This volume of The Collected Works contains essays published by Eric Voegelin between 1929 and 1933, the period between the publication of his first book, On the Form of the American Mind, and Hitler's rise to power, as well as Voegelin's two books analyzing the explosive race issues posed by National Socialism. The essays herein reflect the intellectual and political tumult of the period and their author's maturing grasp of political reality as he moved away from positivism and Kelsen's "Pure Theory of Law" toward a more refined and open philosophical stance. The heart of this shift is signaled by his emphasis on philosophical anthropology and on the decisive importance of the moral substance basic to political communities.

The topics of the essays are grouped around major themes in sociological theory, political science, and the theory of law. They illuminate the theoretical and practical impact of Voegelin's experiences in America as he increasingly engages European theories of state, especially the social theories of leading French and German scholars. In content, these essays include such pragmatic concerns as American theories of property, economic transactions, due process of law, and Austrian constitutional reforms.

Voegelin also explores the technically complex speculative matters surrounding sovereignty and law, Max Weber's science, and the spiritual form of Europe. He analyzes Kant's understanding of moral duty and the meaning of solidarity as the substance of democratic society. Through these discourses, readers can see how the theme of divine transcendence increasingly finds expression during this crucial early stage of Voegelin's scholarly life. Thus, these studies mark the early path Voegelin took in making his arduous journey from legal scholar to philosophical political scientist. They display his increasingly resolute attention-- against challenges both existential and urgently political--to a growing insight into what it means to be fully human as he struggles toward an eventual philosophy of politics and history sufficient to amplify that noble insight.

In this collection of essays, which covers the years from 1934 to1939, we see Eric Voegelin in the role of both scholar and public intellectual in Vienna until he was forced to flee the Nazi terror that descended on Austria in 1938. Revealing the broad spectrum of thinking and scientific study of this relatively young scholar, Voegelin's essays range from Austrian politics, Austrian constitutional history, and European racism to questions of the formation and expression of public opinion, theories of administrative law, and the role of political science in public university education. Several essays serve as useful commentaries on, elaborations of, or synopses of arguments Voegelin made in the five books he had published between 1928 and 1938.

Within these topical headings, there are multiple thematic threads that wind their way through these essays and that remain of interest to contemporary readers. Thirteen of the pieces contained in this collection are short items that Voegelin published in trade journals and newspapers, of which nine appeared in the Wiener Zeitung in 1934 and the Neue Freie Presse in 1937. In these we see two brief periods in which Voegelin played the role of public intellectual not only as a lecturer but also in print.

These essays will be of interest to a wide range of scholars, including constitutional historians, historians of political science, political theorists, and students of Voegelin's later work.