Voegelin was often accused of “theological speculation” or spiritualism beforehand.* It is most surprising that “experience of transcendence” was met with such rejection in Husserl’s native country. This concept is, after all, fundamental to the phenomenological tradition. According to Voegelin’s friend Alfred Schiitz, for instance, the phenomenological project within the social sciences essentially consists of formulating a general theory of the symbolic dealings with transcendence. Transcendence, in this sense, means everything that surpasses the individual in a specific spatial-temporal situation: nature, society, history, cosmos. Although Voegelin describes the concept of transcendence more restrictively in normative- ontological terms, the project remains the same: a philosophical 44, Voegelin, On Character and Scepticism, p. 106. 45. See, for example, Hans-Christof Kraus, “Auf der Suche nach der verlorenen Ordnung, Theologische Spekulation als politische Philosophie bei Eric Voegelin” Criticon: Konservative Zeitschrift 120 (1990): 197-81766 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS anthropology focusing—in Schiitz’s words—on “the place of man in a cosmos which transcends his existence, but within which he has to find his bearings. Signs and Symbols, so we propose to show, are among the means by which man tries to come to terms with his manifold experiences of transcendency.”** Moreover, a number of mutually complementary aspects exist between Schiitz’s more pragmatic approach to transcendence and Voegelin’s ontological approach. If these aspects were to be systematically examined, a very broad philosophical-anthropological foundation for the social sciences could indeed be created. Then we will also see that which Schiitz calls “life-world” is always at the same time a “political reality” in Voegelin’s sense, and the other way round. The English sociologist David J. Levy has proceeded along this path and has, in connection with Voegelin and Schiitz, formulated a phenomenologically oriented “objective science of social reality.”"” In Germany by contrast, one remains oblivious to such a perspective. The author of this essay has recently published, in the Periagoge-series, a comprehensive reconstruction of the correspondence between Eric Voegelin and Alfred Schiitz.** This book not only describes the long- standing theory discussions between the two Viennese emigrants but also frames Voegelin’s work within a phenomenological context. With it, it is hoped that the links between Voegelin’s oeuvre and phenomenology will become more apparent. In the end, one must agree with Aron Gurwitsch when he claimed back in 1952 upon receiving the The New Science of Politics that it, for the most part, is a phenomenological book. This is even more so the case for the original studies in Order and History. 46. Alfred Schittz, The Problem of Social Reality. Collected Papers 1 (The Hague et al: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), p. 293. 47. David J. Levy, Realism: An Essay in Interpretation and Social Reality (Manchester: Carcanet New Press, 1981), p. 14. 48. Gilbert Weiss, Theorie, Relevanz und Wahrheit. Eine Rekonstruktion des Briefwechsels zwischen Eric Voegelin und Alfred Schiitz 1938-1959 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink/Periagoge, 2000). 49. Gurwitsch in a letter to Alfred Schiitz from 2 November 1952, see E. Voegelin, A. Schiitz, L. Strauss, A. Gurwitsch, Briefwechsel, p. 133GNOSIS AND ANAMNESIS 767 Austria Since Austria is part of the German-speaking sphere, what has been said on the reception of Voegelin in Germany is also, in principle, true for Austria. Nevertheless the land from which ‘Voegelin had to flee from in 1938 will be briefly discussed. In the first decades of the twentieth century, Vienna was a metropolis that manifested a remarkable depth and intensity in intellectual, scientific, and artistic developments. It was in this climate that Voegelin was academically socialized. Since the beginning of the 1920s, he was an active participant in various intellectual circles. This Vienna had by 1938, at the very latest, fallen into a precipitous decline; the expulsion of reason was complete. After the war, no serious official attempts were made to bring back the exiled artists, writers, and scientists. Following the complete expulsion, a complete repression of what had happened set in. Through this, the exiled and their work were virtually eradicated from the national consciousness. This at the very point in which a new national consciousness was just being, formed. There