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Abiding ElementsGerhart Niemeyer

Political Rel i gi ons, by Eric Voegelin,translated and introduced by T. DiNapoli and E. Easterly, Toronto:Edwin Mellen Press, 1986. $49.95;(series $39.95).NOW, AFTER Eric Voegelins death, oneexpects a variety of efforts to place beforethe public all of his work, both the as-yet-unpublished parts and the five books hewrote in German before coming to theUnited States. Here we have a translationof the fifth of these, Die politischenReligionen (1938 in Austria, 1939 inSweden). It also contains the Germanoriginal, as well as two introductions, oneby Barry Cooper and another one, calledPreface, by the translators. Voegelinsbook is short, only sixty pages in the Ger-man text, but meaty and profound.Voegelin himself mentions this book inan often quoted passage of Science, Poli-tics, and Gnosticism (German, 1959;English, 1968):

Europe had no conceptual tools with whichto grasp the horror that was upon her.There was a scholarly studyof the Christianchurches and sects; there was a scienceofgovernment, cast in the categories of thesovereign nation-state and its institutions;there were the beginnings of a sociologyofpower and political authority; but there wasno science of the non-Christian, non-national intellectual and mass movementsinto which the Europe of Christian nation-states was in the process of breaking up.Since in its massiveness this new politicalphenomenon could not be disregarded, anumber of stopgap notions were coined tocope with it. There was talk of neo-paganmovements, of new social and politicalmyths, or of mystiques politiques. I , too,tried oneof these ad hoc explanations [Ver-legenheitslosung] in a littlebook on polit-ical religions.

Given this somewhat curt dismissal of thebook by the author himself, no criticism atthis time iscalled for. The reader, though,may find it interesting to compare itsstructure with V oegelins Americanworks. He begins by complaining aboutthe narrowness of the concepts stateand religion that were available to him,and devoted two sections to wideningthese concepts. Then, characteristically,there follows some historical material:Akhnatons short-lived attempt to create anew Egyptian state religion. The analysisof this episode provides Voegelin with ameasure of reference. He now can pro-ceed to establish categories for the studyof all political religions:hierarch) ekklesiu(in the original Greek meaning of theterm), and apocalypse. To these he addsconcepts drawn from his analysis ofHobbes: The Leviathan and the infra-mundane community Hierarchy, ekklesia,and apocalypse no longer govern theworks he wrote in America, leading areader to the question, What took theirplace?One feature the American reader willhave noticed is the increased importanceof Christianity in Voegelins analysis.When Alfred Schutz criticized The NewScience of Politics for this, Voegelinanswered Essentially my concern withChristianity has no religious grounds atall. However, even in 1938, Voegelinknew that it was impossible really to knowFascism, National Socialism, and Com-munism without analyzing the religiousdimension of these movements. And eventhen he perceived this philosophicalnecessity in a general awareness of real-ity: Inalldirections in which human exis-tence is open to the world, the surround-ing Beyond can be sought and found inthe body and in the spirit, in the individual

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and in society, in nature and in God(PoliticalReligions,p. 12). There followsapassage in which he identifies rationalitywith full openness in the sense of theabove remarkFor some, the doorsof ones existence standwide open for a glimpse beyond the levelsof being, from inanimate nature to God. Theworld unfolds for them; the things of thisworld enter into an orderly relationshipwith one another; they combine with eachother into an order of Being; they combinewith the axiological order of the levels ofbeing into an hierarchical order; and, inanswer to the question of the ground of

being, into an order of creation. A maxi-mum of an awareness o reality combineswith amaximum of rationality in orderingand relating [the parts] and is crowned by awell-thought-out dogma of the spiritual ex-perience in an ideaof God, such as the Westhas developed in the analogiaent i s @. 17of the German text, p. 12 of the translationwhich I have here corrected at importantpoints).Voegelin would not have put it this wayafter 1952;yet, all the same, this remainedhis view of reality to the end of his life.Although Voegelins slighting o thisbook bars us from criticizing it now, thereverse does not follow. I t seems to methat his treatment of Hobbes, in this earlywork, is a piece one felt was missing,among the various passages on Hobbes,particularly in TheNew Science. What ismore, these ten pages strike me as anassessment of Hobbes more profound thanthe almost contemporary Hobbes book byLeo Straws. Hobbes, says the opening sen-tence, was the great theologian of theparticular and immediate-to-God [got-tesunrnittelbur] ekklesia. Hobbess es-sence lies not in his social contract, whichismerely asuitable instrument to achievea natural construction of the state. Rather,hisessence must be found in what resultsfrom the contract:The previously formless multitude does not

