This article attempts to establish a rather simple point: Although
Eric Voegelin’s analysis of spiritual disorder or “Gnosticism”
stands as one of the greatest accomplishments of 20th century
political science, the concept of Gnosticism itself has lost its theoretical
viability. The undermining of the concept is, I shall argue, partly
due to advancements in our understanding of the historical Gnostics,
and partly due to late advancements in Voegelin’s own analytical
approach. While this basic point is admittedly a simple one, it is not
without importance. This is because the concept’s loss of viability—
though not itself a matter of great import—prompts serious misunderstandings
of Voegelin’s analysis and diminishes appreciation of
the refinements and extensions of the analysis he debuted under this
rubric in The New Science of Politics. Dispensing with the concept
entails costs that must be acknowledged, since “Gnosticism” is
surely the most widely known of all Voegelin’s many coinages.
However, Voegelin himself consistently ascribed much greater
weight to theoretical precision than to the public currency of terms
or their acceptance within the academy. I believe theoretical precision
demands that we (i.e., those who wish seriously to follow his
lead) cut the concept adrift. I would be more comfortable if Voegelin
had done this himself, but nevertheless the issue seems clear on its
merits—even if it remains unclear why Voegelin did not make this
move himself.
I will try to establish my point by showing that Voegelin’s
understanding of spiritual disorder changed during the decades
following The New Science of Politics in ways that call into question
his usages of “Gnosticism” in that book. In essence, I want to argue
that the philosophical developments that prompted the new mode
of theorizing seen by 1974 in The Ecumenic Age have the effect—
when fully appreciated—of showing that the usage of “Gnosticism”
in The New Science is outmoded. As a preliminary caveat, I wish to
stress that “outmoded” and “mistaken” are very different judgments,
and that I am making the former here rather than the latter. At their
core, the analyses of spiritual disorder and modernity in The New
Science are not incorrect, and it was with good reason that Voegelin
never renounced them. However, during the ensuing two decades,
the fuller development of Voegelin’s theory of consciousness broadened
in ways that strain the “Gnosticism” of 1952 to—and perhaps
past—the breaking point. Moreover, these advancements in the
theory of consciousness, as well as Voegelin’s discovery of
historiogenesis, alter his understanding of historical epochs and the
historical process in ways that seriously undermine some of The New
Science‘s most striking theses regarding Gnosticism. To cite the
most noteworthy case in point, the arresting chapter title, “Gnosticism:
The Nature of Modernity” from 1952 looks quite problematic
from the perspective of 1974, by which time Voegelin had come to
question whether modernity has any specific, meaningful nature at
all, and by which time he must employ the term “Gnosticism” in an
overwhelmingly figurative manner, as the actual historical Gnostics
have turned out to be exceedingly unlikely progenitors of what we
call “modernity.”
We would do well to begin with a word about what Voegelin
meant by “Gnosticism.” In the most general sense, Voegelin used
the term to signify the belief that it is possible for human beings to
escape or eliminate the evils and hardships that afflict our existence
by means of the power conferred by a special knowledge (gnosis in
ancient Greek). Although Gnosticism was a particular “heretical”
faith from the ancient world, Voegelin found (and followed several
earlier scholars in finding) a variety of beliefs in modern times that
he regarded as comparable in structure. This structural comparability
consisted for Voegelin largely in tendency of gnostics—whether
ancient or modern—to exhibit a radical dissatisfaction with the
human condition and an intense longing for enhanced certainty and
power. On this basis, Voegelin launched a series of salvos against
a wide range of modern figures. Although these figures typically
regarded one another as enemies, Voegelin treated them as members
of a class that exhibited cohesion in that all were ideologists and,
on a deeper level, gnostic ones at that. When addressing the
ideological systems of thought that spawned either intellectual
movements (e.g., Hegelianism, psychologism, behavioralism and
positivism) or political movements (e.g., fascism and Marxism),
Voegelin sought to show that their dissimilar doctrines conceal a
deeper commonality on the level of motivation and intellectual
procedure. Despite their conflicting doctrines, all ideologies identify
some aspect of the worldly realm as the key to existence (e.g.,
historical progress, productive relations, racial composition, scientific
rationality). By contrast to the great philosophies and theologies
of order, which located the ground of being outside the
worldly realm, gnostic ideologies (mis)place the ground within the
mundane realm so that human beings can decipher and manipulate
it, thereby achieving the hubristic objectives of absolute power
and perfect certainty.
