McKNIGHT, Stephen A. (1989): Sacralizing the Secular

[vanlose kid]

The following is a review and presentation of a scholarly-academic work on the metaphysics behind the immanentizing of the eschathon or the creation of a NWO. Sheds a deal of light on the works of e.g. Leo Strauss and Carroll Quigley, and the unrecognized or unspoken foundational myths of secularity.

McKNIGHT, Stephen A. (1989): Sacralizing the Secular: The
Renaissance Origins of Modernity, Louisiana State University Press,
USA.

This work by Steven McKnight represents an attempt to reinterpret the nature
of modernity. His essential thesis is that the valuation of rationality was not the
most significant determining influence in the development of the European
“Enlightenment”. The change in consciousness associated with the
Enlightenment is generally identified with a movement away from the sacred
and towards the secular. McKnight contends rather that the Enlightenment
represents a more extensive historic movement driven by a sacralising of the
phenomenal world and of human potentialities.

McKnight suggests that this movement finds its origins in the Hermetic
tradition, the body of work and system of thought believed to be derived from
Hermes Trismegistus, the great magus of Egypt. The Hermetic project is
envisioned as a progressive divinisation of humanity. But reading between the
lines, this divinisation is a highly selective process and tends to be associated
mainly with ruling elites rather than humanity as a whole.

Although McKnight presents a fascinating thesis supported by equally
fascinating historical details, he does not quite crack the kernel. And one could
suggest that even if he did, he would find within it a shrivelled and denatured
vestige of an old story. For underlying many of the utopian systems created by
the so-called god-men in McKnight’s vision are nascent technocracies as
capable of enslavement and tyranny as any theocracy.

At another and more essential level, McKnight has failed to meet with the
Hermetic tradition on its own terms. Quoting extensively from the writings of
Ficino, McKnight interprets the “spiritus mundi” or “quintessentia” as metaphors
for an intellectual development that became the source and justification of a
nascent Prometheanism.

These terms point towards an aspect of reality that was everywhere addressed
or alluded to in the writings of Hermetic practitioners throughout the
Renaissance. Paracelsus constantly referred to the “Light of Nature.” Michael
Sendivogius wrote of the “New Light of Alchemy.” The Hermetic tradition was
not so much concerned with articulating the foundations of a nascent
intellection or rationality. Rather, it was concerned with the direct experience of
spirit, of a coherent luminous energy that informs, directs and empowers the
lives of practitioner/adepts.

By invoking Francis Bacon, Auguste Comte and Karl Marx as exemplars of the
Hermetic project, McKnight has effectively crossed the poetic divide and sided
with those who hold that technical and social engineering represent the
ultimate sources of human salvation.

We have seen enough over the course of the past two centuries to know that
technical mastery guarantees neither the exercise of wisdom nor enlightened
leadership. There remains much to be done on the personal level before true
freedom can become the birthright of all. This has ever been understood by
those who pursued the wisdom traditions in all their manifestations.

Although the “prisca theologia” invoked by McKnight remains a source of deep
knowledge that is capable of bestowing both power and freedom, it remains but
one of the ways that have been revealed and developed by many great souls
throughout history.

The real task is to uncover the means whereby individual transformation can
be activated and encouraged. Enlightened leadership will inevitably fail if it
does not also create a population of enlightened followers.

VDS, Belgrave ~1995
Revised November 2011

Preface
Another major scholarly development was the increasing recognition of the
importance of what D.P. Walker called the prisca theologia, or Ancient Wisdom,
tradition in Renaissance thought. This Ancient Wisdom includes a wide array of
esoteric religious and pseudo-scientific traditions that are now recognized as a valued
part of the Renaissance recovery of ancient learning. The analysis of these materials
and the revaluation of their impact on philosophy and theology were begun by
historians of science such as Lynn Thorndike and then carried forward by D.P.
Walker, Eugenio Garin, Frances Yates, and other Renaissance specialists. As I
examined these works and the primary sources on which they were based I became
convinced that many features of modern thought and experience that had been
identified with ancient Gnosticism could more properly be traced to this Ancient
Wisdom tradition. pp ix-x

Introduction: A New Perspective on the Modern Age
The analysis of secularization focuses on the writings of Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and
Galileo to demonstrate that secularization splits the two poles apart in an effort to
establish the secular as an autonomous field. The examination of sacralization focuses
on one of the Ancient Wisdom texts, the Corpus Hermeticum, to show that it is a key
source for the Renaissance sacralizing pattern that obliterates distinctions between the
secular and the sacred. As a result, man is depicted as a terrestrial god and society as
an earthly paradise. p 6

Modern reformers such as Bacon, Comte, and Marx claim that their programs for
social improvement derive from natural science. New evidence, however,
demonstrates close parallels to the sacralizing aims of the pseudo-sciences of magic
and alchemy. p 7

Secularizing and Sacralizing Patterns in Modernity
The most distinctive feature of modernity is the underlying conviction that an epochal
break separates it from the preceding “dark age.” Integral to this epochal
consciousness is a new confidence in man’s capacity for self-determination, and this
in turn derives from the conviction that an epistemological breakthrough provides
man with the capacity to change the conditions of his existence. p 9
By the eighteenth century the accumulated pressures to integrate the recent political,
cultural, and intellectual advances into a coherent, intelligible pattern of historical
development became a major preoccupation. Voltaire’s proposal to develop a
“philosophy of history” to replace the outmoded theology of history is emblematic of
the direction taken. Voltaire and his contemporaries shifted the focus of history from
the saving acts of the Judaeo-Christian God to the unfolding progress of human
reason and morality. In the nineteenth century, Auguste Comte refined the eighteenthcentury
model and presented the famous three-stage pattern of historical evolution
that supplied the basic historiographical model for most of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. This Comtean paradigm, like the Vasarian prototype, traces three
stages in the maturation of human consciousness from its infancy in religion through
its metaphysical adolescence to its scientific maturity. p 14

For the “modernists,” secularization referred to the emancipation of man, society, and the world from
ecclesiastical and theological domination. The critics of modernity saw in the secularizing movement -
particularly in the doctrines of progress and social perfectibility - an effort to transform man into God and
society into the Kingdom of God. This effort, the critics argued, constituted a blasphemous misconstruction of
reality and deformation of the understanding of human nature and society. p 16

The principal myths and symbols of sacralization enter into modern thought and experience through the
Renaissance revival of the prisca theologia tradition.
While we know that most of the materials in the Ancient Wisdom tradition appear late
in the Hellenistic period, the philosophers and theologians of the Renaissance
understood them to be the earliest and the most complete revelations to non-Christian
wise men (prisci theologi), for example, Pythagoras and Zoroaster. In the fifteenth
century the teachings of Hermes Trismegistus came to be the most highly revered of
all the ancient revelations. Through a curious set of circumstances, he even gained a
reputation as the spiritual mentor of both Moses and Plato. p 20

By the sixteenth century, the Ancient Wisdom was a fundamental element in the
mounting criticism of traditional theology and metaphysics and in the call for a
thoroughgoing religious reorientation and political reformation. As we shall see,
myths and symbols from the Ancient Wisdom tradition are found in the utopian
dreams of social perfection that develop in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and
the programs of social reformation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. p 21

Secularization and Sacralization in the Renaissance
The secularized view of human nature minimizes or altogether ignores the sacred in
favor of the physical and material. While Christian theology would regard this as a
truncated, distorted view of man, the Renaissance secularizing tradition regards it as a
breakthrough in human self-understanding. Three quite different advocates of this
position are Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Galileo, whose works, taken together, show
the pervasive influence of secularization on literature, political thought, and science
during the early modern period. p 26

Galileo has set out a fundamental feature of secularization. Theology’s reign is restricted to
knowledge of salvation. The other areas of inquiry that had been subject to her rule are now autonomous fields
with their own epistemological principles. By implication, Galileo is also revising the long-standing
view of reason and its relation to revelation. In scholastic theology, reason’s function is to initiate the
search for salvation. Galileo removes reason’s religious function and establishes it as an autonomous mode of
inquiry whose aim is to understand the physical world -to understand how the heavens go, and not how to go to
Heaven. p 40

Society is no longer a microcosm of the divine macrocosm. Social and political order
and disorder ebb and flow as the cycle of Fortune turns, and human appetites and
longings serve as the basis both for social and political upheaval and for efforts at
stability. The natural world also gains independence from divine providence. It is
either controlled by Fortune and Necessity, as in the work of Boccaccio and
Machiavelli, or it is a self-contained system indifferent to man, as in Galileo. God is
either remote from this world and human affairs or is dismissed altogether as
irrelevant. pp 40-41

While secularization minimizes or altogether dismisses the sacred, the process of
sacralization obliterates the categorical distinctions so that the secular becomes
indistinguishable from the sacred. The process also produces profound changes in the
traditional medieval view of human nature: man loses his creaturely limitations and
becomes a terrestrial god capable of creating an earthly Paradise.
The source for this sacralizing process is the Ancient Wisdom tradition, particularly
the Hermetic writings. p 41

According to this text, [the Picatrix] Hermes used the knowledge made available to
him to establish a perfect social order operating in harmony with the divine cosmos.
In this brief passage, we find that man first controls those events in nature that
adversely affect him, for example, the flooding of the Nile. The second creative act is
to use the knowledge of the natural order to produce an abundant supply of food to
meet man’s physical needs. The third is to protect the inhabitants of the city from
external threats. It is the final act, however, that is truly extraordinary. By
manipulating the influence of astral powers, the legislator-priest is able to make the
city’s inhabitants virtuous. p 44

Ficino and the Neoplatonists did not find pronounced conflicts between the Hermetic
materials and Christianity. For Ficino, the apparent conflicts in the various ancient
revelations were to be reconciled by establishing the essential core common to all the
texts. p 45

Given the fundamental Gnostic doctrines of the world as a prison and of gnosis as
producing salvation through liberation from the physical world, it is difficult to
understand how Gnostic myths can be equated with modern programs of social
reformation. On the other hand, the Hermetic myths and symbols have a close
correspondence to modern dreams of innerworldly fulfillment. The Hermetic
materials present man as magus, who possesses God-like knowledge to master nature
and to perfect society. p 48

Ficino, Pico, and the New God: Anthropos
This “new understanding of human nature” is developed further in the De vita triplici.
In the introduction, Ficino explains that it is a medical textbook intended for use by
scholars to counteract the physical debilitation brought on by their intellectual
pursuits. The scope is much broader than this description suggests, however. . . .

Ficino offers a “new understanding” of the world in which the material and the
spiritual elements of the cosmos are linked by the world soul (anima mundi) and the
world spirit (spiritus mundi). According to Ficino, the Ancient Wisdom reveals how
to draw upon the power of the world spirit to enhance man’s physical and spiritual
condition and to control the powers of nature in the way the prisci theologi did. . . .

Ficino introduces his work by explaining that he had sought to be a physician of the
soul in his previous writings, and now he intends to minister to the general health and
well-being of intellectuals, who often neglect the physical in pursuit of the spiritual.
In Book 1, Ficino explains that scholars are particularly susceptible to melancholia.
This condition can be treated, however, by drawing on the beneficial influence of
Saturn and other planets favorable to intellectual endeavor. Most of Book 1 is then
given to an account of the substances that contain concentrations of these planetary
influences. In the last section, Ficino exhorts scholars to attend to the intellect as well:
“It is not all right just to take care of the body, which is only the servant of the soul,
and neglect the soul, which is the king and master of the body.” The care of the soul,
then, becomes the subject of the second book.

Book II acknowledges that a long life is necessary if the scholar is to perfect his
knowledge. Long life, however, is not something given by fate. In fact, intellectual
efforts have a debilitating effect on the body. There is a solution, however, because
man is not like other beings: “Long life is not only a matter of what the Fates have put
in store for us from the beginning, but something our diligence takes care of as well.”

In Book III, Ficino “explains how man can alter the decrees of fate.” The key
component is an extended discussion of the interrelation of the material and the
spiritual elements in the world. Herein is Ficino’s “new understanding” of the world
soul and the world spirit. Just as man must have a soul as the mediating link between
the material and the spiritual, so must there be a world soul. pp 57-58

Ficino indicates that the degeneration and disintegration occurring in “fallen nature”
can be overcome by using the world soul to draw the material entity back into
conformity with its eternal form or idea. The agent for this re-formation is the world
spirit, the force flowing through the world that actually accomplishes the infusion of
the divine into the material.

While the world spirit permeates the whole world, it is concentrated in some materials
more than others. By using these knowledgeably, man can draw its regenerative
benefits into his soul. p 59

Ficino explains that the fifth essence (spiritus mundi) can be absorbed by us, if we
know how to separate it from the other elements with which it is heavily mixed, or at
least if we know how to use those things that contain it. This especially true for
things in which it is pure, as in select wines and sugars, balsam and gold, precious
stones, etc. (Ficino, Bk. III, Chap. 1. 562/Boer, 89). p 59

Ficino begins Chapter 20 by indicating that certain natural substances are so potent
with the benefits of the world spirit that, through them, it is possible to rejuvenate
both the body and the soul so that the recipient seems almost reborn. p 60

Ficino’s reformulation of magic provides the epistemological foundation for a new
image of man as the master of the natural world and the shaper of his own destiny.
This is essential to Ficino’s description of man as a terrestrial god. Furthermore, a
fundamental reconceptualization of God and the world is integral to the development
of Ficino’s new understanding of human nature. This reconceptualization is oriented
around the root concept of the world soul that links the material world to the ideal
forms that give it its beauty and its purpose. The most important element of Ficino’s
discussion of the world soul for our consideration is his claim that any degeneration or
disorder in the natural world can be corrected by reinfusing the material world with
super-celestial influences. Because man’s own soul is a microcosm of this
macrocosmic order, he can participate directly in the restoration of order and in the
creation of beauty and harmony. We have in this notion, then, a full presentation of
the concept of sacralization. The sacred is the source of order, beauty, and harmony in
the secular world; the secular is the incarnation of the divine. p 64

Pico claims the notable achievement of having assembled an extraordinary library of
documents of the Ancient Wisdom. This recovery of these precious documents will in
itself serve as a means of overcoming the ignorance and error that have afflicted
human philosophizing and theologizing. But Pico says that his achievement is not
simply as collector. His distinctive accomplishment is that he has drawn together and
reconciled the essential core of these various teachings into a single coherent system
“by means of which whoever holds them will be able . . . . to answer any question
whatever proposed in natural philosophy or divinity.” . . . .

Pico states that he has also established the proper role of magic in philosophy and
theology. In this segment he is quick to say that demonic magic is to be avoided, but
that natural magic, “when it is rightly pursued, is nothing else than the utter perfection
of natural philosophy.” To defend this controversial view, Pico cites the Ancient
Wisdom and the many prisci theologi who regard magic as “a perfect and most high
wisdom.” Pico then examines the nature of the magic that these ancient traditions hold
in such high esteem: “If we ask Plato what the magic of both these men was, he will
reply, in his Alcibiades, that the magic of Zoroaster was none other than the science of
the Divine in which the kings of the Persians instructed their sons, to the end that they
might be taught to rule their own commonwealth by the example of the
commonwealth of the world. He will answer, in the Charmides, that the magic of
Zamolxis was that medicine of the soul through which temperance is brought to the
soul as through temperance health is brought to the body.” The two magical traditions
that Plato cites have had many noble followers. Pico suggests that the number of magi
is even larger than has been recognized thus far and that he will prove this in his
forthcoming Poetic Theology. p 68

While Pico’s myth closely parallels the Hermetic view, its concept of man contrasts
sharply with the Judaeo-Christian creation stories. In Pico’s myth, man has no
boundaries to his nature; he can be whatever he wills to be also. Man’s desire to Godlike
knowledge serves as a bond between man and God, not as a source of sin and
alienation. p 69

Sacralization in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
Agrippa attacks Church corruption and theological confusion as evidence of a
profound state of alienation and disorder. Like the Protestant reformers, Agrippa calls
for a recovery of pristine Christianity, but his is an esoteric Christianity closely tied to
the Cabala. Bruno also criticizes the intellectual and spiritual disorientation of the
Church and calls for a re-institution of Hermetic religion as a replacement for
Christianity. Campanella, the author of the famous utopia, La Citta del Sole, leads a
revolt that is intended to establish a Hermetic City of the Sun as the new political and
religious center of Western civilization. Through an examination of their writings, it is
possible to see how the sacralizing tradition serves as a source for the modern vision
of an epochal break with the Christian “dark age” and for the advent of modern
messianic figures who propose to lead man out of his alienated condition into a
utopian paradise. p 71

Agrippa finds three paths provided by God to enable man to overcome his ignorance and alienation and
recover his full humanity: the book of nature, the book of law, and the gospel. . . . For Agrippa, the key to a
proper understanding of nature, the law, and the gospel is the teaching of the prisci theologi. Like
Ficino, Agrippa is convinced that the ancient theologies have a core that can serve as the means of
recovering the essence of Christianity. There is one significant difference, however. For Ficino, the
primary guide to understanding the Ancient Wisdom was Hermes Trismegistus, who was regarded as the
teacher of both Plato and Moses. For Agrippa, the primary source is not the Hermetic teaching but the
Cabala, the Jewish esoteric tradition supposedly given to Moses during his forty days and nights on Mount Sinai.
According to this view, the law expressed in the Decalogue is only a minor part of God’s revelation.
The deeper part was not made public, it was kept among a highly select group of priests who were
able to understand its full import. In Agrippa’s time a Christianized Cabala was emerging.
pp 73-74

