Eric Voegelin.pdf - Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft

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It must be noted that Voegelin never published the kind of
thorough, scholarly account of the origins of gnosticism that
he provided of philosophy and revelation, for example. (The
closest he came to providing such an account was in 1974 in
The Ecumenic Age, about which more later). That he was fully
knowledgeable of the literature on early gnosticim is
abundantly clear, however, both from the extensive scholarly
literature he cited, for example, in the Introduction to Science,
Politics and Gnosticism, and in his personal contacts with
prominent scholars of gnosticism. (I recall his telling me of
extensive conversations in Paris with the Dean of scholars of
gnosticism, C.H. Puech, who, to Voegelin’s question „Are
today’s ideological movements gnostic in character?“,
answered emphatically „But of course!“ — This conversation
took place before Voegelin wrote the Walgreen Lectures
entitled „Truth and Representation“, published in 1952 under
the title with which we are all familiar.)
As many people who knew him better than I will affirm, Eric
Voegelin never liked to write about anything until he had
thoroughly researched it. The field was moving at such a rapid
rate with new archaeological and textual discoveries in a
variety of languages, including Coptic, in which I feel
confident that not even Voegelin had a working knowledge,
being made, that he presumably did not feel ready to write a
major monograph himself. Besides, he must have reasoned,
many monographs by specialists such as Puech and Gilles
Quispel existed, and the conscientious reader of the New
Science of Politics who wanted to know about the origins of
gnosticism could simply do his or her homework.
Inevitably, these assumptions produced some negative
responses, both from specialists in gnosticism who admired