Voegelin’s work on Gnosticism attracted considerable attention
beginning with the publication of The New Science of Politics in
1952.1 The treatment of Gnosticism in the second half of this dense
and powerful book was so striking that it triggered a feature story in
Time magazine and gained wide admiration for Voegelin among
intellectual and political conservatives.2 Although Voegelin had
published many articles after emigrating to America from Austria,
The New Science of Politics was his first book in English and was the
first extended writing to appear after he abandoned a massive
project on the history of political ideas (which was discontinued due
to a major shift in methodology). Consequently, The New Science
seemed to indicate both the method and the substance of the
writings that would follow in this new phase of Voegelin’s work.
Major writings did indeed follow, and in short order, as Voegelin
published Israel and Revelation, the first volume of Order and
History, in 1956, with volumes II and III (The World of the Polis and
Plato and Aristotle) appearing in 1957. Although there is no doubting
the great importance of these books, those who were looking
specifically for more writing on Gnosticism found little within their
covers. Nevertheless, the plan for Order and History as a whole,
briefly adumbrated in the Preface to Israel and Revelation, offered
indications that a full analysis was soon to follow. The plan indicated
that five “principal types of order, together with their self-expression
in symbols, will be studied as they succeed one another in history.”
The five types were:
- The imperial organizations of the Ancient Near East, and
their existence in the form of the cosmological myth; - the Chosen People, and its existence in historical form;
- the polis and its myth, and the development of philosophy
as the symbolic form of order; - the multicivilizational empires since Alexander, and the
development of Christianity; - the modern national states, and the development of Gnosis
as the symbolic form of order.3
Since three volumes appeared in rapid succession to deal with the
first three types of order in the plan, it seemed likely that Voegelin
would soon provide an extended treatment of modern Gnosticism.
However, 17 years were to pass before the publication of another
volume of Order and History. The long delay preceding the release
of volume IV had important consequences for the book’s reception.
In the interim between 1957 and the publication of The Ecumenic
Age in 1974, Voegelin published only two books: Science, Politics
and Gnosticism, a slim volume consisting predominantly of a previously
published essay and the text of a lecture, and Anamnesis,
which remained unavailable in English translation until 1978.4
Consequently, many scholars from the English-speaking world had
not kept abreast of shifts in Voegelin’s thinking which became
apparent only with the release of The Ecumenic Age. When the
shifts finally did become apparent, they occasioned considerable
surprise in some quarters, and more than a little distress.
Readers who approached The Ecumenic Age having read the
Preface to volume I would have expected to find finished teachings
on the fourth and fifth types of order identified in the Preface, and
many would have looked in particular for treatments of Christianity
and Gnosticism that would fulfill hopes which had been excited but
held in suspension since the appearance of Voegelin’s striking comments
in The New Science of Politics. For example, with regard to
Christianity, Voegelin had written in The New Science of Politics of:
…a civilizational cycle of world-historic proportions. There emerge
the contours of a giant cycle, transcending the cycles of the single
civilizations. The acme of this cycle would be marked by the
appearance of Christ; the pre-Christian high civilizations would
form its ascending branch; modern Gnostic civilization would
form its descending branch.5
However, when The Ecumenic Age finally appeared, many Christians
were dismayed by the way Voegelin discussed and depicted
Christianity, as James Rhodes has observed.6
Readers who came to The Ecumenic Age anticipating an extended
treatment of Gnosticism along the lines of The New Science
of Politics were also prone to disappointment. In that book Voegelin’s
analysis had been, at once, specific, wide-ranging, and exhortatory.
He specifically identified Gnosticism with modernity, entitling a
chapter, “Gnosticism—The Nature of Modernity,” and admonished
readers to “recognize the essence of modernity as the growth of
Gnosticism.”7 He associated a wide range of thinkers and activists
with spiritual disorder and Gnosticism,8 and closed the book with a
call for “repressing Gnostic corruption and restoring the forces of
civilization,” noting ominously that “at present the fate is in the
balance.”9
In 1974, readers who opened The Ecumenic Age in search of a
similarly stirring account of the development of gnosis as the
symbolic form of modern national states, were to find something
quite different. These differences were likely to displease some
readers, especially those who may have heard a sort of pro-Christian,
anti-modern rallying cry in Voegelin’s earlier writings on Gnosticism.