Nature - the first of Agrippa’s three paths to true knowledge - can only be understood
properly if one follows the occult teachings of the Ancient Wisdom. On this point,
Agrippa’s position is similar to Ficino’s effort to develop a cosmology that links the
physical and the spiritual worlds and connects man’s knowledge of the cosmos with
the power to restore nature and to perfect the human condition. His perspective on the
law, the second path, derives from the cabalist tradition, which he is convinced
provides the power to ascend through the orders of nature to direct communion with
God. Thus man gains full knowledge of the workings of nature and the operative
power to change the conditions of existence. The return to the gospel, the third path, is
through a reading of the Ancient Wisdom traditions, finally clarifying the role God
wants man to assume. pp 74-75

Ficino gave primacy to the Hermetic materials in developing his concept of natural
magic; Agrippa is convinced that God’s fullest revelation outside Christianity occurs
in the Cabala. p 76

The De Occulta was one of the most widely known texts in the sixteenth century and
contributed to Agrippa’s growing international reputation as the master magician of
his age. This reputation gained him invitations as a university lecturer and as a
counsellor to royal courts. Given his renown as “one of the most extraordinary men of
an extraordinary age” it is puzzling that some twenty years after preparing the De
Occulta, he published the De Vanitate, a scathing attack on the vanity and futility of
all forms of human knowledge. In this work, Agrippa uses his command of
philosophy, theology, the humanist tradition, and occult tradition to argue that all
these modes of inquiry have been corrupted through sin and have led to human
suffering and alienation from God. p 76

Agrippa, like Ficino and Pico, rejects astrology because its basic premise is that man’s
fate is knowable because it is determined by the stars. Agrippa maintains that man can
use astral magic to manipulate the stars and other celestial divinities to serve his own
purpose and to alter his fate. p 77

Throughout his life, Agrippa was convinced that the key to recovering man’s true
nature was in a proper reading and understanding of the Christian revelation.
Furthermore, the key to this revelation was not in the literal words of the gospel but in
their secret, esoteric meaning that could be brought to light by use of the Cabala and
other Ancient Wisdom traditions. p 77

[Giordano] Bruno criticizes the general state of learned ignorance among university
philosophers and Church theologians in ways that recall Agrippa’s criticisms in the
De Triplici Ratione and the De Vanitate. Also, like Agrippa, Bruno maintains that the
way out of that state is through the teachings of the “Chaldeans, of the Egyptians, of
the Magi, of the Orphics, of the Pythagoreans and other early thinkers.” Bruno reveres
Copernicus’ work because he thinks it is inspired by this Ancient Wisdom tradition
and therefore signals a recovery of the true understanding of the cosmos. p 80

“[The Ancient Wisdom] produced men who were temperate in their lives, expert in the arts of
healing, judicious in contemplation, remarkable in divination, having miraculous powers in
magic, wary of superstitions, law-abiding, of irreproachable morality, penetrating in theology,
heroic in all their ways. This is shown in the length of their lives, the greater strength of their
bodies, their most lofty inventions, their prophecies which have come true; they knew how to
transform substances and how to live peacefully in society; their sacraments were inviolable,
their executions most just, they were in communion with good and tutelar spirits, and the
vestiges of their amazing prowess endure unto this day.” (Giordano Bruno, 43-44/Yates,
238ff.)p. 82

Yates demonstrates that “the legend that Bruno was prosecuted as a philosophical
thinker, was burned for his daring views on innumerable worlds or on the movement
of the earth, can no longer stand.” It is now clear that Bruno was condemned for his
belief that the Egyptian religion was the highest religion given by God, reversing the
view of Ficino and others that the ancient theology pointed the way to the fuller
revelation of Christianity. Moreover, he understood his mission as one of a religious
reformer who would be an instrument in purging the Church and in instituting a new
ecumenic religion based on Hermetism and magic. pp 83-84

Bacon, Comte, and Marx: A Revaluation
This reconsideration of key elements in the work of Bacon, Comte, and Marx
demonstrates parallels between their writings and the sacralizing pattern. It must be
emphasized that this analysis does not attempt to discredit or disregard secularizing
patterns within their writings. Rather, the purpose is to show that there are additional
sacralizing influences that affect their formulations of a new epistemology and a new
program of social reformation. p 91

Each writer’s work displays the three primary characteristics of modernity: the
consciousness of an epochal break with the past; a conviction that this break is due to
an epistemological advance; and the belief that this new knowledge provides man the
means of overcoming his alienation and regaining his true humanity. p 91

The main lines of The Advancement of Learning are generally known. In it Bacon
criticises the disorder and confusion of the various scholarly traditions and urges a
fundamental reform so that man can gain an accurate knowledge of the natural world
and use his knowledge to improve the human condition. . . . Bacon’s vision of the
social benefits to be gained from the reform and the advancement of learning is
presented in his later work, The New Atlantis. p 93

From both The Advancement of Learning and The New Atlantis, it is evident that
Bacon’s understanding of man’s true nature is similar to the mythic description in the
sacralizing tradition of man as a terrestrial god possessing the knowledge to control
nature and to perfect society. These parallels become clearer and more substantial in a
close consideration of themes and images in The New Atlantis. p 94

Comte’s signal contribution to modern thought is found in the creation of social
science (physique sociale), positivist philosophy, and his famous three-stage
progressivist construction of history. He is regarded as a secularist because he argues
that theology and metaphysics represent the childhood and adolescent phases in the
development of Western rationalism and because he asserts that man regains his
dignity and self-determination by ridding himself of the oppressive delusion of God.
p 97

Cours [de Philosophie Positive] sets out his critique of the state of the various
disciplines and contains his call to abandon theological and metaphysical speculations
as useless and counterproductive. He also proposes a new philosophy that discards
metaphysical inquiries into origins or purpose and concentrates on phenomena as they
are known through the laws of nature and as they contribute to the welfare of
humanity. This element of his work is responsible for his reputation as one of the
great modernists. His criticism of metaphysics as a garbled and jumbled mess
resulting from the confusion of theology with classical philosophy and his consequent
proposal to model all knowledge upon the principles of the natural sciences are a
systematic statement of the spirit of the modern age. p 98

In Comte’s new society, scientists and priests have an encyclopaedic knowledge of
the natural world and of human nature, and they are able to master nature, to reform
religion, and to perfect society. Consequently, they can direct the individual and
society toward meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. Moreover, as the priest-philosopher
and political leader of this group, Comte seems very much in the tradition of the first
great magus, Hermes Trismegistus. To a great degree, Comte’s program aims at
creating a society much like Adocentyn or the new Atlantis. Bacon had put the new
Atlantis far away in space. Comte, even more sure about the coming reformation,
locates the new society in Europe and in the immediate future. p 99

The critique of philosophy and religion is a theme that runs throughout Marx’s
writings. In his doctoral dissertation on Democritus, for example, he criticizes
traditional philosophy’s contemplative, passive acceptance of the human condition
and calls for a new active philosophy that takes Prometheus as its patron saint.
Prometheus, the mythical “hater of the gods,” steals their fire and gives it to man. This
gift is, first of all, symbolic of the civilizational resources and skills man needs to alter
the given conditions of existence to suit him. Second, it represents a new autonomy
for man - a break from dependence on the gods. The most famous and concise
statement of the intention of Marx’s Promethean man is in the eleventh thesis on
Feuerbach: “Philosophers have only interpreted the world; the goal however, is to
change it.” p 103

From the time of Ficino onward, the sacralizing tradition was associated with efforts
to reform the understanding of reality propounded in conventional theology and
philosophy. Some aimed at renewing and revitalizing Christianity; others - for
example, Agrippa and Bruno - sought to correct the derailments brought on by
Christianity and its merger with classical philosophy. Marx wants to present an active
merger of theory and practice that will allow man to change the conditions of his
existence. This basic characteristic of the sacralizing tradition was first introduced by
Ficino in his reconceptualization of magic as the highest form of natural philosophy.
p 106

Another correlation between the Marxian project and the sacralizing tradition is in the
purpose and goal of the Communist Revolution. Marx makes very clear his purpose to
overcome man’s alienation and restore man to his true humanity. This liberation
means that man can use his instrumental and theoretical knowledge to be whatever he
wishes to be. This corresponds closely to the Hermetic yearning to make man a
terrestrial god. The Marxist view here contrasts sharply with the secularist views of
Boccaccio and Machiavelli. For them, man is an active shaper of his life. But Fortune
and Necessity mean that man is not in control, that man is not self-determining.
pp 107-108

Marx possesses profound knowledge of the forces governing nature and society,
through which he expects to be able to liberate man from his alienation and to perfect
society. This is the basic role of the magus in the Hermetic tradition. The magus is the
one who combines the knowledge of nature with the transformation of man in this
world, and that is Marx’s ultimate goal. p 108

Conclusion: The Sacralizing Tradition in the Modern Age
These studies make it evident that conventional treatments of modernity and
secularization must be supplemented and revised in light of the opposite yet
complementary influence of sacralization. p 109

http://thehealingproject.net.au/wp-cont ... ernity.pdf

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[Hammer of Los]

...

Nice one VK.

Sorry I only had time to skim read it.

I'll catch up later.

True Philosopher's Stone lies within.

Secular materialists bloody big fools.

The European "enlightenment" is not at all what I mean by Enlightenment.

...

[Wombaticus Rex]

Delicious.

This is a Big Fish.

Thank you, VK, for the heads-up.

[vanlose kid]

You're welcome. Both.

I posted the above mainly because it struck me as singular. (First and only run in HB, 1989. Never issued in PB. Stumbled on it while looking into empiricism, Hobbes and Bacon.) But it does tack closer to what I think is going on. I've mentioned it before, I think: "British Israel".

The "elite" or ruling class, even when they propagate and fund atheism (and they do) do so not because they are atheists. The people who run Dr. Strangelove, the Overlook, who throw parties in EWS, or in Lapham's film (thanks for that) are not atheist at all. Like scientism, they only sell it to the rabble of the null degree.

The best way to protect and propagate a mystery religion for the very few is by pretending that it doesn't exist."The greatest trick the devil ever pulled..." They are a very committed group of people and it is not purely money that drives them but Mammon (Moloch, the Demiurge, the Great Architect, Athene, Prometheus, the Lightbringer, etc.). Atheism (secularism) is just one more veil adorning Mystery Babylon.

You have to ask yourself whether the person preaching it (e.g. Dawkins, Dennett) really does believe what he preaches. Their rulers, it is clear, do not.

I've always been struck by the relation: empiricism-empire. (The Royal Society.) How about you? Follow the obelisk.

The thing about the book is that, like Carroll's, what reads as a critique turns out to be an apologia. Here's a like article by McKnight.

Francis Bacon’s God

Stephen A. McKnight

Editor’s Note: With this issue, we are pleased to offer the first in our series of “Reconsiderations,” essays that reexamine great thinkers and great works at the intersection of science, technology, ethics, and politics. It is only fitting that we should launch this series with an analysis of Francis Bacon’s “New Atlantis,” the story that gave our journal its name and that helped give birth to the age of modern science and technology.

In 1968 Howard B. White published Peace among the Willows, the first book-length analysis of Bacon’s “New Atlantis.” White, a political theorist who regards Bacon as a principal shaper of modern political ideas, maintains that it is this utopian work and not one of Bacon’s philosophical treatises that provides the fullest statement of Bacon’s political theory. White is especially interested in what he regards as Bacon’s secularization of politics and glorification of the power of science to serve the interests of the secular state. In developing his argument, White maintains that “New Atlantis” must be read with meticulous care in order to understand Bacon’s complex interweaving and transformation of political iconography, ancient history and fables, religious symbols, scientific methodologies, and pseudo-scientific concepts. White devotes considerable attention to Bacon’s use of religious themes and argues that he manipulates them in order to subvert Christian ideas and transform them into a culturally acceptable justification for a preoccupation with luxury and materialism. According to White, Bacon’s purpose is to transform the human quest from the search for the “heavenly city” to the creation of the well-governed country, and to change the philosophical quest from an effort to understand God, God’s Creation, and humanity’s place in it to a pursuit to understand what humans can make of themselves.

White’s work has been highly influential and augmented more recently by another political philosopher, Jerry Weinberger. Weinberger also argues that Bacon’s utopia provides a primary source for understanding the transitional phase from early modern political ideas to those of the modern age, and he maintains that Bacon manipulates religious language and concepts to conceal his secular agenda. Recently, considerable attention to Bacon’s “New Atlantis” has also come from the new historical criticism. Studies by Charles Whitney, Amy Boesky, and others have analyzed utopian literature as a primary source for understanding the “founding fictions” and political ideologies underpinning nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, and overseas expansion. Like White and Weinberger, many cultural historians treat Bacon’s manipulation of religious ideas as a way of providing cultural authority for his political agenda. Marina Leslie, for example, asserts that Bacon inverts the spiritual and material worlds, and claims that Bacon transforms spiritual salvation into material well-being accomplished by humans and not by God. David Innes, a theologian influenced by White, contends that Bacon is responsible for transmuting Christian hope for spiritual salvation into a secular dream of material comfort and argues that the Christianity of Bensalem is actually a “fundamental assault upon, transformation of and ultimate displacement of Christianity.” Denise Albanese asserts that Bensalemite Christianity “first serves as yet another instance of reverse colonialism, with the natives’ conversion already an accomplished fact” and as the “code for an intellectual imperialism.”

This essay contends that it is a misunderstanding and distortion to view Bacon’s use of religious language and concepts as disingenuous and manipulative. It demonstrates that Bacon’s program of utopian reform, as presented in “New Atlantis,” is grounded in genuinely and deeply felt religious convictions, which serve as the foundation for his program of political and social prosperity through the advancement of learning.

Developing the evidence to support a position that stands in marked contrast to prevailing interpretations requires careful attention to the details of Bacon’s utopian narrative. We need to examine each episode of the story, from the storm that brings European sailors to Bensalem, through the Europeans’ interviews with the Governor of the Strangers’ House and with Joabin, to the climactic audience with a Father of Solomon’s House. We need to pay careful attention to the accounts of Bensalem’s conversion to Christianity and to the early history of Bensalem, Atlantis, and other great sea-going civilizations. While only one of these, the conversion to Christianity, is explicitly religious, examination of the other episodes demonstrates Bacon’s pervasive use of two key religious themes: providential deliverance and special election. In discussing the primordial history of Bensalem and Atlantis, we need to compare Bacon’s version of the myth of Atlantis to the one found in Plato’s Critias and Timaeus. Bacon uses this primordial history to portray a golden age that has been virtually lost from memory; as a result, humanity has been left with a truncated account of its past achievements. Bacon refers to an ancient wisdom that has been lost and replaced by impotent, inferior philosophies. Yet the purpose of the Platonic myth in “New Atlantis” is to instill hope that this knowledge can be recovered and the state of civilizational excellence restored.

We then need to turn to the complex themes surrounding the activities of Solomon’s House. This episode typically receives the most extended discussion, but the focus is usually on Bacon’s description of collaborative efforts of specialized sciences to advance empirical knowledge and bring relief to the human condition. The analysis offered here will place Bacon’s references to Solomon and Solomon’s House in the context of the iconography of the court of the British King James I, particularly portrayals of James I as the new Solomon, who would restore Solomon’s Temple and usher in a providential age of peace, harmony, and prosperity. Bacon conceives of Solomon’s House (i.e., the recovery of natural philosophy) as the complement to the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple (i.e., the restoration of true religion). This is the heart of Bacon’s program of instauration: first, a thoroughgoing reform of religion that restores humanity’s relation to God, and second, a thoroughgoing recovery of the principles of natural philosophy that restores humanity’s dominion over nature.

In the end, Bacon’s “great instauration” is not a secular, scientific advance through which humanity gains dominion over nature and mastery of its own destiny. Bacon’s instauration is a program for rehabilitating humanity and its relation to nature, guided by divine Providence and achieved through pious human effort. To make this contrarian case, let us follow Bacon’s story as it unfolds.

The Discovery of Bensalem

The story begins with a European expedition sailing from Peru en route to China and Japan being blown off course and becoming lost “in the greatest wilderness of the waters in the world.” Helpless and disoriented, the sailors pray to God, begging for mercy and deliverance. Night closes in leaving them to wonder at their fate. When dawn comes, they discover that their prayers have been answered and they have been brought within sight of land. As they approach the uncharted island, people on shore warn the Europeans not to disembark. The Europeans beg for assistance explaining that they have several sick sailors on board, who might die without medical attention. In response to this urgent need, an official of the country sails out to their ship and offers provisions, medication, and repairs that will enable the Europeans to get underway. This offer is presented on a scroll written in four languages (Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Spanish), and marked by a cross and a pair of cherubim’s wings. (The cross is an obvious Christian symbol, and cherubim’s wings are a key symbol from the Old Testament, representing God’s presence among His chosen people.) The apprehension of the Europeans is relieved by the obvious charity and learning of the inhabitants of this country, but most of all by the familiar sign of the cross. Similarly, the Bensalemites relax their guarded reception of the foreigners when they declare themselves to be from a Christian land, and the Europeans are invited to the island to recuperate.

This opening segment is noteworthy for its introduction of the leitmotif of divine intervention and salvation. In describing the event, the Europeans compare their experience to that of Jonah and acknowledge that it was divine grace that brought them to Bensalem. Were these the only references to deliverance or salvation, their significance could be discounted or attributed to the language conventions of Bacon’s day. This is not the case, however. The theme of salvation and deliverance is developed further as the Europeans experience the charity of the Bensalemites. The sailors are so struck by the people and by the society that they declare that it “seemed to us that we have before us a picture of our salvation in heaven; for we that were awhile since in the jaws of death.” On another occasion, they say that they had “come into a land of angels.”

