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

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violence. I will go further and claim that Voegelin was
fundamentally sound in his linking of gnosticism to the
violence of modernity and that the intransigence of his stance
regarding this thesis should be applauded. We who try to
follow in his footsteps as best we can should not be tempted to
pour water into his wine on the grounds that of course there
were other factors that help to explain the insanity of Nazism
and Stalinism. The fact is that Voegelin understood this quite
well and did not argue in the New Science that ancient
gnosticism automatically produced or „caused“ modern
totalitarianism. Even in the passage quoted above, brief as it is,
it is clear that Voegelin was fully aware of the great variety of
forms of gnosticism, from the contemplative to the paracletic
to the volitional. And he was one of the most acute
sociologists of mass movements of our century, fully aware of
the impact of socio-economic factors and charismatic
personality types on historical events such as Nazism and
Fascism and Stalinism. What he did — and it was a
momentous achievement — was to identify gnosticism — or
gnosis if one prefers that term — as the catalytic source of the
uniquely destructive force of the modern cult of violence.
Voegelin’s Concept of Gnosticism and its Implications
One of the reasons that it is admittedly difficult conceptually
to follow Voegelin’s discussion of gnosticism in the New
Science is that it is grounded upon the principle that „the
substance of history is to be found on the level of experiences,
not on the level of ideas“ 43 . So, to follow the trail of
gnosticism as grounded in an experiential lust for total
knowledge and control led all over the map, from More to
Marx and from the Cathars to Comte. Gnostics could be