Science, Politics & Gnosticism

by Eric Voegelin, Ellis Sandoz (Introduction)

Science, Politics and Gnosticism comprises two essays by Eric Voegelin (1901-85), arguably one of the most provocative and influential political philosophers of the last century. In these essays, Voegelin contends that certain modern movements, including positivism, Hegelianism, Marxism, and the "God is dead" school, are variants of the gnostic tradition he identified in his classic work The New Science of Politics. Voegelin attempts to resolve the intellectual confusion that has resulted from the dominance of gnostic thought by clarifying the distinction between political gnosticism and the philosophy of politics.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics, Nonfiction, Religion, History, Science, Political Science

126 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

German-born American political philosopher. He taught political theory and sociology at the University of Vienna after his habilitation there in 1928. While in Austria Voegelin established the beginnings of his long lasting friendship with F. A. Hayek. In 1933 he published two books criticizing Nazi racism, and was forced to flee from Austria following the Anschluss in 1938. After a brief stay in Switzerland, he arrived in the United States and taught at a series of universities before joining Louisiana State University's Department of Government in 1942. His advisers on his dissertation were Hans Kelsen and Othmar Spann.

Voegelin remained in Baton Rouge until 1958 when he accepted an offer by Munich's Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität to fill Max Weber's former chair in political science, which had been empty since Weber's death in 1920. In Munich he founded the Institut für Politische Wissenschaft. Voegelin returned to America in 1969 to join Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace as Henry Salvatori Fellow where he continued his work until his death on January 19, 1985. He was a member of the Philadelphia Society.

Reviews

[Szplug · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very insightful, without being particularly helpful if one does not hold a belief in a transcendent order of being anchored in God(s)—that is, pretty much the entirety of those who populate the masses that Voegelin would wish to have turn away from their erroneous and destructive path. Difficult because worthy of multiple pauses in order to consider what is being stated, with a considerable amount of the latter delivered through succinct but piercingly discerning and lucid prose.

This slim book comprises two essays penned by Voegelin in 1959—Science, Politics and Gnosticism and Ersatz Religion: The Gnostic Mass Movements Of Our Time. In a nutshell, the former analyzes a situation in which the author determines that most of our modern mass movements and ideologies—progressivism, (neo-)positivism, communism, fascism, national socialism, psychoanalysis—are gnostic in orientation, derived from select intellectual's speculation that truth cannot be located by the opening of our souls to transcendent being, but rather immanent within ourselves. In other words, God is Dead and Man arisen in His place; in gnostic fashion, the reality of the world is to be rejected and a new reality to be imposed through the gnostic will-to-power of this rookie deity. Voegelin sees a change in the ends of modern gnosticism from that of old—away from the Chiliastic and towards the Parousiastic—the Presence of Being that, though empty, is omnipermeating—away from philosophia, the love of knowledge, to gnosis, absolute knowledge, from the finite to the infinite, from accepting the hand of fate to endeavoring to control its wending; from faith to certainty. In such thought do we once again see minds at war with a world that horrifies them, disgusts them, frustrates them, and their desire to do away with this reality in order to impose a new one which pleases and expurgates and assures. In this will-to-power Voegelin determines a magical, an occult element traceable back to the Jewish lore of the Golem, the attempt of man to kill God by immanentizing his creational purview within the human will, as well as the enduring paradox of these thinker's propensity for the construction of systems based upon rational conclusions drawn about reality that posit a reality reliant upon those very systems newly determined. This modern permutation of doxai-as-episteme is especially perilous because certain prophets of this gnosticism—Voegelin's formidable brows furrow deepest at Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Comte, and Heidegger—forbid us to question their ideological dogma—for to do so would reveal the fact that that which would challenge them has been discarded and/or ignored—which might delude us into thinking we cannot make an individual choice to reject this gnostic falsity and its consequent effect of leading one to live a life in spiritual disorder—i.e. perhaps as an unthinking member of the masses blindly performing morally questionable actions; yes, I'm talking to you Nazi SS rank-and-filer.

