Order and History, Volume 2 : The World of the Polis

ERIC VOEGELIN, ATHANASIOS MOULAKIS, ELLIS SANDOZ

ISBN 10: 0826212832 / ISBN 13: 9780826212832

Edité par University of Missouri Press May 2000, 2000

A propos de cet article

'When man is in search of God, as in Hellas, the wisdom gained remains generically human; when God is in search of man, as in Israel, the responsive recipient of revelation becomes historically unique.' Nearing the conclusion of the first volume of his monumental exploration of the origins and influences of Athens and Jerusalem on human history and culture, Voegelin pronounces this dictum; yet it is clear from the massive genius behind the thirty years' labor of Order and History that Voegelin was neither denigrating Athens nor absolutizing Jerusalem. No: the work is that of an Olympian intellect in the presence of the Burning Bush, a phenomenon that renders Russell Kirk's judgment that this is ''the most important historical work of our century'' almost an understatement. Volume 2 in the five part series, 389 pp.

N° de réf. du vendeur 14246

Détails bibliographiques

• Titre: Order and History, Volume 2 : The World of the Polis
• Éditeur: University of Missouri Press May 2000
• Date de parution: 2000
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN à 10 chiffres: 0826212832
• ISBN à 13 chiffres: 9780826212832
• Reliure: Hardcover
• État de l'article: New
• Catalogues du vendeur:
  • Philosophy & Linguistics

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Synopsis

This second volume of Voegelin's magisterial Order and History, The World of the Polis, explores the ancient Greek symbolization of human reality. Taking us from the origins of Greek culture in the Pre-Homeric Cretan civilizations, through the Iliad and Odyssey, Hesiod, and the rise of philosophy with the Pre-Socratics Parmenides and Heraclitus, this masterful work concludes with the historians of the classical period.

In The World of the Polis, Voegelin traces the emergence of the forms of the city-state and of philosophy from the ancient symbolism of myth. He maintains that the limits and ultimate goals of human nature are constant and that the central problem of every society is the same―"to create an order that will endow the fact of its existence with meaning in terms of ends divine and human." Thus, Voegelin shows how "the meaning of existence" achieved concrete expression in the typical political, social, and religious institutions of Greece and in the productions of its poets and thinkers. He deals with more than fifty Greek writers in the course of his analysis of the rise of myth and its representation of the divine order of the cosmos as the first great symbolic form of order, one later supplanted by the leap in being reflected in the emergence of philosophy.

The book is a tour de force, a virtuoso performance by a scholar and philosopher of great power, learning, and imagination that places its subject matter in a new light. The editor's critical introduction places The World of the Polis in the broader context of Voegelin's philosophy of history. Scholars and students of political science, philosophy, and the history of ideas will find this work invaluable.

À propos de l?auteur

Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was one of the most original and influential philosophers of our time. Born in Cologne, Germany, he studied at the University of Vienna, where he became a professor of political science in the Faculty of Law. In 1938, he and his wife, fleeing Hitler, immigrated to the United States. They became American citizens in 1944. Voegelin spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. During his lifetime he published many books and more than one hundred articles. The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin will make available in a uniform edition all of Voegelin's major writings.

Athanasios Moulakis is Herbst Professor of the Humanities at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Simone Weil and the Politics of Self-Denial, Beyond Utility: Liberal Education for a Technological Age (AACAU Ness Award), and Eric Voegelin's History of Political Ideas, Volume I, Hellenism, Rome, and Early Christianity.