Introduction

The Introduction to vol. 3 of the new series Eric Voegelin Studies: Yearbook envisages the main reasons for a reappraisal of Eric Voegelin's early work on race: they lie both in the place it holds in the broader project to write a new theory of government (Staatslehre) and in the importance accorded to body ideas as a necessary component of political communities. Voegein's race-books and some further connected essays investigated in unprecedented manner the historical roots of the typically modern instantiation of body ideas as race ideas. They also showed the extent to which the race idea is based on flawed premises.