The Conversion of Bensalem

When given an opportunity to learn about this remarkable island, the first question that the Europeans hope to have answered is how the island had been converted to Christianity. The Governor of the Strangers’ House explains that the conversion occurred as the result of a miraculous event which happened about twenty years after the Resurrection and Ascension. One night a great column of light topped by a cross appeared about a mile out on the ocean. A few brave souls from Renfusa, the nearest city, boarded boats and sailed out toward the hierophany. When they had come within about 60 yards, they were mysteriously restrained from drawing closer. One of the boats, however, had a member of Solomon’s House on board, who offered this prayer: “Lord God of Heaven and Earth, Thou hast vouchsafed of Thy grace to those of our order, to know Thy works of Creation, and the secrets of them; and to discern ... between divine miracles, works of Nature, works of art, and impostures and illusions of all sorts.” He then declared the column to be a genuine miracle and begged God to reveal its true meaning. The wise man was allowed to move closer, and, as he did, the Pillar of Cloud was transformed, leaving an ark (small chest) floating in the water. As the wise man moved toward it, the chest opened to reveal a book and a letter. The book found in the ark contained canonical books familiar to the Europeans and “some other books of the New Testament which were not at that time written.” The letter was from the apostle Bartholomew, who stated that he had received a vision in which God instructed him “to commit the ark to the floods of the sea.” When the ark reached its appointed destination, the people of that land would receive “salvation and peace and goodwill from the Father and from the Lord Jesus.”

Several aspects of this account deserve comment and development:

Bensalem’s conversion does not occur through ordinary missionary activity. It results from direct intervention by God, Who has chosen the island for a special benediction. In addition, Bensalem’s conversion occurred shortly after Christ’s Ascension — a period when Christ’s teachings and deeds were vivid in the minds of the apostles. The Christianity of Bensalem, therefore, is pure and unadulterated by the human error and misinterpretation that occur with the passage of time. This is a primary difference between Europe and Bensalem.

The sacred texts available to the Bensalemites are more extensive than those available to European Christianity. So, another contrast between Bensalem and Europe is that Bensalem not only has a pure form of gospel Christianity, it also has a fuller scriptural base to guide it. Moreover, the Bensalemites have evidently been able to preserve the purity of the Christian kerygma and have founded a true Christian kingdom: one that the Europeans likened to Heaven and its inhabitants to angels. Again, the purity of religion in Bensalem stands in contrast to the degenerated Christianity of Europe, where doctrinal disputes and ecclesiastical corruption have contaminated the lifeblood of the faith.

The ark that brings salvation to Bensalem calls to mind the ark that saved Noah and his family from the devastating flood that destroyed all other peoples. An ark is also an integral part of the history of God’s selection of the Hebrews as His chosen people. The culminating event of the Exodus-Sinai experience is Moses’ placement of the God-given law in the Ark of the Covenant, which served as the throne of God’s presence among His chosen people. This ark is, therefore, the most sacred object in Hebrew history, playing a ritual role in the crossing of the Jordan River into the Promised Land, the establishment of the Davidic-Solomonic kingship, and in the consecration of Jerusalem as the seat of religious and political order. The ark functions similarly in the account of Bensalem’s conversion, where it is a prime symbol of the special election of the Bensalemites as God’s new chosen people. Perhaps this is why the country is named Bensalem (heir of peace or inheritor of Jerusalem’s renown). The name also establishes a parallel with England as the New Jerusalem, a common apocalyptic motif during the reign of James I, who was portrayed as the new Solomon who would install the new Jerusalem.

The choice of Bartholomew as the apostle who receives the vision and sends the ark on its way is also noteworthy in three ways. First, according to tradition, Bartholomew was the great missionary to the remote parts of the world: India, Persia, and Mesopotamia. Second, Bartholomew is the apostle who had a special ability to receive and interpret dreams and revelations. Finally, tradition holds that Bartholomew was the author of two non-canonical works: “The Gospel of Bartholomew” and “The Book of the Resurrection of Christ,” both of which contain accounts of Christ’s Resurrection, harrowing of Hell, and rescue of Adam. Bartholomew is thus another important symbol of a pure religion capable of healing the ruptured union with God and recovering humanity’s condition prior to the Fall.

These symbols and episodes of providential rescue refer to an entire people or nation, not a few select individuals. The Pillar of Cloud and the Ark are symbols of the selection of the Hebrews as God’s chosen people. Adam, as his name indicates, represents humanity. Even Jonah’s rescue is a prelude to the conversion of the people of Nineveh. Within the “New Atlantis,” salvation also comes to the entire nation. And the European sailors, in the context of this utopia, are representative of European society as the whole.

The function of the member of Solomon’s House is important to note and to understand properly. Though this appearance is brief, it establishes Solomon’s House as the interpreter of both natural and supernatural or divine events. So from the first, Solomon’s House is presented in a religious context, not as a secular, scientific think tank. The description of the activities of Solomon’s House, provided in a later interview, makes it clear that the Brethren study the Creation in order to better understand God. Theirs is a pious search for the benefits in nature provided by the divine. Howard White is wrong, therefore, when he says that the ability to interpret the miracle only serves to grant “power over miracles to the wise men of Solomon’s House” and means “control of natural philosophy over theology.” The wise man is not a secular scientist able to command the supernatural to obey; he is devoted to the search for truth in its natural and its supernatural forms. The demeanor of the member of Solomon’s House is reverent: He prays to God to reveal the meaning of a supernatural event that he is able to recognize as a miracle, but which he cannot interpret without divine revelation.

The role of the wise man in the episode is also important in coming to understand why Bensalem was chosen for this special benediction. Christian revelation comes to the land because the Bensalemites already believed in an all-knowing, all-powerful God; they devoted efforts to studying both the natural and the divine and were able to distinguish the two. That the ark comes to Bensalem is, therefore, not a result of accident or caprice. God selects Bensalem because it is capable of receiving and perpetuating a pure form of gospel Christianity.

The account of the island’s conversion establishes parallels between the experience of the Bensalemites and those who first received the good news of Christ’s birth. The community that first sees the hierophany is called “Renfusa,” or sheep people. The person on the ship who is able to interpret the miracle is a wise man. This parallels the miraculous announcement of the birth of the Messiah to the shepherds and to the Magi. White chooses to associate the name of the community with gullibility, and Laurence Lampert claims that Renfusa is evidence that “Christianity was introduced by a wise scientist as an instrument to lead the sheep.” But these interpretations are difficult to maintain or support when the reference to Renfusa is read in relation to the other symbols and motifs associated with the conversion of Bensalem.

Why Bensalem Remains Hidden

During the second interview with the Governor of the Strangers’ House, the Europeans ask why such a great civilization has chosen to remain hidden from the rest of humanity, while it obviously knows about all other existing civilizations, including Europe. The Governor begins his answer with an account of ancient history virtually unknown to the Europeans. In the distant past, worldwide navigation and commerce were commonplace, until disrupted by natural catastrophe. The only vestige of the golden age known to the Europeans is in Plato’s account of the glorious civilization of Atlantis, which was destroyed by earthquake and flood as punishment for its avarice and will to power. According to the Governor’s account, the early history of navigation was far more advanced than even the impressive recent accomplishments of the Europeans. In the ancient past, many great civilizations sailed to the farthest regions of the world and carried on trade with Bensalem and its neighbor Atlantis. This period was brought to an end by earthquakes and floods that “Divine Revenge” used to punish Atlantis for its proud enterprises. These calamities devastated the country, the people, and the great civilization that they had created. Human civilization was never fully able to recover following these catastrophes; the civilization of Atlantis left only the primitive culture of America and the New World. “So you see,” the Governor explains, “by this main accident of time, we lost our traffic with the Americans.... As for the other parts of the world, it is most manifest that in the ages following (whether it were in respect of wars, or by a natural revolution of time) navigation did every where greatly decay; and specially far voyages.”

This account explains how other civilizations had been cut off from Bensalem and how knowledge of its greatness had been lost to the rest of the world. It does not explain, however, why Bensalem chose to keep its existence secret even though it was in contact with other nations. To give an adequate explanation requires the Governor to discuss the policies of the great king Solamona and his creation of Solomon’s House. The Governor explains that about 1,900 years earlier the Bensalemite king Solamona decided that his nation was far superior to all others in every way and could not benefit from direct intercourse with them. His country was wholly self-sufficient, morally upright, and could be “a thousand ways altered to the worse, but scarce any one way to the better” from traffic with other civilizations. For this reason, he took steps to prevent the influx of customs and ideas from inferior nations. One of his steps was to offer to allow all foreign travelers to take up residence in Bensalem rather than return to their own countries. The Governor reports that this policy had been followed ever since and only thirteen individuals ever chose to leave during the 1,900-year span. As a result, almost nothing has been reported back to other nations in two millennia; and the few reports that were made were dismissed as fantasy because the quality of life in Bensalem seemed to be an improbable delusion.

King Solamona also prohibited his subjects from leaving to prevent them from revealing too much or from becoming corrupted by what they encountered abroad. Only members of Solomon’s House are sent on secret reconnaissance missions. The purpose of these trips is to gather information about other nations, especially the “sciences, arts, manufacturers, and inventions of all the world; and withal to bring unto us books, instruments, and patterns in every kind.” The Governor makes it clear that the purpose of these efforts is not to acquire “gold, silver, or jewels; nor for silks; nor for spices; nor any other commodity of matter; but only for God’s first creature, which was Light.” The Governor explains that King Solamona created Solomon’s House to “find out the true nature of all things; (whereby God might have the more glory in the workmanship of them, and men the more fruit in the use of them).” This parenthetic statement links the pious study of the Creation and devotion to the Creator with the discovery of the benefits God placed in nature for humanity’s use. As we will see, Bacon repeatedly warns that humanity cannot gain the benefits in nature without proper piety.

The Governor next explains that the name Solomon’s House is inspired by the biblical Solomon’s reputation for wisdom; but the Governor adds that Bensalem possessed Solomon’s Natural History, a text which was lost to the Europeans. This text held special knowledge of the workings of nature, which Solomon’s House used as the foundation of its remarkable work.

Following his description of the founding of the House of Solomon, and of the reconnaissance missions of its members, the Governor offers to help the Europeans return to their country or to allow them to stay in Bensalem. The Europeans enthusiastically accept the offer to stay. This account introduces or reinforces several critical themes:

Atlantis is destroyed by the gods because of its drive to expand its empire through conquest and world domination. This libido dominandi stands in stark contrast to Bensalem, which is characterized as an embodiment of the cardinal Christian virtues of faith, charity, peace, and justice. Even after the series of natural disasters, which weakened or destroyed other civilizations, Bensalem does not seize the opportunity to invade lands and enslave their inhabitants. Instead, it chooses to withdraw in order to live in peace.

While Atlantis used navigation and exploration for material gain, Bensalem seeks knowledge that it can use for the welfare of its people.

The activities of Solomon’s House have theological as well as scientific dimensions. The study of nature, which brings practical benefits, is also a study of the Creation in order to know the Creator. In addition, the account of the conversion of Bensalem to Christianity makes it clear that the members of Solomon’s House are able to discern the miraculous from the natural.

This episode contains another reference to sacred texts unknown or lost to Europe, and these texts play an essential role in the well-being of the nation and its people.

It is important to recognize that the age of Solamona and the founding of Solomon’s House occur before the conversion to Christianity. The island, therefore, is already devoted to the spiritual and material well-being of its inhabitants. Perhaps this is why it is chosen by God for a “special benediction.”

In the discussion of the conversion to Christianity, reference was made to Bartholomew and the two writings attributed to him, which described Christ’s harrowing of Hell and rescue of Adam. Before the Fall, humanity had dominion over nature and was able to draw from Creation all of the benefits that God had placed in it. The work of Solomon’s House reflects this prelapsarian condition in which humanity has mastery over nature and is able to create paradisiacal conditions.

Finally, it is important to note that Bensalem is the only civilization that has been spared devastation. Neither natural catastrophes nor the ravages of war have interrupted its history. It is able to preserve ancient truth and build upon it rather than being reduced to an primitive state of subsistence living and intellectual poverty.

These themes need further investigation in order to understand how they contribute to Bacon’s concept of instauration. But three other episodes need to be examined first: the “Feast of the Family” ceremony, the meeting with Joabin, and the audience with a Father from Solomon’s House.

The Feast of the Family

As already noted, the Europeans readily accept the Governor’s invitation to become citizens. They move about the country in an attempt to learn more about its customs and practices, and soon they have the opportunity to observe the Feast of the Family ceremony. The account of the Feast of the Family serves primarily as a model to juxtapose to the pervasive disorder in European society, a theme which is taken up again during the Europeans’ meeting with Joabin. Briefly, the stated purpose of the ceremony is to honor the patriarch of a family, who has supplied the king with many subjects. The celebration is thus a ritual affirmation of the abundance and prosperity of the country. More than fecundity is being celebrated, however. The ceremony stresses the patriarch’s role as the source of order, justice, and moral instruction within the family and by extension within the nation as a whole. The patriarch’s first ceremonial duty, for example, is to resolve any conflict within the family before the actual celebration can begin. Moreover, the honor accorded the patriarch is proportional to the success of his children as productive, responsible citizens of the state. That the moral dimension of family life is central to the ceremony and to the well-being of the country is made clear in the discussion with Joabin. This discussion begins when the European narrator asks Joabin if polygamy is practiced in Bensalem (since it is obvious that the country honors large families). “I desired to know of him what laws and customs they had concerning marriage; and whether they kept marriage well; and whether they were tied to one wife? For that where population is so much affected [desired] and such as with them it seemed to be, there is commonly permission of plurality of wives.”

Joabin replies that the marital bond is the nucleus of familial and social order in Bensalem and that the people are not given to passion or sexual excess: “there are no stews [brothels], no dissolute houses, no courtesans, nor any thing of that kind.” He adds, however, that his familiarity with the deplorable condition of European society allows him to understand how such a question might be the paramount interest and logical assumption of the Europeans. “They [the Bensalemites] say ye have put marriage out of office: for marriage is ordained the remedy for unlawful concupiscence; and natural concupiscence seemeth as a spur to marriage. But when men have at hand a remedy more agreeable to their corrupt will, marriage is almost expulsed.” This passage is followed by a scathing criticism of libidinal immorality in Europe that has destroyed the family, the desire for children, and the orderly social life that emerges from a stable family. The disorder resulting from libidinal corruption in individuals is compounded by misguided social customs and laws. In order to prevent the greater evils of adultery, the deflowering of virgins, and unnatural lust, society permits “change and the delight in meretricious embracements.” Such compromises and accommodations, however, are destined to fail. According to Joabin, lust is like a furnace: If you stop the flames altogether, it will go out, “but if you give it any vent, it will rage.” He then asserts that vice and corrupt appetites reflect a profound disorder of the soul that obstructs religious and moral instruction, and without a firm moral and religious base, no society can endure. The analysis here is restricted to the most literal meaning of the text. We shall see later that Bacon repeatedly uses the “marriage” image in reference to the productive union of the mind with nature. This image is contrasted to the sterile state when men become obsessed with their intellectual creations.

Joabin the Jew

The exchange between Joabin and the Europeans is interrupted by a messenger who has come to tell Joabin that a Father of Solomon’s House is going to visit the city and Joabin is needed to help make suitable arrangements. Although Joabin appears only briefly, his role in Bacon’s parable is crucial. The references to Solomon’s House and Joabin’s name provide the principal clue to his role in Bacon’s parable. The stem of Joabin’s name is Joab. The biblical Joab was one of King David’s generals, whose most important role was in retrieving the Ark of the Covenant from the Philistines. As we have already noted, the Ark of the Covenant is the prime symbol of the Hebrews election as God’s special people. The Ark’s recovery and subsequent placement in the Temple were essential elements of the establishment of Jerusalem as a religious and political center for the Jewish people. So there is a direct connection between the biblical Joab, Jerusalem, and Solomon’s Temple. Joabin also has a key function in Bensalem and an important tie to the activities of Solomon’s House. These equivalences of symbolization augment the earlier discussion of King Solamona and reinforce other symbols that associate Bensalem with God’s chosen people and the New Jerusalem.

Joabin’s connection with other key themes in “New Atlantis” is found in his account of the ancestry of the Bensalemites. According to Joabin, the people of Bensalem are descended from Abraham and their laws were given by Moses. The descent from Abraham is supposed to come from his son Nachoran. Joabin’s statement, therefore, provides a further link of the Bensalemites to a biblical benediction (Abraham is described elsewhere in “New Atlantis” as “Father of the faithful”). The reference to Moses includes the statement that he “by a secret cabala ordained the laws of Bensalem which they now use.” The political order of Bensalem, therefore, is founded on God’s law. But the law available to Bensalem extends beyond the Old Testament. It includes the secret teachings revealed to Moses during the 40 days on Mount Sinai. While Joabin speaks specifically of the Cabala in relation to political law, mention of the Cabala reinforces the discussion of Solomon’s Natural History: From the Middle Ages into the Renaissance there was a widespread tradition that the secret teachings given to Moses were preserved in the Ark of the Covenant and transmitted to Solomon.

This complex of symbolic linkages between Bensalem and Jerusalem, Solomon’s Temple, and Solomon’s House is further augmented by the initial description of Joabin as a Jew unlike those in Europe. The chief difference between the Jews of Bensalem and the Jews of Europe is that the Bensalemite Jews expect that the coming of the Messiah will usher in a New Jerusalem or a Kingdom of God on earth, and they expect that the king of Bensalem, as a representative of a people who have received a special benediction, will sit on the right hand of the enthroned messiah. Joabin’s function, therefore, is to set the stage for the discussion of Solomon’s House by introducing symbolic linkages between Solomon’s House and Solomon’s Temple. Joabin also serves as a representative of a pure form of Judaism, which complements Bensalem’s pure form of Christianity. Joabin’s pure form of Judaism follows the traditions of Abraham and Moses, respects Christianity, and waits for the Messiah, who will deliver His chosen people from spiritual and temporal disorder. Joabin’s identification of Bensalem as a chosen people, whose king will sit on the right hand of God, reinforces the emphasis on piety, charity, faith, and good works as the traits of God’s chosen people. God’s “chosen” do not belong to a specific ethnic group. They are those who attempt to live under the Old and New Covenants.

