In that sense, one could say that both Strauss and Voegelin were witness to a similar display of raw and limitless power during the first half of the twentieth century. Both were instances in which the reality of power and its capacity for destruction became crude facts of life. There are certain parallels between the events in 1494 and the ones that followed 1933 in the heartland of Europe. The invasions were not intended to be an expression of better and more refined reasons or ideas: they were just stronger powers conquering a weaker and divided territory. The first thing that Voegelin brings into attention is that the elongated shadow of condemnation covering Machiavelli can only be a sign that “something extraordinary had occurred, a severe break with the tradition for treating political questions.” The extraordinary situation came to a pinnacle during what he considered to be the “trauma of 1494.” Machiavelli and his generation witness the reduction and impotence of the Italian principalities and the success of the French, Spanish and Swiss invaders in taking over a prosperous land in an event without sense beyond the display of naked power. ” Although in exile by different personal circumstances, both Strauss and Voegelin did shared the experience of ruthless authoritarian violence in their native land, but their approach to Machiavelli, the author that Strauss blames to be the teacher of tyrants, differs in many ways. Voegelin came to the United States after the occupation of Austria in 1938, not because he was accused of being a Communist, Catholic, or Jew, but because – as he remembered years later – he was inspired by one of the virtues that Max Weber demanded of a scholar, namely, “intellectual honesty. Like Strauss, Eric Voegelin also went into exile after the rise of National Socialism.
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