[W]e enter a period in which Christianity slowly but surely loses its hegemonic position in intellectual discourse, while academic historians of philosophy abandon the currents and ideas associated with “Platonic Orientalism” as unworthy of serious…
Tag: hermetism
Wouter Hanegraaff on religionism & eclectism
Due to their utter incompatibility with the findings of modern historical criticism, these two traditional perspectives [apologetic and anti-apologetic currents] were unable to keep up with scholarly progress in the study of ancient religions, and…
Wouter Hanegraaff on the Enlightment paradigm as the beginning of the eclipse of ‘Western esotericism’
The “Enlightenment paradigm” announced so clearly in [Christoph August] Heumann’s Acta Philosophorum was the beginning of the eclipse of “Western esotericism” in modern intellectual discourse. So far, the “pagan” philosophies associated with Platonic Orientalism had…
Wouter Hanegraaff on Jacob Thomasius & Ehregott Daniel Colberg
As already noted, [Jacob] Thomasius was not just a critical historian of philosophy. First and foremost, he was a pious Lutheran who believed that the biblical revelation was the only reliable source of religious truth…
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Wouter Hanegraaff on the historiographical foundations of the Western esotericism
Before moving on to the anti-apologetic reaction, it is important to provide a brief evaluation of what the preceding discussion contributes to the leading problematics of this book as a whole. I have been arguing…
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Wouter Hanegraaff on Pico della Mirandola & concealment
As Chaim Wirszubski remarks in his classic study [Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter. – GF], Pico set out to prove the Christian truth by means of Jewish kabbalah, but “as thesis after thesis yields up its…
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Wouter Hanegraaff on prisca theologia, philosophia perennis & pia philosophia
What we find, therefore, is a strong tension between two opposed tendencies: on the one hand, a historically/chronologically oriented narrative of ancient wisdom which held considerable revolutionary potential, and, on the other, an essentially conservative…
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Опять объ Гегеля
Среди обычныхъ возможныхъ цѣлей вопрошанія (я назову его здесь “философскимъ”) можно назвать освѣдомленіе и испытаніе. По контрасту, вопрошаніе, которое я назову герметическимъ, не подразумѣваетъ этихъ функцій: узнать ничего нельзя, можно развѣ только стать знающимъ; далѣе,…
Контрасты
Среди интереснѣйшихъ книгъ, прочитанныхъ въ этомъ году, были “Современное состояніе вопроса о реликтовыхъ гоминидахъ” Б.Ф. Поршнева и “Against the Modern World” Марка Седжвика. Соположеніе ихъ, такимъ образомъ, довольно случайно, но представляется мнѣ иллюстративнымъ. По критеріямъ…
David V. Barrett on spies
Going back to the sixteenth century it is almost certain that, in different ways, John Dee, Giordano Bruno and Christopher Marlowe were all spies. – A Brief History of Secret Societies: An Unbiased History of…