 |
Heidegger and Voegelin on Augustine
| |
| | Unformatted Document Text:
Conclusion
From this comparison of Heidegger and Voegelin we can draw tentative
conclusions. Although they came to terms with Augustine’s Confessions rather differently, the conclusion they reached are similar in so far as each interpreter shows that in treating the basic relationship between God and human beings, Augustine made potentially important contributions to philosophical anthropology. They also agree that at the time in his life when he was writing Confessions, Augustine tended not to distinguish clearly between creation as such, and creation as fallen.
For Voegelin, who conceived of himself as open to divine transcendence and may
even have implicitly espoused a universalist notion of saving grace, this confusion did not result in a catastrophic imbalance. As Geoffrey Price argued so convincingly, when Voegelin faced the task of incorporating the realism of Machiavelli and Hobbes into his political theory of history, he retrieved from Plato’s Laws the more integral premodern approach to political and historical evil.
For Heidegger, who apparently no longer believed in God’s grace in a Christian
sense, the horizon of his most well known book was restricted to world-immanent realities and oriented toward the ultimate annihilation of all possibilities in death. In his later poetic attempts to rethink what was positive in the ontological distinction between beings as manipulable and Being as unverfügbar, he developed a kind of heuristic eschatology, saying in the famous Rudolf Augstein interview towards the end of his life, “Only a god can save us!”
13
|
| |
| |
|
|
Conclusion
From this comparison of Heidegger and Voegelin we can draw tentative
conclusions. Although they came to terms with Augustine’s Confessions rather
differently, the conclusion they reached are similar in so far as each interpreter shows that
in treating the basic relationship between God and human beings, Augustine made
potentially important contributions to philosophical anthropology. They also agree that at
the time in his life when he was writing Confessions, Augustine tended not to distinguish
clearly between creation as such, and creation as fallen.
For Voegelin, who conceived of himself as open to divine transcendence and may
even have implicitly espoused a universalist notion of saving grace, this confusion did not
result in a catastrophic imbalance. As Geoffrey Price argued so convincingly, when
Voegelin faced the task of incorporating the realism of Machiavelli and Hobbes into his
political theory of history, he retrieved from Plato’s Laws the more integral premodern
approach to political and historical evil.
For Heidegger, who apparently no longer believed in God’s grace in a Christian
sense, the horizon of his most well known book was restricted to world-immanent
realities and oriented toward the ultimate annihilation of all possibilities in death. In his
later poetic attempts to rethink what was positive in the ontological distinction between
beings as manipulable and Being as unverfügbar, he developed a kind of heuristic
eschatology, saying in the famous Rudolf Augstein interview towards the end of his life,
“Only a god can save us!”
13
|
|
 Convention | | All Academic Convention makes running your annual conference simple and cost effective. It is your online solution for abstract management, peer review, and scheduling for your annual meeting or convention. | | Submission - Custom fields, multiple submission types, tracks, audio visual, multiple upload formats, automatic conversion to pdf. | | Review - Peer Review, Bulk reviewer assignment, bulk emails, ranking, z-score statistics, and multiple worksheets! | | Reports - Many standard and custom reports generated while you wait. Print programs with participant indexes, event grids, and more! | | Scheduling - Flexible and convenient grid scheduling within rooms and buildings. Conflict checking and advanced filtering. | | Communication - Bulk email tools to help your administrators send reminders and responses. Use form letters, a message center, and much more! | | Management - Search tools, duplicate people management, editing tools, submission transfers, many tools to manage a variety of conference management headaches! | | Click here for more information. |
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
