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THE WORLD OF THE
POLIS
Eric Voegelin
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This is Volume II of his monumental work,
Order and History Louisiana State Univ. Press, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, 1937
- 1964, 389 pgs., index, footnotes
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Reviewer Comments:
Warning to the reader: This will be 'tough' difficult going. At the surface
level, the language is highly philosophical and frequently symbolic. At the
next level the content is based on the written word of ancient authors
expressing myths as well as history understanding of which requires extensive
knowledge of the authors and their writing (both its content and their style)..
At the level Dr. Voegelin presumes (I suppose) that the reader will have
a-priori knowledge of the facts he advances as examples or proofs. I provide
two samples from the chapter on Mankind and History.
In the Preface to Vol I of Order and History, Israel and
Revalation Dr. Voegelin states his fundamental thesis. "The order of
history emerges from the history of order. Every society is burdened with the
task, under its concrete conditions, of creating an order that will endow the
fact of its existence with meaning in terms of ends divine and human".
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Preface and Introduction: Mankind and History
Dr. Voegelin states the subject: "Order and History is a
philosophical inquiry concerning the principal types of order in human
existence in society and history as well as the corresponding symbolic
forms."
He writes: "We conclude: That problems of multiple and parallel leaps in
being cannot be met theoretically with the eighteenth-century resignation and
wisdom of Lesing's Nathan. What is valid in the Nathan wisdom, and remains
valid when Jaspers and Toynbee treat of wider and more variegated historical
scene in its spirit, is the respect for every order, and every truth about
order: for every society, on whatever level of compactness or differentiation
its experiences and symbols of order move, strives for attainment with the
order of being." And also: "The philosophy of order and history is a
Western symbolism because Western society has received tis historical form
through Christianity.
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Part One: Cretans, Achaeans, and Hellenes
Chapter 1 Hellas and History
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Chapter 2: The Cretan and Achaean Societies
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Chapter 3 - Homer and Mycenae
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Part Two: From Myth to Philosophy
Chapter 4 - The Hellenic Polis
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Chapter 5 - Hesiod
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Chapter 6 - The Break with the Myth
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Chapter 7 - The Aretai and the Polis
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Chapter 8 - Parmenides
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Chapter 9 - Heraclitus
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Pat Three
The Athenian Century
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Chapter 10 - Tragedy
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Chapter 11 - The Sophists
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Chapter 12 - Power and History
In this chapter Dr. Voegelin analyses the writings of Herodotus, the 'Old
Oligarch', and Thucydides.
1 Herodotus
2 The Old Oligarch
3 Thucydides
This section is relevant to the study of strategy as well as to study of
Thucydides' descripion of the 'causes' and course of the Peloponnesian war in
which he stressed the role of psychological factors in both leading individuals
and in groups.
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