The term “order” appears prominently in the title of one of the most outstanding, yet overlooked, philosophical works of the twentieth century: Eric Voegelin’s Order and History. The pairing of order and history recalls that of being and time, though transposed on a more concrete level. And, indeed, the work is intended as an investigation into the founding principles of political societies throughout human history.
To try to understand what Voegelin had in mind, let us follow the Aristotelian path he himself indicated on several occasions: starting from an examination of how the term “order” is commonly understood.[1]
Both as a substantive and as a verb, “order” covers in ordinary language two main realms of meaning. Upon hearing it, the first thing that probably comes to mind is a command, as for instance, most intriguingly, the “order” to put things “in order.” This may evoke in us some sort of uneasiness: either the feeling of a limitation of freedom (as the consequence of a command) or of an impending nuisance (it’s time to get things back in order!). We could rest in these impressions and fail to ask if they reflect some deeper meaning. And this is indeed the case. In fact, order in the sense of “command” opens up to the wide realm of obligation, authority, and law, while “to put in order” means to remove disorder: while order enhances the pursuit of our goals, disorder inhibits it, a fact easily seen if we monitor our workspace throughout the day.
By this simple reflection, the term “order” has ceased to be what Voegelin calls an “unanalyzed” concept and has opened up an unexpected complexity. Furthermore, the duality of meaning that has emerged prompts us to ask if it is possible to reduce both to a univocal definition. Not only does this appear problematic, but even the attempt to explain the pair of opposites order-disorder by tracing it back to more elementary concepts such as one-many seems doomed to failure. Despite the fact that they are undoubtedly related, as far as disorder entails multiplicity and order entails unity, order seems to denote a multiplicity in which each element has been assigned its proper place. We can conclude, then, that both “one” and “order” are basic terms, that is, each of them exhibit a manifold meaning and can be better grasped through its respective opposite. Furthermore, all basic terms appear to be somehow interrelated (i.e., to refer to each other).
Basic terms such as being, one, identical, good, etc. are, according to Aristotle, fundamental ontological terms. If we agree with him on this point, he will bring us a step further, showing their internal structure. The manifold meaning exhibited by each ontological term can neither be reduced to a different, more basic meaning, nor does it split in an unrelated (disordered!) multiplicity of meanings. In terms of ancient logic, we can say that terms of this sort are neither univocal nor equivocal, but that they rather exhibit a range of hierarchically related meanings.
Considered under this perspective, “order” seems even to be an ontological term with metaphysical implications, to the point that Leibniz’s famous question “Why is there something? Why not nothing?” could be expressed just as appropriately as: “Why is there order and not chaos?”[2]
In particular, the concept of order captures the genetic-dynamic aspect of reality, that is, it raises the question of its origin and purpose. But it also raises the question of why entities have an organizing principle that arranges a multiplicity of elements to express a predictable form, that is something that can be seen and touched, whose motion has a direction, and whose beneficial effects can be experienced. In short, order manifests as an operative concept, whose validity and vitality are expressed at all levels of reality: inorganic and organic, psychic, intellectual, and spiritual. It also applies, consequently, to the set of human techniques insofar as they, in various ways, have a mimetic relationship with reality. And, finally, it applies to political realities, insofar as they enable a human group to organize itself and to act in history.[3]
The true order of the soul can become the standard for measuring both human types and types of social order because it represents the truth about human existence on the border of transcendence.
All these different connotations of the term “order” were variously investigated by philosophers, but it was Plato and Aristotle who first dealt with them in the most fundamental and comprehensive manner. Clearly aware of their mutual entanglement, the two Greeks gave rise to a tradition that recognized philosophy’s claim to inquire into reality in all its fundamental aspects. The epistemological shift that occurred during the eighteenth century challenged this claim, and as a consequence, philosophers directed attention from the forms of being to the forms of knowledge. This event, in conjunction with the ascent of the so-called natural sciences, led philosophy to give way to many single sciences, each claiming this title by virtue of the particular method it applies in order to form its own subject matter.
Eric Voegelin challenged this modern attitude and tried to enhance the ancient one, though by a new and original perspective.