Voegelin no longer seemed inclined to identify Gnosticism
and modernity, or to limit it to any particular period in time, or to
associate it with historical occurrences that could even keep it
circumscribed within the West. The range of thinkers and activists
associated with Gnosticism was expanded, but expanded in an
unanticipated and perhaps unwelcome manner to include Christian
figures and influences.10 Whereas The New Science spoke of an
immediate crisis in which the forces of civilization are arrayed
against a specific enemy that arose though a specific historical
process and was marked by a pronounced “otherness,” The Ecumenic
Age deprived would-be anti-gnostic combatants of their marching
orders by stripping the conflict of much of its particularity in terms
of time and place, and by making it much harder to distinguish friend
from foe.
What happened in the years between the publication of volumes
III and IV to explain this altered approach to Gnosticism? An
adequate answer must take note of two central factors, one on the
theoretical side of Voegelin’s work, and another on the side of the
source materials encountered in his researches between 1957 and
the completion of The Ecumenic Age. On the theoretical side,
Voegelin became increasingly immersed in the philosophy of consciousness,
ultimately developing a largely original theory that was
expressed most extensively in the German edition of Anamnesis.
This theoretical development radicalized Voegelin’s break with the
history of ideas approach which characterized his early writings and
which was still present to a reduced degree in The New Science and
the first three volumes of Order and History.
Although much has been written about how this change in
theoretical direction affected Voegelin’s conception of the history of
order,11 relatively little attention has been paid to its effect on
Voegelin’s diagnosis of Gnosticism and spiritual disorder. It is not
possible to summarize the change in Voegelin’s diagnosis without
losing many important nuances, but the following formulation will
perhaps not be misleading: the change involved a shift from viewing
instances of gnostic thought and action as connected events in
literary history to viewing them as independent but essentially
equivalent events in consciousness.12
Before the change, Voegelin wrote as if later instances of gnostic
thought resulted from influences from earlier writings. When considered
in this way, it made sense to trace the Gnosticism of one such
as, say, Marx, back to the ancient Gnostics by noting the intervening
figures who served as transmitters; Marx was an admirer of Thomas
Münzer, who was in turn a follower of Joachim of Flora, who was in
turn acquainted with ancient Gnostic writings. Or, to use another
example, the Puritan sectarians noted by Voegelin as exemplars of
Gnosticism may be said to have acquired gnostic or quasi-gnostic
patterns of thought from sects such as the Ortliebians, Paracletes,
and Adamites, who may have been inspired by the Albigensians,
who may have been influenced by the writings of Scotus Erigena,
whose views were affected by the still-earlier writings of Pseudo-
Dionysius.13 Following this approach to Gnosticism, it would make
sense to speak of a gnostic “stream” in history that may swell at
certain times while receding at others, or to refer to certain periods
(such as the Renaissance or the mid-19th century) as periods marked
by a “growth” of Gnosticism. However, if one follows the approach
to Gnosticism that first became fully apparent in The Ecumenic Age,
such notions no longer make sense.
By the time Voegelin completed work on The Ecumenic Age, his
studies in the philosophy of consciousness had led him away from
notions of literary transmission and into a perspective in which
Gnosticism is viewed as a response not to the influence of earlier
writings but to tensions that inhere in the human condition itself. In
describing the human condition, Voegelin utilizes Plato’s symbol of
the metaxy to suggest that humans exist in an “in-between” state of
suspension between the merely human and the divine. Humans are
tied to the immanent, mundane realm by virtue of their physical
existence and the pragmatic necessities that flow therefrom, yet they
also participate in the divine by virtue of more-or-less sustained and
self-conscious spiritual activity of two fundamental types: searching
for understanding of the divine in its dimension as the creative
source of the cosmos, and/or responsiveness to the active and
sustaining presence of the divine as it is experienced within reality
but beyond the cosmos. To say that humans exist in the metaxy is to
say that they are more than animals but less than gods. By dint of
participation in the divine, in the forms of meditative contemplation,
or prayerful beseeching, or responsive obedience, or worshipful
love, they are more than animals; yet they are not themselves divine,
as they experience the divine as a reality other than themselves,
either in its dimension as the Beginning of the cosmos or in its
dimension as a Beyond of the cosmos toward which they are drawn.
