Voegelin 2

In order to appear the unlimited master of being, man must so delimit being that limitations are no longer evident. And why must this magic act be performed? The answer is: “If there were gods, how could I endure not being a god! Therefore, there are no gods!”

There’s a footnote for the quote that I can’t make heads or tails of, but the overall quote itself comes from Voegelin’s Science, Politics, and Gnosticism.

Voegelin, according to Wikipedia, is arguing against excessive promotion of self over god that results in disturbing influences on politics. Unless I read Wikipedia’s summary of his argument, I would have never understood what this man is trying to say through his obtuse writing. I imagine a large part of the problem is that I am not his intended audience for the essay, resulting in lacking comprehension of the jargon he throws around with immense frequency.

Unfortunately, I have a final essay due on this dude and this book, so I will attempt to hash out what I can understand from his writing here.

Of the profusion of gnostic experiences and symbolic expressions, one feature may be singled out as the central element in this varied and extensive creation of meaning: the experience of the world as an alien place into which man has strayed and from which he must find his way back home to the other world of his origin. “Who has cast me into the suffering of this world?” asks the “Great Life” of the gnostic texts, which is also the “first, alien Life from the worlds light.” It is an alien in this world and this world is alien to it.

While the title mentions gnosticism, it’s not until nine pages into the introduction in which Voegelin gives the above paragraph to describe ‘an aspect’ of gnosticism.

Wikipedia describes some of the main features of gnosticism to be:

1. There’s a single dude that is the source of all things.
2. As things ‘emanate’ from the dude, and things emanate from the first things, everything gets progressively further from the origin. In other words, it’s a game of telephone; the first guy whispers “It’s sunny down here” to another guy, but 30 guys later, it might be “Funny that thing we know there”. Except it’s not a change in words but a change in being.
3. This is related to number 1, and that is that there is a supreme creator. Except he’s not supreme because he just comes from the first dude that is the source of all things. This guy (number 3) is what the gnostics would call a demiurge, which is essentially the ‘clockwork god’—the kind that makes shit and then shoves it in a corner and doesn’t care much for it afterwards. This guy creates underlings and the underlings keep super underlings from rising above.
4. This features says that because of Number 3, this is a fake and crappy world, because those underlings create random obstacles that are just designed to keep the downtrodden down.
5. The passage on Wiki for this feature lost me.

In other words, Voegelin understands a gnostic to be someone who believes this world is alien to human beings, and that through acquiring knowledge, human beings can create their own world and become their own gods.

Gnosis = knowledge. Hence, gnosticism (the ideology) and gnostics (the idealists).

Gnosticism is then an ideology in which humans think they can make a world of their own that belongs to them—if they gain the knowledge to do it.

If man is to be delivered from the world, the possibility of deliverance must first be established in the order of being. In the ontology of ancient gnosticism this is accomplished through faith in the “alien”, “hidden” God who comes to man’s aid, sends him his messengers, and shows him the way out of the prison of the evil God of this world (be he Zeus or Yahweh or one of the other ancient father gods). In modern gnosticism it is accomplished through the assumption of an absolute spirit which in the dialectical unfolding of consciousness proceeds from alienation to consciousness of itself; or through the assumption of a dialectical-material process of nature which in its course leads from the alienation resulting from private property and belief in God to the freedom of a fully human existence; or through the assumption of a will of nature which transforms man into superman.

The past two quotes come from the introduction. What Voegelin does with the above paragraph is fire his shots. The “dialectical-material process of nature” is Marx, the “transforms man into superman” is Nietzsche. Voegelin disapproves of their crazy, and that is what this book is about.

Voegelin proceeds to say that in modern gnosticism, since the prospect of a ‘real God’ is not incorporated into the salvation part of the ideology, modern gnosticism requires its believers to act to bring about salvation for themselves. Gnosis/knowledge is the instrument of salvation.

Agnoia/ignorance is what the gnostics believe brings about sin and affliction, so the obvious cure is the opposite of ignorance.

Self-salvation through knowledge has its own magic, and this magic is not harmless. The structure of the order of being will not change because one finds it defective and runs away from it. The attempt at world destruction will not destroy the world, but will only increase the disorder in society. The gnostic’s flight from a truly dreadful, confusing, and oppressive state of the world is understandable. But the order of the ancient world was renewed by that movement which strove through loving action to revive the practice of the “serious play” (to use Plato’s expression)—that is, by Christianity.

I would have agreed neatly with Voegelin if he did not shove that bit about Christianity in at the end. Neither religion nor gnosticism make for much order; both are men-made and run by men, and consequently too corrupt to adhere to their own ideas anyway. However, I think he’s not necessarily making religion = good and gnosticism = bad; at least, I hope not. It would be presumptuous to think so, considering history. Both religion and gnosticism have its good effects in the provision of morality and a way of life; those who take the ideologies of either too far are the ones who are ‘evil’, so to speak.