Born in 1901 in Cologne, Voegelin studied sociology, government and law in Vienna and was a pupil and then an assistant of Hans Kelsen, the founder of the theory of pure law. Critical of it, Voegelin set out from an early age to study the fundamental phenomenon of law and sovereignty by investigating their experiential foundations, and for this reason he sought support in philosophy, drawing in particular on the work of the main philosophers of his time, such as Husserl, Bergson, Scheler, Heidegger, as well as Whitehead and William James, whose work he had encountered during a stay in the United States.
Furthermore, following in the steps of Max Weber, the great German sociologist whom he greatly admired, he began to study political societies throughout history, focusing on two cases that had received little attention until then, that is, the clash between the Western political order and the Mongol empires in the 13th and 15th centuries and the formation of the national state in 16th-century France.
His attention was drawn thereby to the fact that all political societies legitimized themselves, albeit in very different ways, on a mythical foundation, which came to take on a religious and sacred function. This led him to conduct research into the origins of the myth of race, which was so prevalent in many respects in contemporary Central-European societies and particularly in Germany.[4]
Having fled to the United States in 1938, Voegelin was invited to write a History of Political Ideas, a proposal he gladly accepted because it allowed him to test his theoretical insights on historical materials. From the very beginning “ideas” meant to him not so much political philosophical theories but rather attitudes and moods that are characteristic of an epoch. The phrase “climate of opinion,” coined by Whitehead, soon won his favor, and he used it extensively throughout his work. The project of the History, on which he worked for 15 years, was interrupted for a short time in 1950 in order to reflect on the nature of political theory. The occasion to do this was offered by the Walgreen Lectures, held in Chicago in 1951 and thereafter collected in The New Science of Politics, Voegelin’s best-known book up to this day.
It was during those years that in America a new generation of scholars had begun to question the traditional approach to government and politics and to promote instead a statistical, psychological, and sociological approach. Voegelin intervened authoritatively in the debate, proposing a theoretical rethinking of political theory, which he understands as the study of order in political societies throughout history. In the long Introduction of the book, he makes clear why such a topic could have never been admitted by the now (or: then?) widespread positivistic methodological approach. Instead, he intends to recover the classical conception, according to which “science is a truthful account of the structure of reality, and political science is the theoretical account of man in the world” (NSP, 5).
Building on these theoretical insights, he decided to modify the project of the History of Political Ideas into the study of political societies throughout history according to their respective experiences of order and titled the new work Order and History (OH).[5] Initially limited to the Mediterranean and Near-East regions,[6] with the fourth volume dedicated to the ecumenic empires that had formed in the European and Asian areas since the sixth century BC, the study of Order and History expanded to a universal horizon that reflected the historical situation of opening geopolitical and cultural borders that arose after World War II.
The Order and History project marked the beginning of Voegelin’s phase as a philosopher of history and of consciousness. He explored these two topics in depth in a new book entitled Anamnesis and in a large number of essays written between the third and the fourth volume of Order and History.
Meanwhile, in 1957, he had accepted the invitation to return to Europe, to found an institute of political science in Munich, which would ideally resume the task previously undertaken by Max Weber and prematurely interrupted in 1920 by his sudden death. The ten years spent in Germany were marked by many public appearances, both in Europe and in the United States. In 1969 Voegelin accepted a position as distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. There he pursued further the project of Order and History. Vol. IV appeared in 1974, but Voegelin died in 1985 without having completed volume V, which appeared in 1987 under the title In Search of Order.[7]
Order and History is a very complex work that requires some sort of initiation in order to be properly understood. The New Science of Politics, the most accessible of Voegelin’s works, is helpful in this regard, and examining its thesis yields important insights into Voegelin’s approach to the issue of order.
As previously mentioned, positivistic attitudes had spread in American academic institutions in the time between the two World Wars (Carnap was teaching in Chicago as Voegelin held his lectures). In his Introduction to the New Science of Politics, Voegelin analyzes the intellectual phenomenon of Positivism in order to show how it has destroyed the meaning of political theory as the science of human and social order, and declares that his scope is to recover political science according to the Platonic meaning of science (episteme) as opposed to opinion (doxa).