The mature Voegelin of the 1970s speaks, therefore, of humans
as existing in a tension toward the divine. His usage of “tension” in
this formulation suggests two distinct features of the human condition
that are important for understanding his revised analysis of
Gnosticism. First, his usage of “tension” suggests that humans are
naturally drawn or “pulled” toward the divine, whether in simple
curiosity about their own origins, or a more intense longing for
understanding of the ground of being, or a more specific love of the
source of goodness in reality, or in some still more dramatic fashion
as in a revelatory event. Second, his use of tension conveys the notion
that the human condition is an uneasy one. If humans are more than
animals but less than gods, they can understand themselves only by
reference to beings which they are not, which is an important source
of unease. Moreover, since they are drawn in these various modes
of participation toward a divine reality that they can experience but
not know in any certain way,14 the experienced reality to which
humans owe their existence and toward which humans are drawn in
the present will remain—forever—a Mystery. For Voegelin, the
ineluctable mysteriousness of the divine further aggravates the
fundamental human unease of which we are speaking because it
spreads mysteriousness over humanity as well. He held that the
human condition can only be understood within the comprehensive
matrix of “God and man, world and society,”15 and that no single
element in this matrix can be fully understood unless all of its
elements are fully understood. The nature of the divine and the
human must always remain mysterious at their core, and if Aristotle
were correct when stating in the first line of the Metaphysics that all
human beings by nature desire to know, then all human beings are
bound to experience frustration of a fundamental desire.
Stated simply, spiritual revolt or “Gnosticism” in the categorical
sense is an aggressive reaction to this frustration. As Voegelin
analyses it in The Ecumenic Age, Gnosticism is a reaction to an
experience in consciousness and not, as his earlier writings had
suggested, a result of influence from a text. If the symbols of a gnostic
text do, in fact, have the effect of stirring up an aggressive response
on the part of a reader against the uncertain and contingent
character of human life, then it is because the symbol created by the
writer resonates with an experience of frustration and aggressive
reaction which is already present in the consciousness of the reader.
All who read gnostic texts do not fall prey to Gnosticism, and the
reason is that all have not previously reacted rebelliously to the
tension of existence.
Interestingly, for Voegelin it is the same with philosophy: not all
are made philosophers by reading Platonic dialogues, and the reason
is that all have not previously reacted with acceptance, faith, and
loving openness to the tension of existence. In Voegelin’s theory of
experience and symbolization, which informed works like The New
Science of Politics but was not fully developed until at least a decade
later, it is a basic principle that symbols do not have a life of their own,
but are only vital if they spring from personal experience, and only
effective if they are encountered by those with parallel personal
experiences. Thus, Voegelin’s analysis of Gnosticism in The Ecumenic
Age is novel in that it locates gnostic phenomena not in a stream of
literary transmission but in consciousness. More specifically,
Voegelin’s mature analysis locates Gnosticism in the consciousness
of particular individuals who fail to bear up under the tensions of
existence in the metaxy and who react aggressively against the
uncertainties and limitations of creaturely existence by seeking to
abolish them through gnosis.
Having shown how Voegelin’s analysis of Gnosticism was altered
by his studies in the theory of consciousness, it should also be noted
that changes were dictated by the historical materials that he
encountered between 1957 and 1974. In the Introduction to The
Ecumenic Age, Voegelin notes that as his
knowledge of materials increased, the original list of five types of
order and symbolization turned out to be regrettably limited; and
when the empirical basis on which the study had to rest was
broadened so as to conform to the state of the historical sciences,
the manuscript swelled to a size that easily would have filled six
more volumes in print. That situation was awkward enough. What
ultimately broke the project, however, was the impossibility of
aligning the empirical types in any time sequence at all that would
permit the structures actually found to emerge from a history
conceived as a “course.”…[T]he conception was untenable because
it had not taken proper account of the important lines of
meaning in history that did not run along lines of time.16
Once Voegelin had taken proper account of the lines of meaning that
did not run along lines of time, he rejected the conception of history
as a course in favor of the view that history “is not a stream of human
beings and their actions in time, but the process of man’s participation
in a flux of divine presence that has eschatological direction”
(EA, 6). These dramatic shifts in Voegelin’s conception of history as
a whole carried similarly dramatic implications for conceiving the
history of Gnosticism. If it no longer made sense to speak of a course
when conceiving of history as a whole, it could no longer make sense
to conceive of the history of Gnosticism as a “course” or a “stream”
or an “unbroken continuum of movements”17 leading from the
ancient writings through a series of medieval sectarian transmitters
to the modern gnostics of the ideological movements. Moreover, if
history was “definitely not a story of meaningful events to be
arranged on a time line,” but rather a “movement through a web of
meaning with a plurality of nodal points” requiring an analysis that
“had to move backward and forward and sideways,”18 then it could
hardly make sense to focus on blocks of time as the meaningful units
in history.
