Getting to Know Eric Voegelin

Professor Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) was a political philosopher whose five-volume Order and History influenced many generations of students who were introduced to him at the University of Munich, Louisiana State University and a series of other American universities including Notre Dame, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford.

It was my good fortune to take courses from Voegelin at the University of Notre Dame and to monitor a course he taught at the University of Dallas in my second year as a member of the Faculty at UD. My Ph.D. dissertation examined Voegelin’s concept of modern “Gnosticism” which led to a conference, Gnosticism and Modernity,  that I organized with J. W. Corrington and William Havard  at Vanderbilt University on April 27-29, 1978.

We political philosophers who studied with Eric call ourselves “Voegelinians” and we contribute essays at VoegelinView that I highly recommend.