Subj : Bible
To   : Curtis Johnson
From : Frank Masingill
Date : Tue Oct 31 2000 12:15 am

 FM> you well know, my first introduction and still my guide in the
 FM> world of critical thought is Eric Voegelin who was not a
 FM> "professional" philosopher but a "professional" political
 FM> scientist.  The myriad of his students (a growing body) are
 FM> thankful that he was not impressed by academic titles - even
 FM> his own!

 CJ> His peculiar usage of "gnostic" is another example--but we've
 CJ> already been through that, haven't we?

        I have only read one rather mild criticism of him for that
by Russell Nieli ("Eric Voegelin, Gnosticism, Mysticism, and Modern
Radical Poltics," Southern Review, Vol 25, #2) and he said little
that Voegelin, himself, did not acknowledge in later years, to wit,
that his emphasis on gnosticism as a model was overly stressed in
the earlier years of his work to the neglect of other similar models
of magic, hermeticism, apocalypticism that were formative elements
of the positivism, psychoanalysis, progressivism, Marxism, communism
and national socialism that became so ruinous as mass movements in
the world of political thought, often posing as philosophy and still
doing so today.   Taking Christianity as one differentiation in
clarity, Voegelin accepted the mystery that Bergson and James had
also accepted that the spiritual eruptions that produced greater
clarity also carried right in with them the Parmenadean "untruth"
that indicates that the "truth" is simply too much for the vessel to
bear.  Why this is so, Voegelin accepted as a mystery.  We simply
have to live with this reality.  There are no shortcuts.  I usually
express this by saying that an institution attempting to reflect the
new truth about being becomes both the carrier and the killer of the
spirit.   I don't happen to think that his application of
"gnosticism" to his "spiritual religions" was all wrong by any means
and perhaps if you had to escape a book-burning, murderous Gestapo
about to arrest you for your views your understanding of the "people
killing other people for the fun of it" might be more similar to
his.  

        My government never really made it clear what "I" was
fighting against in WW II.  I will be forever grateful that within
four years AFTER my mustering out I met Voegelin and encountered a
masterful, scholarly analysis of what happened with its intellectual
background.  Clarification of the issues of one's age is certainly
an important duty for man, in my view.  But, I did NOT stop with his
bombshell, _The New Science of Politics_ as, understandably, many
have.  He underwent growth and change of a serious nature as the
Introduction of his famous fourth volume demonstrates.  

Frank 

--- PPoint 2.07
 * Origin: Maybe in 5000 years (1:396/45.12)

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