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

„Man’s partnership in being is the essence of his existence,
and this essence depends on the whole, of which existence is
a part. Knowledge of the whole, however, is precluded by the
identity of the knower with the partner, and ignorance of the
whole precludes essential knowledge of the part“.
Eric Voegelin, Order and History, I, 2.
Introductory Note
In this study I have sought to accomplish two objectives: (1) to
present an account of Voegelin’s understanding of original
(i.e. ancient) gnosticism as it developed from The New Science
of Politics to Volume V of Order and History, and (2) to bring
out the implications for Voegelin’s teaching on both ancient
and modern gnosticism for an understanding of the Cult of
(Expressive) Violence in our time. These two themes are
interwoven in my text, just as they are in the texts of Voegelin.
Although there have been a few learned treatments of
Voegelin and Gnosticism — the essay by Gregor Sebba on
„History, Modernity, and Gnosticism“ in The Philosophy of
Order 1 is especially noteworthy —, no one to my knowledge
has traced what Voegelin had to say about Gnosticism over
time, letting him speak in his own words, and I am glad that in
this paper I have been able to accomplish this task.
The discussion of what Voegelin actually said on the second
theme — the implications of the Gnostic preintellectual
disposition against reality for the emergence of the Cult of
Violence — would be brief indeed if we were to rely
exclusively on Voegelin’s own words. This is perhaps because
his notion of „science“ left little room for the detailed
depiction of or even reference to the most monstrous acts of