Eric Voegelin's Dialogue with the Postmoderns: Searching for Foundations

by Peter A. Petrakis, Cecil L. Eubanks

Overview

This collection of essays endeavors to generate a dialogue between Eric Voegelin and other prominent twentieth-century thinkers and explore some of the more perplexing issues in contemporary political theory. Each essay rests on the underlying question: is it possible or desirable to construct or discover political foundations without resorting to metaphysical or essentialist constructs? The introduction focuses on the two nineteenth-century thinkers, Nietzsche and Husserl, who have framed the debate about modernity and postmodernity; thereafter, the book examines Voegelin's ideas as compared to those of other twentieth-century thinkers.

Discussed within the volume are Levinas and the precedence of ethics, Ricoeur's theory of narrative representation, Deleuze and the philosophy of immanence, Voegelin's relationship to a speech- dimension theory of human behavior, and Patocka's theory of pre- metaphysical transcendence in Socrates. What will impress scholars most about this collection is the provocative dialogue created between Voegelin and other major thinkers of postmodernism that addresses the issue of establishing foundations without foundationalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826215642
Publisher:	University of Missouri Press
Publication date:	12/17/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

About the Editors
Peter A. Petrakis is Associate Professor of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana State University in Hammond.
Cecil L. Eubanks is Alumni Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. He is the author of Marx and Engels: An Analytical Bibliography.

Editorial Reviews

"This volume of essays explores a wonderfully fruitful area in the field of Voegelin studies. These essays endeavor to examine the relationship of Voegelin's thought to that of significant postmodernists and their philosophical inspirers. The range of thinkers treated is representative and a few of the essays break new ground in well-argued and convincing ways."—Glenn Hughes

"Eric Voegelin's Dialogue with the Postmoderns will appeal to Voegelin scholars who wish to see the fruitful application of his philosophy to a variety of thinkers who, like him, seek an alternative both to traditional essentialist metaphysics and to modernist naturalism, subjectivism, and foundationalism. The variety of essays is enriching, and each is intriguing in its own right. A very important contribution to the literature on Eric Voegelin."—Thomas McPartland

From the Publisher