His critique focuses on what he considers the unifying bond of the different manifestations of Positivism: The use of method as the criterion of science (NSP, 8). The primacy of methodology stays on three main tenets: 1. The reversal of the ancient (Aristotelian) principle whereby in science the method is dictated by the object; 2. The conviction that only the methods of natural sciences lend “scientificity” to a form of knowledge; and that 3. Only propositions concerning facts of the phenomenal world are “objective,” while judgments concerning the right order of soul and society are “subjective.”
Positivism has though, in Voegelin’s opinion, reached its theoretical end, as the impasse facing Max Weber demonstrates. Weber’s aim was to make political theory a value-free science by eliminating value judgments from it, insofar as they are supposedly subjective. In Voegelin’s opinion the problem lies precisely in considering the problematic of the principles of action—decisive for political science—as value judgements. The pluralism of values ends up in relativism, and in relativism there can be no rules for action.
For neither classic nor Christian ethics and politics contain “value-judgments” but elaborate, empirically and critically the problem of order which derive from philosophical anthropology as part of a general ontology. Only when ontology as a science was lost, and when consequently ethics and politics could no longer be understood as sciences of the order in which human nature reaches its maximal actualization, was it possible for this realm of knowledge to become suspect as a field of subjective, uncritical opinion. (NSP, 11ff.)
From this perspective, Weber’s proposed solution also appears unsuccessful, because it denies in principle the possibility of arriving at a knowledge of the principles of action and reduces political theory to a mere science of the technique of action in order to attain the desired end. In view of all this, Voegelin concludes that rationalism has freed itself from a whole mass of critical rational thinking and precisely in this respect it has manifested its irrationality.
He believes, consequently, that the time is ripe for a restoration of political science, meaning by this a return to the consciousness of principles. Political theory can rise to the level of science precisely because it investigates the principles of order. And as long as science is cognitive relation to reality, the theoretical approach consists in the dispassionate gaze on the order of being. But the method that leads to it emerges gradually. It is effective if it brings clarity to this basic cognitive participation of man in reality.
If in our prescientific participation in the order of a society, of right and wrong, of justice and injustice, we should feel the desire to penetrate to a theoretical understanding of the source of order and its validity, we may arrive in the course of our endeavors at the theory that the justice of human order depends on its participation in the Platonic Agathon, in the Aristotelian Nous, or the Stoic Logos, or the Thomistic ratio aeterna. … none of these theories may satisfy us completely; but we know that we are in search of an answer of this type. If, however, the way should lead us to the notion that social order is motivated by will to power and fear, we know that we have lost the essence of the problem in the course of our inquiry. … we know that the methods of a psychology of motivations are not adequate for the exploration of the problem and that in this concrete case it would be better to rely on the methods of metaphysical speculation and theological symbolization. (NSP, 6)
In order to test his new approach, Voegelin proposes to conduct an investigation into the central problem of a theory of politics: representation understood as “the form by which a political society gains existence for action in history” (NSP, 1).
He shows that representation is a complex concept and sets out to analyze it, moving from its unreflective use to one that penetrates its principles. He thus distinguishes three levels of it: a basic one, an existential one, and a more fundamental one that he calls “representation of a transcendental truth.” He explains the third level as follows:
Society is a “cosmion” of meaning, illuminated from within by its own self-interpretation; and since this little world of meaning was precisely the object to be explored by political science, the method of starting from the symbols by which political societies interpret themselves as representatives of a transcendent truth seemed at least to assume the grip on the object. (NSP, 52)
It is precisely in virtue of the third level of representation that a human society becomes political, that is, ordered as a little cosmos. Its source of order can be compared to a political theology and can be investigated through its symbols. What’s more: “The manifold of such symbols, finally, will not form a flat catalogue [doxographic] but prove amenable to theoretization as an intelligible succession of phases in a historical process. An inquiry concerning representation, if its theoretical implications are unfolded consistently, will in fact become a philosophy of history.”
This is not the place to dwell on the different types of order—cosmological, historical, philosophical, ecumenic—covered in Order and History, but rather to focus on the crucial question Voegelin raises in the The New Science with regard to the existence of this plurality of orders in human history: has a principle of evaluation of these different orders ever historically existed? The question is unavoidable given the fact that each cosmion is in fact concerned with justice and injustice.
History itself provides an affirmative answer to this question: “The discovery of the truth that is apt to challenge the truth of the cosmological empires is itself a historical event of major dimension” (NSP, 60).