Additionally, if blocks of time were not meaningful units, they
could not be adequately described by reference to any single
element, however prominent. Thus, from the perspective on history
that informs The Ecumenic Age, it could no longer make sense to
speak—as Voegelin had in The New Science of Politics—of Gnosticism
as “the nature of modernity.” Indeed, once Voegelin began
viewing instances of gnostic thought and activity through the lens of
his philosophy of consciousness, he found that even when the
instances were separated by many centuries and by widely varying
civilizational circumstances, they exhibited remarkable parallels as
aggressive reactions to a human condition which does not—in its
essentials—vary over time. Consequently, the Voegelin who could,
in 1952, admonish readers to “recognize the essence of modernity
as the growth of Gnosticism” could later, after finding that modern
ideologues were exemplars of a disordered consciousness also
observed in the ancient world, ask the question in 1974: “what
exactly was modern about modernity?”19 Thus we can see that
Voegelin’s studies in the theory of consciousness and his transformed
conception of the structure of history combined to produce
a significant alteration of his analysis of Gnosticism. By comparison
to the analysis of The New Science of Politics, his treatment in The
Ecumenic Age is vastly more intricate and sophisticated.
Is the concept of Gnosticism still viable in this more intricate and
sophisticated approach? Even when Voegelin began using it, the
concept was badly overburdened, as it had to subsume not only the
thought and activity of the ancient Gnostics, but also a vast collection
of individuals who were members of no Gnostic sect, and indeed at
some points he connects it to figures who lived prior to the historical
appearance of the Gnostics themselves. Voegelin associates the term
with a long list of highly variegated individuals and groups extending
through the Middle Ages into our present, and when doing so, he
frequently oscillates between using “Gnosticism” as a categorical
concept and as a proper noun. This is no mere grammarian’s quibble
but rather a source of real trouble, especially for one who, as
Voegelin said of himself, is “a man who likes to keep his language
clean.”20 For example, in The Ecumenic Age, when Voegelin uses
the term “Gnosticism” as a capitalized noun, one might wonder
whether he intends it as a proper noun to refer to the sects who are
known to scholars of religion as the Gnostics or whether he intends
it as a critical concept of his own making to be understood with the
(continually shifting) accents and specifications he places upon it.
Moreover, when he employs the term as an adjective, one wonders
whether he means that a thinker has been influenced by the
historical Gnostics, or whether he merely wishes to suggest that the
individual under discussion thinks along analogous lines. He sometimes
oscillates between usage patterns several times on a single
page or in a brief section, as in the Introduction, where each of the
four usages just described appears several times between pages 20
and 25. Consequently, readers must continually strain to discern
who or what Voegelin means to designate by the term when they
encounter it. Voegelin’s usage patterns in particular books and
articles, taken singly, are not always inconsistent, but his use of terms
and analogies regarding Gnosticism and spiritual disorder is often
surprisingly indefinite as one moves from one writing to another.
Concepts announced in one work fail to appear in the next,21
distinctions drawn at one point are not developed or applied at
others,22 and terms that arise in differing contexts are often used
interchangeably.23 Although I certainly do not subscribe to the view
that readers should never be asked to strain to understand an author,
I find that Voegelin’s usage of “Gnosticism” varies so widely in his
writings that even a specialist can sometimes do little more than
guess what he means.
Since Voegelin was a very careful writer, the problems that mark
the terminology he used for his diagnosis of spiritual disorder—
which is a major part of his work as a whole—are puzzling. My only
hunch (and I hasten to emphasize that this is only a hunch) as to why
we have been left with such a maddening welter of terms is that
Voegelin was so intent upon driving each of his analyses closer to the
essence of the phenomena under investigation that he felt compelled
to neologize almost continually to keep his concepts in step
with his ever more penetrating insights. He was well acquainted
with thinkers like Hegel and Marx who had left wonderfully consistent
conceptual systems, but seemed to regard this as an unscientific
attempt by ideologists to paper over the complexity and
mysteriousness of reality by achieving conceptual clarity within their
systems. Once such a grand conceptual edifice is built, the orderliness
of the passageways makes it is easy for epigones to take up
residence and confer an ersatz immortality upon the system builder
by means of their venerations. By contrast, Voegelin’s writings show
little concern for the niceties of seamlessness and continuity. He
seemed thoroughly unconcerned that his readers might not be able
to keep up with him, and he did conspicuously little to tidy up his
writings to facilitate easy consumption by any would-be disciples.
