Eric Voegelin (January 2, 1901 – January 19, 1985) was born in Germany and lived there until he fled to the United States with his wife during the Nazi invasion. He spent much of his career at Louisiana State University, the University of Munich, and the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He wrote many books including Science, Politics, and Gnosticism (1968), The Science of New Politics (1952) and his great 5 volume work entitled Order and History.
Eric Voegelin: A Scattering of Brilliant Ideas
For Eric Voegelin, all modern ideologies—left or right—were simply Gnostic attempts to order a disordered world according to ritual and knowledge. This essay concludes my three-essay series on Eric Voegelin (1901-1985). In the first essay, I discussed Voegelin’s own influence on my intellectual development over the past 37 years. I also, rightly or wrongly, questioned [...]