Bodies of truth: Eric Voegelin’s ontology of participation and the potentialities of embodied being

Abstract

This article critically engages with the work of Eric Voegelin, a thinker who, for the most part, has remained neglected. Against this neglect the claim is advanced that Voegelin’s thought should be taken heed of, not least from thinkers who register themselves in the radical tradition of political theory. At the same time, however, it is argued that any positive appropriation of Voegelin from a radical perspective has to put under critical scrutiny basic assumptions informing his thought, and above all his conception of the body. In particular, the argument put forward is that Voegelin’s impoverished conceptualization of the body constitutes a real problem for his thought, and specifically one that underscores his dismissive attitude toward political radicalism. Subsequently, through a presentation of recent theoretical discussions of the body, a more positive conception of embodied being is sought for, which can lay open the radical dynamic of Voegelin’s participatory ontology.