Personal computer algorithms: Revisiting the Modern Gnosticism thesis (part iii)
Computers are getting better all the time, right! Well, nooo. Not really. At least, not for me, and in more ways than one. Before going further, two…
Depersonalisation in banking and medicine: Revisiting the Modern Gnosticism thesis (part ii)
One of the most, if not the most, pernicious aspects of modern mechanisation, standardisation and centralisation is the loss of the personal dimension of human life, or…
Irrational and stressful algorithms: Revisiting the Modern Gnosticism thesis through liminal incommensurability (part i)
The idea that the modern world, in particular modern knowledge and science, represents a victory of ancient Gnostic views, branded as heresies in the Christian era, is…
The Voegelin-McLuhan Correspondence
Editorial Note This is the first part of a multipart series. It gives the 4 letters exchanged by Eric Voegelin and Marshall McLuhan in 1953. Other parts…
Neo-Totalitarianism, The Beginning of Anarchic Civilization? A Voegelin Reading of Our Time
“No one is obliged to take part in the spiritual crisis of a society; on the contrary, everyone is obliged to avoid this folly and live his…
The Concept of Gnosticism and the Analysis of Spiritual Disorder
This article attempts to establish a rather simple point: Although Eric Voegelin’s analysis of spiritual disorder or “Gnosticism” stands as one of the greatest accomplishments of 20th…
Gnosticism and Modernity: Voegelin’s Reconsiderations Twenty Years after The New Science of Politics
In 1971, Notre Dame University held a conference to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Voegelin’s Walgren Lectures given at the University of Chicago and published the following…
Voegelin on Gnosticism, Modernity, and the Balance of Consciousness
The twentieth century was an era of unprecedented horror. From the Russian Revolution through the two world wars to the Chinese “Cultural Revolution” and the Cambodian “killing…
Stuart Holroyd, Gnosticism, and the Occult Wave
The name of Stuart Holroyd (born 1933) is associated – if rather erroneously – with that British literary insurrection of the late 1950s, the “Angry Young Men.” …
Gnostic Rebels Trapped in Prison of Their Own Mind
Pope Francis, in his wise reflections on holiness in Gaudete et Exsultate (“Rejoice and Be Glad”), discusses Gnosticism and Pelagianism as “two subtle enemies of holiness.” The…
Modern Political Religion
The intellectual culture of the philosophes, what Alexis de Tocqueville called esprit revolutionare,[1] is what political theorists today understand is a form of "political religion." The term…
The Apocalypse of Beatitude: Modern Gnosticism and Ancient Faith in Dostoevsky’s The Possessed
Prelude: Gnosticism Ancient and Modern Eric Voegelin’s use of the phrase “modern gnosticism” complicates the quarrel between the ancients and the moderns in that the phrase suggests…
On Voegelin: Modernity and Gnosticism
Eric Voegelin (1901-85) is often portrayed as one of the severest critics of modernity–its belief in human reason’s ability to understand and convey the fundamental structures of…
Gnostic Wars: Islamic Terrorism, Positive Toleration, and How the Ideological Dynamics of the War on Terrorism Are Advantaging the Terrorists
Introduction The American debate regarding the policy needed to combat the dangers posed by immigration from nations who are currently hotbeds of Islamic radicalization is presently being…
The Recovery of Science in Eric Voegelin’s Thought
The debate about scientism (also referred to as positivism or scientific reductionism) is an argument over the validity of applying the methods of the natural sciences to…