If my hunch has merit, we will have found our explanation for
Voegelin’s terminological inconsistencies not in shortcomings that
marked the man but in his possession of the virtue of scientific
relentlessness and also, perhaps, something akin to magnanimity as
described by Aristotle.24 Nevertheless, this does not diminish the
specific problems caused by his decision to retain the concept of
Gnosticism for use once his thinking had taken the new turns
manifested in The Ecumenic Age. By the 1970s, Voegelin indicated
that he “would probably not use [the term Gnosticism] if here were
starting over again,”25 and I believe that he should indeed have made
a clean break with it, as his attempts to patch up or augment it proved
unsuccessful. The most notable of these was Voegelin’s statement in
1973 that:
Since my first applications of Gnosticism to modern phenomena
in The New Science of Politics and in 1959 in my study on Science,Politics, and Gnosticism, I have had to revise my position.
Theapplication of the category of Gnosticism to modern ideology, of
course, stands. In a more complete analysis, however, there are
other factors to be considered in addition. One of these factors is
the metastatic apocalypse deriving directly from the Israelite
prophets, via Paul, and forming a permanent strand in Christian
sectarian movements right up to the Renaissance…. I found,
furthermore, that neither the apocalyptic nor the Gnostic strand
completely accounts for the process of immanentization. This
factor has independent origins in the revival of neo-Platonism in
Florence in the late fifteenth century.26
Here Voegelin is attempting to deal with a problem that became
apparent in the years immediately following publication of The New
Science of Politics, namely, that archaeological finds (dating principally
from 1952) and scholarly research have shown that ancient
Gnosticism strongly tended toward apoliticism, since it denigrated
life in this world in favor of escape from it through some sort of secret
teaching or gnosis. Voegelin’s own interest in The New Science was
in the forms that a claim to gnosis could take when there was an
interest in drawing on the power of such knowledge for the transformation
of the present world.27 It was to account for the worldtransforming
strand in medieval and modern disorders that Voegelin
began speaking of hermeticism, alchemy and magic as bearing an
importance comparable to Gnosticism. Thus, in a 1978 publication,
he argues that, “…the contemporary disorder will appear in a rather
new light when we leave the ‘climate of opinion’ and, adopting the
perspective of the historical sciences, acknowledge the problems of
‘modernity’ to be caused by the predominance of Gnostic, Hermetic,
and alchemistic conceits, as well as by the magic of violence
as the means for transforming reality.”28 This looks to me like
backsliding. That is, Voegelin seems to be reverting here from his
more developed analytical approach to one still cast in the mold of
the history of ideas. More specifically, it looks like a reversion from
the view that, a) we can identify an essential equivalence between
ancient and modern symbolisms of revolts occasioned by essentially
equivalent engendering experiences to the view that, b) we can show
by historical analysis that modern problems are “caused” by residues
of gnostic, hermetic, alchemistic and magic lingering from premodern
sources.
This is not to say that there are no commonalities running
between modern ideologists, medieval millenarians, ancient Gnostics
and, indeed, pre-Gnostic individuals who anticipate or seek to
initiate a fundamental transformation of the conditions of human
existence. Such commonalities do indeed exist, in my view, but they
cannot be established in a satisfactory way by suggesting chains of
literary influence.29 One of the most important events in Voegelin’s
development as a thinker was his recognition that ideas are but
epiphenomenal manifestations of the experiences that engender
them, and if one accepts this as a premise, then it follows that any
commonalities among seemingly disparate figures must be established
on the level of experience. I have tried elsewhere to show
that this can indeed be accomplished by reference to a common
pattern of revolt in reaction to four fundamental experiences of
the human condition: uncertainty, contingency, imperfection,
and mortality.30 Regardless of the success or failure of this effort,
it is clear that chains of literary influence must be regarded as
outmoded remnants of Voegelin’s early studies in the history of
ideas, and that any analysis of commonalities must take full
account of Voegelin’s late work in the theory of consciousness.