The second essay is a truly thoughtful and enlightening analysis of the rise of these modern gnostic movements, why they have proven such a commonplace throughout history, and how they were seeded and grown from shared common threads within Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and ancient Hellenic philosophy. Voegelin posits that the truth of our reality—that of a transcendent order of being that, besides its being anchored in a Godhead, cannot be ascertained but only intuited and positioned by and within metaphysical, mythological and symbolic structures—has always placed a terrible strain upon our souls and minds; the precariousness and mysteriousness of our existence, the terrible finality of unknown and unknowable death, the thin reed of faith upon which we are required to hang the short and swift years of our drawing of breath place an onerous burden upon each individual, and the allure of a gnosticism that promises deliverance from an uncertain truth by means of a certain untruth has a seemingly enduring appeal. He further contends that the more established and delineated that a religion becomes, the more stress it places upon the faith of its believers—under the piercing light of such a vast amount of detailed thought and reflection the cracks in the edifice become glaringly apparent. Using brief examinations of Thomas Moore's Utopia, Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan and Hegel's Philosophy of History, Voegelin determines that there are six characteristics that reveal the nature of the gnostic attitude as well as three primary symbols that can inevitably be found, though usually in intermingled amounts, within the same. Of the latter, the first is of particular interest, comprising a teleological drive towards ultimate perfection, an axiological goal of achieving a state of highest value, and an admixture of these two. These three constituent elements are to be found in Progressivism, Utopian Idealism, and the mass movements deriving from Comte and Marx respectively. Voegelin poignantly accounts for the seductiveness of such ideologies in the comforting assurances of ending human misery, solidifying the future, and placing a disturbingly ineffable fate squarely within the controlling and shaping hands of familiar mankind that they offer; but, having severed themselves from the ontic reality of transcendent being by their expurgation of that of the latter which casts doubt upon their system's verity, their framework is unstable and prone to violent movement and so will be whatever the society that is contained within their structure.

I can't say that I'm in full agreement with Voegelin about his analysis—and his solutions to such salvational doctrines don't offer much in the way of viable options outside of resist; however, as explanatory systems for how we have arrived at where we are, I believe his insights are valuable and contain a healthy chunk of wisdom. If nothing else, I am now determined to finally crack The Drama of Atheist Humanism and dig deeper and further in Plato's Complete Works , as the Attic genius is the figure from whom Voegelin has drawn the majority of his own personal philosophy.

[Josiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent little book. Here's a quick summary:

The basic thesis is that engagement with the transcendent is extremely hard, psychologically, and so people look for what promises certainty (ideology) rather than what asks for faith (religion and scholastic/ancient philosophy). This leads to a decent from "uncertain truth into certain untruth", (page 83). Voegelin identifies most modern ideologies as contemporary expressions of basic Gnostic doctrines, noting that they both arise in reaction against Christianity while nonetheless preserving corrupted elements of Christianity. These Gnostic ideologies are fundamentally a rebellion against "Being" and the God of Being: they see being as oppressive and they believe self-salvation by man for man is possible through discovering "special knowledge" and systematizing it into a plan for reformation. This process is motivated by the libido dominandi (will to power) and requires a psychological reenactment of Nietzsche's "death of God", by which one kills God and becomes a "superman" capable of restructuring reality as one wants, not as God created it. However, any "restructuring" of reality according to the gnostic/ideological system involves ignoring or omitting elements of reality which don't fit into the system.

[Simon Stegall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult to read, but still accessible. Voegelin tends to define his terms AFTER using them in analysis rather than before, which is confusing at first but actually appears to be a very sound method; sometimes terms are so complex they can only be elucidated through a chapter rather than a definition.

This little book is more or less about gnosticism in its many forms and the murder of God that arises from such thought. He attacks Marx, Hegel and Nietzsche quite a bit, calling them "anti-philosophical swindlers", as their gnosticism necessarily prohibits certain questions in order to maintain an illusory teleology. I wish he talked more about why Christianity is a better alternative and how it succeeds where gnosticism fails, but I guess this is more an evaluation of a heresy than an apologetic.

Mostly this is just giving me a bunch of ammo for my upcoming review of Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand was a cheap Gnostic "swindler" if there ever was one.

[Philipp · Rating 3 out of 5]

The great thing about reading is that it allows you to really delve into mental models that are completely alien to your own thought.

Voegelin's writing is such a case. He's politically very different from me, he's anti-liberal, very Christian (but that starch conservative Christianity, not that Jesus-hippy kind), big racist (not after 1945 though), very anti-Marx, very anti-modernism.

It's not easy reading at all - Voegelin's English doesn't come directly to you, it takes a few stops and possibly a holiday to come to you via his native German - but two things make this even harder: He's not a fan of defining terms he throws at you until he's used them about 20 times, and Voegelin has strongly held convictions about this world that he rarely makes explicit to you, you have to guess why he holds a specific position, only rarely does he tell you why he holds these positions (or pretends like these positions are God-given). Let's look at one of these rare cases:

(the context is a discussion of More's Utopia)

This raises the question of the peculiar psychopathological condition in which a man like More must have found himself when he drew up a model of the perfect society in history, in full consciousness that it could never be realized because of original sin.

So here Voegelin clearly states that you cannot have an utopia because of mankind's original sin. A few pages later:

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.

So to Voegelin original sin isn't something theological, it's a essential element of reality, one which utopias oppress. From there it follows that utopias are impossible, not because of any science, no, because the bible says so. What's in the bible is, to Voegelin, an essential part of reality. There are many arguments throughout this text that make no sense at all to someone who's not particularly religious, but it takes you a while to realise that these arguments make no sense in your own world-view because Voegelin doesn't play with open cards. To Voegelin (and it took me a while to realise!), man finds the world the way it is organised by God, man has no power to change this. From that point on it's easy to dismiss people who want large-scale change, they're all gnostic weakminds who don't see the glory of God's creation, they're gnostics, they (to Voegelin, wrongly) believe change is within reach of mankind's grasp.

