The Eric Voegelin Society
Annual Meeting

Charles Embry, editor of the new and engaging, Robert B. Heilman and Eric Voegelin, A friendship in Letters, explained to us that literature occupied a special place for Voegelin—in both his personal and professional life.

Polly Detels took J.M. Coetzee's novel, Waiting for the Barbarians, and gave a persuasive analysis using Voegelin's concept of historiogenesis , how the empire has created the time of history.

Steven Ealy looked at three Robert Penn Warren poems, especially Brother to Dragons, , which Warren rewrote and republished after 20 years. Warren gave a uniquely American cast to Voegelin's Time of the Tale . "We create ourselves when we recreate the past."

Timothy Hoye finds similarities between Voegelin and Natsume Soseki's (1867-1916) FIRST TRILOGY in politics, philosophy and myth, including the recognition of nous and the quaternary structure of reality: God and man, world and society.

John Jamieson explores Eric Voegelin's Analysis of Spritual Deformation in Robert Musil's THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES.

Michael Henry discussed both the Detels and Jamieson papers, emphasizing that the First World War was a flight from peace and cited Voegelin's Hitler and the Germans .

Michael Franz commented on the Ealy and Hoye presentations. He noted that Warren's All the King's Men is the best study of a successful tyranny and asked why Warren chose verse for his subject of Jefferson's cousins and their murdering in Brother to Dragons.

A further question about Seseki's Meiji Japan: was there a common "nous" being destroyed by 19th century modernization and is the cohesiveness of modern Japan a phenomenon of spiritual community or something more prosaic? Is historiogenesis in Japan noetic at all?

As Gebhardt demonstrates, while trust is essential and is based on political friendship, the latter is not the same as Christian friendship. A civil polity is a universal idea but it is a product of Western civilization and not too easily exported.

Thomas Heilke spoke about friendship in Calvin and Luther. Neither said much about friendship, treating it as a utilitarian matter. For Calvin community is no more than those bound together by an assurance of grace. His concern was the person's juridical status before God.
From earliest time, from the Gilgamesh and from Homer, friendship is always shown as having a public and therefore political aspect.

Travis Smith gave us insights into Hobbes and Locke. The Leviathan presents a sustained attack on friendship. In Hobbes' bleak view a friend is merely someone who will want to do what you want them to do, not under compulsion of government.

An appreciative audience listens to the presentations on friendship in the modern state.

Barry Cooper speaks on a topic he knows so well:
the Strauss-Voegelin Correspondence. He is an editor of the book, newly available in paper, from the U. of Missouri Press: Faith and Political Philosophy, The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934-1964.

These two men became close without becoming familiar (at least in writing) while maintaining their differences on some key issues, most famously, Voegelin's rejection and Strauss' insistance upon the absolute divide between Jerusalem and Athens, between Faith and Philosophy.

Gordon LLoyd and John A. Murley listen before presenting their fascinating insights into Willmoore Kendall's relationships with both Strauss and Voegelin. Murley, together with John Alvis, has edited the new book: Willmoore Kendall, Maverick of American Conservatives.

The implied question: had it not been for his appetites, how much more might he have achieved? But then he would not have been the same Willmore Kendall we remember and loved.

THE PANEL: Roundtable on Eric Voegelin as Master Teacher.

The panelists were: Barry Cooper (Chairman), Tilo Schabert, Ellis Sandoz, Paul Caringella, Thomas Hollweck, Brendan Purcell and Fritz Wagner.

There are no pictures from this session, unless someone took one, in which case I would be happy to put it here.

While most of us reminisced from memory or notes, Tilo Schabert took the occasion of this roundtable to present a splendid paper, "Eric Voegelin's Workshop," which recounts Schabert's years of intimate working with Voegelin, and gives us an idea of how Voegelin involved everyone around him in the creative process—especially testing his ideas with the scholars who came his way.