The Father of Solomon’s House

Shortly after Joabin is called away to assist with the arrival of the Father from Solomon’s House, the narrator gives a detailed description of the pomp and ceremony surrounding the Father’s entry into the city. The people crowd the streets to catch a glimpse of this high-level state official, who is surrounded by religious paraphernalia. His attendants, for example, carry a crosier, a symbol of ecclesiastical authority, and a staff, a symbol of pastoral function. Moreover, his demeanor is clearly ecclesiastical — he “held up his bare hand as he went, as blessing the people.” Because the Europeans have heard about and seen how highly the Brethren are valued, they are anxious for an opportunity to gain an audience, and Joabin is able to make the arrangements. This interview is the climactic episode of “New Atlantis.”

When the Europeans enter, the Father greets them with a gesture of blessing, and they kneel to kiss the hem of his robe (as they have been instructed). The Father then provides an extended account of the purpose, the activities, and the contributions of Solomon’s House. The purpose is first succinctly stated: “The End of our Foundation is the knowledge of Causes and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.” A detailed description of the investigation of the natural world then follows: from caves to mountain observatories to marine investigations. These investigations produce a breadth and depth of knowledge beyond anything imagined in Europe. But these investigations are only the preliminary stage. The intent is to use them to improve the human condition through the improvement of existing orders and to create new phenomena. Experiments in the Lower Region, for example, produce new artificial metals, which are used for curing diseases. There is also a “great variety of composts, and of soils, for the making of the earth fruitful.” There are also a number of artificial wells and fountains, including one called Water of Paradise, which was created by the brethren “for health and the prolongation of life.” The Father further indicates that “we have also large and various orchards and gardens ... [and] make them also by art greater much than their nature; and their fruit greater and sweeter.... And many of them we so order as they become of medicinal use.” The Father also explains that Solomon’s House has apothecaries, centers for the mechanical arts, furnaces, laboratories for light, acoustics, as well as houses for the study and exposure of deceit, impostures, and illusions.

The Father next explains the duties or offices of the various members, which include advancing the practical aspects of research, developing new theoretical insights, and producing new products and inventions that benefit the nation. The Europeans are told that Solomon’s House guards its work carefully and takes pains to prevent the government or the citizenry from obtaining information that might be misunderstood or misused. This last statement — along with the earlier statement that foreign travel is restricted to members of Solomon’s House — has prompted extensive comment by White, Weinberger, Boesky, and others, who see these practices as further evidence of totalitarian state control or evidence of the creation of scientists as a new political-intellectual elite, who are able to provide creature comforts to the citizens and produce political order and stability for political rulers. Such interpretations fail to take into account Bacon’s concept of human nature, which is based upon the concept of Original Sin. Since the Fall, humans are prone to being self-centered and inclined to become preoccupied with material concerns. Only the members of Solomon’s House have attained the level of spiritual discipline to overcome this materialistic preoccupation and use the rich benefits to be derived from God’s Creation for charitable purposes.

The Father ends by describing daily religious observances intended, evidently, to remind the brethren of their religious and moral obligations to use their God-given wisdom prudently: “We have certain hymns and services, which we say daily, of laud, and thanks to God for his marvellous works: and forms of prayers, imploring his aid and blessing for the illumination of our labours, and the turning of them into good and holy uses.” Here is another instance where Bacon associates knowledge of nature with piety and charity, which Bacon contrasts to the sins of pride and selfishness. Shortly after the statement that “we do also declare natural divinations of diseases, plagues, swarms of harmful creatures, scarcity, tempests, earthquakes, great inundations, comets and (etc.),” the text breaks off.

This account of the collective efforts to advance the theoretical and practical applications of the study of nature is the reason some scholars describe Solomon’s House as a model for the Royal Society. But the analysis offered here demonstrates that Bacon presents Solomon’s House after establishing a context of religious imagery of salvation, deliverance, and rehabilitation. We need, therefore, to consider the function of Solomon’s House in relation to these motifs in more detail, especially the motifs of rescue and renewal. More specifically, we need to examine the linkages Bacon establishes between Bensalem’s Solamona and the biblical Solomon and between Solomon’s House and Solomon’s Temple. For it is here that we might discover the true character of Bacon’s concept of instauration.

Solamona and Solomon’s House

We should begin by recalling the Governor’s account of King Solamona and his founding of Solomon’s House:

There reigned in this island, about nineteen hundred years ago, a King whose memory of all others we most adore; not superstitiously, but as a divine instrument, though a mortal man; his name was Solamona: and we esteem him as the lawgiver of our nation. This king had a large heart, inscrutable for good; and was wholly bent to make his kingdom and people happy.... [A]mongst the excellent acts of that king, one above all hath the preeminence. It was the erection and institution of an Order or Society which we call Salomon’s House; the noblest foundation (as we think) that ever was upon the earth; and the lanthorn of this kingdom. It is dedicated to the study of the Works and Creatures of God. Some think it beareth the founder’s name a little corrupted, as if it should be Solamona’s House. But the records write it as it is spoken. So as I take it to be denominate of the King of the Hebrews, which is famous with you, and no stranger to us. For we have some parts of his works which with you are lost; namely, that Natural History which he wrote, of all plants, from the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall, and of all things that have life and motion. (emphasis added)

The first notable feature of this account is the connection between Solamona’s “large heart,” that is, his piety and charity, and the establishment of Solomon’s House. Bacon’s reference to Solamona’s “large heart” evokes the use of the phrase in I Kings 4:29 to describe Solomon. According to the text, Solomon found favor with God and God offered to grant him any wish. Solomon asked for wisdom in order to be able to rule his kingdom with intelligence and compassion. The request pleased God and it was granted. God also gave Solomon great material wealth as well. The biblical reference to a “large heart” is augmented in the Governor’s account of Solamona’s reign, describing the king’s devotion to making his kingdom and his people happy and to perpetuating peace and prosperity. This emphasis on the benevolence of the king also defines his kingship in terms of the primary Christian virtue: charity. “New Atlantis” makes it clear that benevolence and charity are the motives for Solamona’s establishing Solomon’s House. It is referred to several times as “the lanthorn of the kingdom,” providing enlightenment and prosperity; enlightenment encompasses religious knowledge as well as philosophical knowledge of the workings of nature that can be applied for the benefit of humanity. Scholars who are determined to portray Bacon as an advocate of imperialism and colonization continue to overlook the Solomonic model of political order that is so obvious here and in Bacon’s other writings.

Solomon’s House and Bacon’s Instauration

While Bacon uses biblical descriptions of Solomon’s piety and charity to link Solamona’s kingship with the Hebrew King, he significantly modifies the conventional notions of Solomonic wisdom. The famous biblical account of the judgment of Solomon accents the psychological insight that allowed him to understand his subjects and to rule them justly. In “New Atlantis,” Bacon associates Solomonic wisdom with his understanding of the workings of nature, and the Governor claims that Bensalem possesses a copy of Solomon’s Natural History; and its ongoing work advances the knowledge it contains. There is, of course, no mention of this Natural History in the biblical accounts. Bacon makes the biblical connection by quoting fragments from the biblical description of Solomon’s knowledge of the natural order: “of all plants, from the cedar of Libanus to the moss that groweth out of the wall, and of all things that have life and motion.” Bacon connects Solomonic knowledge to charity and piety; the work of Solomon’s House brings relief to “man’s estate” and demonstrates the love and mercy of the Creator.

The transformation of the attributes of Solomonic wisdom is complemented by transformation of the Solomonic Temple into Solomon’s House. Charles Whitney has provided the most penetrating study of this transformation, and has shown how the references to the biblical Solomon and to the appropriation of the Solomonic Temple are tied to Bacon’s concept of instauration. As Whitney explains, the Vulgate edition of the Bible created a typology that centered on the apocalyptic motif of the rebuilding of the Temple of Jerusalem. Because the Temple held the Ark of the Covenant, it stood as a symbol of God’s presence among the Hebrews and associated the kingdom with religious piety and justice. It also identified the kingdom as the agency for both God’s justice and His mercy. The kingdom reached its zenith during the reign of Solomon, when the Hebrews enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and freedom from religious or political interference by neighboring powers. After Solomon, however, the Hebrew nation was overrun and lost its political autonomy and religious freedom. In 624 B.C., pressure from neighboring powers waned, and the young king Josiah was able to institute political and religious reforms, including rebuilding of the Temple. During reconstruction, the Temple’s Mosaic Law (the Deuteronomic Code) was rediscovered, and this crucial recovery was interpreted as the beginning of a renewed covenant with God. The biblical account makes it clear that the project of rebuilding was understood as providentially guided and signaled the restoration of God’s relation to the people. The term used in the Vulgate for the rebuilding is instauro, which has the dual meaning of building up (construction) and rebuilding.

Whitney demonstrates that Bacon uses the notion of instauration as no previous author had, making it the root symbol for his program. Moreover, according to Whitney, Bacon employs the connotation of building or rebuilding as edification or re-edification. The word edifice and its derivatives can denote a physical structure or can refer to the building up or construction of knowledge (edification). Bacon chooses to emphasize the latter. For him, instauration depends upon a recovery of knowledge that clears away accumulated epistemological errors and re-establishes a proper foundation. This notion of instauration is developed in “New Atlantis” by utilizing the dual meaning of edifice and edification. King Solamona builds an edifice — Solomon’s House — that is responsible for rebuilding and advancing knowledge (edification).

According to Whitney, Bacon’s emphasis on the revitalization of natural philosophy, that is, the rebuilding of Solomon’s House, displaces the biblical notion of a spiritual recovery and advance represented by the apocalyptic motif of the rebuilding of Solomon’s Temple. But this is incorrect: “New Atlantis” does not depict Solomon’s House as a displacement of Solomon’s Temple; it presents it as its complement. In “New Atlantis” Bacon several times demonstrates the importance of purified religion as a spiritual basis for the well-being of the people and associates it with providential action on behalf of the people. Bacon does not dismiss or displace the idea of spiritual renewal; indeed, regulation of gospel Christianity was one of his principal concerns. He chooses, however, to emphasize what for him is an equally important part of recovery or rebuilding: to rebuild natural philosophy so that human beings can recover the benefits God instilled in Creation. The description of Solomon’s House makes it clear that its first pursuit is light. Light as enlightenment is a basic religious motif, and Bacon never changes its religious connotation. At the same time, natural philosophy leads not only to reverence for God and God’s Creation but also provides practical insights into how to relieve human suffering and improve the human condition. While others stress the need for spiritual regeneration, Bacon emphasizes the need for the complementary instauration of knowledge.

While the symbolic ties between Solomon’s Temple and Solomon’s House are the key to understanding Bacon’s concept of instauration, they do not explain how Bacon’s instauration of knowledge involves recovery and rebuilding in the way that the apocalyptic dream of rebuilding Solomon’s Temple does. To adequately develop this concept requires an examination of the Governor’s account of the prehistory of Bensalem and Atlantis, an episode that has been largely ignored by most scholars.

The Prehistory of Civilization

According to the Governor, Bensalem, Atlantis, and civilizations from the far-flung corners of the world carried out a mutual exchange of learning and material goods, while living in peace. A series of cataclysms destroyed the other great civilizations and left most nations in an infantile state, having lost all records of their previous greatness and all ability to restore themselves to their former condition. Not only were the civilizations reduced to infancy and the memory of their own past greatness eclipsed, they also forgot about the other great civilizations as well. Consequently, Bensalem, the only civilization to be spared, chooses to remain obscure; the country has nothing to gain and much to lose by making itself known to the rest of the world. As previously noted, the island does continue to monitor developments in other countries throughout the world and brings back any information that can be used by Bensalem. The most learned and incorruptible inhabitants of Bensalem, the members of Solomon’s House, carry out these expeditions in secret, however.

In recounting these remarkable events, the Bensalemite official notes that the only records of the great primeval age available to the Europeans are the brief references in the work of “one of your philosophers.” The allusion is to Plato’s discussion of the golden age of Athens and to the demise of the great sea-going empire, Atlantis, found in the Timaeus and the Critias. As Plato retells in recounting the fate of Athens and other countries, “your people and the others are but newly equipped, every time, with letters and all such arts as civilized States require; and when, after the usual interval of years, like a plague, the flood from heaven comes sweeping down afresh upon your people, it leaves none but you the unlettered and uncultured so that you become young as ever, with no knowledge of all that happened in old times in this land or in your own.”

The purpose of the Platonic accounts of the fate of Atlantis and of a golden age virtually lost from memory is made clear in the opening dialogue of the Timaeus. The participants in the dialogue are discussing the best form of society. Their intent is to limit the discussion to actually existing societies, not unattainable ideal states. But the dialogue makes it clear that the historical horizon has to be expanded beyond the immediate past. The present age is not one in which humanity has realized its full potential. It is a period of iron, not gold. In the Platonic dialogues, it is evident that the primary difference between the primordial golden age and the current state of degeneration lies in the eclipse of knowledge of the divine and in the loss of the skills of divination, medicine, engineering, agriculture, and navigation. In the Platonic context, then, it is clear that an essential requirement for recovering the capacity for human excellence lies in re-attaining the original, pure forms of knowledge. The two Platonic myths, taken together, give an account of the creation of the cosmos and the primordial age before man’s hubris led to corruption and degeneration. After the cosmos is created, the gods amicably divide the territories. Athena, for example, becomes the patroness of Athens, and Poseidon becomes the patron of Atlantis. The human race that the gods create is a combination of divine spirit and matter. The gods’ gifts to the human race include an idyllic world, and human beings have dominion over all terrestrial things. Using their god-given abilities, they are able to accomplish great feats of engineering and navigation. The Atlantans, as the children of Poseidon, were especially accomplished navigators. But the idyllic age is destroyed when the material aspect of human nature gained prominence. The predominance of the material leads to avarice and to the will to dominate and control, and Atlantis uses its navigational skills to subjugate other civilizations. According to the Critias, the hubris of Atlantis is brought to an end by the gods. Zeus, the god of justice, calls a council of the gods to decide on a proper punishment. This punishment must be severe enough to end Atlantis’s marauding, but it is not to be so severe as to annihilate Atlantis. The text states that Atlantis can be brought back again at some future date. White has incorrectly characterized this ending speech by Zeus as being about destruction. In fact, Zeus is the minister of justice and is responsible for the restoration of order. The Atlantans have violated their place in the order of things and that order has to be restored by the gods. The emphasis is not on destruction; it is on the restoration of order. And the punishment is not to be a total destruction. While order must be restored in the present, Atlantis will have an opportunity to rise again in the future. This promise of restoration perhaps explains why Bacon chooses to call his text “New Atlantis.”

Perhaps Bacon uses the myth of Atlantis and the promise or restoration (instauration) to complement the prevalent apocalyptic theme in England of the re-establishing of Jerusalem. While James I exploited the political elements of the idea of a renewal of the Solomonic kingdom, the primary association was with religious renewal. And, as we have noted, Bacon regarded the renewal of natural philosophy as the necessary complement to the religious renewal that was underway. Bacon apparently wishes to augment the apocalyptic religious images associated with the New Jerusalem with the prospects of the renewal of Atlantis. Atlantis was known for its engineering and navigation, and its great accomplishments in these areas reflected its wise use of the gifts the gods had provided. Atlantis only declined after it fell away from divine intent and became dominated by material concerns. Its renewal would be allowed by the gods, once Atlantis had come to recognize the errors of its ways and had returned to a spiritual state. Perhaps Bacon intends to suggest that England’s spiritual renewal coupled with his reform of knowledge will permit it to emulate the engineering and navigational feats of Atlantis; therefore, England can become the new Atlantis. And, of course, a chastened Atlantis would also greatly resemble Bensalem. If this is Bacon’s intent, then it might also explain why Bacon leaves his story incomplete. Bacon is proposing that England continue its emphasis on religious recovery and begin the recovery of natural philosophy. Whether this will be done or not is out of Bacon’s hands. It will depend on whether or not James I is like Solomon and Solamona and will choose to implement the pious study of nature in order to draw from Creation the benefits that God has provided.

There are, of course, significant differences in Bacon’s uses of the myth of a primordial age of human excellence and those of Plato. The focus of the Platonic dialogue is on the development of right political order. Bacon’s interest in political order and disorder is secondary. His utopia makes it clear that political order derives from right religion and the proper study of nature. One of the biggest obstructions to the recovery of right knowledge — in Bacon’s view — is the misplaced reverence for Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. Through the Platonic dialogues and Bacon’s own account of the prehistory of the world, we are shown that the period of Greek civilization valued by the Europeans is not an age of wisdom and high civilizational attainment. It is a period of infancy or childhood following on natural calamities. Most efforts were necessarily devoted to subsistence living; and once a civilization was stable enough to devote itself to considerations of political order and justice or to the study of the natural order, it would have little or no frame of reference, because the records of the great achievements of the past had been lost. Bacon makes this point in “New Atlantis” by having the Governor of the House of Strangers tell them first that there are Scriptures and ecclesiastical traditions that are not available in Europe, and then he tells them that Bensalem possesses Solomon’s natural history which is unknown in Europe. Moreover, his description of the activities of Solomon’s House clearly do not follow Platonic or Aristotelian methods of investigation and deduction. They are based upon more ancient and purer forms of philosophy. The significance of the ancient wisdom for the (re)building of knowledge is presented in Bacon’s Wisdom of the Ancients of 1609, which augments the primordial history of Atlantis and Bensalem. By examining the key themes in this work, we can more fully understand Bacon’s description of the work of Solomon’s House and how the recovery of ancient wisdom relates to Bacon’s instauration of natural philosophy.