What's interesting is that Voegelin moves a bit into the direction of Dietrich Bonhoeffer - religion not as a thing that is something nice for the believer a la modern megachurches (think Hillsong etc.), but something that puts a burden onto the believer, who has to be strong enough to carry that burden for God. It's just that Voegelin goes into a completely different direction from Bonhoeffer, who was much more of a humanist!

Coincidentally with its greatness, its weakness became apparent: great masses of Christianized men who were not strong enough for the heroic adventure of faith became susceptible to ideas that could give them a greater degree of certainty about the meaning of their existence than faith. The reality of being as it is known in its truth by Christianity is difficult to bear, and the flight from clearly seen reality to gnostic constructs will probably always be a phenomenon of wide extent in civilizations that Christianity has permeated.

In other words, you're all weak.

And as I said in the beginning, that's something completely alien to the way I see reality, and that's what makes this book so interesting (even though I agree with exactly 0 of it)

[Truls Ljungström · Rating 5 out of 5]

I grund och botten en varningstext mot politisk psykos, genom ett studium av dess vanligaste filosofiska grund: messianistisk gnosticism (vilken Vögelin menar är totaliteten av gnosticism).

Argumentet som Vögelin framställer det vilar på idén om att världen är illa konstruerad, men att den kan åtgärdas genom mänskligt intellekt; samman med insikten om att intellekt är ojämnt fördelat, leder detta till kulten av den stora ledaren. Kännetecknande för att man har med en vögelinisk-gnostisk rörelse att göra, är att vissa frågor inte får ställas, och inte kan ställas inom rörelsens ram. Med en rationellare diskurs finns bevis eller tecken på att det antagna stämmer; inom gnostisk diskurs är ifrågasättandet ett tecken på att du är en svag och dålig människa, och därmed ovärdig svaret.

Jag känner igen det Vögelin beskriver, men har inte kunnat artikulera det på egen hand. Det blir särskilt spännande i kritiken av t.ex. Hobbes som en föregångare till (de moderna) Gnostikerna, i och med förnekandet av ett mål med Polis. Vögelin kopplar detta mot förnekandet av allmänmänsklig rationalitet, och här tycker jag att han går för långt. Överlevnad är ett rationellt mål, och det är vad Hobbes tar upp. Vad det däremot inte är, är ett moraliskt mål, men kritiken av moraliska mål, i termer av rationalistiska, reduktionistiska, ideologiska mål, är en del av det som Vögelin kritiserar. I och för sig kopplar Hobbes på en kritik av tankefrihet vilket kunde vara vad Vögelins kritik riktar sig mot.

Nu lämnar jag Vögelin för nu, men det är definitivt en intressant tänkare.

[Trish]

Let's just say that I hope I never have to read anything by Voegelin again.

[Brett Williams · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aside from persistently bloated sentences, the first half of Voegelin’s text, posing as critical analysis, is mere apologetics with nothing about science, and vanishingly little about its method or use of that method in his argument. The basis from which he makes his judgement against other views comes with no support or justification. For example, “Man’s fulfillment is brought about by grace in death,” “the world… is created by God,” and Germany’s “higher criticism” of the Gospels “concluded a preoccupation with the history of heresy.”

Oh… OK.

And the moon, which is really the eye of Horus, goes through phases because Horus does battle in the underworld each time he sets beneath the horizon, swelling his eye shut, then healing open once a month. Claiming makes it so.

Books like this are “sung to the choir” who don’t need convincing, and garners an enthusiastic one star. But Voegelin rescued some level of interest with the second half of his book. He makes honest admission that faith hangs by a thread as “Man is given nothing tangible.” With the success of Christianity, its weaknesses became apparent as people “became susceptible to ideas that could give them a greater degree of certainty than faith.” And he does a decent job of exposing weaknesses in his target systems of thought offered by Marx, Hobbes, and Hegel. Much of this today we would call aspects of tribalism, academic dishonesty, or postmodernist spin (also called lying), not gnosticism as Voegelin does. Though he can be cut some slack for generalizing the term “gnosticism” to include any social movement or philosophy because the wider set of gnostic texts we have today were only discovered in jars near Nag Hammadi Egypt in 1945 not long before this book was written. Some of them are kooky, some are brilliant. But one take-away is not, per Voegelin, that they denied the world as it is and lied about it to make their vision happen as Marx did, but that the Gnostics urged a change in perspective, not an impossible change in the world. Voegelin had 2nd century bishops Ireneus and Tertullian’s attacks on the Gnostics as heretics instead. That came after the church canon was selected from available writings and the losing texts had to be expunged for political needs, justifying the selections made as the Gospel.

