Order and History (Volume 4): The Ecumenic Age (Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, Volume 17)

Order and History, Eric Voegelin's five-volume study of how human and divine order are intertwined and manifested in history, has been widely acclaimed as one of the great intellectual achievements of our age. In the fourth volume, The Ecumenic Age, Voegelin breaks with the course he originally charted for the series, in which human existence in society and the corresponding symbolism of order were to be presented in historical succession. The analyses in the three previous volumes remain valid as far as they go, Voegelin explains, but the original conception proved "untenable because it had not taken proper account of the important lines of meaning in history that did not run along lines of time." The Ecumenic Age treats history not as a stream of human beings and their actions in time, but as the process of man's participation in a flux of divine presence that has eschatological direction. "The process of history, and such order as can be discerned in it," Voegelin writes, "is not a story to be told from the beginning to its happy, or unhappy, end; it is a mystery in process of revelation." In the present volume, Voegelin applies his revised conception of historical analysis to the "Ecumenic Age," a pivotal period that extends roughly from the rise of the Persian Empire to the fall of the Roman. The age is marked by the advent of a new type of political unit—the ecumenic empire—achieved at the cost of unprecedented destruction. Yet the pragmatic destructiveness of the age is paralleled by equally unprecedented spiritual creativity, born from the need to make sense of existence in the wake of imperial conquest. These spiritual outbursts gave rise to the great ecumenic religions and raised fundamental questions for human self- understanding that extend into our historical present. This third volume of Order and History completes Voegelin's study of Greek culture from its earliest pre-Hellenic origins to its full maturity with the dominance of Athens. As the title suggests, Plato and Aristotle is principally devoted to the work of the two great thinkers who represent the high point of philosophic inquiry among the Greeks. Through an absorbing analysis of the Platonic and Aristotelian vision of soul, polis, and cosmos, Voegelin demonstrates how the symbolic framework of the older myth was superseded by the more precisely differentiated symbols of philosophy. Although this outmoding and rejection of past symbols of truth might seem to lead to a chaotic and despairing relativism, Voegelin makes it the basis of a profound conception of the historical process: "the attempts to find the symbolic forms that will adequately express the meaning (of a society), while imperfect, do not form a senseless series of failures. For the great socieries have created a sequence of orders, intelligibly connected with one another as advances toward, or recessions from, an adequate symbolization of the truth concerning the order of being of which the order of society is a part." In this view, history has no obvious "meaning, " yet each society makes a similar venture after truth. Although every society works out its destiny under different conditions, each nonetheless creates symbols -- in its deeds and institutions -- which bear the meaning of its own existence. History, then, acquires a unity in the common endeavor toward meaning and order. The rationality and nobility of this view of history has much to say to the present age. Dante Germino's powerful introduction to this edition of Plato and Aristotle eloquently directs the reader into Voegelin's search through the thought of these two philosophers and toward a full understanding of their relevance to the "modern" world. This masterpiece, Germino argues, provides a welcome antidote to the spirit of an era Voegelin once called the Gnostic age Order and History, a comprehensive study of the order of human existence in society from ancient to modern times, has been widely acclaimed as one of the great intellectual achievements of our age.In the fourth volume, The Ecumenic Age, Eric Voegelin breaks with the course he originally charted, in which man's existence in society and the corresponding symbolism of order were presented in historical succession. The analyses in the three previous volumes are valid as far as they go, Voegelin explains, but "the conception was untenable because it had not taken proper account of the important lines of meaning in history that did not run along lines of time".The present volume treats history not as a stream of human beings and their actions in time, but as the process of man's participation in a flux of divine presence that has eschatological direction. "The process of history, and such order as can be discerned in it", says Voegelin, "is not a story to be told from the beginning to its happy, or unhappy, end; it is a mystery in process of revelation".The Ecumenic Age -- the age when the great religions, especially Christianity, originated -- denotes a period in the history of mankind that roughly extends from the rise of the Persian Empire to the fall of the Roman. "An epoch in history was marked indeed when the societies which had differentiated the truth of existence through revelation and philosophy succumbed, in pragmatic history, to new societies of the imperial type". Originally published: Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1974. With new introd.