Eric Voegelin (1901-1985)

Unto thee, O Lord, will I lift up my soul. —Psalm 25

On January 19, 1985, death came to Eric Voegelin, one of the greatest political theorists of all time. Why is it that, compared with the flood of Nobel Prize-crowned natural scientists, few comparable names of political scientists come to mind? Is it because even noted political scientists tell us little more than what we already know? The founders of political science were Plato and Aristotle, his student, philosophers both. In modern times one may think of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Max Weber, although each can be blamed for serious errors of thinking, with disastrous results. Eric Voegelin, like Plato and Aristotle, was a philosopher; unlike Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Weber, he was not given to error; in fact he uncovered and corrected their mistakes. In an age suffering from deep disorders of reason and political practice, he elevated political science to a source of new knowledge that also revived old insights.

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Gerhart Niemeyer

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Unto thee, O Lord, will I lift up my soul. —Psalm 25

On January 19, 1985, death came to Eric Voegelin, one of the greatest political theorists of all time. Why is it that, compared with the flood of Nobel Prize-crowned natural scientists, few comparable names of political scientists come to mind? Is it because even noted political scientists tell us little more than what we already know? The founders of political science were Plato and Aristotle, his student, philosophers both. In modern times one may think of Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Max Weber, although each can be blamed for serious errors of thinking, with disastrous results. Eric Voegelin, like Plato and Aristotle, was a philosopher; unlike Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Weber, he was not given to error; in fact he uncovered and corrected their mistakes. In an age suffering from deep disorders of reason and political practice, he elevated political science to a source of new knowledge that also revived old insights.