In his laudable zeal to expose the modernist attempts to immanentise the transcendent he does occasionally seem to sort of mystics transcendence in the here and now which would include Christian mystics such as Meister Eckhart, St.Francis of Assisi and St.John of the Cross as well as the more mystical Christian East not to mention the Sufis like Ib’n Arabi, the Vedantan’s like Adi Shankara and of course the Buddha and any Buddhist or Hindu attempts at enlightenment or libertation in this life and also Taoist and Platonic mystics to name a few schools. Indeed there is one introduction in one of his works that he does seem to label Platonism(almost inexplicably called “Neo”-Platonism by modernists, and for some reason Voegelin in the passage I’m referring to, despite it being a direct continuation of middle Platonic, Platonic and Pre-Socratic thought going back to Egypt and Mesopotamia.) and Hermeticism as possibility gnostic in his negative sense which would be a grave miscalculation and misunderstanding of these schools of theosophy(as the great traditions of classical thought always were.). I think it would have been better for Voegelin if he just avoided the term Gnostic completely, there is positive gnosis and just concentrated on his real and profound criticisms of modernist and post-modernist thought.

The website for this project, which will be pretty expansive, can be found here: http://www.thenewatlantis.com/Hawthorne .

Thanks for your kind words. Also, thanks for posting these excellent reflections and further readings.

Best Regards,

Peter Haworth

I might suggest, following Matthew J. Milliner’s interesting recent essays, that Protestants concerned with culture and art in the temporal realm might take Hawthorne and Jonathan Edwards for touchstones. More on this anon.

Science, frequently an Occam’s Razor in pursuit of codifying and illuminating an imperfect world seems to think that perfection …the Grand Theory ….is actually desirable. This scientific compulsion has colonized public policy in this age of the Global Nation State and rather than illuminating human interaction through heuristic openness and inquiry, it has devolved into the patently absurd course of occupation and democracy at gunpoint. Science, and its Political assigns , rather than being a vehicle for inquiry has become a pat stance of hubris.

Once an arch criticism of the Totalitarianism of National Socialism, Voegelin’s accusations of Gnosticism can now be trained squarely upon the Government and Popular Culture of the United States of America. The messianic declamations of “change” in the last election, the drift of the Treasury Department and Fed into a role as Top Corporate Backstop and Arranger, the Endless War on Terror and its accompanying labyrinth of Security industries, the transforming of debt into commodity…they are all illustrations of the toxic edge of the modern Gnostic impulse. Totalitarianism, in an American form has already erupted. Interestingly enough, finding no significant enemy in opposition, we turn on ourselves. We call terrorism the enemy but they are a rather minor opponent when compared to our gathering self-destructive behavior.

Thanks for this. Voegelin, writing from the experience of persecution at the hands of Hitler , his penetrating if somewhat dense vernacular provides one of the clearest insights into our current dysfunctions of any modern philosopher. Compared to that loutish Marxist Existentialist Sartre and despite his dense classical references, Voegelin is the breath of fresh air this triumphantly fatalistic age needs.