Historia w ujęciu Erica Voegelina

This article is devoted to present the principal ideas of Eric Voegelin and his conception of the resemblance of political ideas to religious and philosophical ideas. For Voegelin these ideas are the result of the state of consciousness of the human mind. The principal thesis of Voegelin's philosophy results from the experience of totalitarianism, communism and national-socialism. For this philosopher the emergence of these regimes is not the matter of accident. Totaliarism is the logical result of the decadence of the consciousness of modern men. This type of mind is the product of ideas of the Renaissance Enlightenment and positivism. The fall of the human mind is the effect of the process of secularisation. The human's mind loses consciousness of the beyond and of the possesion of the psyche. In effect, modern mentality is closed to transcendence. Men lose transcendent ideas and are ready to follow strange and nonhuman ideologies: liberalism, Marxism and fascism. The experience of the 20th century is the effect of the fall the Platonic mind (noetic mind). For Voegelin totalitarianism is the result of the decomposition of western mentality; it is a sign of thedecay of philosophical and religious ideas. The brutal ideologies are the product of secularisation of Christianity.