Being a student of Voegelin, a philosophical groupie as it were, I’ve long wanted to attend one the annual American Political Science Association meetings held throughout the country and Canada. This year’s event was held last month in Toronto and has, of course, been blogged here at PoMoCon.
I’ve had sundry professors tell me that the gatherings are rather boring and they ‘hate’ to attend but that hasn’t dissuaded me, not one bit. It hasn’t dissuaded me because not only would I get to meet my Voegelinian heroes (Sandoz, Wagner, Hughes, Walsh, Levy et al,) I’d also get to meet Ivan, Peter, from PoMoCon, and my pal Roger Berkowitz from Bard College. And, being an affable fellow there’s nothing I’d enjoy more than pressing the flesh with these learned scholars and hoisting an adult beverage or two.
But, this year’s APSA meeting wasn’t exactly boring. In fact at the Voegelin assembly there was something of a “mood” that is revealed in Voegelinian scholar Fritz Wagner’s essay and the responses by three of his interlocutors to certain ‘comments’ made at the meetings.
Ah, the contretemps of the philosophical life!
October 7th, 2009 | 9:33 am
Nice to hear my old prof David Walsh is a hero. (I immediately think well of you.) In fact, I’ve been waiting for FT to notice “The Luminosity of Existence” with some impatience. It sounds as if the importance of the work is being felt, even if it is taking a little while to work itself “through the system” so to speak.
October 7th, 2009 | 10:21 am
I was half way through LOE, reached Schelling, and got sidetracked hunting down his “werke!” I have to finish and review…for me, it’s a very challenging work, with a breathtaking thesis. Walsh “eschews” the Voegelinian verbiage and some symbolism..so it’s doubly challenging. However, he appears to be one of those rare thinkers that comes along far to infrequently, much as our own, beloved, Peter!
October 7th, 2009 | 4:27 pm
Yes, the Schelling chapter I found relevatory. (Who knew he was more then just another German thinker not named Hegel?)
And, I agree, LOE is a demanding book. I have to imagine many reading along with “After Ideology” and “Growth of the Liberal Soul” are gonna find this new one tough going. For myself, I found the toughest thing to do was to drop my old prejudices and follow Walsh through his Derrida discussion. I’m not sure I’ll drop all of my older view of Derrida, but I certainly see the invitation to revaluate. (I really hope Walsh doesn’t continue this tendency to rehabilitate philosophers I’ve safely put away. If his next book starts praising Louis Althusser I’m giving up.)
As for the dropping of Voegelinian verbiage, yes, I believe he has been aiming at that for awhile. In many ways the little book he published some time before “Guarded by Mystery” acts as a kind of prolegomena for LOE. From the picture on the cover (three people sitting around disputing), to the accesible way it is written, it feels like an invitation to a larger, more involved conversation; a conversation that couldn’t take place easily within the confines of the technical vocabulary of Voegelin.
I look forward to reading your take on the whole book.
October 7th, 2009 | 10:10 pm
Well, you’re giving me incentive to take up the tome and push through to the end. The Schelling side track has opened the doors to four or five of his works that have been translated with only a couple more to locate. I’m thinking Schelling is but one of the several keys to Walsh’s discussions: the event of being, the containing of existence within thought, and the unfolding of existence before an ever receding horizon, a phenomenon related to the work of Derrida via Kierkegaard, all of which hurts my head.
The fact is I miss the Voegelin language, where I had at least a little familiarity and took my comfort; Hegel, et al are really difficult, plus I am thinking of Voegelin’s critiques related to Hegel’s sorcerer’s magic.
I am fond of Kierkegaard.
I take it you’ve finished the book?
Duquesne Univ. Press just sent me Sarah Allen’s “The Philosophical Sense of Transcendence: Levinas and Plato on Loving Beyond Being.” So many books, so little time.
Nice meeting you.
October 8th, 2009 | 10:36 am
Yes, I too read Schelling as being a key here, if at least to pull back the Hegelian shroud cast over much 19th Century German philosophy. For example, to read Nietzsche in light of Schelling (in addition to the usual lights cast by Schopenhauer and Hegel) is interesting, and does add something to our uderstanding that is there in Nietzsche. Now, the weight one might want to give it in their own interpretation of Nietzsche is a different question… but a good one.
I take it you’ve finished the book?
Not quite. I have the Kierkegaard chapter to go. I was making good progress over the summer, and then the semester began. Once again work gets in the way of work. lol
Besides, I know when I finish I’ll owe Dr. Walsh an email, and his book is the kind of work that turns me into an intellectual python; I’ve swallowed a big meal, but its gonna take awhile to digest.
October 8th, 2009 | 10:37 am
Oh, I meant to add….
Nice meeting you as well.
October 9th, 2009 | 7:28 am
Mr. Cheeks, thanks for drawing our attention to the interesting comments by Tim Fuller et al. on “the state of Voegeliniana” (or however you’d like to put it). You’ll be pleased to hear that, as book review editor of Perspectives on Political Science, I’ve commissioned a review of the Walsh book. (As a matter of fact, it was assigned to someone Jim Ceaser regularly refers to as SBE at this blog.) I think the opening chapter on the limits of instrumental reason was one of the very best discussions of the topic I’ve ever read. And his observation that discontent with it indicates that we’re not wholly captive to it is very pregnant. I won’t pronounce on his particular readings.
October 9th, 2009 | 9:08 am
Dr. Seaton, it was my pleasure. Yes, I quite agree re: Walsh’s discussion on instrumental reason.
The book, I believe, will be widely read and discussed (much as we are doing now), so your decision to have it reviewed in your journal was farsighted.
I should think that Dr. Lawler and other PoMoCons will be eager to engage his ideas and will be intrigued with the idea that “our philosophical meditation unfolds at the heart of a technological project,”(and all that that entails) and the associated challenge of being limited to the “realm of appearance.”
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