Abstract
This biopsy revisits the theoretical and political controversies between the legal scholar Hans Kelsen and his student at the University of Vienna, Eric Voegelin, who rejected his teacher‘s neo-Kantian positivism and published a multi volume work on the meta-narratives of meaning of all major civilizations. This work challenged the epistemological foundations of Kelsen‘s
understanding of political reality which remained centered throughout his life on the legal structures of society. The scholars clashed also on the viability of the authoritarian state in the 1930s before both took refuge in the US after Nazi Germany‘s annexation of Austria.
