Posted on 01/01/2007 1:38:50 AM PST by Noumenon
Well, read the book then. The thesis is that philosophy is what truly moves the world. It determines the choices that individuals make. If the philosophy they are taught is anti-American, then so will their choices be. His point in the Ominous Parallels is that the same ideas that led to Nazism in Germany are being taught and accepted in America today by philosophers.
And ideas often assume a life of their own.
Eric Voegelin had some very intersting ideas concerning the condition and direction of Western civilization. He's a tough read, but worth the effort.
For example, Voegelin observes that many liberal intellectuals object in one way or another to totalitarianism, but fail to realize that their own worldview shares common ground with Communism and Nazism. As Voegelin puts it: "The true dividing line in the contemporary crisis does not run between liberals and totalitarians, but between the religious and philosophical transcendentalists on the one side and the liberal and totalitarian immanentist sectarians on the other side."
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