Voegelin said he was guided by his material rather than by a method. He never rested in a well-wrought fortress. He never stopped looking at old material. For instance, he found late on that St. Augustine's Confessions was not actually autobiographical as he had always thought, but rather a stylized spiritual guide of a type known as sacrificio confessiones.

Ellis Sandoz studied under Voegelin from his junior year at Louisianna State University until he completed his doctorate under Voegelin in Munich fifteen years later. He was a Voegelin student when the breakout Walgreen Lectures were delivered at the U. of Chicago and which were published as The New Science of Politics. Sandoz stressed Voegelin's personal modesty, the self-denigration that showed as a part of his character.

Thomas Hollweck pointed out that Voegelin was unashamedly a teacher, yet abhored the "education racket." He also disliked the Socratic method, considering it a waste of time. Because Hollweck chose to do his doctoral work in Atlanta with Voegelin's close friend and colleague, Gregor Sebba, he has a somewhat different perspective on Voegelin and his work while remaining a Voegelin scholar.

Paul Caringella discovered Voegelin when he was studying with Frederick Wilhelmsen in 1962. Later his second philosophy professor, Father Robert J. Giguere gave him Remy de Gourmont's, Natural Philosophy of Love, in which he found Voegelin. He finally met him in 1969 when Voegelin was visiting Seattle.

Voegelin often expressed to Paul his own felt inadequacy in the presence of a great text. During the last six years of Voegelin's life when Paul acted as his personal assistant, Voegelin assumed Paul knew much more than he in fact did. It is, says Paul, in the twenty years since Voegelin's death that he has perhaps grown into the kind of person Voegelin had assumed he already was.

(Just before Brendan Purcell began to speak, a panelist said in a stage whisper,"Talk slow, Brendan." Needless to say, he didn't ! )

Brendan met Voegelin in Ireland in 1972. Voegelin had come there to study neolithic ruins, which, according to Brendan, are piled high and wide in Ireland. Voegelin was pursuing his interest in the neolithicum , which had been sparked by paleontologist Marie Koenig, for the eventual writing of what Brendan referred to as "Volume Zero!"

Brendan emphasized that the reason there are no "Voegelinians" as such is that Voegelin expected his students to do their own work and not repeat his. He also noted that while Voegelin was self-effacing, he wanted to win his arguments!

Fritz Wagner read two personal reminiscences, one about Voegelin reading the funnies in the Notre Dame cafeteria and the other about recalling to Lissy Voegelin in 1992 the autograph session with Eric in 1960. He was gratified to read them to an appreciative audience.

THE PANEL: Eric Voegelin and Post Modern Thought.

THE SPEAKER: Margaret Hrezo

THE PANELISTS (seated from left to right):
Lee Trepanier, Paul Corey, Henrik Syse, John Baltes and Horst Mewes.

Margaret Hrezo responds to a question as Lee Trepanier, Paul Corey and Horst Mewes listen. Ms. Hrezo gave a Voegelinian analysis of Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon, the latter being one of Voegelin's favorite novelistic explorers of the structure of reality.

Henrik Syse explains Voegelin's understanding of ethics and natural law in light of the two essays, "What is Right by Nature?" and "What is Nature?" —both originally published in 1966 in the German edition of Anamnesis ( In the collected works edition of Anamnesis [Volume 6, released in 2002] "What is Right by Nature?" is renamed "Right by Nature.").

Joe Feeney is looking pensive. After La Tavernetta, our party of five went on to visit (or revisit) the Jazz Showcase, where some of us (not Joe) nodded off in our chairs. Perhaps Joe is thinking of the beautiful wedding Mass we had happened upon at the Cathedral Saturday afternoon.

I neglected to allow time in my flight schedule for the whole Sunday session, so there were papers I did not hear. I welcome any notes people wish to offer. I would be happy to supply large jpeg photos to anyone who asks. Please email me with corrections or clarifications.

I left with many goodbyes unspoken.