[Jeannette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eric Voegelin’s Science, Politics and Gnosticism was a bit like encountering a memory stick; I haven’t read the theorists he analyzes for many years. Fortunately, he quotes generously to make his points, so I wasn’t reliant on my memory alone. Voegelin would have been a great help to me in my youth. Reading him I had flashes of how ill prepared I was for the many, usually unbidden, encounters I had with ideological system junkies in the 1960’s and ’70’s. Mind benders were everywhere in my undergraduate days at UC Berkeley and I recognized in Voegelin’s descriptions the ardent arguments I used to encounter. So many voices were clamoring as to how one should see the world, life, the very nature of being. The loudest voices had a vision for what needed to be torn down and replaced. The professor of one of my philosophy classes was converting students to socialism. In the off campus lairs recruiters of various stripes were determined to undermine and stop one’s naive questioning. Voegelin highlights this aspect of modern political gnostics, the prohibition of questions which might undermine a philosophy’s credibility. Eric Voegelin’s breadth of knowledge challenges the limits of my education, yet, even from my perch, I found his analysis very helpful. Rational discussions in our heavily ideologized society are certainly not getting any easier.

Voegelin argues that “isms” in general are the children of early heresies of gnosticism and then turns his analysis to the modern movements. He identifies shared assumptions, methodologies and motives in Marxism, Freudianism, existentialism, progressivism, utopianism, revolutionary activism, fascism, communism and national socialism.

Philosophy is a search for truth and springs from the love of being, but Gnosis, Voegelin argues, lusts for power and the desire for dominion over being, which requires falsifications of reality. The world is perceived as an alien place that must be fixed by man as he plots his own salvation. There is an obsession with destroying the old world, destroying the order of being, to forge passage to progress. Voegelin notes how often obsession with changing the world has had disastrous consequences for mankind.

I know that Eric Voegelin has a reputation for being difficult to read, but I found him very much worth the trouble and I am looking for more. (less)

[Jason Farley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really insightful, though classic hopeless conservatism. Great analysis without offering solutions. But the analysis was mostly spot on. A little off with his Milleniarialism, but only because he lived before any significant preterism.

[noblethumos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eric Voegelin’s Science, Politics and Gnosticism—originally written in the 1950s and later published in English in the 1960s—stands as one of the most influential and controversial contributions to twentieth-century political philosophy. Comprising two lectures, “Science, Politics and Gnosticism” and “Ersatz Religion,” the work condenses Voegelin’s wider philosophical project: an attempt to diagnose the spiritual pathologies of modernity by situating political ideologies within the long history of religious thought. Though concise, the text offers a dense and challenging synthesis of metaphysics, theology, and political theory, revealing Voegelin’s distinctive critique of modern ideological movements, which he notoriously categorises as forms of “Gnosticism.”


At the heart of Voegelin’s argument is a provocative claim: that the dominant ideological systems of the modern era—particularly Marxism, positivism, scientism, and totalitarian political doctrines—represent modern expressions of ancient Gnostic impulses. For Voegelin, Gnosticism is not merely a set of early Christian heresies but a recurring existential posture: the refusal to accept the structure of reality and the attempt to create a salvific transformation of the world through human will.


Gnosticism, in Voegelin’s formulation, consists of several elements:

Alienation from the existing order of being, perceived as fundamentally flawed or evil.

A belief in hidden knowledge (gnosis) that reveals the true nature of reality.

The conviction that salvation lies in transforming the world, not oneself, through political or historical action.

The construction of an immanentized eschatology, replacing divine transcendence with secular utopias.


Modern ideological movements, Voegelin argues, share these structural features. Marx’s dialectical materialism, Comte’s positivism, and the doctrines of totalitarian states promise a final, perfected order achieved through human mastery of history—an attempt to “immanentize the eschaton,” as Voegelin famously puts it.


Voegelin’s analytic approach is neither historical nor empirical but philosophical and phenomenological. Drawing upon classical political philosophy, Christian theology, and the history of ideas, he reconstructs the “symbolic” structures that shape political consciousness. His critique revolves around the adequacy of “existential representation”—the ability of political and philosophical systems to articulate man’s relationship to transcendence.


The book’s polemical force stems from Voegelin’s assertion that modern ideologies represent a fundamental deformation of the human spirit: a flight from uncertainty, finitude, and transcendence into the false certainty of ideological systems. Thus, he positions his critique not simply as political theory but as a recovery of spiritual order.


A penetrating diagnosis of ideological modernity
Voegelin’s framing of totalitarianism as a spiritual, rather than merely political, phenomenon was both original and influential. His analysis helps explain why modern ideologies can inspire quasi-religious devotion, mobilise mass movements, and demand absolute loyalty.


A multidisciplinary synthesis
The text exemplifies Voegelin’s unusual ability to move between ancient philosophy, Christian theology, modern politics, and epistemology. His account of “gnosis” as an existential orientation rather than a historical doctrine allowed him to connect seemingly disparate movements within a unified interpretive framework.