Ancient Wisdom and the Instauration of Knowledge

In the preface to Wisdom of the Ancients, Bacon explains that the fables of Homer and Hesiod “must be regarded as neither being the inventions nor belonging to the age of the poets themselves, but as sacred relics and light airs breathing out of better times, that were caught from the traditions of more ancient nations and so received into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks.” The problem is that their true meaning has been lost, obscured, or distorted over time; and previous generations have been unqualified to interpret them. Bacon’s purpose, therefore, is to re-present the fables and give them their proper interpretation. For the present purpose, our discussion can be confined to the fable of Orpheus, which is for Bacon the story of the decline of philosophy as it descends from the natural philosophy of the ancient wisemen to moral and civil philosophy and finally to a state of almost total disintegration. In its pristine state, according to Bacon, “natural philosophy proposes to itself as its noblest work of all, nothing less than the restitution and renovation [instauratio] of things corruptible, and (what is indeed the same thing in a lower degree) the conservation of bodies in the state in which they are, and the retardation of dissolution and putrefaction.” The effort at retardation, however, means arduous labor, and failure leads to frustration and to the adoption of the easier task — the management of human affairs through moral and civil philosophy. This stage of philosophy remains stable for a while, but it too declines with the passage of time, and moral and civil laws are put to silence. And if such troubles last, Bacon warns, “it is not for long before letters also and philosophy are so torn in pieces that no traces of them can be found but a few fragments, scattered here and there.” When philosophy and civilization reach this low point, barbarism sets in and disorder prevails “until, according to the appointed vicissitude of things, they break out and issue forth again, perhaps among other nations, and not in the places where they were before.”

Three elements of this Baconian fable are worthy of emphasis. The pure, original philosophy takes as its task the restitution and renovation of things corruptible. This god-given ability is lost through the lack of human effort and will. The decline, however, is not permanent. According to “the appointed vicissitude of things” — which is to say, providential intervention — true philosophy will return, and humanity will be restored to its primordial condition, but not necessarily in the place it originated.

With this brief discussion of Bacon’s fable of the degeneration of the original, pure form of philosophy in mind, we can now better understand the activities of Solomon’s House as the preservation and perpetuation of natural philosophy in its original, pure form. The investigations of Solomon’s House are aimed at finding “the knowledge of Causes, and secret motions of things”; they produce new artificial metals, which are used for curing diseases, and blended mineral waters created by the brethren “for health and prolongation of life.” The activities of Solomon’s House are reminiscent of Bacon’s accounts in Wisdom of the Ancients of the original, pure philosophy used to retard age, prolong life, and restore corruptible things to their original, pure state.

This emphasis on the restitution of health and the prolongation of life runs throughout “New Atlantis,” and no function of Solomon’s House appears to be more important. The European sailors who are sick are given a fruit with remarkable restorative properties; it causes the sick to think that they had been “cast into some Divine Pool of healing.” White and others see this emphasis on “prolonging life” and drawing other benefits from nature as evidence of Bacon’s materialism and secularism. It is more accurate to see these results as evidence that the reverent study of nature by Solomon’s House allows them to overcome the alienation from God and nature that is the consequence of Original Sin. The Brethren understand nature and are able to enjoy the benefits God intended humanity to possess. This return to Eden is a result of the spiritual quest that has purged the members of Solomon’s House of pride (the cause of the Fall) and the pious devotion to God that has prompted them to “love the neighbor as the self.”

In addition, the reference to Solomon’s Natural History seems to allude to a Jewish esoteric tradition in which Solomon was not only wise in the way described in the Biblical accounts, he also possessed a deep understanding of the mysteries of the Creation. Several variations of this tradition were fairly widely known in the early modern period. In one version, the original esoteric knowledge is given to Adam but lost through the Fall. Another version has the knowledge given to Moses on Mount Sinai and placed in the Ark of the Tabernacle, where it was accessible only to the High Priest. The Ark and then later Solomon’s Temple became a center for communing with the powers and principalities governing the world. The work of Solomon’s House, then, is clearly in accord with both the “pagan” tradition of a pure ancient wisdom and with the Jewish esoteric traditions associating Solomon and Solomon’s Temple with cabalistic knowledge.

The Dimensions of Instauration

Taken as a whole, “New Atlantis” presents a two-fold view or description of instauration. One is represented by Bensalem and involves a spiritual rejuvenation. The other is a recovery of natural philosophy represented by the work of Solomon’s House and by Atlantis before it became corrupted. Bacon chooses to stress the latter in his utopia because he was concerned that the recovery or instauration of natural philosophy was being overlooked. For Bacon, the instauration of knowledge or the building of Solomon’s House was as important to creating a Solomonic kingdom as was the religious recovery.

It is important to recognize the predominance of these religious motifs in order to understand the full scope of Bacon’s program for a great instauration through the advancement of learning. This program is not a secular or humanistic departure from traditional religion and Solomon’s House is not the prototype for a modern scientific think tank. Careful reading of the full text demonstrates that the activities of Solomon’s House cannot be separated from the underlying themes of providential salvation and deliverance. The aim is to rebuild man’s relation to God and recover the benefits God placed in nature for human beings to enjoy. The work of Solomon’s House is thus tied to the spiritual as well as the material well-being of the people. Reverence toward nature as God’s Creation is essential to derive the benefits from the Creation. The pious study of nature also guards against humanity’s pride and its effort to create its own fantasy world. The Solomonic wisdom alluded to in Solomon’s House is the wisdom of the workings of nature and the ability to use that knowledge for the benefit of humankind.

Yet Bacon’s emphasis on Solomon’s House rather than on Solomon’s Temple reveals the way in which Bacon’s vision of renewal or instauration is unique. The work of Solomon’s House is not a substitute for the work of the Temple; it is the complement to it. Bacon indicates in several other writings that he believes religious reform is underway. What is crucial but lagging is the reform of natural philosophy. This is where Bacon directs his foremost attention. The biblical themes of instauration are reinforced by references to the prehistory of the world before human ignorance and error resulted in divine punishment. This primeval golden age offers another vision of what a well-ordered empire can be, with Atlantis serving as a proper symbol of Bacon’s intent and as a complement to Bensalem. Atlantis also provides an object lesson regarding the need for right religion to guide the efforts of natural philosophy. If pride replaces piety, science and technology will become sterile or self-destructive.

That Bacon sees the two aspects of instauration as complementary is evident in his other writings. In The New Organon, for example, Bacon says that “man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocency and from his dominion over Creation. Both of these losses however can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by arts and sciences.” In The Great Instauration, Bacon urges that “all trial should be made, whether that commerce between the mind of man and the nature of things ... might by any means be restored to its perfect and original condition, [or at least] reduced to a better condition than that in which it now is.” Bacon believed that religious reform could be accomplished through the work of others. It was his special duty to advance the reform of natural philosophy. Both were necessary for the complete instauration of man’s relation to God and his dominion over nature. The complete instauration will overcome the ravages of Original Sin and restore humanity to its prelapsarian condition.

In the end, “New Atlantis” offers a multi-layered analysis of the disorder of the European sailors’ society and then prescribes the necessary cures. The contrast between European nations and Bensalem points to the sources of order and disorder. Both Bensalem and Europe have the benefit of Christian religion. Bensalem’s Christianity is a pure form of gospel Christianity uncorrupted by human ignorance and error. Europe’s Christianity, by contrast, has been distorted and is plagued by philosophical and theological squabbling. Bensalem and Europe also have schools of natural philosophy. Bensalem’s school of natural philosophy is the House of Solomon, which investigates nature in a reverent attempt to discover the benefits placed in creation by a loving God. Europe’s natural philosophy has been marginalized and corrupted by scholastic and philosophical bickering and is dominated by competing schools of thought no longer grounded in empirical investigation of nature. England, nevertheless, has at its disposal the necessary means for utopian reform: a reformed and purified religion and, through Bacon’s efforts, a reformed and revitalized natural philosophy. The two are complementary and each is indispensable for the restitution of humanity to its prelapsarian condition.

The Religious Origins of Modern Science

Because Howard White and others have argued that Bacon’s use of biblical images and religious themes is cynical and transforms a spiritual quest into a material hedonism, it is important to review how religious motifs actually function in the text. Contrary to White’s interpretation, the transformation from the European wanderers’ preoccupation with material concerns to spiritual conversion constitutes the central dramatic action of “New Atlantis.” At the beginning of the story, the Europeans are concerned to be rescued from a storm, and they seek assistance for those who are ill. The Europeans quickly recognize the excellence of the island and are struck by its order and its religion. After they have been allowed to reside in the Strangers’ House, the narrator urges his companions to conduct themselves so that they can earn the respect of the Bensalemites. The more they learn about Bensalem, the more they wish to become residents there. While their initial concern was their physical rescue or well-being, their exposure to the quality of life in Bensalem makes them realize that they have been rescued from personal, social, political, and spiritual disorder and disorientation. Even White acknowledges that the European travelers “not only wish to stay but are somehow made worthy of staying.”

The centrality of religious and spiritual themes is reflected not only in the transformation of the Europeans but also in the persons with whom the Europeans have contact. The Bensalemite official, who boards the European ship, offers Christian charity in the form of provisions and medicines. The first interviews are provided by the Governor of the Strangers’ House, a Christian priest, who responded warmly when the first question from the Europeans concerned the island’s religion. The second set of interviews is given by Joabin and centers around matters of social order and morality, including discussion of Judeo-Christian dreams of installing the Kingdom of God on earth. The final interview is given by a Father of Solomon’s House. He describes the physical and material benefits provided by Solomon’s House, but he also emphasizes that their study is motivated by piety, and he stresses that the ability to discover useful information is dependent on reverence and charity. Indeed, piety and charity are the motivations for founding Solomon’s House in the first place.

It is well known that Bacon repeatedly links the knowledge of nature with the ability to bring relief to man’s estate. Most often this linking is associated with knowledge as power. What is often overlooked is Bacon’s emphasis on charity as the motive for using the knowledge of nature for the benefit of humankind — and, more specifically, the allusion to the biblical Solomon’s reward for his “large heart” and his request for knowledge that can help meet the needs of his people. It is wrong, therefore, to link Bacon to a Faustian exercise of egomaniacal power. The understanding of nature enables humanity to enjoy the blessings that God provided, not simply to conquer the natural world with impiety.

The Temple in Jerusalem was the primary symbol of religious and political order. It housed the Ark of the Covenant, which was the symbol of divine election, and represented the making of the covenant between God and the Hebrews and the giving of the law as the basis for the covenant. One of the greatest instances of Israel’s defeat and humiliation was the profanation of the Temple; and one of its greatest moments of rejuvenation occurred when King Josiah was able to re-establish political independence and to rebuild the Temple. Josiah’s reform did not endure; Israel was again defeated and this time taken into captivity. During the post-exilic time, the apocalyptic yearning for restoration centered on the rebuilding of the Temple, and the Temple remained an apocalyptic symbol through the New Testament period to Bacon’s age. The term used in the Vulgate edition of the Bible for Josiah’s reform and for other messianic or apocalyptic revivals is instauratio. This term is, of course, a key symbol in Bacon’s writings; it signals the shape and direction of the restoration he believes it is his calling to initiate.

When examined carefully, it becomes evident that “New Atlantis” is an intricately constructed literary work permeated with religious themes, including providential deliverance (for both the Europeans and Bensalem), apocalyptic instauration of the Kingdom of God on earth, and the societal embodiment of the cardinal Christian virtues, especially charity. It is not a society of “pleasant things,” as Howard White asserts, nor is it the case, as Denise Albanese claims, that “the references to crosses and oblations, to piety and Christianity, which crowd the earlier pages ... virtually disappeared thereafter.” The primary religious motif of salvation and deliverance is evident from the outset. The European voyagers are tossed off course by a storm and surrounded by darkness. But then they are delivered — like Jonah — to safety. The Europeans describe the island of Bensalem as a land of angels or as the Kingdom of God on earth. The conversion of Bensalem is an act of providential deliverance, suffused with symbols of special election, including the pillar of Cloud and the Ark of the Covenant. These themes are important to understanding Bacon’s real project and for the recovery of the religious origins of modern natural science. For while the hunger to restore humanity’s original place in God’s Creation is surely not the only spur to the modern mastery of nature, the significance of the divine for the birth of empirical science also cannot be avoided or denied.

Stephen A. McKnight is professor emeritus in the department of history at the University of Florida. This essay is adapted from his forthcoming book The Religious Foundations of Francis Bacon’s Thought, with the permission of the University of Missouri Press.

Stephen A. McKnight, "Francis Bacon’s God," The New Atlantis, Number 10, Fall 2005, pp. 73-100.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicati ... bacons-god

Manly P. Hall on Bacon.

The Hymn of Bensalem.

If zionism is a tool, who's wielding it and to what end?

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[vanlose kid]

Another look at the same phenomenon.

REFLECTIONS ON

THE NATURE OF MODERNITY


DAVID WALSH




The question of the nature of modern civilization is the most fundamental one we confront today. Yet it is almost universally neglected by the world of scholarship. There is no specialization concerned with modernity as such, although we have a wealth of studies of its component periods and parts. Whether it is the Baroque or the Enlightenment, Revolution or Renaissance, there is no difficulty in identifying competent studies of the specific epochs. It is only when we wish to comprehend them all together, with a view to unearthing the significance of the modern age as a whole that we come up empty. Part of the blame is attributable to the increasing necessity for historiographic specialization, but surely not all of it. Why, for example, is the search for a theory of modernity not itself a separate field of study? The answer of course lies in great measure in our inability to distance ourselves from the historic unfolding of the age in which we live. Modernity has not yet become a question for scholarship, precisely because our scientific investigations are so much part of it. The assumptions of our world are too deeply imbedded in our scholarship.

This I would suggest is all the more reason for making the effort to break free of the tyranny of conventional perspectives. Without such detachment we run the danger of misreading or misrepresenting the import of the prolific historical studies available to us. So long as we lack a critical context in which to locate the German Peasants' Revolt or the rise of nationalism the objectivity of our studies is vitiated. But of far greater consequence are the dangers that arise for public policy based on such undigested scholarship. If we have misunderstood the essential core of the civilization in which we live then we will continue to develop social and political policies that bear little relation to the magnitude of the problems confronting us. At best the responses are ineffective, at worst they aggravate the disturbances they seek to alleviate. Indeed the elaboration of inappropriate solutions has itself become such a constant that we may regard it as one of the characteristics of modernity.

Unless we wish to continue this pattern it is incumbent upon us to seek the necessary understanding. For it makes all the difference in the world if the movement that has given birth to our civilization is rooted in a disorder of the spirit, or in an advance to autonomous rationality, or in both at the same time. Our response to the problems before us will vary accordingly.

MODERNITY AS SECULARIZED CHRISTIANITY

lt is because this question is of such crucial importance to us that any attempt to confront it, however, imperfect, must be warmly encouraged. In recent years the work of Hans Blumenberg has performed such an invaluable service. His Legitimacy of the Modern Age provided a welcome opportunity for reflection on the issues of civilization.1 Significantly, he framed his reflections as a response to the previous occasion when a searching reconsideration of modernity was undertaken. This was the "crisis" generated by the totalitarian convulsion of the Second World War. It had provoked Karl Löwith and others to develop the thesis that modernity is essentially formed by a secularization of Christian eschatology and cannot be regarded as a movement distinctly different from the preceding spiritual traditions.2

Blumenberg has chosen to oppose this conception by defending the legitimacy of modernity as a sui generis civilizational form. It is not, in his view, necessary to take cognizance of the derivation from Judaism and Christianity in order to understand the modern secular world. Nor is there any clear indication of a progressive redirection of the transcendent impulse of religion toward an intramundane fulfillment. Instead, the rational secular ethos of man's self-assertion, of self-confidence in the exercise of his own autonomous reason, has few historical antecedents.

What there is of quasi-religious extrapolations, e.g. from progress in knowledge toward the ultimate perfection of human nature and the conditions of existence, are merely the residual effect of earlier spiritual forms. The new secular orientation continues to feel the need to occupy the outmoded position of religion and metaphysics. Once we recognize that such attempts are no longer needed they will gradually disappear. We will be left with the essential core of modernity in the autonomous exercise of reason.

Blumenberg's argument has attracted widespread notice and occasional emulation. He has stimulated recent scholars to reflect on the implications of their work for the emerging conception of modernity, or to at least give voice to their previously unspoken assumptions concerning the nature of our world.3 It has also been a godsend for those of us who wish to test critically the received self-understanding of the modern age. So often the difficulty with any examination of conventional wisdom is that it is nowhere coherently articulated. It exists as a pervasive mood or orientation, not as a theoretical statement. Blumenberg remedies this by providing us with the best defense of the uniqueness of modernity that can be cogently constructed. He not only asserts the legitimacy of modern civilization, as a phenomenon to be taken purely on its own terms, but also attempts to forestall the likely objections to this thesis. It is to this latter aspect of his work I would like to direct the focus of this paper.

The dismissal of the opposing evidence, of the continued utilization of religious forms by secular thinkers, is one of the two key elements of Blumenberg's analysis. Much turns on his ability to persuade us that the persistence of spiritual symbolism within a secular world is merely a transitional phenomenon. Once the absence of any need for "occupying" such comprehensive metaphysical positions is recognized, they will evaporate to leave the core of finite rationality behind.

Blumenberg does not deny the influence of religious forms on secular intellectual and political movements. He even acknowledges that the drive to extend the range of man's power arose in reaction to the medieval experience of the omnipotence of God and the contingency of creation. But he nevertheless insists that the quasi-religious trappings bear no essential relation to their content as expressions of human "self-assertion". It is, I hope to show, a difficult if not impossible position to defend.4

The problem is not only the preponderance of evidence concerning the "religious" character of the ideological mass movements, or the extent to which the various "isms" (Communism, Positivism, Racism, Freudianism, Fascism, and so on) function as substitute religions. Much more difficult to sustain is the rejection of the self-understanding of the major thinkers responsible for their creation. Blumenberg has to maintain that they were all mistaken in the interpretation of their own intentions. He and his supporters have to maintain that the thinkers most intimately involved with the formation of a modern mythology, such as the romantic poets or the idealist philosophers, fundamentally misconceived the nature of their project.5 It is not merely enough to express disagreement with their endeavor. Blumenberg et al must demonstrate that it did not truly represent the innermost convictions of the participants themselves. He has to defend his interpretation in the face of explicit disavowals within the materials of his investigation. When Marx or Comte or Nietzsche proclaim the necessity for man to become God, Blumenberg has to maintain that this was not at all what they meant or, if they did, that it was not what they ought to have meant. With thinkers of this stature it is a formidable undertaking.

