Professor Voegelin was a pioneer in identifying secular religions such as socialism with the pattern of gnosticism experienced in ancient times.
In Part IV of his disquisition on Eric Voegelin’s philosophy of history in the Brussels Journal, Thomas F. Bertonneau focuses on Voegelin’s analysis of the deformations of reality induced by modern secular religions.
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In “The Political Religions,” Voegelin classifies secularization under the heading of religious developments but in the direction of pure immanence rather than transcendence. He reminds readers that the “process of withering” that afflicts European civilization “has its origins in the secularization of the soul and the ensuing severance of a consequently purely secular soul from its roots in religiousness.” Later in the text, we encounter this: “Precisely the secularization of life that accompanied the doctrine of humanism is the soil in which such an anti-Christian religious movement as National Socialism was able to prosper.” Once the propaganda in denial of a “Beyond” of this world has sufficiently pervaded the social domain the only possible remaining sources of valid propositions are “a powerful person,” “organization accompanied by glamour and noise,” and the combination of “force and terror.” The “powerful person” never invites his followers to test on their own the rightness of his doctrine; he promulgates it in the mode of absolute authority – thus as unquestionable Gnosis, the term that Voegelin would later employ. Voegelin observes that ideological-totalitarian states invariably imitate the trappings of sacred societies. Think of Hitler’s flag-ceremonies or the mummified bodies of the Bolshevik leaders, to which the Communist faithful make pilgrimage.
This is a lengthy piece, but well worth reading. I post it, first, because Professor Voegelin, under whom I studied for two years at Louisiana State University in the early 1950s, was the most influential teacher I ever was privileged to have. Secondly, because frequently I allude in other postings to the gnostic nature of socialism and its first cousins, Nazism, Fascism, and liberal-progressivism. See, for example, The Genealogy of American Liberal-Progressive Gnosticism and The Da Vinci Code: Liberal Gnosticism.
In addition, see my review of Professor Ellis Sandoz’s book, Republicanism, Religion, and the Soul of America. Professor Sandoz is the director of the Eric Voegelin Institute at Louisiana State University, where Dr. Voegelin spent most of his years in the United States.
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