I consider this work not only a continuation of the tradition of scholarship I have sketched out above but also as a contribution to an ongoing project in the history of ideas pioneered by such writers as Voegelin, Frances Yates, Antoine Faivre, Richard Popkin, Allan Debus, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, Paul Oskar Kristeller, D. P. Walker, Stephen McKnight, and Alison Coudert […]. These scholars argue that Hermeticism has influenced such mainstream rationalist thinkers as Bacon, Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and Newton and has played a hitherto unappreciated role in the formation of the central ideas and ambitions of modern philosophy and science, particularly the modern project of the progressive scientific investigation and technological mastery of nature*.
It is surely one of the great ironies of history that the Hermetic ideal of man as magus, achieving total knowledge and wielding Godlike powers to bring the world to perfection, was the prototype of the modern scientist. Yet, as Gerald Hanratty writes, “the widespread recourse to magical and alchemical techniques inspired a new confidence in man’s operational powers. In contrast with the passive and contemplative attitudes which generally prevail during earlier centuries, Renaissance alchemists and Magi asserted their dominion over all levels of being.”** Hermeticism replaces the love of wisdom with the lust for power. As we shall see, Hegel’s system is the ultimate expression of this pursuit of mastery.
– Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (2001), pp. 7-8
* In addition to Bacon’s use of Rosicrucian images, Descartes’s search for the Rosicrucians, Spinoza’s debt to Kabbalism, Leibniz’s fascination wuth Rosicrucianism, Kabbalah, and alchemy, and Newton’s fascination with millenialism and alchemy, there is also evidence that Kant was interested in the visions of Emmanuel Swedenborg; Schelling was interested in Böhme, Swedenborg, and Mesmer; Schopenhauer was interested in Böhme, Swedenborg, Lavater; William James was interested in Swedenborg, Fechner, spiritualism and ESP; C.S. Pierce was interested in Swedenborg and Böhme; C.D. Broad was interested in ESP; and, today, Michael Dummett is interested in tarot cards (Michael Dummett, The Visconti-Sforza Tarot Cards [New York: G. Braziller, 1986. – GM]).
** Gerald Hanratty “hegel and the Gnostic Tradition II,” Philosophical Studies (Ireland) 31 (1986-87): 301-25, 308. Walsh writes that “The empirical investigation of nature received its impetus from the conviction of Neoplatonic Hermeticism that reality is a hierarchy of occult or hidden sympathies uniting the whole and ultimately emanating from the divine One” (Walsh, “A Mythology of Reason,” 146)