His task is somewhat easier with the pre-Revolutionary generation of Enlightenment philosophes. Their espousal of deism appears to fit Blumenberg's suggestion of a desire to "reoccupy" the position vacated by traditional Christian theology. As a religion of reason deism eliminated the transcendent and mysterious dimension of faith. Religion becomes the product of finite reason and is intended to serve a utilitarian social role. It is not long, as we know, before the transparent artificiality of this "reoccupation" becomes evident and deism yields to a straightforwardly atheistic rationalism.6 The same may be said of the enlightenment faith in the progress and perfectibility of human nature. It is so clearly a residual continuation of Christian salvation history that it too has little to sustain itself, once the lack of a foundation becomes apparent. A similar fate overtakes the new spiritual movements of the Enlightenment, especially Freemasonry. The Masonic lodges emerge as alternative churches for the social and intellectual elite in the age of reason, but eventually come to function largely as new modes of communal association.7

ln stark contrast to this marginalization of religion is the romantic reaction to the Enlightenment that begins at the end of the eighteenth century. Spiritual symbolism, together with the reality and power behind it, are no longer a residual influence from earlier times. Experiences of the awful and mysterious become the essence of the romantic quest. A change as dramatic as any that have occurred in modern history marks this shift. What had been of ancillary and incidental interest to the enlightenment becomes focal and absorbing concerns to the romantics. Spiritual forms that had been of diminishing significance within the age of reason suddenly became of central concern. Religion across the whole spectrum of its manifestations was no longer a declining cultural influence. The search for spiritual illumination now seemed to displace the light of reason.

lt is the dramatic intensity of this transition that shows it is no mere product of attenuated religious influence. A generation that had grown up with the age of reason and was thoroughly familiar with its achievements had found the entire project sadly deficient. This is not to say that they were unsympathetic to the aspirations of the Enlightenment. They shared the scientific quest for knowledge of nature, and the political quest for emancipation from the shackles of all outmoded authority and tradition. The French Revolution is both an Enlightenment and a romantic phenomenon. But the rising generation had become convinced that reason alone is an insufficient means of accomplishing these goals. A true knowledge of reality and man's true liberation are possible only by undergoing the kind of profound inner transformation that is the result of spiritual illumination. Far from becoming a peripheral element within modernity, a particular form of the religious quest had become its essence.

The drive for specifically spiritual transformation, not a continuation of the Enlightenment program of rational self-interest, became the distinguishing feature of a wide variety of movements. Following the French Revolution the growing consensus concerning the limits of reason had become a commonplace. In part this was a result of the very success of the critical spirit of the Enlightenment; its attention had eventually been

directed toward reason itself. Kant represents the definitive articulation of this philosophy of reason. Reflecting on what he had accomplished through critical philosophy he observed, "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to leave room for faith." In part, too, the return to the spiritual dimension was a response to the failure of the Revolution, its decline into terror and the dictatorship of Napoleon. A widespread perception emerged that it had, after all, been only a political revolution. What was needed was a more profound transformation of human nature. The process had to be completed with a truly spiritual revolution.8

A search for new spiritual forms became the preoccupation of the age. The sheer variety of attempts bears witness to the extent and intensity of the movement. Already within the Revolution there were the various efforts at developing a public cult, from the Cult of Reason, to the Cult of the Supreme Being, and finally Theophilanthropy. Saint-Simon created a new scientistic creed by joining science and Christianity; this form was to receive its most elaborate expression in August Comte's Religion of Humanity. A more pietistic response was contained within the commitment of the Holy Alliance to the principles of Justice, Charity and Peace, as the means of transforming social and political order and resisting the destructive excesses of the Revolution.9

Even the counter-revolutionary movement as represented by de Maistre became a call for the restoration of religious order first; in this case the proposal was for a return to papal theocracy. The influence of Masonic and spiritualist groups is well known in all of these examples, but what is less well recognized is the extent to which the lodges themselves underwent a profound change. From the simpler, more rationalist variety of Masonry that preceded the Revolution, one suddenly encounters the flowering of the more mystical-speculative variety associated with the Scottish-Rite lodges.10 Romanticism itself springs from this search for higher spiritual truths that are inaccessible to reason alone. The nature mysticism of the poets functions as a new spiritual form, containing within its concrete imagery the power of spiritual transformation for society. Numerous evocations of a romantic utopia, calls for a national religion, or a return to a renewed Christendom all spring from this source.11 The list could go on and on. There occurs such an explosion of interest in the mysterious and the extreme, the mystical and the miraculous, that there is scarcely a major figure who is not touched by them.

Far from a continuation of the Enlightenment goal of extending man's autonomous rational power, there seems to be a decisive reaction against it. Instead of an expansion of the domain of the secular, there appears to be a retreat toward the earlier forms of spiritual or experiential faith as the unifying force within society. Reason and abstract freedom had become discredited; only contact with the great spiritual forces of reality could restore the organic order of human existence.12

HEGEL AND THE SOCIALIZING CHARACTER OF MODERNITY

Nevertheless, all this profusion of spiritual interest must not simply be taken at face value. To what extent was it a revival, to what extent a distortion of traditional spiritual forms? Was the search for spiritual illumination genuine or a continuation of the secular impulse for domination by other means? Perhaps the romantic and revolutionary incorporation of quasireligious symbolism is no more than that, a rhetorical deception to heighten the spirit of human self-aggrandizement that still inspired them. Such are the difficult questions presented by this complex of phenomena. Upon our answers to them hinges our conception of modernity and our assessment of its independent legitimacy. Is the Prometheanism that emerges so clearly from the romantic era merely another formulation of the faith in man's power of autonomous self-determination? Or does it have its roots within the Christian faith in man's ultimate transfiguration through the grace of God in eternity?

In order to answer these questions we must turn to the work of a representative thinker of the period, preferably one whose own self-interpretation will clarify the issues for us. On both counts the outstanding exemplar is G.W.F. Hegel. He was thoroughly familiar with the Enlightenment project, especially as it had reached its definitive theoretical expression within the philosophy of Kant. At the same time Hegel was a child of his own age; he sought the universal contemplation of all things within the divine Spirit. He looked forward to a new epoch in which "spirit can venture to hallow itself as spirit in its own shape, and reestablish the original reconciliation with itself in a new religion, in which the infinite grief and the whole burden of its antithesis is taken up."13 But what makes Hegel's construction unique is the extent to which he sought to remain faithful to both the Enlightenment and romantic components. Rational speculation and mystical unification were blended in one symbolism. For this reason he clearly reveals the point of demarcation between the two. Hegel is the one who can best guide us in understanding the motivations of the age, because he is the one who understood them most profoundly and sought to realize them most completely.

ln his earliest writings we find him struggling to synthesize the Kantian categorical imperative with the life of Jesus. While fully accepting the critical philosophy of Kant he had also recognized the need to go beyond it, to restore the unity between subject and object, the individual will and the process of reality as a whole. His own efforts at constructing a "national religion" on the basis of an experiential or mystical Christianity were soon rejected.14 Any such purely "romantic" or subjective reconciliation would entail the abandonment of the rational independence that man had so recently attained. Finite consciousness would inevitably be submerged in its union with the All or Absolute which it experiences without truly comprehending. Hegel's strictures against Schleiermacher's surrender to the mystery of the Absolute, as no more than an admission of "the night in which all cows are black", are well known. His own objective is best expressed in one of the earliest formulations of his `system-program': "Absolute freedom of all spirits who bear the intellectual world in themselves, and cannot seek either God or immortality outside themselves."15

But to be "God and immortality" they cannot be wholly identified with the reflections of the finite self either. Hegel was in search of the transcendent divine reality that alone can save man from the secular "boredom of the world" or create the ethical substance of society. This was the core of his critique, and that of his generation, concerning the emptiness of Enlightenment rational freedom. Man had been abandoned to the resources of his own finite reason and they enabled him neither to understand the larger process of which he is a part, nor to furnish any substantive guidance to the life he ought to lead in society and history. What was needed was a "reconciliation" in which these dire options would be overcome through unity with the higher reality beyond them. The difficulty was to preserve the independence of the finite pole, human self-consciousness.

A breakthrough occurs in Hegel's grappling with these problems when, shortly after his arrival at Jena (1801), he begins to think in terms of a dialectical resolution. By shifting from the perspective of man to that of universal Spirit he could conceive the finite and infinite both as moments within the one unfolding movement. The finite world is a necessary moment because infinite Being would remain an abstraction without it. Spirit is the underlying reality that is moving toward self-consciousness, toward its self-realization as Spirit. To become aware of itself it must encounter another reality outside itself by means of which it can return to knowledge of itself. Concretely, however, this is possible only so far as consciousness is a reality and that consciousness has grasped the necessity for its own existence, as the vehicle by which Spirit arrives at self-consciousness. This is the stage that has historically been reached at the conclusion of The Phenomenology of Spirit. It is not the identification of man and God, but the point at which man has transcended his finite consciousness to enter universal self-consciousness, just as God has quit the abstraction of his transcendence to become the concretely self-conscious reality of Spirit. "God is God only so far as he knows himself: his self-knowledge is, further, a self-consciousness in man and man's knowledge of God, which proceed to man's self-knowledge in God."16

The reconciliation between God and man occurs when finite consciousness recognizes the necessity for its own existence, as the indispensable means by which absolute Spirit realizes itself as Spirit. Hegel could maintain that he had not identified man and God, but merely denominated both their natures as self-consciousness. This is what makes their "reconciliation" possible. For just as self-consciousness is the essence of what it means to be human, it is no less crucial to the nature of God. Once this is acknowledged then we recognize the necessity for finite existence as precisely that which is to be transcended in the formation of self-consciousness. It is no more possible for divine self-consciousness to exist alone than it would be for human self-consciousness to arise without a consciousness of something. Therefore, it is only through the movement of finite consciousness toward universal self-consciousness that Absolute Spirit can become an actual reality. In apprehending this necessity the gulf between the divine and human has been overcome.

Hegel regarded it as the resolution of the "unhappy consciousness" of all religious longing, which seeks unity with a God who is beyond experience. Such a quest was doomed to frustration precisely because the "`other' was beyond, something that cannot be found".17 In contrast, the God whose essence is apprehended as self-consciousness, as Spirit, "is no longer beyond the picturing consciousness or beyond the Self".18 Yet, it cannot be emphasized too much, this is not the idea of God proposed by Hegel. If it were it would be equally vulnerable to the charge of one-sidedness, that it is no more than the subjective assertion of unity with the highest reality. What makes it a genuine unification is that the Absolute itself has effected it. This is the significance of Hegel's shift toward the perspective of Spirit, for the apprehension of necessity from man's point of view has become identical with the self-realization of Spirit. It is "not only the intuition of the divine but the Divine's intuition of itself".19 This is the new meaning of science within Hegel's system.

As such it preserves the rationality so essential to the Enlightenment conception of science. Hegel had found the means of attaining the higher spiritual knowledge sought by the romantics, without surrendering the autonomous freedom of finite human consciousness. The unification between divine and human occurs not on the level of feeling or of mystical intuition. It is the result of a rational necessity that is grasped by man. The reconciliation remains fully transparent to the finite experiencing consciousness; no surrender of freedom or reason before the ineffable mystery of the Absolute is required. Hegel had accomplished the goal of both Enlightenment and romanticism: a systematic comprehension of reality as a whole.20

He also articulated what such absolute knowledge must signify. It meant that the transfiguration of reality had been accomplished with the publication of The Phenomenology of Spirit. For Hegel's apprehension of necessity is, as we have seen, not merely his own construction. It is the medium through which world-Spirit emerges to recognizes itself as Spirit. This is the transforming event, the self-revelation of absolute Spirit within time, that occurs nowhere else than within the self-transcending finite consciousness of the author and reader of the Phenomenology. From there it spreads its transfiguring light over all other reality, as the necessity for their various respective conditions are apprehended and transcended. In this contemplative transfiguration history has reached its fulfillment. Absolute knowledge would not have emerged if the movement of Spirit in history had not made it possible; now that it has, it denotes that the work of "actual history" is over since Spirit has reached "its consummation as self-conscious Spirit". With Hegel's system of Science we have "the last shape of Spirit the Spirit which at the same time gives its complete and true content the form of the Self and thereby realizes its Notion as remaining in its Notion in its realization this is absolute knowing."21

The identification between human and divine self-consciousness is, thus, no merely incidental feature of Hegel's construction. It is its essence. Without attaining the perspective of absolute reality, the knowledge acquired would have remained incomplete; without a rational comprehension of its structure, such reality would have remained irrevocably beyond man. The apprehension of necessity within the self-knowledge of God is the core of Hegel's system of science. There are no indications that he ever conceived of his absolute knowledge as a way-station on the road toward secular incremental science. It was rather the reverse. Moreover, Hegel was eager to assert both his personal orthodoxy as a Lutheran, and the capacity of his system to absorb all the strands of religious tradition. Philosophy, in his formulation, expressed in conceptual form the content that was figuratively represented by religion. And while much has been made of the tendency of philosophy to replace religion within this scheme, that was clearly not Hegel's view. He regarded philosophy and religion, together with art, as equivalent expressions of the Absolute, and for good reason. The authority of his own philosophic construction is derived in large measure from the divine authority of religion. His absolute knowledge must recognize itself as the absolute knowledge of God.

lt is within this enormous interpretive work of absorbing the history of philosophy, religion and art into the system, that Hegel identifies his own most significant predecessors. This is an indispensable key to the interpretation of his construction. Invariably it is the tradition of speculative mysticism that is singled out, within the Lectures on the History of Philosophy and the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, as the line of thinkers who have most noticeably advanced the movement toward absolute Spirit. Within the ancient world this role is occupied particularly by the Neoplatonists, both Plotinus and Proclus, together with the mysterious creations of the Gnostics. In the medieval context the German mystics, especially Eckhart, are quoted with approval. By the time of the Renaissance this Neoplatonic gnosis, Hegel recognizes, is in the hands of such adepts as Giordano Bruno and Pico della Mirandola. But none hold his interest as much as the speculative theosophy of the Silesian mystic, Jacob Boehme. Hegel devotes an entire chapter of the History of Philosophy (more pages than to any other modern thinker) to Boehme, and counted him, with Francis Bacon, as one of the two great fountainheads of the modern world.

What Hegel admired in Boehme was the ability to go beyond the merely figurative understanding of religion, to penetrate the inner necessity of God's relationship to the world. Boehme had recognized that the divine "All" would be a "dark Nothing" if there were not a reality outside of itself by which it might become self-conscious. God must project outside of himself the harsh fiery principle of self-assertiveness which creates a separate existence. The struggle within creation is between this self-centering force and the opposing divine principle of love or surrender, by which the divine light is reflected back to its source. Boehme had elaborated the dialectical process of God's self-revelation. Now whether Hegel was influenced in the formation of his own conception of Geist by the Boehmean construction is in its nature a difficult question to settle. There is strong evidence that Hegel passed through a "theosophic phase" during those crucial early years at Jena.22 What is certain, however, is that, despite his differences over the figurative mode of Boehme's expression, he remained an admirer of the theosophic speculation itself.

Hegel understood his own work as a continuation and culmination of the speculative mysticism of his Silesian predecessor:

He is called the philosophus teutonicus, and in fact through him philosophy first entered Germany with its characteristic nature. . . . In the idea of God to apprehend the negative, to comprehend God as absolute identity this is the struggle that he had to endure; it had a frightful appearance because Boehme was so far behind in intellectual development. On the one hand there is the completely rough and barbaric representation; on the other hand one recognizes the deep German disposition (Gemüt) that associates with the innermost and therein exercises its might, its power.23

Here, as always (apart from his brief "theosophic phase"), Hegel is careful to distinguish himself from Boehme's representational language. The theosophy had not achieved the clarity of conceptual understanding and therefore remained tied to a still transcendent Godhead. Yet despite these reservations Hegel continued to pay him the highest compliment of employing Boehmean language to express his own understanding of God.24

ln other words, Hegel did not regard his own speculative philosophy as the occupation of an outmoded theological position. His relationship to the history of Christianity and, in particular, to the line of theosophic mysticism within it determined the essence of his project. It was precisely because the self-revelation of God within history was already moving in the direction of its dialectical fulfillment, that this consummation could be effected within his system. That is why he could continue to express his insights in theosophic language, as a means of underlining the continuity with this tradition. For his interpreters it means that we are on safest ground if we regard his construction as a variant of Neoplatonic-Gnostic speculation within the Christian mystical tradition.25 We have Hegel's own assurance that this constituted his purpose. In the 1827 Preface to the Encyclopedia he wrote that he was in essential agreement with the efforts of Karl von Baader, to transform the theosophic speculation of Boehme and other mystics into the foundation for rational idealist philosophy.

Difficulties and uncertainties of interpretation arise precisely because of the ambiguity of this conception. God and man have become wholly identified with their manifestations within the system; they no longer arise from a reality in depth beyond their self-revelation. As a consequence the conception of Spirit that unites them revolves around an essential ambiguity. Is it immanentist or transcendent, secular or religious? Is God simply reduced to his self-understanding within man? Does man definitively transcend the finite condition of his existence? Hegel's genius consisted in preserving this ambiguity, so that his construction could be interpreted both secularly and religiously. He insisted on the preservation of both dimensions at once.26 Among his successors, especially the Left Hegelians, the tendency was to dissolve the ambiguity in favor of a purely rational immanentist construction of history.

