Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: How did Eric Voegelin read texts? In which way and to what extend did his reading of other authors influence his own thinking? Or to put it in a more analytical question: Is it possible to identify certain hermeneutical principles of what could be called Eric Voegelin´s philosophical art of understanding? In the paper I suggest a few aspects that may be worth considering regarding such possible principles of “Voegelinian hermeneutics”. I consider some early texts in which Voegelin reflects on “methodical” questions, and I primarily focus on Voegelin´s reading of Jean Bodin. For Voegelin´s interpretation of this thinker in my opinion is particularly instructive in this respect.
The argument of my paper can be summarized as follows: The first answer I suggest to the question of how Eric Voegelin read texts is that he read them in two substantially different ways. There are two different, yet dialectically related variants of his hermeneutical method of interpretation discernable in his material studies which I want to call his “open” and his “closed” method of interpretation, respectively. These two variants reflect – on the “methodical” level – fundamental principles of Voegelin´s general theoretical perspective. Secondly I argue that particularly his “open” method of interpretation, of which his reading of Jean Bodin is a particularly distinct example, in turn has important general theoretical implications. It seems to constitute a genuine form of Voegelinian philosophical hermeneutics in which author and interpreter – the work to be interpreted and Voegelin´s genuine interpretation of it – are intimately related in an intricate reciprocal or “dialogical” complex of meaning. These peculiarities of Voegelin´s way of reading texts appear to emphasize the importance of the “hermeneutical” traits within his philosophical questioning and his conception of political science in general.