In conclusion, I should emphasize that while I regard the
concept of Gnosticism as having become a millstone in the effort to
understand the role of spiritual disorder in modernity, the effort
itself is one of great importance, and the problems caused by the
concept are dwarfed by the magnitude of Voegelin’s accomplishments
in this area. Moreover, the extent of the damage caused by
conceptual problems is rather superficial, rarely penetrating to the
theoretical core of what Voegelin wishes to emphasize in particular
writings. Nevertheless, the relatively superficial damage caused by
conceptual problems is hardly trivial in importance, since many of
Voegelin’s formulations will prove seriously misleading to those who
are not steeped in his late writings. Thus, for example, I would argue
that Voegelin’s famous assertion from The New Science of Politics
that, “Gnosticism is the essence of modernity” is correct at its core,
in the sense that what people generally call “modernity” was born of
a series of personal, spiritual revolts against the limitations and
imperfections of human existence. We can see that pre-modern
writings that hubristically celebrate human capacities were occasionally
admired by modern ideologists in the course of their own
revolts, and that this genre includes Gnostic texts as well as Hermetic
writings, speculations on alchemy, magic, apocalypticism, messianism,
and so forth. However, though we can legitimately take one further
step to find in hubristic pre-modern writings a pattern of personal
revolt that is analogous to modern revolts, these pre-modern writings
do not “cause” modern instances of spiritual revolt in any
meaningful sense. Voegelin’s late work suggests that if there is such
a “cause,” it is the complex of tensions that inhere in the human
condition itself, in the metaxy. It is the tension itself—not early
symbolizations of the tension—that prompts the various revolts,
whether ancient or modern. The earlier ones do not “cause” or even
influence the later ones in any substantial way.31 From this perspective,
it is almost completely meaningless in a literal sense to say that
“Gnosticism is the essence of modernity.” Historical Gnosticism has
nothing substantial to do with the revolts of individuals like Hegel
and Marx and Comte (or their various epigones and functionaries),
and as Voegelin’s late work on historiogenesis demonstrates, there
is nothing essentially “modern” about these revolts.32 Thus, due to
the problematic character of the concept of Gnosticism, we can see
that a proposition such as “Gnosticism is the essence of modernity”
can be—at once—virtual nonsense on its face but also a profound
discovery at its core.
Michael Franz
Loyola College in Maryland
NOTES
- Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An Introduction
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952). - “Journalism and Joachim’s Children,” Time 61 (1953), 10ff.
On Voegelin’s reputation among conservatives, see Ted V. McAlister,
Revolt against Modernity: Leo Strauss, Eric Voegelin, and the
Search for a Postliberal Order (Lawrence: University of Kansas
Press, 1995). - Voegelin, Israel and Revelation,(vol. 1 of Order and History)
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1956). - Voegelin, Science, Politics and Gnosticism (Chicago: Henry
Regnery, 1968); Anamnesis: Zur Theorie der Geschichte und Politik
(Munich: Piper, 1966). - The New Science of Politics, 164. All references to this book
are to the original publication from University of Chicago Press. - See also Rhodes’ more extended discussion of Christian
reactions in “Voegelin and Christian Faith,” Center Journal (2:3,
Summer 1983). - The New Science of Politics, 107, 126.
- These include Bakunin, Comte, Condorcet, D’Alembert,
Diderot, Engels, Feuerbach, Hegel, Hitler, Hobbes, Joachim of
Flora, Marx, J. S. Mill, and Nietzsche. - Ibid., 189.
- To quote but one example: “Considering the history of
Gnosticism, with the great bulk of its manifestations belonging to, or
deriving from, the Christian orbit, I am inclined to recognize in the
epiphany of Christ the great catalyst that made eschatological
consciousness an historical force both in forming and deforming
humanity” The Ecumenic Age, 20. All references to this book are to
the original publication from Louisiana State University Press. - See, for example, Bruce Douglass, “The Break in Voegelin’s
Program,” Political Science Reviewer 7 (1977), 1–22; Gerhart
Niemeyer, “Eric Voegelin’s Philosophy and the Drama of Mankind,”
Modern Age 20 (1976), 28–39. - Two caveats should be noted here. First, I describe the
change that became apparent in The Ecumenic Age as a shift because
one can find passages in writings prior to the book (including
passages in The New Science of Politics) in which Voegelin seems to
lean toward treating Gnosticism as an event in consciousness. It
would be an overstatement to suggest that the change is a simple,
before-and-after affair, with The Ecumenic Age lying between the
before and the after. Second, the proposition that independently
arising gnostic phenomena such as, say, Joachitic millennialism and
Marxian speculation on the imminent rise of communism are
“essentially equivalent” is controversial and extremely complicated.
I have pursued the issue at considerable length in Eric Voegelin
and the Politics of Spiritual Revolt. - On these connections see Eugene Webb, Eric Voegelin:
Philosopher of History, (Seattle: University of Washington Press,
1981) 199–204. - In Voegelin’s view, philosophical activity does not yield a set
of facts but a set of illuminating experiences of participation in a
process of being which reveals itself as mysterious, as a great
Question. Thus Voegelin writes, “The Questions as a structure in
experience is part of, and pertains to the In-Between stratum of
reality, the Metaxy. There is no answer to the Question other than
the Mystery as it becomes luminous in the acts of questioning” The
Ecumenic Age, 330. - Israel and Revelation, 1.
