Voegelin, Eric (1901–85)

Throughout his career, Voegelin was concerned with modernity; unlike his contemporaries he sought the explanation of its character and deformities (especially totalitarianism) in the restoration of ‘political science’ as Plato and Aristotle understood it. He therefore explored order in the individual’s soul, political society, history and the universe, and its source in God. He did so by studying the representation of order in philosophy (Eastern as well as Western) and in revelation and myth. Voegelin concluded that ‘gnosticism’, the misinterpretation of the insights of myth, philosophy and revelation as descriptions of some future perfected society, and the wilful denial of transcendence and human limitation, represented the essence of modernity.