A critique of scientism and positivism
Voegelin anticipates later critiques of technocratic rationalism by challenging the assumption that empirical science alone can provide a complete account of human existence. He defends a vision of political science grounded in the classical philosophical understanding of the human soul.


Stylistic clarity within conceptual density
Although his larger works, especially Order and History, are notoriously difficult, Science, Politics and Gnosticism is among his more accessible texts. It distills his mature position in a relatively compact form.


Despite its lasting influence, the work has generated substantial criticism.


Overextension of the “Gnosticism” category
Many scholars argue that Voegelin’s use of the term is historically imprecise and conceptually expansive to the point of obscuring meaningful distinctions. Equating movements as diverse as Marxism, positivism, and Nazism under a single typology risks reducing complex phenomena to a shared metaphysical pathology.


Limited engagement with empirical history
Voegelin’s analysis relies on philosophical construction rather than historical contextualisation. His critique of Marx, for example, focuses on metaphysical premises rather than socioeconomic analysis, making his account less compelling to historians or social scientists.


A tendency toward moral dualism
By framing non-classical philosophical systems as spiritual deformations, Voegelin implicitly contrasts them with an idealised conception of classical-Christian order. Critics argue that this reproduces its own kind of dogmatism, substituting one metaphysical certainty for another.


Ambiguity in the concept of “transcendence”
Voegelin’s insistence on the primacy of transcendence allows him to criticise modern secular ideologies, but his description of its content remains elusive. The result can appear as a philosophical theology that lacks full systematic articulation.


Despite these criticisms, Science, Politics and Gnosticism remains a foundational text in political philosophy, intellectual history, and the study of modern ideology. Its central ideas influenced postwar conservative and Christian political thought, the study of totalitarianism, and the development of critiques of modernity. Voegelin’s conceptual vocabulary—particularly “gnosticism” and “immanentizing the eschaton”—entered broader political discourse, sometimes being appropriated in ways far from his original intention.


For contemporary scholars, the book serves both as a powerful interpretive lens and as a stimulus for critical reflection on the metaphysical assumptions underlying political movements. Whether accepted or rejected, Voegelin’s framework forces readers to consider the spiritual dimensions of political life and the existential roots of ideological commitments.


Science, Politics and Gnosticism is a pivotal text that condenses Eric Voegelin’s ambitious critique of modernity into a forceful philosophical argument. While its conceptual framework is controversial and often overgeneralised, the work continues to provoke debate for its insights into the spiritual dynamics of political ideologies. By linking modern political movements to ancient patterns of religious revolt, Voegelin challenges readers to reconsider the metaphysical—and often unacknowledged—foundations of modern political thought.


It remains a seminal contribution to twentieth-century political philosophy: at once illuminating, idiosyncratic, and enduringly challenging.

GPT

[Pietro Montesano Da Luz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Uma grande reflexão de um problema sério que enfrentamos hoje.

[Viator Fleischer · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first it seemed like an interesting read when it first catched my eyes, but after reading it, I am severely dissapointed, as I was expecting something more...

Although some of the core characteristics of Gnosticism that Voegelin identified might have been more or less to the point (I admit, he got the general gist or "ethos" of it right, but in a very limited sense), I didn't really appreciate his bashing of it. Like how another commenter wrote here, it seemed like the book was written for a choir who didn't need any more convincing of the cons of Gnosticism.

Additionally, he slapped the term quite indiscriminatorily to the modern schools of thought - it's like calling Christianity Communism, because it preaches the idea of universal community, which, even if we were to agree, could fit only at the most vaguest and generalest of sense, and by brushing off all the nuances, details and relevant interlinkings between other concepts or aspects of these two systems.

So, at least to my estimation, calling Marx, Hegel, Nietzsche and Heidegger "Gnostics" is a gross misinterpretation of both Gnosticism and the aforementioned thinkers' work(s), which I don't think should be viewed as "immanentizing of the eschaton". It (and the accusation of his variant of "Gnosticism") might apply to some extent to some of the thinkers, but if so, only partly, and only if we forced them to fit these categories.

And, at the very least, Voegelin didn't even give any decent argument for the opposite case, namely for why we *shouldn't* either murder God or "destroy" reality. Surprisingly, not even once was the Holocaust or similar atrocities as a justification for why we should oppose the "Gnostic" world-bettering salvationism present in these "political religions" invoked. Not once.

It might've deserved a 3/5, because there are some interesting takes on Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche, but because the book came off more as an opinion piece, rather than as a rigorously argued to-be-taken-seriously kind of thesis, I gave it a 2.

[Liedzeit Liedzeit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice little book. A polemic against what Voegelin calls Gnosticism. Meaning Socialism and Positivism for example. Basically, Gnosticism is the view that man has the power to change the world, to make it a better place. This is the positive view. Of course, that is not how Voegelin presents it. For him Christianity and accepting the world as it is and hoping for a better life after death is positive. Now, this, of course, is also polemical.
Voegelin says: "Reality must be destroyed - this is the great concern of Gnosticism" (p. 24)
He makes quite a nice case, especially in analyzing Hegel and Marx. (He calls Marx an intellectual swindler.) The socialists (and Gnostics) in general "know that their opinions cannot stand up under critical analysis" and who "make the prohibition of the examination of their premises part of their dogma". This sounds quite right for socialism but I doubt that the Christian view is immune from this. It seems rather odd that pure science is possible only for a Christian.

Political science was founded by Plato and Aristotle. The classical foundation of political science is still valid today. It is nothing esoteric: What is happiness, How should a man live in order to be happy? What is virtue? What especially, is the virtue of justice? How large a territory and a population are best for a society? What kind of education is best. etc. -- "And the philosopher is a man like any other: as far as the order of society is concerned, he has no other questions to ask that those of his fellow citizens. (p. 11)

What I did not know. That Comte coined the word "altruism" the secular-immanent substitute for 'love'. This, says Voegelin ist associated with Christianity whereas "altruism is the basis of the conception of a brotherhood of man without a father." (p. 58)
"Order and Progress" is the motto of Comte.

[Thai Son · Rating 4 out of 5]

26/30
Eric Voegelin’s Science, Politics and Gnosticism is a short book, but it operates at a high altitude. It is less a treatise than a diagnostic instrument, aimed at exposing a recurring pathology in modern political thought: the attempt to immanentize salvation, to treat politics as a substitute for metaphysics, and history as a mechanism through which ultimate truth can be forced into existence. What Voegelin calls “gnosticism” is not an antiquarian curiosity but a recurring temptation, one that reappears whenever societies lose confidence in transcendence and attempt to manufacture meaning through power.

Voegelin builds his argument by drawing on a wide and eclectic intellectual lineage. The most distant source is classical philosophy, particularly Plato and Aristotle. From them, Voegelin inherits the idea that political order is inseparable from an underlying conception of reality and human nature. Politics is not merely procedural; it reflects a society’s orientation toward truth. When that orientation collapses, disorder follows--not necessarily immediately, but structurally.

Christian theology forms the next layer of influence. Voegelin is especially attentive to the early Christian struggle against Gnosticism, understood not narrowly as a historical sect but as a disposition: the belief that the world is fundamentally disordered, that its structure is illegitimate, and that salvation lies in possessing secret or superior knowledge that allows one to transcend or remake reality. In orthodox Christianity, salvation remains transcendent; history is meaningful but incomplete. Gnostic movements, by contrast, seek to complete history, to abolish uncertainty, suffering, and ambiguity through knowledge and action.

From this theological foundation, Voegelin moves into modernity. He traces how the Enlightenment’s rejection of transcendence did not eliminate religious longing but displaced it. Thinkers such as Joachim of Fiore, Hegel, Marx, Comte, and later positivists reinterpreted salvation as historical progress. The Kingdom of God becomes the classless society, the rational state, the end of history. Science, stripped of humility, becomes an oracle rather than a method. Politics becomes soteriology by other means.

This is where Voegelin’s use of the word “science” is crucial. He does not oppose empirical inquiry; he opposes the misuse of scientific language to confer moral or metaphysical authority. When political movements claim inevitability (historical necessity, scientific certainty, moral undeniability) they cease to be open to correction. Error becomes heresy. Opposition becomes pathology. Violence, when it appears, is framed as tragic but necessary.

Voegelin’s critique applies equally to totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth century. Totalitarian nazi and communist systems, in his reading, are not opposites but siblings. Both reject transcendent order, both promise redemption through history, both rely on mythic narratives disguised as rational systems. Their crimes are not accidents; they are consequences of attempting to force reality into alignment with an imagined end-state.

What gives Science, Politics and Gnosticism its enduring relevance is that Voegelin does not treat gnosticism as confined to overtly violent regimes. He is warning about a structure of thought, not a political label. Whenever politics claims final answers, whenever moral disagreement is reclassified as ignorance or bad faith, whenever complexity is treated as an obstacle rather than a condition of reality, gnostic temptation reappears.

In the modern political climate, this diagnosis feels uncomfortably precise. Across ideological lines, we see movements that collapse epistemology into morality: to disagree is not merely to err but to be corrupt, unenlightened, or dangerous. Technocratic governance increasingly claims legitimacy not through consent or prudence, but through expertise elevated into unquestionable authority. Moral language proliferates while responsibility diffuses. Voegelin would recognize this immediately--not as progress, but as spiritual inflation.

The relevance extends beyond the left–right axis. On the progressive side, one sees a tendency to treat history as a tribunal and politics as moral purification, with institutional power tasked with enforcing a particular vision of justice as inevitable. On the reactionary side, one finds mirror-image temptations: mythic pasts, civilizational destiny, and authoritarian certainty offered as escape from ambiguity. Voegelin rejects both. His argument is not for moderation as temperament, but for ontological humility--the acceptance that human knowledge is partial, history is open, and politics must remain provisional.

How would the so-called intellectual dark web respond to this book? Unevenly, but with interest. Figures inclined toward critiques of ideological capture, technocracy, and moral absolutism would find Voegelin’s framework clarifying. His account provides a deeper genealogy for concerns about institutional overreach, epistemic closure, and the moralization of disagreement. Unlike contemporary polemics, Voegelin does not rely on partisan examples; he offers a pattern that explains why different ideologies converge on similar pathologies once they abandon transcendence.

At the same time, Voegelin would likely frustrate some of these readers. He offers no program, no counter-ideology, no easy rallying point. His critique cuts too deeply to be weaponized comfortably. He does not affirm market fundamentalism, cultural traditionalism, or free speech absolutism as salvific solutions. He insists instead on limits, on the irreducibility of mystery, the necessity of restraint, and the dangers of certainty.

Science, Politics and Gnosticism does not tell readers what to think politically; it tells them what to be wary of philosophically. It reminds us that the most dangerous political errors are not born of malice but of misplaced faith—faith that history can be mastered, that knowledge can redeem, and that power can complete what reality has left unfinished.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

The essence of what I'm picking up is that any political ideology or plan that is not Christian and "practical" (ie, accepts large swaths of the status quo) is "gnostic", presumably because it does not embrace the world "as is" & seeks to reform it in a way that is guided by an invisible (not-yet-present) order. In reading this, I think it made me proud to be a gnostic! The deepest irony is that Voegelin ignores the close ties between Christianity and gnodticism, and hisnbemoaining that positivists, communists etc overturn the transcendent order is -absolutely- a gnostic ontological basis for a transcendent metaphysics. So lol Voegelin, nice try, not compelling at all.

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently re-read and it is still magnificent. Lovely to feel how his work is almost like a surgical operation, and going through it once more you remember how your brain was stretched and re-trained by the first reading.

What I took from it this time: our Utopia-builders always leave something out. Thomas More: original sin (though at least he was engaged in entertainment and not serious about enacting it). Thomas Hobbes: summum bonum. Karl Marx: well, a basic acceptance of reality.

Vogelein is a champion of reality.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

As political philosophers go, Voegelin is not an easy read, but worth the effort. In this, he equates ancient Gnosticism with what he regarded as unsound political theories, such as Communism and Fascism. Critics sometimes point out that his Gnostic sources are mostly secondary, since the Nag Hammadi texts were not widely available at the time this was written.

[Joshua Finch]

Overall I really think he's on to something. Besides the more obvious traits of gnosticism he lists, there is the general defection from reality that must take this specific shape after Christ. He explains it is because the standard of what can be hoped for is raised in Christian revelation, but also the standard of what we must do for this, and how uncertain we are about achieving it, causes too much tension for most people, who are therefore too weak for this reality. Now his Catholic conception of assurance could be playing a role here. Perhaps we can allow that his own misunderstanding is widespread enough beyond Roman Catholics to be historically explanatory. But in any case since Christ is already revealed in such fullness now, if He is denied, that denial will take a certain unique shape, which it did not take in more simple polytheistic pagan cultures BC.

He shows the continuity of ancient and Modern gnosticism, not just through the Christian heretics. I think this analysis is particularly striking when he talks about the prohibition of questioning. The part about the golems and the murder of God, this other element of gnosticism, usurpation and taking on of God's role is also striking.

Although in the introduction by Ellis Sandoz, Voegelin is quoted in conversation saying there are distinct but neighboring traditions besides gnosticism (as more widely construed here), such as hermeticism, NeoPlatonism, the (Jewish) apocalytpic tradition (where Heidegger comes closest in his later thought), and magic. He may see gnosticism by the time he's quoted here in 1976, as the dominant strand. But he seems to suggest that they can't all be reduced to gnosticism. I would agree gnosticism is the dominant form antiChristianity takes in politics / action. It is a little more helpful to describe it that way, as it's own form of religion, as opposed to taking Modernity for how it describes itself or merely calling it anti-Christian.

