Eric Voegelin's Framework for Political Evaluation in His Recently Published Work

Bibliographic Data

ID7596151
AuthorsDante Germino (University of Virginia, corresponding author)
Year1978
Volume72
Issue1
Pages110-121
Publication date1978-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1953602
OpenAlexW2172062289
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited3

Eric Voegelin's evaluation of politics is grounded in the symbols and experiences which illumine man's participation in the process of reality. The trail of symbols and equivalent experiences whic constitute history provides the fundamental criteria by which the language of politics is to be evaluated. The central philosophical symbol is the Between (metaxy), coined by Plato. It indicates that human existence is a tension between the poles of the divine height and the cosmic depth. Politics and its language must acknowledge the limitations of this tension: that the human perspective is always from within reality. Existentially, man is a participant, not an observer looking at non-metric reality from the “outside.” The existential balance of the open psyche is the product of a perpetual struggle against the tendency to distortions. Such distortions can arise when one or other aspect of reality is allowed to absorb the whole, and individual thinkers attempt to abolish the tension by replacing it with a system which provides the “solution” to the mystery of reality

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Existentialism · Linguistics · Observer (physics · Political science · Politics · Psyche · Self · Sociology · Symbol (formal · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Religion and Society Interactions

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