so much elect a ruler for itself, but ratherunites its pluralism into the entity of a per-son. . . .The open structureof the Christianekklesia [comprising both spiritual and tem-

poral rule] is largely abandoned. T he hierar-chy, it is true, still extends to God, and thecommonwealth originates in accordancewith the will of God, but from God thehierarchy no longer descends topersons in-cumbent of the ranks, but tothe communityas a collective person. It goes to the sov-ereign not as a ruler of subjects, but as thepersonal embodiment of acollectivity [Ger-man text, p. 44 ; translation-again cor-rected-pp. 48 , 591.Hobbess state is the mortal god towhom men are in debt, next to the Im-mortal God, for peace and security.Thus the commonwealth is closed notonly as a unit of political power but alsospiritually, because the sovereign, be hemonarch or a parliament, has the rightto judge which opinions and teachings areappropriate. . .(pp. 45 and 50, respective-ly). The teachings, of course, must betrue, but no conflict can arise, for teach-ings that disturb the peace of the com-munity are not true (p. 45 of the Germantext; this sentence is missing in the trans-

lation). Saint Thomass high-scholasticconstruction, with the subordination of thetemporal to the spiritual order, completewith organizational distinctness, nowbreaks apart; the mundane order now isfilled with national substance thus turninginto a self-impersonated unit. This causesHobbes to argue vehemently against thatremnant which might still claim to repre-sent the whole of Christendom, the Catho-lic Church. On the basis of his own con-cepts he concludes that the Church cannotbeacommonwealth or have a personalityof itsown, and also that his new ekklesiucannot be a part of an all-embracing king-dom of God, but rather must be seen as aparticular person, immediately under God(pp. 45ff., 5 1, respectively). Finally,Hobbes supports his structure by ref-erences to the Old Testament,sothat thereligious potency of J ewish theocracy nowstreams into the world of the EnglishReformation. The sovereign of the Chris-tian commonwealth resembles Abraham:God speaks only to him; to him alone Godreveals himself; he only transmits Godswill to his people.

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This analysis of Hobbes leads Voegelinto the general concept of the intra-mundane [innerweltlich] community,comprising eight pages outlining theessential features of modernity. Truth iswhat serves human purposes. Naive intra-mundane apocalypses,e.g.,progressivism,are refuted by radical ones that, however,even claim for themselves the authority ofscience. One might think that the ingre-dient of science would cause these radicalideologies to dissolve, in terms of theirown presuppositions. What happens,though, is most curious: instead of theradical apocalypses crumbling under theattack of scientific criticism, they con-tinue, while the concept of truth ismodified @p.53 and 62, respectively).The book ends with a quotation fromthe Theologia Germanica:If acreature attributes good things to itself,such as essence, life, knowledge, under-standing, ability, in short all that which onewould have to call good, as if the creaturewere that or possessed that by itself, it turnsaway [abkehren].What else did the devildo? What else was his fall, his turning away

other than that he presumed to be and tohave something and some-Who as his own?This presumption and his I, and Me, hisFor Me, and Mine, this was his turningaway and his Fall. And that isstill the case[p. 64 of the German text; p. 78 of the cor-rected translation].

If Voegelin adds no commentof his ownatthispoint, he did write in The New Scienceof Politics: The insight that man in hismere humanity, without the fides curituteformutu, s demonic nothingness has beenbrought by Christianity to the ultimateborder of clarity which by tradition iscalled revelation.In the beginning and the end of this littlebook, and also in the Hobbes analysis, werecognize abiding elements in Voegelinsthought. Thus, having the book in trans-lation, side by side with the Germanoriginal,isa distinctassetto the interestedAmerican reader. As suggested by mymention of corrections I had to make, thistranslation leaves something to be de-sired. Let the reader beware, but let himnot for this reason leave thework unread.

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