Though it seems like Voegelin sympathizes with the gnostic for his pained view of the world, Voegelin thinks the gnostic is running away from reality if he is trying to create a new, better world on Earth. And this is the part Voegelin considers ‘wrong’. Creating a new, better world means denying the current humanity and giving justification to the totalitarian regimes. Nazism, communism, fascism, and other ‘gnostic movements’ all have the ultimate goal of some paradise on Earth, and it is for these paradises that their followers can kill millions and commit terrible crimes to humanity.

When we speak of scientific analysis, we wish to emphasize the contrast with formal analysis. An analysis by means of formal logic can lead to no more than a demonstration that an opinion suffers from an inherent contradiction, or that different opinions contradict one another, or that conclusions have been invalidly drawn. A scientific analysis, on the other hand, makes it possible to judge of the truth of a premises implied by an opinion. It can do this, however, only on the assumption that truth about the order of being—to which, of course, opinions also refer—is objectively ascertainable.

This is the point where my face turned into this >/. He’s discredited both formal and scientific analysis, with an exception for the latter. What Voegelin proposes has its element of truth: obviously scientific proof, hard evidence, outweighs that of some bumbling logic.

Problem is, though, for the next 60 pages, he fails to demonstrate exactly what is so scientific about his own reasoning. His ‘science of politics’ is just word analysis. There’s nothing wrong with that other than his pretense that it is science. What compounds the idiocy of his statements is his elevation of science as “therapy for society”. Only if your science is honestly valid can you call it a therapy, and even then it’s a stretch.

The opposition becomes truly radical and dangerous only when philosophical questioning is itself called into question, when doxa (opinion) takes on the appearance of philosophy, when it arrogates to itself the name of science and prohibits science as non-science.

This is one of the first arguments that Voegelin presents against Marxism/Communism. He states that “we are confronted…with persons who know that, and why, their opinions cannot stand up under critical analysis and who therefore make the prohibition of the examination of their premises part of their dogma”.

What he implies is that the gnostic has to deny reality in order to pretend his self-created system is possible. For instance, Marxism posits that men are at their cores productive animals, and this is the single premise on which all Marxist philosophies rest. Marx says history began through conflicts between ‘classes’ created after primitive communism. Voegelin notes that if one questions the exact origin of man, Marx will scoff and pretend the question does not exist.

Not having read enough of either to know if Voegelin is being presumptuous or if Marx is really a tad off, I’d say that damning a whole philosophy because it cannot answer one question is not exactly a good thing either. I read the Communist Manifesto and I found it hilarious that a man could be so candid about his opinions and assume them to be facts. While I don’t subscribe to Marx’s “humans as productive animals” and his general philosophy about economic classes dominating the progress of society and politics, I can feel, in a sense, his pain for what the downtrodden must have lived like during his time. Even today we have people who are exploited by those who care for nothing but profit, and it’s easy to see why people would be drawn to Marx’s ideas, because we like to consider ourselves equal and should be equal in what we get out of life, if everyone is born a blank slate.

Regardless of what Americans prize as equality and freedom, it’s easy to see that in reality, no one is equal.

Marx is a speculative gnostic. He construes the order of being as a process of nature complete in itself. Nature is in a state of becoming, and in the course of its development it has brought forth man: “Man is directly a being of nature“. Now, in the development of nature a special role has devolved upon man. This being, which is itself nature, also stands over against nature and assists it in its development by human labor—which in its highest form is technology and industry based on the natural sciences…”

Creating nature will also create man to his fullest being. So says Voegelin in his interpretation of Marx. And this is where Voegelin begins turning into fuzz. “The being-of-itself of nature and main is inconceivable to him, because it contradicts all the tangible aspects of practical life”.

….>/

What Voegelin argues is that in Marx’s construct of man continuously developing his existence, man will question where he came from in the first place, like where the first man popped out of. And Voegelin says this construct will collapse because of the question of arche/origin. He believes Marx would call the question of origin “a product of abstraction”, meaning that the question is designed to distract from the real shit. Hence Voegelin concludes that Marx is an intellectual swindler, because Marx cannot argue his theory but chooses to pretend all opposition questions do not exist.

Why is Marx an intellectual swindler? We move on to about 20 pages of how the gnostics hate god, as explained by Nietzsche.

Nietzsche speaks of the human desire to control, the desire to “feel itself master”. And because of this desire, humans resolve to be ignorant because they cannot tolerate the idea of not being in control. Unable to control high-level stuff, humans seek to control each other instead, using a “cunning and variety of masks” and deception. Man “wills to disbelief” so that he can become superman—and the obvious interpretation is that he wants to become God.

Hooray! Cue a couple of pages of quotations from a jumble of sources to prove Nietzsche is indeed saying man wants to become God.

