The result of such transitions — which are in fact leaps — is that the meanings of words are changed. The gnostic program that Hegel successfully carries out retains for itself the name “philosophy,” and…
Category: Florilegium
Eric Voegelin on Marx & gnosis
Marx does not deny that “tangible experience” argues for the dependence of man. But reality must be destroyed — this is the great concern of gnosis. In its place steps the gnostic who produces the…
Eric Voegelin on totalitarianism
Society resists the therapeutic activity of science. Because not only the validity of the opinions is called into question but also the truth of the human attitudes expressed in the opinions, because the effort in…
Ellis Sandoz citing Eric Voegelin
A valuable subsequent statement came in a reported conversation in 1976 in which Voegelin replied to a question, in part as follows: I paid perhaps undue attention to gnosticism in the first book I published…
Charles Barber (& Alexander Kazhdan) on freedom from social relationships
My second text is the Precepts and Anecdotes written by Kekaumenos to his son in the 1070s. This text plays an important part in Kazhdan’s construction of homo byzantinus and for all its peculiarities it…
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Glenn Magee on the Rosicrucians vs. the Freemasons & Illuminati
Some time in the latter half of the eighteenth century the Rosicrucian movement was revived in Germany. There is disagreement about exactly when it took place – some say 1757, some 1777, others give a…
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Glenn Magee (& Eric Voegelin) on Joachim de Fiore
As [Eric] Voegelin sees it, Joachim [de Fiore]’s great innovations were to conceive of history as having an eidos, a formal structure, and to “immanentize the eschaton,” to hold that the end of time will…
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Glenn Magee on Hegel’s views on magic
On the surface, it appears that all Hegel has in mind by “magic,” and by the “magic” of magnetism, is simply psychological control. As we have seen, he speaks about magnetism being made possible by…
Glenn Magee on Leibniz
G. W.F. Leibniz (1646—1716) also belongs squarely in the tradition of pansophia and encyclopedism. In his “Introduction to a Secret Encyclopedia” (Introductio ad Encyclopaediam arcanum, c. 1679), Leibniz’s description of “General Science” is strikingly pansophic:…
Glenn Magee on Hegel vs Aristotle
The difference between Hegel and Aristotle, however, is that the Unmoved Mover, which is perfectly independent and self-sufficient, is no “system” in the sense of a unity of parts, because it has no parts. Aristotle…