About the Editor

Ellis Sandoz, Hermann Moyse Jr. Distinguished Professor of Political Science, is Director of the Eric Voegelin Institute for American Renaissance Studies at Louisiana State University. He is the general editor of Voegelin's History of Political Ideas and author or editor of numerous books, including A Government of Laws: Political Theory, Religion, and the American Founding (University of Missouri Press).

“One clue to [Voegelin’s] life lies in the following passage: ‘I have in my files documents labeling me a Communist, a Fascist, a National Socialist, an old Liberal, a new Liberal, a Jew, a Catholic, a Protestant, a Platonist, a neo-Augustinian, a Thomist, and of course a Hegelian—not to forget that I was supposedly strongly influenced by Huey Long. This list I consider of some importance, because the various characterizations of course always name the pet bête noire of the critic and give, therefore, a very good picture of the intellectual destruction and corruption that characterize the contemporary academic world.’ Obviously a thinker damned in so many diverse ways is on to some uncomfortable truths.”—Robert B. Heilman on Voegelin in the Sewanee Review

“[Autobiographical Reflections] provides the best possible introduction to Voegelin’s political philosophy as well as a splendid illustration of Voegelin’s own interpretive procedure. . . . In short, [it] is accessible to anyone interested in discovering what the recovery of political science has meant. It also constitutes a significant contribution to that recovery.”—Review of Politics

“The importance of this work resides in the fact that the student of Voegelin’s thought is given the opportunity to learn firsthand of the origin and context within which Voegelin came upon his powerful insights, as well as to hear and assess for himself the musings of this great master as he reflects on the teachings of some of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century.”—Modern Age

The thirty-fourth volume of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin consists of Voegelin’s Autobiographical Reflections, reprinted from the 1989 edition with additional annotations; a glossary of terms used in Voegelin’s writings, illustrated with examples from throughout the Collected Works; a volume index; and a cumulative index. The last covers the entire edition, apart from The History of Political Ideas, which has its own index, and volumes 29 and 30, the Selected Correspondence, which are at present not published.

The glossary lists, defines, and illustrates from the author’s writings many of the key terms employed, paying particular attention to the Greek terms. The cumulative index supplies a more comprehensive access to the contents of the entire Collected Works. Together, the glossary and index systematically include names, subjects, ideas, writings, and terms, making this culminating volume an indispensable help for any serious study of Eric Voegelin’s oeuvre.