Some of my gripes are that he doesn't clearly explain Hegel and his interpretation. He does quote Hegel, but it's unclear how he's making his inferences. And it was fairly clear to me he was misunderstanding Heidegger. He in fact quotes Heidegger where the latter mentions the possibility of Being opening, and then on the same page criticizes Heidegger for thinking of Being as a closed process. But Heidegger wasn't a systematic "closed" thinker, at least in his later years. I definitely sympathize with categorizing and explaining Heidegger as some kind of anti-Christian mystic. But he and Voegelin actually have a lot of agreement on a critique of Modernity, together with Ellul. One could see Heidegger as so incredibly anti-Hellenist and quasi-Protestant that he leaves Christianity because he wants to work merely with what would be revealed anew, by the right form of thinking / being of dasein (~of human being). He seems to reject the thesis that we can return to a still preserved true tradition, because the historical age in which (and only in which) they were meaningful has passed irrevocably (the Christian age has passed, to him). This desire to artistically bring about a new age, to escape the current decline and obscuring, as well as seeing a kind of end-of-the-world situation in Modern technological society, is a kind of apocalyptic mysticism in my opinion. Only now from my Orthodox view, do I see the awaiting upon revelation (anew) from Being, as very inclined toward the demonic, not to mention the dismissal of Christianity as a passed epoch (for the West - Idk whether he knew of Eastern Christianity). It's really an attempt to go forward into a postmodern quasi-pagan innocence, by going beyond Modern enframing, and it assumes atheism because he assumes God wouldn't preserve a true and clear tradition regardless of the world age. Instead, our paradigms, like fashions are changed by Being in a mysterious or fickle way.

Also I don't think everything anti-Christian is, in its own theory, gnostic. I think all non-Christian views share in common their denial of Christ, and so will practically be used like an overall unified network (not logically unified) by Satan in the progression toward AntiChrist, and to some extent they will be theoretically bent and warped to that purpose. I also think it could be an interesting part of apologetics to show how someone's Buddhism or any random non-Christian view in fact accelerates or at least allows (where one should know better) the advent of AntiChrist, and to use terms for that ill consequence that they can understand, not 'AntiChrist.'

[Horatiu Chituc · Rating 1 out of 5]

I don't understand how some people have a high regard of Voegelin's work, particularly when you scrutinize the main thesis of this book: that many modern movements, often unrelated and at opposite poles of one another, are gnostic in nature. Clearly he is using the word "gnostic" improperly and arbitrarily and its weird application to modern ideologies hasn't amazed only me, but also other scholars and historians of religions who studied gnosticism in depth.

In the introduction of his book he tries to associate gnosticism with alienation and the transition from the old to the new (the latter is not a trait of gnosticism by the way) and in the second half of the book he claims that it's not important to try to define gnosticism while making the association between it and marxism, fascism, psychoanalysis and so on. Why? Because once you will define it and pay attention to all the details and ideas that were present in gnosticism you will see how little there is in common between it and what Voegelin claims to be gnostic. To his mind Marx was a gnostic, but also Nietzsche. These are obvious absurd claims and a misuse of the word and concept.

So I really don't recommend this book. It unfortunately doesn't have any real insights into anything, not even when Voegelin moves away from his main thesis and tries to characterize Marxism as this ideology which tries to reduce to silence any opposition.

[أحمد ناجي · Rating 1 out of 5]

Voegelin really outdid himself, recycling old church rhetoric against Gnosticism without ever bothering to read any actual Gnostic texts. Why do the work when you can just crib from centuries-old church diatribes?

Then, with the grace of a circus acrobat, he leaps to connect Gnosticism to Hegel and Marxism, painting himself as some medieval priest bravely battling the "modern Gnostic devil." Bold strategy, Voegelin. Bold.

It’s almost impressive how lame this all is. How anyone takes him seriously is beyond me. Honestly, if Voegelin were around today, his peak achievement would probably be as a guest on the Joe Rogan podcast, smugly holding court about how Gnosticism is ruining everything. That’s about as far as he’d go.

[Tom Schulte · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the audiobook narrated by Robin Lawson. As I write, this title is no longer available at Audible Audio.

I feel I may not even be qualified to read this rather advanced philosophical work. I say advanced in that it assumes a lot of technical knowledge on behalf of the reader. The blend of analytical views of Christianity, Marx, Positivism, Hegelianism, and the "God is Dead" movement as variants of the Gnostic tradition of antiquity may be a "masterwork of scholarship by Eric Voegelin" best appreciated by readers with prerequisite expertise.

[J. Tayler Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very short, yet very deep and thought provoking - explaining the process, developments, and faults of gnostic thought in relation to political ideologies and faith. However, this is quite the read and is really only suited for those studying the subject matter already, it is not for casual readers.

[Zeke Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this lying around.

Apparently he influenced Flannery O’Connor (Wiki). He also taught at an SEC school: LSU.

This doesn’t pretend to be anything more than an outline connecting “gnosticism” with schools of thought. I would probably need to read more of his writing to appreciate these connections.

[Matt Ney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm certainly too under-read and not smart to comprehend most of what Voegelin discusses in this collection of essays, but what I do gather from his examples of Marx, Nietzsche and Hegel makes me agree with them all the more (though I realize that was not at all his intention).

[Norman Styers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, but not for the faint of heart.

[Chris McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profound as ever.

[Donald Trump · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly provocative, one of the most important treatises written by modern political thinkers.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

lots of interesting ideas.

[Andrew Conlon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise and eloquent.

[Bryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An essential analysis of and for our times.