Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought


Book Description

The rise of Asia in global affairs has forced western thinkers to rethink their assumptions, theories, and conclusions about the region. Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought brings together a mixture of established and rising scholars from both Asia and the West to reflect upon the political philosopher’s thought about China, Japan, Korea, Central Asia, and India. From Voegelin’s writings, readers will not only understand how Voegelin’s approach can illuminate the fundamental principles and issues about Asia but also what are the challenges and possibilities that Asia offers in the twentieth-first century. For those who want to move past the superficial commentary and clichés about Asia, Eric Voegelin’s Asian Political Thought is the book for you.




Eric Voegelin on China and Universal Humanity


Book Description

Eric Voegelin on China and Universal Humanity: A Study of Voegelin’s Hermeneutic Empirical Paradigm aims to speak to comparative political theorists, philosophers, historians, sinologists, and anyone interested in understanding our current disorders and exploring a culturally non-specific paradigm for understanding equivalent practices and patterns in the global age, especially China and the West. Specifically, this book looks at Eric Voegelin’s (1901–1985) Theory of Order. It focuses on Voegelin’s interpretation of order/disorder, his penetration of the Tianxia (the Chinese Ecumene), and his comparison of two representative heterogenous Ecumenes in the ancient West and East. In doing so, the book explores the issue of universal humankind and the nature of order-searching.




Eric Voegelin’s Political Readings


Book Description

Eric Voegelin’s Political Readings fills a critical void by providing an original approach to studying the work of Eric Voegelin, one of the major political philosophers of the twenty-first century. Across six chapters, experts guide the reader from classical to modern times presenting six political philosophers who have had an impact on the life and philosophical production of Eric Voegelin. Philosophers examined include Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Hobbes, Weber and Kelsen. Through this innovative structure, the chapters collectively illustrate how Voegelin was an exceptional thinker through his engagement with political philosophers both modern and antique. The plurality of unique, academic perspectives and voices enriches our understanding of Voegelin’s own thought while also encouraging a re-think of ancient and modern thinkers, and the transformation and continuity between these. Designed for students and scholars alike, Eric Voegelin’s Political Readings will appeal to all those with an interest in Voegelin as well as readers familiar with classical and modern political philosophers.




Eric Voegelin


Book Description

"Readers intimidated or puzzled by Voegelin's often daunting prose will find Federici's volume, the fourth entry in ISI's Library of Modern Thinkers series, an invaluable guide to one of the twentieth century's most imposing - and most impressive - philosophical minds."--BOOK JACKET.







Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought (set)


Book Description

This groundbreaking new work explores modern and contemporary political thought since 1750, looking at the thinkers, concepts, debates, issues, and national traditions that have shaped political thought from the Enlightenment to post-modernism and post-structuralism. Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought is two-volume A to Z reference that provides historical context to the philosophical issues and debates that have shaped attitudes toward democracy, citizenship, rights, property, duties, justice, equality, community, law, power, gender, race, and legitimacy over the last three centuries. It profiles major and minor political thinkers, and the national traditions, both Western and non-Western, which continue to shape and divide political thought. More than 200 scholars from leading international research institutions and organizations have provided signed entries that offer comprehensive coverage of: Thought of regions and countries, including African political thought, American political thought , Australasian political thought (Australian and New Zealand), Chinese political thought, Indian political thought, Islamic political Thought, Japanese political thought, and more Thought regarding contemporary issues such as abortion, affirmative action, animal rights, European integration, feminism, humanitarian intervention, international law, race and racism, and more The ideological spectrum from Marxism to neoconservatism, including anarchism, conservatism, Darwinism and Social Darwinism, Engels, fascism, the Frankfurt School, Lenin and Leninism, socialism, and more Connections of political thought to key areas of politics and other disciplines such as economics, psychology, law, and religion Notable time periods of political thought since 1750 Concepts including class, democratic theory, liberalism, nationalism, natural and human rights, and theories of the state Theorists and political intellectuals, both Western and non-Western including John Adams, Edmund Burke, Mohandas Gandhi, Immanuel Kant, Ayatollah Khomeini, Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, George Washington, and Mary Wollstonecraft