Yet even there, in the most militantly secular ideologies, the transition is made not by rejecting the divine but by absorbing it more radically. Marx in essence extends the direction already indicated by Hegel, to insist that the absolute Spirit is wholly identified with the unfolding of the human spirit within history. From a Hegelian perspective this is a rather crude assertion, particularly when it becomes the basis for the expectation that man can transform his own nature. With what nature will this transformation be effected? Nevertheless this was the assertion of Marx, and he leaves no doubt that the faith sustaining his effort lay in the absorption of the divine creative powers into man. His revolt against God, he explained, arose from his Promethean rejection of "all heavenly and earthly gods who refuse to recognize human self-consciousness as the supreme divinity."27 In an almost identical manner Nietzsche reveals the secret of Zarathustra, from which the entire elaboration of the will to power springs: "if there were gods, how could I endure not being a god?"28

With Marx, Comte and Nietzsche the dimension of revolt against God together with its motivation comes into the open. Again it is of the essence of their common project, because without the death of God the apocalypse of man cannot take place. Hegel did not express it so bluntly because he understood that its impossibility would become self-evident. He sought to accomplish the same result by maintaining the ambiguity of the divine-human identification. In either case, however, the difficulty remains the same. How can man raise himself up to the Godhead through his own autonomous self-assertion? Even more significantly, how is belief in this transparently impossible project sustained? For clearly the open declaration of the quest for self-divinization has shattered the illusion of a rational foundation, along with any possibility of remedying it through the appeal of persuasion.

On the broader front it has also exploded the misconception of the purely secular character of modernity. It becomes increasingly difficult to maintain that it is to be identified with the expansion of rational science, or that any quasi-religious symbolism is merely the residual after-effect of centuries of faith. In the revolt against God of the leading nineteenth-century thinkers we witness the point at which the intramundane religiousness of modernity eclipses the rational-scientific component within it. The quest for self-divinization has proved superior to the more self-disciplined authority of reason. We are left with no alternative but to acknowledge the sacralizing character of modernity. Far from being a legitimate or distinct age in its own right, the modern world can ultimately only be understood as a convulsion within the larger movement of Christianity. It is to the unfolding of the Western spiritual traditions that we must look for the roots of the disease that afflicts us, just as it is to those same traditions of philosophy, Judaism and Christianity that we must search for its remedy.

Department of Politics

The Catholic University of America

Washington, D.C.

NOTES

1. Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, Robert M. Wallace, trans. (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1983; German original 1966).

2. Although Blumenberg focuses principally on Löwith's presentation (which is not without deficiencies), the understanding of modernity as a secularization of Judeo-Christian eschatology was more extensively elaborated in the works of Eric Voegelin, Jacob Taubes, Ernst Lee Tuveson, Carl Becker, Jacob Talmon, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Albert Camus, Norman Cohn, Hans Jonas, Carl Becker, Henri de Lubac and others. This is to confine ourselves only to those who wrote about it in the immediate post-war period. More specific recent studies will be noted further below.

3. See for example, Bernard Yack, The Longing for Total Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), which argues that the "longing for total revolution"(sic) by Marx and Nietzsche can be explained as a self-contradiction between their conception of human freedom and their recognition of the incompleteness of any institutional realization. This is a step beyond Blumenberg's concession to the lingering influence of Christian positions that require to be "reoccupied".

4. The other line of criticism would consist of an examination of the early modern spiritual movements, in which the transcendent impulse of Christianity is progressively redirected toward an innerworldly fulfillment. See Walsh, The Mysticism of Innerworldly Fulfillment (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1983). Stephen A. McKnight, Sacralizing the Secular: The Renaissance Origins of Modernity (Baton Rouge: LSU Press forthcoming). Frances Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); idem, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Boston: Routledge, Kegan and Paul, 1972); D.P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Cornell University Press, 1972); idem, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: Warburg Institute, 1958); Henri de Lubac, La posterité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore, 2 vols. (Paris: Lethielleux, 1979, 1981).

5. In a later study, Work on Myth, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985; original 1979), Blumenberg reveals greater sensitivity to the supra-rational dimension of myths. Yet even while acknowledging the continuity of myth into the modern world, he conceives of it as undergoing a rationalization in light of the requirement for autonomous human responsibility.

6. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York: Norton, 1966, 1969).

7. There is, for example, little of the mysterious or divine within the Masonic world depicted in Mozart's "Magic Flute". Ritual and symbolism are all fully in accord with enlightened rational harmony. The connection between the occult and materialistic trends is well explored in Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981).

8. Eric Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution ed. John Hallowell (Durham: Duke University Press, 1975); James Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Basic, 1980); idem, The Icon and the Axe (New York: Vintage, 1970, Ch. 4; Gerhart Niemeyer, Between Nothingness and Paradise (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1971).

9. The title of Franz von Baader's text, which was instrumental in the formation of the Holy Alliance, summarizes the requirements rather clearly: "Uber das durch die französische Revolution herbeigefuhrte Bedurfniss einer neuern und innigeern Verbindung der Religion mit der Politik" (1815). See F. Büchler, Die geistige Wurzeln der Heiligen Allianz (Freiburg, 1929), pp. 53-60.

10. The standard study remains August Viatte, Les sources occultes

du romantisme, 1770-1820, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1965; original 1929).

11. Ernst Benz, Les sources mystiques de la philosophie romantique

allemande (Paris: Vrin, 1968); Ernst Lee Tuveson, The Avatars of Thrice Great Hermes: An Approach to Romanticism (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1981); M.H. Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature (New York: Norton, 1971); Renée Winegarten, Writers and Revolution (New York: Franklin Watts, 1974).

12. "Let the true beholder contemplate calmly and dispassionately

the new state-toppling era. Will not the state-toppler seem to him like Sisyphus? Now he has attained the summit of equilibrium, and already the mighty weight is rolling down the other side again. It will never remain on high unless an attraction toward heaven holds it poised on the crest. All your props are too weak if your state retains its tendency toward the earth. But link it by a higher yearning to the heights of heaven, give it a relevancy to the universe, and you will have in it a never-wearying spring, and you will see your efforts richly rewarded. I refer you to history. Search amid its instructive coherency for parallel points of time and learn to use the magic wand of analogy." Novalis, "Christendom or Europe", Hymns to the Night and Other Selected Writings, trans. Charles E. Passage (lndianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1960), p. 56.

13. Hegel, System of Ethical Life trans. H.S. Harris (Albany: State University of New York Press 1979), p. 185.

14. Hegel, Early Theological Writings, trans. T.M. Knox (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971). See also Lewis Hinchman, Hegel's Critique of the Enlightenment (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1984).

15. Hegel, "The Earliest System-program of German Idealism'" in

H.S. Harris, Hegel's Development Toward the Sunlight, 1770-1801 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), p. 511.

16. Hegel, The Philosophy of Mind trans. M. Wallace (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), par. 564.

17. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 131.

18. lbid., p. 476.

19. lbid., p.483.

20. This was the intention outlined in the famous preface to the Phenomenology. "The true shape in which truth exists can only be the scientific system of such truth. To help bring philosophy closer to the form of Science, to the goal where it can lay aside the title `love of knowing' and be actual knowing that is what I have set myself to do." (p.3).

21. lbid., p. 485; see also pp. 487, 488.

22. Hegel's first biographer, Rosenkranz, is the source for this conception of a theosophic phase. It is significant, however, that it is also supported by the most recent comprehensive study of his life by H.S. Harris, especially in the second volume: Hegel's Development: Night Thoughts (Jena 1801-1806) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Harris is "inclined to believe in Boehme's influence upon Hegel from 1801 onwards" (p. 85n), and includes one of the most elaborate theosophic manuscripts preserved by Rosenkranz, "The Triangle of Triangles", as an appendix (pp. 184-88). See also Walsh, "The Historical Dialectic of Spirit: Jacob Boehme's lnfluence on Hegel" in Robert Perkins, ed., History and System: Hegel's Philosophy of History (Albany: SUNY Press, 1984), pp. 15-35. On Hegel's relationship to illuminism and Freemasonry see Jacques d'Hondt, Hegel Secret (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968); the influence of speculative pietism is explored in Reiner Heinze, Bengel und Oetinger als Vorläufer des deutschen ldealismus (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Münster, 1969).

23. Hegel, Vorlesungen: Ausgewählte Nachschriften und Manuskripte Bd. 9, Vorlesungen Über die Gischichte der Philosophie, Teil 4, ed. Pierre Garniron and Walter Jaeschke (Hamburg: Meiner, 1986), p. 80. See also the letter of gratitude to his former student, van Ghert, for sending Hegel an edition of Boehme's collected works. Hegel: The Letters, trans. Clark Butler and Christiane Seiler (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), pp. 573-74.

24. Hegel utilizes Boehme's conception of God, as a unity of the opposing forces of love and wrath, when he identifies this as the highest achievement of representational Christianity. "Picture-thinking takes the other aspect, evil, to be a happening alien to the divine Being; to grasp it in the divine Being itself as the wrath of God, this demands from picture-thinking, struggling against its limitations, its supreme and most strenuous effort, an effort which, since it lacks the Notion, remains fruitless." Phenomenology, p. 470.

25. This is certainly how his own contemporaries understood the system. See Ferdinand Christian Baur, Die christliche Gnosis (Tübingen: Osiander, 1835), who located Hegel along a line of Christian Gnostics extending back to ancient times. Many of the Young Hegelians arrived at an understanding of the universal self-reconciliation of Spirit through the same avenue of esoteric and ecstatic mysticism. See John Edward Toews, Hegelianism: The Path Toward Dialectical Humanism, 1805-1841 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Jürgen Gebhardt, Politik und Eschatologie: Studien zur Geschichte der Hegelschen Schule in den Jahren 1830-1840 (Munich: Beck, 1963).

26. See Eric Voegelin, "On Hegel: A Study in Sorcery" Studium Generale 24 (1971), pp. 335-68.

27. This famous passage is from the preface to Marx's doctoral dissertation, when he was most under the influence of Hegel. Quoted in Voegelin, From Enlightenment to Revolution, p. 273. See also the equally revealing discussion in the "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts", where Marx explains why we should not raise the question of the ground or source of all things. "[S]ince to the socialist man the entire so-called history of the world is nothing but the begetting of man through human labour, nothing but the coming-to-be of nature for man, he has the visible, irrefutable proof of his birth through himself, of his process of coming-to-be." Robert C. Tucker, Marx-Engels Reader (New York: Norton, 1978), p. 92.

28. Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, 1978), p. 86. For an extremely useful survey of the Übermensch idea see Ernst Benz, Der Übermensch (Zurich: Rhein Verlag, 1961).

http://www.crvp.org/book/Series04/IVA-7/chapter_iv.htm

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[Hammer of Los]

...

I enjoyed the works of Jacob Boehme.

I read all the mystics, you know.

This thread is great VK.

Thanks again.

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[vanlose kid]

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It's not always what is happening that is significant, but what's not.





Eyes Wide Shut.

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[vanlose kid]

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Atheism is auto-apotheosis.

Religious Motifs in Technological Posthumanism
To appear in Western Humanities Review (2009)
Michael E. Zimmerman
University of Colorado, Boulder

Looking back on a century of violent revolutions, Michel Foucault observed that “one of the most destructive habits of modern thought” is to regard one's own present moment as pivotal in world history.i Given the consequences of modernity's tendency to “heroize” the present, Foucault remarked, “One must probably find the humility to admit that the time of one's own life is not the one-time, basic, revolutionary moment of history, from which everything begins and is completed.”ii Perhaps Foucault's perceptive admonition should be heeded by those who believe that humankind is on the verge of something truly revolutionary: namely, constructing “posthuman” beings--our successors--who will be made of stuff far stronger and enduring than mortal flesh and blood. These God-like beings, so we are told, will constitute a gigantic leap in the intelligence that evolved on this planet.

According to Ray Kurzweil, a leading advocate and theorist for posthumanism, within a few centuries our successors will be able to redesign the entire universe according to their own preferences (if posthumans can overcome such a minor problem as achieving faster-than-light speed!). Posthumans will eventually “spiritualize” everything in the universe, including supposedly “dumb” matter/energy. Such a fully awakened, conscious, and sublimely intelligent universe, Kurzweil writes, “is about as close to God as I can imagine.”iii Of course, traditional views about God as “wholly Other” need to be more than slightly revised if posthuman demi-gods will the agency that transform lifeless atoms “into a vast, transcendent mind.” Kurzweil writes:

[E]volution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, greater love. And God has been called all these things, only without any limitations [….] Evolution does not achieve an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves in this direction. [….] Thus the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form [i]may be regarded as an essentially spiritual quest.iv[/i]

Literary-philosophical posthumans, along with contemporary scientists, accuse religions as being naively human-centered, but the technological posthumanist maintains that “we are central after all.” Our thumbs and high intelligence allow us to create the technology needed for us (in the form of our successors) to evolve “until the entire universe is at our fingertips.”v

Humankind may erect the bridge to the Promised Land, but cannot cross over. Our posthuman progeny must complete the journey for us.

Technological posthumanists know that their God-project is dangerous; for instance, our posthuman progeny might conclude that we are more trouble than we‟re worth.vi Why, then, the urgency associated with inventing hyper-intelligent and powerful beings? One answer is that Earth's biosphere is imperiled: by incoming comets and meteors, gigantic volcanic eruptions, Earth-sterilizing cosmic ray bursts, pandemics, or dramatic changes in solar activity.vii Technological posthumans would not be biologically based; hence, they would be able to leave our planet and Solar system, thereby saving self-conscious life from extinction. Another cause for urgency is that the consequences of human actions--such as nuclear war, or global economic collapse--could cripple technological civilization before the posthuman breakthrough has been achieved.

Artificially enhanced humans, cyborgs, and robots will prepare the way for the God-like posthumans.viii Cyborgs and advanced robots are easier to represent than true posthumans, whose capacities--and hence whose goals--would vastly outstrip our own. The term of art for commencement of the mysterious posthuman era is “the Singularity,” a term drawn from astrophysical discourse about black holes, that is, collapsed stars whose fields of gravity is so great that practically no light or information can escape to offer insight to what is going on in the post-stellar abyss.ix Kurzweil maintains that the Singularity will arrive around the middle of this century, when developments in nanotechnology, genetic engineering, robotics, and artificial intelligence converge to make possible beings so grand and yet so inscrutable that humans will tend to worship them, as gods we can believe in!x

Singularity posthumanists, as I will call them, often cite the proclamation of Nietzsche‟s Zarathustra: “Man is a rope, tied between beast and Overman--a rope over an abyss. [….] What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end. What can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.”xi Zarathustra intoned that humankind must “go under” in order to make way for something better. What Nietzsche had in mind by the Overman, however, was not technological progeny, but rather a transfiguration of the organic human into the organic superhuman.

Nietzsche influenced the posthumanism of Heidegger, Derrida, and other major 20th century European thinkers, who foresaw the death of the subject. Literary-philosophical discourse about the “end of man” sought to undermine Euro-logo-phallo centrism tremble so as to open up free space within which marginalized Others might engage in and celebrate new forms of identity and performativity. Singularity posthumanists, too, call for new forms of identity and performativity, but the agents involved will increasingly be unlike Homo sapiens. The Singularity version of “the end of man” might well mean the literal extinction of our species.

Envisioning posthuman mastery of the universe, Singularity posthumanists would appear to be the apotheosis of the very humanism criticized by literary-philosophical posthumanists. The motives behind this drive to improve and later to replace humankind is over-determined: Some Singularity posthumanists, crave life extension and even immortality; others see a fortune to be made in medicine and armament; still others envision Nobel prizes for extraordinary scientific breakthroughs. Another important factor animating posthumanism, however, is spiritual-religious yearnings that seem scarcely compatible with the high-tech skills of and the atheistic postures adopted by many posthumanists.

Erik Davis argues that a supposedly post-religious modernity has not succeeded in eliminating “occult dreamings, spiritual transformations, and metaphysical longings.” Instead, they “went underground, worming their way into the cultural, psychological, and mythological motivations that form the foundations of the modern world.”xii Hence, the unquenchable thirst to leave behind “the concerns and limitations of merely human life” has seized “information technology for its own purposes.” Even modern technology “embodies an image of the soul, or rather a host of images: redemptive, demonic, magical, transcendent, hypnotic, alive.”xiii Scientists often use alchemical metaphors to describe breakthroughs that provide the knowledge--gnosis--needed to create new life forms, to transform human life, and to construct our God-like successors. According to Glenn Magee, the prototype of the modern scientist was “the Hermetic ideal of man as magus, achieving total knowledge and wielding Godlike powers to bring the world to perfection….”xiv Kurzweil makes no bones about using God-talk to depict the posthuman future, in which the cosmos will become self-conscious. Posthumans will supposedly achieve what St. Paul could only hope for, namely, “that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”xv

To explain what motivates Singularity posthumanism, we need to understand more about the religious motifs that helped to shape modernity. In the mid-twentieth century, Karl Löwith articulated the “secularization” thesis, according to which modernity takes over and redefines major Christian concepts, including the notion that history moves toward a culminating goal of perfection, harmony, and even immortality.xvi In The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, however, Hans Blumenberg replied that while religious factors did play a role in the rise of modernity, modernity is neither an illegitimate deviation from nor an occluded version of Christianity, but rather has its own aims and justification, expressed in human self-assertion or self-will.xvii Moderns define and seek to satisfy their needs as best they can, without reference to Scripture, and call on science and technology to satisfy those needs. Hence, Blumenberg writes, modernity “should be described not as the transposition of authentically theological contents into secularized alienation from their origin but rather as the reoccupation of answer positions that had become vacant and whose corresponding questions could not be eliminated.”xviii Although the “reoccupation” thesis has been influential, it has not won the day. Arguably, reconfigured religious impulses continue to inspire people--including a number of Singularity posthumanists--who have abandoned Biblical religions, but who still desire to “reoccupy” the place vacated by the allegedly deceased God with a real God, one created by our posthuman offspring.

