THE COLLECTED WORKS OF

ERIC VOEGELIN
VOLUME 5

MODERNITY WITHOUT
RESTRAINT
THE POLITICAL RELIGIONS; THE NEW
SCIENCE OF POLmCS; AND SCIBNCE,
POLmcs, AND GNOSTICISM

l!D!TED
W!TH AN !NTRODUCT!ON BY
MANPRI!D Hl!NNINGSEN

Published together for the fust time in one vol­

wne are Eric Voegelin's Political Religions, The
New Science of Politics, and Science, Politics,
and Gnosticism. The Political Religions was fust
publíshed in 1938 in Vienna, the year of Voegelin's
forced immigration from Austria to the United
States. TheNew Science ofPolitics was written in
1952 and established Voegclin's reputation as a
política! philosopher in America. Science, Politics,
and Gnosticism was Voegelin's Inaugural i..tt.ture
at the University of Munich in 1958 and íntro­
ducedbím to the West Germaníntellectual public.
Although these books were written duríng
remarkably dllierent historical ciroumstances of
Voegelin's life, all three present an analysis of
modem Westem civil.ization that has lost its
spiritual foundations and is challenged by vari­
ous ideological persuasions. Voegclin critiques in
these texts a "modernity without resttaint." lt is a
modernity with Hegelian, Marxian, NietzSChean,
Heideggerian, positivist, Fascist, and other prc­
dominantly German characteristics. The autbor

•
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I
1'he three books by Eric Voegelin that are published in this volume
were written in remarkably different phases of bis life, reflecting the
circumstances of bis respective Austrian, American, and German
biographies. When the study Die politischen Religionen was first
published in Vienna in April 1938, Austria had been annexcd a
month earlier by Nazi Germany. Voegelin was informed at the end
of March that hc should not expect any succcssful cmploymcot
at an Austrian university in the future and should therefore look
for a job at an Amcricao univcrsity.' When he received thc letter
with the friendly suggestion he was still a Privatdozent and adjunct
professor at the university, offlcially employed as an assistant at
the law school. On April 22, 1938, he lost the right to teach; the
so-called venia Jegendi was ,vithdrawn by the ministry. On May 1 7
he was fired from the position of an assistant, cffcctíve at the cnd
of the month. When the Gestapo tried to get hold of bis passport he
fled to Switzerland. He and his wife, Lissy, ended up in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, where, on Christmas 1938, he wrote the preface for
a new edition of Die politischen Religionen, which llis publisher,
Berm.ann-Fischer, issued in Stockholm in 1939. This preface was
also meant as an answer to Thomas Mann, who-after having read
the book-had written Voegelin a highly criticai letter about the
lack of passionate dcnouncement oi thc Nazis.'
The second book, The New Science of Politics, is a series of
lectures he gave at the University of Chicago in the winter quarter
1. The leu:er from the Austruln Mi.nisuy of Culture w.as datedApri1 1, 1938. Eric
Vocgclin Papcrs, Hoovcr lnstitution Arthivcs, lncrcmcnt Box.
2. Thomas Mann letter, ibid., box 24, 6.le n.

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class of political phenomena he was writing about ln the r93os.'•

Yet the main charge against modemity as the juggernaut of spir­
itual disenchantment remained intact until the end of his We. ln
The Polítical Religíons he rejects the conceptual nonünalism that
equates religion with the institutional churches and politics with
the modero secular state. For Voegelin this neat compartmentaliza­
tion makes it impossible to recognize that ali política! order is jus­
tified and legitimatcd through symbolic narratives that connect the
respective society or movement with a larger order of things. The
secularization of the world, this major achievement of modernity,�
has not silenced the quest for meaning but has produced the urge to
find altemative ways of satisfying this existential human need. The
"satanic" seducers Voegelin tried to understand in 1938 forccd him
to search for other historical constellations in which the connec­
tion between social ordcr and narrativcs of transccndcnt meaning
manifests itseli. Ali of these constellations, i.e., ancient Egypt,
Greece, Rome, the Catholic and sectarian Christian Middle Ages,
English Puritanism, and modem apocalyptic speculation, he re­
visits at length in other stages of his intellectual journey. Yet he
returos only occasionaUy to the central and formative experience
of his search, the rise of Nazi Germany. He oever prepared his
most extensive treatment of the Third Reich, his 1964 lectures on
Hitler and the Germans, for the cootractually promised publication.
Voegelin's view of the "satanic" aspect of the Nazis had obviously
changed. Onc can almost say that by 1964 hc completely agrccd
with Hannah Arendt's political analysis that he had found spiri­
tually wanting in r953. His personal comrnents on Arendt's book
Eichmann in ferusalem, published in r963, were full of praise.•• ln
June r961, when she was working in Munich on the manuscript for
the cssays in thc New Yorker, Arcndt gave a talk on the Eichmann
triai in Voegelin's graduate seminar at the university and engaged
bis students in a spirited discussion. She told her husband in a letter
(June 4, 1961) that an encounter with Voegelin at his home had been
"sehr nett" (very nice)."

19. S<:c Vocgclin, Autobiograpbical Ref]ections. cd. Ellis Sandoz h9S9, available
Columbia: UniveISity oi Ml..ouri Prcss, 1999), 50 f.
2.0. See Giacomo Marram ao, Die Sê1.ku1ari$ierung der westlicben Welt JFrno.kJurt:
lnsel, 1996).
21. Thcsc commcnts werc made to me in Munich in 1963.
1.2. Hannah Arendt to Hcinrich Blücher, Bciefe. 1 9 3 61968,
- cd. Lorte Kõhler
{Munich: Piper Verlag, 1996), S49 f .

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