The article gives a brief overview of the first two volumes of the work of the German philosopher Eric Voegelin “Order and History”. The relevance of the concept of “order” for modern philosophy, which is attentive to the background concepts that form the fundamental level of human existence, is noted. Voegelin starts from the idea of the human community, which imagines itself in history and thereby creates symbolic structures – the formation of order. The study of them should begin with consideration of the direct experience of reality, while ideas as an object of study can carry the threat of distorting reality. The first work, “Israel and Revelation,” is devoted to the study of the truth of the order that emerged in ancient times in the Middle East, Mesopotamia and Israel. The second, “The World of the Polis,” covers the period of the birth and flourishing of Greek civilization. Both works are united by Voegelin’s transition from cosmological forms of symbolization of order to historical forms through the destruction of mythological structures of order – the cosmos and the affirmation of the idea of transcendental reality and the order of history.