were, however, exceptions such as Sigmund Freud, whose fame could not be overlooked and, in addition, served quite well as an adornment to the national consciousness. Eric Voegelin, of course, was not one of the exceptions. His first return visit to Vienna was in 1950. Following this, he came on short visits as a guest lecturer and, in the winter semester of 1973/74, he held a 6 week course at the University of Vienna on the topic of “Ecumenic humanity and peace in history.” This invitation can be attributed to the initiatives of certain individuals such as the philosophy professor Leo Gabriel; in general, however, Voegelin’s newer “American” works were just as ignored as his “Austrian” studies of the 1920s and 1930s. The latter were also shelved because his book on the “Authoritarian State” from 1936 was seen as defending—which it in some respects did—the authoritarian constitution of 1934.” Voegelin, as did Karl Kraus and Sigmund Freud, regarded the support for 50. See E. Voegelin, The Authoritarian State: An Essay on the Problem of the Austrian State. trans. Ruth Hein, ed. and intro. Gilbert Weiss; historical commentary on the period by Erika Weinzierl, vol 4, Collected Works (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1999).768 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS the authoritarian government the only way to maintain the country’s national autonomy against Nazi Germany on the one side and Mussolini Italy on the other. In the common sense of the Second Republic (i.e., Austria after 1945), however, the years between 1934 and 1938 were labeled as the time of “Austrofaschism.” So, a position like the one Voegelin had assumed in the book from 1936 was seen as proto-fascist too. Voegelin’s books on race from 1933 made his work appear even more suspect; the title “Race and State” was enough to convey this impression. In order to know that these books served as a radical critique on racist (pseudo-) science, one would have had to read the books. This, of course, was not done. The antimodernity of the gnosticism thesis, which drew increasing attention to Voegelin in the 1950s, fit well into this picture. Still in 1995, in the catalogue of an exhibition on the “Cultural exodus from Austria”—the first comprehensive biographical documentation of the expulsion and annihilation of persons from the arts, literature and the sciences—we find a short article on Voegelin in which he is described, with reference to the previously mentioned Richard Faber, as a more or less reactionary “fetishist of law and order.”*' Here the typical pattern of “Austrian” categorization used on Voegelin is shown: His later philosophy of order is constantly associated with his 1936 book on the authoritarian state. This synthesis reads as follows: “Voegelin understood political science to be an authoritarian ‘science of order’.”* In other words, the theme of a past study is shifted to the conceptual form of science. From a Voegelinian perspective, such a categorization is of course a contradictio in adiecto—mainly for one reason: “authoritarian” is a symbol of political self-interpretation (doxa) and, as such, can never become an analytical- explicative concept (epistemé); this, by the way, could already be read in the book from 1936. 51. Oliver Rathkolb, “Eric Voegelin: Froma Member of the Vienna Legal Theory School to a ‘Gnostic Anti-Gnostic,” in Vertreibung der Vernunft. The Cultural Exodus from Austria, ed. F Stadler and P. Weibel (Vienna and New York: Springer, 1995),p. 163. 52. Ibid. 53. See Voegelin, TheAuthoritarian State, p. 57f.GNOSIS AND ANAMNESIS 769 In 1997, Voegelin’s Authoritarian State was re-issued by Giinther Winkler. In his introduction, Winkler concentrates on the relationship between Voegelin and Hans Kelsen—Voegelin’s early mentor and the “father” of the Austrian Constitution of 1920. This focus is only legitimate because it is indeed the full- length criticism of Kelsen’s pure theory of law and not so much the Authoritarian constitution that is at the core of Voegelin’s book. However, there is no indication that this reissue from 1997, was noted at all by the Austrian scientific public. Italy and France In Italy, since the beginning of the 1970s, there has been a very lively reception of Voegelin’s work. With the translation of the New Science in 1968, Voegelin’s theoretical positions entered for the first time into the Italian debate in rather turbulent times.” It was the conservatives who first picked up Voegelin’s radical critique of modernity. In the 1980s, against the background of emerging legitimation problems of Marxist positions, the Italian Left also became increasingly interested in Voegelin. In his work, they sought a framework in which to formulate a “filosofia pratica” (practical philosophy). Today, numerous monographs and essays on Voegelin exist that illuminate various aspects of his works.® The Political Religions as well as the Autobiographical Reflections have been translated. The Anamnesis book was already published in 1972. In 1988, the Plato section of Order and History II was translated and in 1993 parts of Order and History I.” Chignola differentiates between three phases of the “Ricezione Italiana di Voegelin.” The first phase highlighted the discussion about the nature and interpretation of modernity; the 54. E, Voegelin, Der autoritiire Staat. Ein Versuch tiber das dsterreichsche Staatsproblem, ed...and intro. Giinther Winkler (Wien and New York: Springer, 1997}. 55. E. Voegelin, La nuova scienza politica, trans. R. Pavetto (Torino: Borla, 1968). 56. See, for instance, Gian F. Lami, Introduzione a Eric Voegelin. Dal mito teo- cosmogonico al sensorio della trascendenza: la ragione degti antiquie la ragione dei moderni (Milano: Giuffré, 1993); Luigi Mistrorigo, Eric Voegelin. Decadenaa e ordine politico: 1a politica prima del potere (Roma: Citta Nuova, 1994); Sandro Chignola, Pratica del limite, Saggio sulla filosofia politica di Eric Voegelin (Padova: Unipress, 1998) 57. For detailled bibliographical references of all these publications see the Bibliography (“Fonti”) in Chignola, Pratica del limite7710 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS second phase addressed the existentialist background of anepistemé politiké and coupled this to the reformulation of a practical philosophy; the third part focussed on the general “problematica del valori” (value problem) in political science—although here, comparisons between Voegelin and Max Weber on the one hand and Carl Schmitt on the other seemed to dominate.* Chignola had also intensively preoccupied himself with Voegelin’s earlier works on Jaw and “Staatslehre.” Because of this, he was able to show the continuity of the phenomenological-exegetical approach to symbols throughout Voegelin’s development as a theorist.” In contrast to Italy, France did not show evidence of any significant reception of Voegelin. And yet the beginning of the 1950s seemed to start off quite promisingly. From one of Alfred Schiitz’s letters of 1958, we can gather that Jean Wahl, a prominent philosopher and editor of the journal Revue de Métaphysique et Morale (Journal of metaphysics and morals), was “thoroughly impressed” with the first volume of Order and History.” Schiitz, who had excellent contact with French intellectuals and scholars, mentioned to Wahl that two other volumes of Order and History had in the meantime been published. Following this, Wahl inquired whether the publisher could send him these other two copies. He would then write a book review of all three volumes in his Revue. Schiitz then informed Voegelin and explicitly pointed out “that a book review written from his (Wahl’s) pen would be of utmost importance for the circulation of this book in France.”*' Voegelin responded to Schiitz with delight and reported that he had informed the press to send Wahl the two volumes. It is not known whether Wahl had indeed received these volumes. What is known, however, is that the book review was not written. This is, from a Voegelinian perspective, very unfortunate; especially since Wahl was known for enabling new ideas to surface in France.® Already 58. Ibid., Appendix 3. 59. S. Chignola, Fetishism with the Norm and Symbols of Politics, Occasional Papers 10, Eric-Voegelin-Archiv, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munich (1999). 60. This letter is from 16 October 1958; see Eric Voegelin Papers, Box 34.11, Hoover Institution Archives. 61. Schiitz to Voegelin, 16 October 1958. 62. Voegelin to Schiitz, 20 October 1958. 63, Bernhard Waldenfels, Phiinomenologie in Frankreich (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1987), p. 39.GNOSIS AND ANAMNESIS 77 in the summer of 1950, Voegelin had, on Schiitz’s recommendation, met Raymond Aron in Paris. Jean Wahl and Maurice Merleau- Ponty also stood on Voegelin’s list of whom to visit but they were at this time on vacation. Over the years, Voegelin remained in contact with Aron. In 1981, Aron contributed an article entitled Remarques sur la Gnose Leniniste (Remarks on the Leninist Gnosis) to the volume commemorating Voegelin’s eightieth birthday. Finally, Aron was the only one of the postwar intelligentsia from Paris who had followed Voegelin’s work over the years. At this point, a letter from Jacob Taubes in 1952 should also be mentioned.