In Greek civilization, historical figures emerge who develop rational criteria for evaluation. It is Solon, Aeschylus, and the mystical philosophers Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Parmenides. By examining their work, and further the full development of their insights by Plato and Aristotle, Voegelin focuses on a concept that will become crucial in his thinking: that of experiences of transcendence. Experience attests as the empirical basis for testing the truth of theory (NSP, 64).
In particular, Plato’s image that the polis is man written large (Republic 368c-d) is the dynamic core of the new theory: “The wedge of this principle must be permanently driven into the idea that society represents nothing but cosmic truth … a political society in existence will have to be an ordered cosmion, but not at the price of man; it should be not only a microcosmos but also a macroanthropos” (NSP, 61).
The anthropological principle has a dual application: not only is it a general principle for the interpretation of society—a predominant social type of man determines the character of a society—but it is also an instrument of social critique, as Plato’s anthropological principle is rooted in the discovery of the true order of the soul.
The true order of the soul turned out to be dependent on philosophy in the strict sense of the love of the divine sophon. The true order of man is a constitution (politeia) of the soul, to be defined in terms of certain experiences which have become predominant to the point of forming a character. The true order of the soul in this sense furnishes the standard for measuring and classifying the empirical variety of human types as well as of the social order in which they find their expression. (NSP, 63)
No more than a brief catalogue of such experiences can be given: love of wisdom, beauty and goodness (eros of the sophon, the kalon, and the agathon); dike (justice) in the Platonic sense: the virtue of the right taxis (superordination and subordination of the forces in the soul, in opposition to the busy attitude polypragmosyne of his citizens); thanatos: cathartic experience of the soul which purifies conduct by placing it into the longest perspective, into the perspective of death; and finally the experiences in which the inner dimension of the soul is given in height (mystical ascent over the via negativa, toward the border of transcendence) and in depth: anamnestic descent into the unconscious, into the depth from where are drawn up the “true logoi” of the Platonic dialogues Timaeus and Critias.
According to Voegelinian principles, then:
The true order of the soul can become the standard for measuring both human types and types of social order [third level of representation] because it represents the truth about human existence on the border of transcendence. (NSP, 67)
Aristotle follows the same line of thought, sharing Plato’s view that human reason participates in divine reason:
Plato’s and Aristotle’s creation of a political science was made possible by the ontological insight that humans participate in all realms of being, from the inorganic to the spiritual. Human reason, and with it the order of the soul, is constituted by its participation in the otherworldly, divine reason.
Here, in conclusion, it is important to recall that to define the order of history Voegelin engaged with the thinkers who had reflected most deeply on the nature of history and the relationship between history and political societies: from Augustine to Vico, from Voltaire to Comte, from Toynbee to Jaspers.
Simply mentioning these names is enough to give an idea of the breadth and depth of Voegelin’s investigation into the order of history, and how it is the result not only of historical studies conducted with extreme meticulousness, but also of dialogue with the leading historians of his time.
[1] “The analysis [here conducted] used the Aristotelian method of examining language symbols as they occur in political reality, in the hope that the procedure of clarification would lead to critically tenable concepts” (Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics [Chicago, 1952]; quotations from the University of Chicago Press edition of 1987, 52).
[2] Voegelin returned repeatedly to Leibniz’s two questions. On one occasion he remarked that Heidegger, in his prominent reflection about Leibniz’s formulation of the principle of sufficient reason, stresses only the first question and disregards the second, although it is equally fundamental in establishing the principle. Cf. E. Voegelin, On Debate and Existence (1967), in Eric Voegelin, Collected Works (thereafter CW), vol. 12, Missouri University Press, 43.
[3] Political realities give rise to legal systems, i.e. collections of orders based on the authority of an individual and/or collective entity whose power to issue them is institutionally recognized.
[4] He dedicated two books to the topic of race, both published in Germany in the tumultuous year of 1933: Race and State (CW 2; 1997) and The History of the Race Idea: From Ray to Carus (CW 3; 1998).
[5] OH is meant to be “a history and philosophy of political order and its symbolization,” cf. Selected Correspondence 1950–1984 (CW 30), 225.
[6] See OH, vols. 1–3, published in 1956 and 1957.
[7] Cf. CW 18.
