Eric Voegelin on Nazi Political Extremism
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4455583 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Clifford F Porter (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2002 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 151-171 |
| Publication date | 2002-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the History of Ideas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-5037 • E-ISSN: 1086-3222 |
| Publisher | Project MUSE (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jhi.2002.0008 |
| OpenAlex | W1974214255 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 6 |
Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) is not as well known among historians as he is among political theorists, yet he has had a continuing influence on both German Social Democrat and Christian Democrat political leaders. His early life is very much a reflection of both the intellectual developments and the chaos of Germany and Austria between the wars. Voegelin's analysis of Nazism is worth revisiting by historians because it delineated the Nazi rationale for the Holocaust in the early 1930s, even if the Nazis themselves had yet to move towards mass murder early in the regime. Voegelin was not prescient enough to predict the extent of the Holocaust, but he understood that the ideological rationale of Nazi violence was unlimited. Furthermore, his description of political extremism as Gnosticism in 1952 is valid for explaining why an individual might support the Nazis and then voluntarily commit extraordinarily vicious acts to try to realize the dream-world of the Third Reich
Antisemitism · Criminology · German · Gnosticism · Ideology · Judaism · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · The Holocaust · Theology · German History and Society · German legal, social, and political studies · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Philosophy · Religious studies
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,18 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2025 (11) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |