From Enlightenment to Revolution and The Ecumenic Age
Molnar, Thomas
Book Review/Thomas Molnar History and the Total Mass In From Enlightenment to Revolution, Eric Voegelin describes the central conflict of Western history, beginning with the Investiture struggle...
...according to Voegelin, we have been moving into such an age since the eighteenth century...
...At vast time intervals there emerges an age first of clashing imperialisms andthen of flat and impersonal mass-civilizations...
...The temporal authority of State and Society has come to prevail during this conflict, and religious faith has disintegrated—for the liberal-democratic regimes were wrong in supposing faith could be sustained as a merely "private" affair...
...The result utopia which, as I argued in a book sour years ago, is an arbitrary cutoff point history, consequently rigid, with rules si by the more equal among equals, on( and for all...
...Yet society cannot exist without a spiritual center, and false spiritual systems, or "ideologies," have filled the vacuum left by the departure of Church authority...
...From Machiavelli to the philc sophes and the utilitarians, to Godwir Comte, and Bakunin, the ambition ha been, precisely, to abolish duality and rc duce man to membership in what Turg( called the masse totale , which absorbs a his energies and aspirations...
...The false spiritual From Enlightenment to Revolution by Eric Voegelin Duke University Press $12.75 The Ecumenic Age by Eric Voegelin Louisiana State University Press $15.00 systems which have emerged, Voegelin says, are of mostly neo-gnostic inspiration, and they have become completely mundane, "world-immanent," whether they are idealist, enlightened, positives or Marxist...
...The false spiritual From Enlightenment to Revolution by Eric Voegelin Duke University Press $12.75 The Ecumenic Age by Eric Voegelin Louisiana State University Press $15.00 systems which have emerged, Voegelin says, are of mostly neo-gnostic inspiration, and they have become completely mundane, "world-immanent," whether they are idealist, enlightened, positives or Marxist...
...The result utopia which, as I argued in a book sour years ago, is an arbitrary cutoff point history, consequently rigid, with rules si by the more equal among equals, on( and for all...
...Voegelin brilliantly conceptualizes tl age of ecumenic ideologies through tl detailed study of their chief articulator Not only the leftist ideologues but al: conservatives can learn from his anal ses, since conservatives also believe th 34 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 19 Book Review/Thomas Molnar History and the Total Mass In From Enlightenment to Revolution, Eric Voegelin describes the central conflict of Western history, beginning with the Investiture struggle between Papacy and Empire, as the conflict between spiritual and t...
...The situation has therefore deteriorated, and Voegelin's other just-published book, The Ecumenic Age, is a good place to turn for some of the reasons why...
...The secular salvation system are far more totalist than the Christian rt ligion since they acknowledge no dualit in man...
...Voegelin brilliantly conceptualizes tl age of ecumenic ideologies through tl detailed study of their chief articulator Not only the leftist ideologues but al: conservatives can learn from his anal ses, since conservatives also believe th 34 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 19 Book Review/Thomas Molnar History and the Total Mass In From Enlightenment to Revolution, Eric Voegelin describes the central conflict of Western history, beginning with the Investiture struggle between Papacy and Empire, as the conflict between spiritual and temporal powers...
...From Machiavelli to the philc sophes and the utilitarians, to Godwir Comte, and Bakunin, the ambition ha been, precisely, to abolish duality and rc duce man to membership in what Turg( called the masse totale , which absorbs a his energies and aspirations...
...Book Review/Thomas Molnar History and the Total Mass In From Enlightenment to Revolution, Eric Voegelin describes the central conflict of Western history, beginning with the Investiture struggle between Papacy and Empire, as the conflict between spiritual and temporal powers...
...At vast time intervals there emerges an age first of clashing imperialisms andthen of flat and impersonal mass-civilizations...
...The temporal authority of State and Society has come to prevail during this conflict, and religious faith has disintegrated—for the liberal-democratic regimes were wrong in supposing faith could be sustained as a merely "private" affair...
...Yet society cannot exist without a spiritual center, and false spiritual systems, or "ideologies," have filled the vacuum left by the departure of Church authority...
...The situation has therefore deteriorated, and Voegelin's other just-published book, The Ecumenic Age, is a good place to turn for some of the reasons why...
...The secular salvation system are far more totalist than the Christian rt ligion since they acknowledge no dualit in man...
...according to Voegelin, we have been moving into such an age since the eighteenth century...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