Approaches to Political Thought


Book Description

Approaches to Political Thought raises three important questions concerning traditional political thought: (1) Why study the political writings and ideas of Plato, Machiavelli, and other long-dead writers? (2) Who among the writers, and which of their works, are worth studying? (3) How should they be studied? The book then explores ten contemporary approaches to understanding political thought and the diverse answers to these questions. The approaches covered include those of Leo Strauss, Hannah Arendt, Eric Voegelin, Sheldon Wolin, the Cambridge School (Quentin Skinner and J.G.A. Pocock), Psychobiography, Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School (Herbert Marcuse and JYrgen Habermas), Hermeneutics (Paul Ricoeur and Hans-Georg Gadamer), Michel Foucault, and Feminist Criticism (Susan Moller Okin and Jean Elshtain). Each chapter includes an introductory essay and edited selections that illustrate or discuss that approach. Each chapter concludes with discussion questions and suggestions for further exploration, including books, articles, and web sites. This exploration of contending contemporary approaches to political thought touches upon ongoing methodological and philosophical issues that are relevant to several academic disciplines, including political science, history, philosophy, and psychology.




Western political thought in dialogue with Asia


Book Description

Given the rise of globalization and coinciding increase in cultural clashes among diverse nations, it has become eminently clear to scholars of political thought that there exists a critical gap in the knowledge of non-Western philosophies and how Western thought has been influenced by them. This gap has led to a severely diminished capacity of both state and nonstate actors to communicate effectively on a global scale. The political theorists, area scholars, and intellectual historians gathered here by Takashi Shogimen and Cary J. Nederman examine the exchange of political ideas between Europe and Asia from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century. They establish the need for comparative political thought, showing that in order to fully grasp the origins and achievements of the West, historians of political thought must incorporate Asian political discourse and ideas into their understanding. By engaging in comparative studies, this volume proves the necessity of a cross-disciplinary approach in guiding the study of the global history of political thought.




Civil Religion in Political Thought


Book Description

The essays in this volume blend historical and philosophical reflection with concern for contemporary political problems. They show that the causes and motivations of civil religion are a permanent fixture of the human condition, though some of its manifestations and proximate causes have shifted in an age of multiculturalism, religious toleration, and secularization




The Nature of the Law and Related Legal Writings


Book Description

During the course of his lifelong, wide-ranging reflections on history and philosophy, Eric Voegelin naturally was drawn to speculate on the nature of law. This volume consists of many of Voegelin's significant writings in this area, most notably the previously unpublished The Nature of the Law. Voegelin completed The Nature of the Law in 1957 while he was a member of the political science faculty of Louisiana State University and teaching a course in jurisprudence at the university's law school. In it he undertakes a philosophical analysis of the law to determine its nature, or essence, and comes to the conclusion that the law does not exist as a discrete entity but instead constitutes the structure of a society. The law, as Voegelin's analysis reveals, is not simply the command of a Leviathan handed down to others. Nor is it simply the result of a social compact among autonomous individuals or the expressed will of a majority securing its own self-defined, immediate worldly interest. It is rather a part of the order that a society discovers and specifies for itself in the effort to secure the common good. Thus laws and legal order have an integral relation with the society that declares them, for in declaring laws the society in some sense structures itself. Also included in this volume is Voegelin's detailed outline for the jurisprudence course he taught at LSU from 1954 to 1957. The outline was distributed to Voegelin's students but otherwise has not been published. In this outline Voegelin is concerned more with the criteria for legal order than he is with the nature of law. Voegelin also prepared for his jurisprudence course supplementary notes that are essentially a compact statement of his views on the law, and the editors have included those notes here. Finally, the book contains reviews, written by Voegelin in 1941 and 1942, of four books on legal science and legal philosophy.