Multiple Expressions Of The Universal Order

This dissertation studies Eric Voegelin's political theory in light of his views on modernity and world-empire. The question is: what influences do the efforts to build a world-empire or something like it have on the order of modern society?The introduction briefly states the main features of a world-empire, makes it clear the relevance of the issue of world-empire to our current political concerns, as well as Voegelin's theoretical relevance to the empire issue, and outlines the basic structure of this dissertation.Chapter One is concerned with Voegelin's life and works, and gives a brief review on current Voegelinian scholarship abroad and home. It is shown by the review that there is not any study on Voegelin's thought which adopts the perspective as this dissertation, that is, a combination of his critique of modernity as Gnosticism and his elaboration on empires as negative for political order but positive to some extent for universal humanity at the same time.Chapter Two is concerned with the starting points of Voegelin's theory, that is, his conception of order, experience and symbol, and summarizes his theory on representation and truth, for the following analysis will be based on the perspective provided by this theory.Chapter Three is focused on Voegelin's famous point that"modernity is Gnosticism", firstly clarifying his views on the core substance of Gnosticism as well as its variants, and then going to make a detailed articulation of the political and historical doctrines of two representative modern thinkers, Hobbes and Hegel, with emphasis on how they modified in respective ways the representation of truth by political societies and by eminent individuals like the Christ and classical philosophers, resulting in the end of history, the end of faith in God as well as the end of philosophy. Chapter Four is focused on Voegelin's two-fold views on empires: on the one hand, the close connection of empires with the rise of Gnosticism by its devastating effects on the order of conquered areas; on the other hand, the imperial claims of representation of universal humanity which serve as some kind of"reminders"for human pursuit for universal order and against historicism and relativism.Then comes Chapter Five as the concluding chapter which is based on combination of Voegelin's views elaborated in the above two chapters, showing the defects and mistakes of both Hobbesian and Hegelian doctrines, and making clear Voegelin's own suggestion to the problem of order in modern society, that is, to appreciate and insist on, through philosophizing as Voegelin himself has experienced who in his turn followed Plato, the Metaxy structure of both reality and consciousness.