With the three stages in the spirit’s action it is now possible also to differentiate more precisely the corresponding levels of deception:

1. For the surface act it will be convenient to retain the term Nietzsche used, “deception”. But in content this action does not necessarily differ from another motive than the gnostic. It could also be an “error”. It becomes a deception only because of psychological context.
2. In the second stage the thinker becomes aware of the untruth of his assertion or speculation, but persists in it in spite of his knowledge. Only because of his awareness of the untruth does the action become a deception. And because of the persistence in the communication of what are recognized to be false arguments, it also becomes an “intellectual swindle”.
3. In the third stage the revolt against God is revealed and recognized to be the motive of the swindle. With the continuation of the intellectual swindle in full knowledge of the motive of revolt the deception further becomes “demonic mendacity”.

Voegelin says, “Yeah, Marx fills 1 and 2″ and then proceeds to explain how Marx fills 3. For the gnostic thinker, “reality must be destroyed…In its place steps the gnostic who produces the independence of his existence by speculation”.

Then there’s a quote from Prometheus Bound in which Prometheus says “In a word, I hate all the gods”. Voegelin says Marx used this quote out of context; he says in Prometheus Bound, the author intended to portray Prometheus as a madman when the dude says this.

For the gnostics, philosophy is the source of order and authority—if they gain the philosophy (GNOSIS/KNOWLEDGE) that is the right one, allowing them to create their own world. Gnostics also think that gnosis is inevitable, that ‘being’ will come inevitably.

As a result of this refining process, the nature of gnostic speculation can now be understood as the symbolic expression of an anticipation of salvation in which the power of being replaces the power of God and the parousia (presence) of being, the Parousia of Christ.

I suspect that Voegelin’s ending with religious references in the positive opposite and all his criticism of these thinkers for daring to think their way to Goddom means he is a religious dude. If he prescribes Christianity as the cure, I’m going to pop his head off. “Political science can assist in exorcising the demons—in the modest measure of effectiveness that our society grants to episteme (science) and its therapy”……He actually uses ‘exorcising the demons’.

Likewise, Voegelin defines parousianism as the expectation of deliverance from evil through the advent of immanent being. Given that right now I’m having difficulty grasping what ‘immanent’ is, I’ll have to take his word for it.

The aim of parousiastic gnosticism is to destroy the order of being, which is experienced as defective and unjust, and through man’s creative power to replace it with a perfect and just order.

To do that, guys, we gotta murder God.

Man cannot transform himself in a superman; the attempt to create a superman is an attempt to murder man. Historically, the murder of God is not followed by the superman, but by the murder of man: the deicide of the gnostic theoreticians is followed by the homicide of the revolutionary practitioners.

“The critique of religion is the presupposition of all critique.” God was never anything but a human product.

In the three cases of More, Hobbes, and Hegel, we can establish that the thinker suppresses an essential element of reality in order to be able to construct an image of man, or society, or history to suit his desires…the will to power of the gnostic who wants to rule the world has triumphed over the humility of subordination to the constitution of being…The constitution of being remains what it is—beyond the reach of the thinker’s lust for power…The result, therefore, is not dominion over being, but a fantasy satisfaction.

Voegelin argues that gnostic thinking is a safety haven because it provides certainty in the meaning of existence and knowledge of the future, and also creates a basis for action.

The thin thread of faith in God is not something everyone can uphold; because of that, people stray. Essentially, Voegelin labels modern gnostic movements as derivations of Christianity. People are unable to take waiting and praying for something that may not exist. They choose to have a here and now; “killing God” is really Voegelin’s metaphor for “killing reality” (so I think).

This post has been written in bits and pieces before, during, and after I completed my awkward essay. Thus, the comprehension of my thoughts is literally all over the place. Yet I think preserving my on-the-fly scribbles is better than rewriting, at least for this. It’s awkward to write about thinkings that you don’t agree with without criticism, and for the most part writing without much desire to write about it results in some super bland, clinical ‘definition’ writing—this means this, this means that.

There are some parts where I agree with Voegelin and some parts where I shake my head. Overall, though, I don’t sit into either gnosticism or religion. I’m 20 years old, and I’ve never been in a church my whole life. I’ve never read a single passage from the Bible. I don’t believe in God. But I don’t believe in wiping the current humanity to create a new one, because of one simple thing: I believe the current humanity is the best humanity.

It’s odd, isn’t it? Especially since our societies are always in some sort of disgusting trouble or another. We have wars, murder, rape, all sorts of terrible actions that men are capable of. But it’s these things that make me think, strangely enough, that this is the best. Not the ‘best we can be’, but best in the sense that these things have doubtlessly existed since the history of man (not including pre-historic, I guess) started. Yet look at the progress men have made in spite of crazy sin and crazy brethren. In the modern world, many of us still live like shit but a shit ton of us live better than a shit ton of us lived in 1900. It’s almost hopelessly optimistic about humanity to have faith in our continued ability to keep going higher, but that’s one of the precious few things I’m optimistic about.

That’s frighteningly hilarious, since I’m jaded about everything.

Moreover, even though people continue to dream of a heaven of peace and tranquility and everyone happy-happy, I wonder if they ever account for what human nature is really like. Thing about humans, we like being happy and all that, and even if happiness is eternal in heaven—

That means it’s boring.