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

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something to be raped. 36 The centrality of cosmic rejection to
any understanding of original Gnosticism was underlined by
Hans Jonas in 1966 in his critique of the work of Gershom
Scholem: „A Gnosticism without a fallen god, without the
benighted creator and sinister creation, without alien soul,
cosmic captivity, and acosmic salvation, without the selfredeeming
of the Deity — in short a Gnosis without divine
tragedy will not meet specifications…“. 37
Return to Voegelin
The purpose of the foregoing excursus into definitions is to
show that Voegelin’s characterizations of ancient gnosticism
were fully in line with the most recent research. Critics such as
Colpe who claimed that Voegelin (and now he would have to
add Umberto Eco) „did violence“ to gnosticism do not have a
case.
It is ironic that Voegelin should be accused of violence against
gnosticism, when the purpose of my paper is to suggest in
preliminary outline what I perceive can be derived from
Voegelin’s teaching: viz., that gnosticism itself is the major
spiritual and intellectual source of what has come to be called
„expressive“ violence in the modern world. Let me leave this
irony aside, however, and proceed to examine that teaching
itself.
„Nothing to Retract or Correct“: Gnosticism in the New
Science
It is The New Science of Politics, first published in 1952, that
put gnosticism on the map of political theory, and it is above