® In this letter, Taubes informed Voegelin that Albert Camus had borrowed from Taubes’ wife a copy of Voegelin’s essay ‘on Gnostische Politik,* and that Camus never returned the copy because “of interest in the essay.” To be sure, Voegelin’s essay could not have had any influence on L’homme révolté because the latter had already been published in October 1951. It is possible, however, that, through Voegelin’s work, Camus was able to find a confirmation of his own thesis. It is idle to speculate what would have happened if Voegelin had personally met Wahl and Merleau-Ponty in summer 1950, if Wahl! had really written the review of Order and History, etc. Perhaps Voegelin would have gotten in contact through Wahl with Emmanuel Lévinas, a close friend of the latter; and perhaps he would have discovered a fundamental mutuality of interests with Lévinas. That such a mutuality existed in various respects is certain. What particularly catches the eye are the parallels of their criticisms of Husserl and, emerging out of these criticisms, the common approach to a “nonintentional consciousness.” A sentence like the following by Lévinas could just as well come from Voegelin: “The intentionality (of consciousness) does not make up the secret of humanity.” However, we should stick to 64. Raymond Aron, "Remarques sur la Gnose Leniniste,” in The Philosophy of Order: Essays on Consciousness, History and Politics, ed. P. J. Opitz and G. Seba (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1981), pp. 263-74. 65, Taubes to Voegelin, November 1952, see Eric Voegelin Papers, Box 37.10, Hoover Institution Archives. 66. E. Voegelin, "Gnostische Politik,” Merkur, Deutsche Zeitschrift fur europitisches Denken 4 (1952): 301-17. 67. E. Lévinas, Dieu, la Mort et le Temps (Paris: Editions Grasset and Fasquelle, 1993), quoted from the German translation 1996, p. 25.772 THE REVIEW OF POLITICS the facts. And the facts are that Voegelin was not present in the French discourse of the last twenty to thirty years. Occasionally, we find brief references to him like, for instance, in Rémi Brague’s Europe, la voie romaine where the author, a well reputed Plato expert, rephrases the difference between Voegelin and Blumenberg on modernity, criticizes the former's ignorance of Marcion, and elaborates himself the “Marcionistic Character” of modernity. The sociologist Raymond Boudon, in his 1986- classic L’idéologie. L’origine des idées recues, devotes some two, three pages to Voegelin basically claiming that the latter’s work is a representative case of the “ideology of Conservatism.” These examples at least show that prominent scholars like Brague and Boudon know about Voegelin’s work. However, in 1994 the Political Religions, translated by Jacob Schmutz, appeared as Voegelin’s first book publication in French.” Schmutz contributed a very informative introduction to this volume and, in addition, also presented Voegelin’s oeuvre in a long essay in the Reoue philosophique de Louvain.” Since spring 2000, finally, the New Science is available in French translation—just as the Political Religions—at a well renowned Parisian publishing house.” These translations might stir up the reception or rather nonreception of Voegelin in France. First signs, however, suggest that German evils are taken over here. Alain Besancon, for example, has recently published a short history of totalitarianism in which he builds on the idea of political religions but does not once refer to Voegelin.”* 68. Rémi Brague, Europe, la voie romaine (Paris: Criterion, 1992), quoted from the German translation 1993, p. 146. 69. Raymond Boudon, Lidéologie. L’origine des idées recues (Paris, Librairie Artheme Fayard, 1986), quoted from the German translation, p. 167. 70. E. Voegelin, Les religions politiques, traduction et préface par Jacob Schmutz (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1994) 71. See J. Schmutz, “La prophetie du Flore,” in E. Voegelin, Les religions politiques, pp. 7-22; and “La philosophie de l’ordre d’Eric Voegeli,” Revue hilosophique de Louvain 3 (1995): 255-84. 72. E, Voegelin, La nouvelle science de la politique, traduction et présentation par Sylvie Courtine-Denamy (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2000) 73, Alain Besangon, Le Malheur du siécle. Sur le communisme, le nazisme et 'unicité de Ia Shoah (Paris: Fayard, 1998). 1am grateful to Jacob Schmutz for this information.