- The Ecumenic Age, 2.
- See Israel and Revelation, 454.
- The Ecumenic Age, 57.
- The Ecumenic Age, 7, see also p. 68.
- Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections, (Ellis Sandoz, ed.)
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989) 47. - For example, “modern Prometheanism,” from The New
Science of Politics, 254; “social Satanism,” from From Enlightenment
to Revolution (John H. Hallowell, ed.)(Durham: University of
North Carolina Press, 1975), 71, 195. - For example, those between teleological, axiological, and
activist immanentization, and intellectual, emotional, and volitional
gnosticism from The New Science of Politics, 124, 175, which do not
reappear in any subsequent work. - For example, the following terms are among those used as
apparent synonyms for either “ideology” or “gnosticism” at various
points in Voegelin’s writings: pneumapathology, activist dreaming,
egophanic revolt, metastatic faith, activist mysticism, demonic mendacity,
Prometheanism, parousiasm, political religion, social Satanism,
magic pneumatism, eristics. - See Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 1123b25–1125a15.
- See Webb, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History, 200.
- Autobiographical Reflections, 66–67.
- See Webb, Eric Voegelin: Philosopher of History, 199.
- See, e.g., “Response to Professor Altizer’s ‘A New History
and a New but Ancient God?'” in Published Essays, 1966–1985, CW,
Volume 12, 298. - It simply will not suffice to suggest, for example, that Marx
can be regarded as a gnostic because he was an admirer of Thomas
Münzer, who was in turn an admirer of Joachim. Neither Marx nor
Engels (who, of the two, had the greater interest in Münzer)
considered themselves followers of Münzer—much less Joachim,
and to suggest that Marx is a gnostic on this basis runs afoul of the
principles underlying Voegelin’s late work. In Autobiographical
Reflections, Voegelin notes, “the principle that lies at the basis of all
my later work: the reality of experience is self-interpretive” (p. 80;
emphasis in original). Marx was no gnostic in his self-interpretation,
and though it is indeed possible to demonstrate that he was an
exemplar of a pattern of spiritual disorder that Voegelin has referred
to analogically as “gnosticism,” Voegelin’s principle indicates that
such a demonstration must be based upon painstaking experiential
analysis conducted on Marx’s own writings. - The fourth experience in this series actually requires a
somewhat more elaborate description as the experience of mortality
in a world in which all things pass away, but beyond which there is
a perceived but mysterious lastingness or an eternity beyond the
world of things. See my, “Brothers Under the Skin: Voegelin on the
Common Experiential Wellsprings of Spiritual Order and Disorder,”
in The Politics of the Soul: Voegelin and Religious Experience,
139–161; Voegelin’s Analysis of Marx, Eric Voegelin Archive Occasional
Papers, University of Munich, 2000; and “Gnosticism and
Spiritual Disorder in The Ecumenic Age,” The Political Science
Reviewer 27 (1998), 17–43. - Does this mean that historical work is insignificant in this
problem area? Absolutely not, though we should recognize that the
real importance of historical work regarding spiritual disorder is
that, by establishing the perennial appearance of spiritual revolts
that are equivalent at the level of spiritual experience, we can show
that modern revolts are not simply caused by modern circumstances
(the rise of capitalism or the decline of the Church or the French
Revolution, etc.) but rather by the same perennial tensions that gave
rise to ancient revolts. - On the importance of historiogenesis in this context, see The
Ecumenic Age, 68, where Voegelin asks, “what is modern about the
modern mind, one may ask, if Hegel, Comte or Marx, in order to
create an image of history that will support their ideological imperialism,
still use the same techniques for distorting the reality of
history as their Sumerian predecessors?” See also p. 7, where he
asks, “what exactly was modern about modernity, if the great
struggle among the historiogenetic constructions, among enlightened
Progressivism, Comtism, Hegelianism, Marxism, had to be
understood as a dogmatomachy among imperialist speculators in
the best cosmological style?” In both passages, the emphasis is
added. Regarding Voegelin’s self-understanding of the importance
of the discovery of historiogenesis, see the letter of Voegelin
to Donald Ellegood of July 21, 1960 (in Eric Voegelin Papers,
Hoover Institution Library, Stanford University, box 23, folder
28), where Voegelin notes, “I have hit on something like a theory
of relativity for the field of symbolic forms….” See also Thomas
Hollweck and Paul Caringella, “Editor’s Introduction” to What is
History? And Other Late Unpublished Writings, volume 28 of The
Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, xii–xv.
