SLSL: mortality & mercy in vienna/: eddins

[Abdiel OAbdiel]

--- lorentzen-nicklaus
<lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de> wrote:
> 
>  of course, eddins' voegelinesque notion of
> 'gnosticism' is not in touch with   the actual
ancient sources (see, if you're interested, James M.
Robinson, ed.,   The Nag Hammadi Library) and also
leaves the gnostic elements in christianity 
>  itself - "my kingdom is not of this world" (the
> gospel of john) - completely   out. 

Thanks for tyoing it up and sending it to us. 

I must disagree with your reading of it. 

  Eddins provides several definitions of exactly what
he means and what he does not mean when he applies
"Voegelinesque" and several other definitions of
(G)(g)nosticism.   So the point you make here doesn't
make sense to me. 


furthermore, the rather schematic distinction
> of 'gnostic' vs. 'orphic' is 
>  highly problematic when seen in the late rilke's
> light. 

I think the orphic/gnostic reading is the most
brilliant reading of of Pynchon,  GR, Blicero,  to
date. 



dwight eddins, however, 
>  comes with his approach to presentable results, and
> he is among the very few 
>  who seriously address the spiritual dimension in
> pynchon's work. 
> 
>  apropos voegelin: the foreign policy of the current
> us-government, with its 
>  quasi-ontological distinction between 'good' &
> 'evil', has a certain 'gnostic' 
>  smell, nicht wahr?! 

While I don't support the war or the current
government, I can't agree with this. Intersting that
the NY Times Magazine this past Sunday ran an article
on Al Qaeda's Philosopher, Qutb. Anyway, according to
Voegelin, the Judaeo-Christian (Bush's Moralist
politics) is based on the idea that God created a good
world, a world that was ordered and Man can act to
bring the dealings of men into alignment with God's
good order. Gnostic man rejects this intrinsic order.
For him, and this is clearly the case for many of
Pynchon powerful characters, the world has become a
prison. The wretched soul of gnostic man strays into a
labyrinth of torment and wanders about, but... there
is no way out. So, gnostic man asks, why has this
world been created and why were the tribes ordered
here? "Gnosis is the knowledge of who the tribes were
and what they became, or where they were and wherein
they have been flung (Heidegger's Geworfenheit) , of
whereinto they are hastening and wherefrom they shall
be redeemed, of what birth into this prison is and
what rebirth will be." (Clement of Alexandria)

W Bush is a born again American Texas style Christian
and is therefore not a Modern Gnostic in the Voegelin
sense at all.  In fact, Qutb  is the Modern Gnostic as
Voegelin defines it. Bush's religion is rooted in
ancient gnosticism.  In the ontology of Ancient
Gnosticism faith in a God, who comes to man's aid,
sends him his message, shows him the way to the good,
liberates man from the prison of evil. In Modern
political Gnosticism this same objective is
accomplished through the assumption of a
dialectical-material process of nature that in its
course leads from the alienation resulting from
private property and belief in God to the freedom of a
fully human existence; or through the assumption of a
will of nature that transforms man into superman.
Within the ontic possibility, however, gnostic man
must carry on the work of salvation himself. The labor
of salvation entails dissolution of the worldly
constitution of the psyche and it involves the
destruction of the ordered world. 

Now matter how evil you may think this war, this
government, this man in the white house, Gnostic 
political religion, (akin to that of the Nazis and the
Fascists) is not in the American deck of cards. But it
is the trump card most Minddle Eastern nations. 



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