“What was novel in Voegelin’s thought was that he wedded that commonplace to a theory of history, suggesting that a universal process of symbolization was surreptitiously at work in human civilization, giving world history a discernible direction.”

Mark Lilla, "Mr. Casaubon in America", The New York Review of Books (June 28, 2007)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update March 13, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "What was novel in Voegelin’s thought was that he wedded that commonplace to a theory of history, suggesting that a univ…" by Eric Voegelin?

Eric Voegelin13

American philosopher 1901–1985

Related quotes

“Every civilization sees itself as the center of the world and writes its history as the central drama of human history.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

“Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

“A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Ninth Thesis
Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784)

“Of course, one way of thinking about all of life and civilization is as being about how the world registers and processes information. Certainly that's what sex is about; that's what history is about.”

Seth Lloyd (1960) American engineer

Seth Lloyd, cited in: Michael Schmiechen (2009) Newton's Principia Revisited. p. 885

“The history of mathematics is important also as a valuable contribution to the history of civilization. Human progress is closely identified with scientific thought. Mathematical and physical researches are a reliable record of intellectual progress.”

Florian Cajori book A History of Mathematics

Source: A History of Mathematics (1893), p. 4; Cited in: Moritz (1914, 90); Study and research in mathematics

“Either history is really governed by laws, and in that case a truly human-activity is impossible, except perhaps in a technical sense; or human beings really make their own history, and then the task of theory will not be directed to discovering 'laws', but to the elucidation of the conditions with in which human activity unfolds.”

Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997) Greek-French philosopher

From an interview conducted on 23 March 1983 for the May-August issue of the French journal Lutter ( "Marx today: the tragicomical paradox " http://www.rebeller.se/m.html). It was translated by Franco Schiavoni for the January 1984 issue of the Australian magazine Thesis Eleven.

“During that period von Bertalanffy as a young scholar was not only interested in biology and philosophy of science. He was also interested in history and generally in humanities. He studied Oswald Spengler's theory of history and has written a paper on this topic. His interest in Spengler's theory of history anticipated von Bertalanffy's lifelong attempts to reconcile sciences with humanities.”

Thaddus E. Weckowicz (1919–2000) Canadian psychologist

Source: Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972) (1989), p. 4