Michael Allen Gillespie has argued that modernity “arose not in opposition to or as a continuation of the medieval world, but out of its rubble.”xix For centuries, Christianity strove to reconcile revelation (Scripture) with the rationalism of Greek philosophy. St. Thomas Aquinas's brilliant synthesis was soon destroyed by the heavy artillery of medieval nominalism, according to which there are no universal essences or forms, understood as archetypes in the divine Mind. Nominalists denied such forms in part because their existence supposedly constrained the kind of cosmos that God could create. Nominalists asserted that we can know little about God, other than the fact that He is willful and even arbitrary, limited in his acts only by the law of non-contradiction. The victory of nominalism over the ordered, hierarchical cosmology forged by Hellenized Christianity left disoriented European intellectuals faced with an inscrutable, terrifying, and capricious God, as well as with the need to re-conceptualize nature and humankind. In recounting such changes today, we often do so from a secularized perspective that took centuries to form, and that regards religious categories as generally naïve and regressive. This is the case for those philosophers who prefer to think of modernity as breaking decisively with superstitious beliefs and replacing them with disinterested rational inquiry. Imagine how such moderns would regard an alternative narrative: The breakdown of mainstream religious, cosmological, and social orders in early modern times opened up a space in which thinkers influenced by esoteric traditions--Gnostic, Hermetic, Kabbalistic, Rosecrucian, Masonic, and so on--could emerge as serious players in defining modernity's aims and aspirations.xx In other words, in the “rubble” of the medieval world there were relatively intact religious categories that influenced the development of modern science and politics. Below, I offer very brief “mainstream” accounts of how nominalism influenced religion, science, and human self-understanding. In each case, I add some information about mystical/occult influences that usually go unmentioned.

That Martin Luther was trained by leading nominalist theologians helps to explain both his enmity toward Aquinas and Hellenized Christianity, and also his desperate search for a way to stabilize faith in an inscrutable and distant Deity. As Gillespie argues, Luther transforms nominalism by affirming that God acts in and through us an inward power that transforms individuals who trust God's word in Holy Scripture. Through the faith made possible by grace, we are reborn in God because God comes to dwell in us. God's dwelling within us does not mean that we become powerful demi-Gods; instead, we become God-like insofar as God becomes our interior guiding principle, or conscience.xxi (Luther’s proclamation that “God became man so that man could become God” exerted a tremendous influence on subsequent German philosophy, including that of G.W.F. Hegel, who--steeped in “esoteric” thought, including Hermeticism--maintained that God became man in order to achieve the absolute self-consciousness, freedom, and recognition that could not have happened otherwise.)

By denying that there are eternal forms, nominalism did away with two of Aristotle's four causes: formal and final, leaving only material and efficient causes. If human concepts (mere names) categorize a world of material particulars, and if there is no discernible final cause to a world created by a willful God, early modern scientists had to focus on the how of things, the processes of material change, becoming, and--centuries later--development, including evolution. In demonstrating that mathematical physics could describe and predict the movement of material phenomena, however, natural scientists assumed that they had discovered natural order, which many attributed to God, despite nominalism's claim that we can know virtually nothing about Him. Knowledge of how nature works allows humans to control it for their own purposes, without claiming any ultimate insight into the mysteries of the divine mind. (This account downplays the fact that Hermeticism, alchemy, magic, and other esoteric beliefs and practices pervaded early modern science--and remain influential at some level even today. Hermetic, alchemical, and other esoteric schools helped to provide the vision for why science and technology should be pursued at all. These were not “disinterested” ventures, but were instead motivated by a complex of factors, both lofty and self-interested, as is the case with science and technology today.xxii)

The explosive idea that humans do not instantiate a pre-existing divine form--put otherwise, that there is no human nature--proved liberating to Renaissance humanists, who asserted that the self-defining individual human being lies at the center of things. According to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, God endows humans with neither limits nor predetermined nature, so they can freely determine their nature. Self-willing man was made in the image of the willful nominalist God, a consideration that overcomes some of infinite Otherness of that God. For humanists, individuals can even become God-like, although this was sometimes said to involve a turning inward to the spirit, rather than outward in the mode of reconstructing nature, which still lacked metaphysical coherence in nominalism's aftermath. (Pico and other Renaissance thinkers, however, were also influenced by Hermeticism, which includes in some cases the idea that God endows humanity with the gnosis needed to gain mastery over nature. If God is willful, and if humans are made in God’s image, then humankind is also willful. If there is no longer any human nature [form], there is nothing stopping humans from choosing to redesign themselves, as proposed by Singularity posthumanists.)xxiii

Martin Heidegger, who in this respect partly at least agrees with Hans Blumenberg, argued that will and self-assertion form the central categories of modern metaphysics, including work composed by Leibniz, Spinoza, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. According to Heidegger, Nietzsche's metaphysics of the Will to Power is manifest in the nihilism of industrial technological, to which Ernst Jünger gave exceptional expression. Although Nietzsche can be read as promoting “non-stop progress,” Heidegger maintains that--more deeply understood--“the Overman… is not a product of an unbridled and degenerate imagination rushing headlong into the void.”xxiv Instead, the Overman will overcome the human craving for revenge against time and its “it was,” that is, revenge against finitude and mortality. Many Singularity posthumanists, however, adopt goals of immortality, deification, and cosmic mastery that are not easily reconciled with this understanding of the Overman, nor with Zarathustra‟s call for humanity to “remain faithful to the Earth” and thus to human embodiment.

Given that Singularity posthumanists often describe the human body pejoratively as far too to limited and weak to attain God-like immortality, however, critics often accuse such posthumanists of reprising Gnosticism. Concluding that I needed to learn more about this topic, I began rather optimistically, thinking that I would soon gain a working knowledge of it. Alas, I soon felt as if I had fallen down an intellectual's version of Alice's rabbit hole. Arcane, archaic, disturbing, intricately connected and contradictory material floating by as I plummeted into a cryptic conceptual abyss that promised what Middlemarch's Mr. Casaubon had been seeking all along: the key to all the world's mythology.xxv I began to see that highly popular fictional works such as Foucault’s Pendulum and The DaVinci Code draw not only on Gnosticism, but also on Hermeticism, the Kabbala, the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, alchemy, and related conspiracy theories that purport to explain the hidden history of Christianity and the West. More importantly, I began to understand that scholars have sometimes sanitized the origins of modernity to conceal the fact that is was partly shaped by views that still find expression in--horrors!--various kinds of New Age esotericism.

According to Hans Jonas's famous but now contested account of Gnosticism, this religious formation arose from many different sources during the two centuries before and after the birth of Christ.xxvi Gnosticism is a patchwork of texts, many of which claim that the cosmos is the botched work of an evil (or at least incompetent) demi-god, who came to be after a struggle within the Godhead.xxvii This demi-god is the Biblical God, who has allegedly imprisoned our souls--sparks of the true God--in mortal and putrid bodies within a hellish world that is subject to a grinding fate. Escape is possible only for those gifted with the gnosis necessary to recognize their identity with the True God, with whom they year to be re-united. For Gnosticism, the world (creation) is manifestly evil, whereas the true God--the wholly Other God, the hidden God (Deus absconditus), and the God beyond the ill-formed cosmos--is all good. Although often depicted as inferior to and parasitic on Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament, Gnostic texts in fact voiced a powerful, dualistic counter-trend within early Christianity.

Gnosticism held that because humans already share divinity with God, the death of Christ on the cross makes little sense and was certainly not a sacrifice for human sins. For this reason, Gnostics tended toward a position favored by a many early Christians, docetism, the (heretical) doctrine according to which Jesus did not in fact die on the cross, or else that the man who died on the cross was not really God, but only a human shell or a projection body housing the same divine spark found in all superior humans. Jesus Christ was sent by the true God to remind these superior people that their kingdom is not of this (fallen, alienating, botched) world. Gnosticism, then, may be understood then as a kind of self-redemption or self-realization.

Early Christianity arose within and was influenced by a dynamic context, which included not only Gnosticism but also other dualistic religious schemes, some of which were compatible with the tendency of Greek philosophy to regard the body as corrupt and even as unreal in comparison with the realm of unchanging Being. A few centuries later, St. Augustine attempted to counter Gnostic-Manichean dualism by arguing that evil in the world is not substantive. Otherwise, God must be responsible for creating evil, but this cannot be, because He is inherently good. Hence, evil must have resulted from human sinfulness. According to St. Augustine, the domain of human affairs--the temporal City of Man-- played no role in supernatural affairs leading to the Last Judgment, which would open the way to the eternal City of God. In this way, St. Augustine also attempted to put to rest millennial yearnings inspired by St. John's Apocalypse, which in later centuries encouraged some divines to maintain that God had summoned them to usher in the New Age. St. Augustine's attempt to overcome Gnosticism and to temper millennialism had only limited success, however, as Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, Eric Voegelin, and others have pointed out. According to Blumenberg, the second attempt to overcome Gnosticism was in modernity, when people forsook the Christian discourse about a supernatural that was far preferable to this “veil of tears,” and chose instead to remodel the world according to human desires and decisions.xxviii

If Voegelin is right, Gnosticism went underground for centuries, before emerging again in the work of the 9th century theologian, Scotus Eriugena, who introduced neo-Platonism to medieval Europe, and whose work was rediscovered in the 17th century.xxix Modernity began stirring, then, not in the 17th century with Descartes, as philosophers often suppose, but in the middle ages. Eriugena developed themes from neo-Platonism, which always verged toward a contemptus mundi reminiscent of Gnosticism, as Plotinus understood so well. By the 11th century, medieval Europe began to turn its eyes a bit more earthward, in view of substantial commercial, intellectual, political, and technological growth. Some Christian Europeans became impatient with St. Augustine‟s recommendation that they tread water while awaiting the Second Coming. Millennial movements, led by purportedly God-inspired “free spirits,” arose to bring about God's kingdom on Earth.xxx It is difficult to sort out whether such revolts were inspired by Gnosticism, by variants of Johannine apocalpyticism, by Hermeticism, or by still other factors.xxxi

In any event, within the context of growing European self-confidence and millennial fervor, Joachim di Fiore (d. 1202) proposed his three-stage, developmental conception of history that has reverberated for centuries in Western thought.xxxii Joachim argued that beyond the static second era posited by St. Augustine, there would be yet a third era, the monastic era, which would begin in the 13th century and which would enjoy the emergence of free, autonomous individuals directly inspired by the Holy Spirit, without any need for Church hierarchy or sacraments. Divinely inspired development within history, then, would bring about terrestrial perfection. Many centuries were required to transform Joachim's vision into what Voegelin calls the full “immanentization” of what had been an otherworldly eschaton.xxxiii According to Voegelin, modern Gnostic revolutions are but one of several efforts--intellectual, scientific, mystical, as well as political--to bring the otherworldly divine into the human orbit. Voegelin is hardly alone in hypothesizing that the goal of Gnostic-inflected Western humankind is to become God through self-actualization, whether in the form Hegel's absolute idealism, Marx's post-capitalist superman, Nietzsche's Overman, liberalism's self-made man, or--presumably--Singularity's posthuman being. What traditional Christians would regard as superbia, modern Gnostics would regard as a matter of becoming who we already are in potentia.

Given that early Gnosticism exhibited such contempt for the cosmos, for the human body, and even for the soul (only spirit, pneuma, was considered to be divine), we might wonder how Gnosticism could possibly be at work in a modernity that proposes to construct a this-worldly New Jerusalem. Because Voegelin suggested at times that Gnosticism could explain almost everything, and because no concept can possibly do that, I began to suspect that Gnosticism was not in fact the key to all the world's mythology (not to mention religion, science, and politics). Karen J. Grimstad, however, has argued effectively that there are two modern variants of Gnosticism: the first condemns modernity, whereas the second champions it.xxxiv Many major 19th and 20th century artists and philosophers--from Baudelaire to Heidegger--condemned modernity as a fallen, corrupt, commercialized, hyper rational, and otherwise botched project, one in which authentic human existence is impossible. Artistic modernism emphasized the power of art--expressed in the slogan l’art pour l’art--to transcend the decaying modern condition. For such Gnostics, historical “progress” was a code word for further deterioration of human spirit, rather than a term describing humanity‟s ascent toward God-like power. Adherents to both anti-modern and pro-modern Gnosticism are profoundly dissatisfied with the given world and its order, and feel estranged and alienated from what they regard as authentic human existence. In this respect, Heidegger has much in common with Marx, despite many other differences. Moreover, the anxiety experienced by both anti-modern and the pro-modern Gnostics arise in part from the “death” of the Biblical God, which had for so long provided meaning and direction for Western humanity. xxxv

Nietzsche predicted that the “death of God” would have devastating consequences--including nihilism, cultural exhaustion, and world wars--for Europe. His proposed his idea of the Overman to fill the vacated God-position. The Overman would transcend existing humankind, but immanently, without reference to a supernatural domain. Nietzsche turned out to be prescient, as 20th century totalitarianisms proposed that their supermen would be the gods of the future. These efforts, it goes without saying, went very badly astray. 20th century existentialists offered another way of dealing with the death of God, by defining humanity‟s essence as its existence, understood as the free capacity to define oneself, without regard to God or a purported human nature. Unhappily, such existentialism all too easily veered toward an amoral “decisionism,” which sheds light on Heidegger's decision to support what he described as National Socialism's goal of totally transforming “human Dasein”.xxxvi

Neither anti-modern nor pro-modern Gnostics proposed to retain the full range of mythological beliefs found in ancient Gnosticism. In turning their attention to transforming this world--either by either abolishing modernity or by achieving its telos--modern Gnostics demythologized important elements of early Gnostic mythology. What Susan Anima Taubes said in her brilliant but neglected essay, “The Gnostic Foundations of Heidegger's Nihilism” (1954), is pertinent for both anti-modern and pro-modern Gnostics. “The gnostic speculative system may…become totally immanent in its structure and yet retain at its center the principle of transcendence.”xxxvii Just as Heidegger emphasized human freedom and transcendence in the context of his confrontation with a spirit-eroding modernity, Marxism calls for historical human transformation that amounts to an immanent attainment of transcendence.xxxviii Missing from anti-modern and pro-modern Gnostics is Blumenberg's more temperate view of modernity as neither devil nor savior, but rather as the attempt to open the neutral arena needed for constructive human development in the domains of politics, science, religious toleration, economics, and the arts. Voegelin writes that anti- and pro-modern variants of Gnosticism--including fascism, Heidegger‟s thought, German idealism, Marxism, progressivism, positivism, and psychoanalysis, --exhibit six basic attitudes. Gnostics are: 1) profoundly dissatisfied with their situations; 2) they attribute this dissatisfaction not to themselves, but instead to the fact that world itself is poorly organized; 3) they believe that salvation from this evil world is possible, and 4) that the order of being must be changed and perfected via a developmental/evolutionary historical process; 5) humans are capable of changing that order through their own actions; 6) people are now discovering the knowledge--gnosis--needed to change reality--the cosmic order--and prophets are proclaiming that acquiring such knowledge is the key to cosmic salvation.xxxix

As my research continued, or as the velocity of my plunge down the rabbit hole increased, however, I discovered that the work done on Gnosticism by Jonas and Voegelin in mid-century has come in for criticism. Jonas's “intuition” about a unifying core of Gnosticism in its variant expressions may have led him to ignore important differences that make it difficult or even impossible to speak of a coherent view or movement called “Gnosticism.” Moreover, as Voegelin himself eventually concluded, he brought too many disparate religious and/or esoteric movements under the concept of Gnosticism. Then, I encountered the argument that the pro-modern, pro-development branch of Gnosticism could perhaps be understood better as an expression of Hermeticism, which is often (but incorrectly) lumped together with Gnosticism.xl Of course, this discovery led me into another strange historical thicket that I could explore only briefly, if I ever wanted to complete this essay. Put briefly, the difference between Hermeticism and Gnosticism is this: the former emphasizes that humanity can attain the knowledge needed to transform Creation, whereas the latter (at least in its ancient version) regarded Creation as inherently flawed and thus not worth saving.xli

According to Glenn Magee, Hegel's thought was influenced at least as much by Hermeticism as by Gnosticism.xlii Indeed, Hegel‟s substantial debt to esoteric and mystical thinkers helps to make sense of his effort to radicalize of the concept of theosis embodied in Martin Luther's claim—borrowed from St. Athanasia (d. 860 CE)--that God became man, so that man could become God.xliii While studying at Tübingen's Lutheran seminary, Hegel began spinning Luther's theology in a way that would have repelled Luther. Nevertheless, in part because of Luther's mystical insights into the God-man identity, Hegel regarded Lutheranism as the acme of Christianity. To be sure, Hegel deviated from Luther's view, which itself barely remained within the bounds of Christian orthodoxy. For Hegel, theosis represents a three-fold process: God is moved internally to externalize himself; He does so in the form of Creation that initially alienates Him from Himself; finally, Christ's Incarnation begins the process of Divine reconciliation that is completed when God attains absolute self-consciousness in human history, specifically in the person of Hegel and in German constitutional democracy. Insofar as God becomes wholly human in this long and painful process of overcoming divine self-alienation, the Incarnation marks the beginning of the end of the otherworldly God and the rise of fully immanent Logos in modern humankind. As Cyril O'Regan points out in The Heterodox Hegel, “This means that revelation has a history and that time is an indispensable vehicle of the articulation and concrete appropriation of human beings' divinity and sonship, an insight not lost on twentieth-century theology and philosophy.”xliv For Hegel, in effect, God reveals Himself in human history.xlv

O'Regan has demonstrated Hegel's substantial debt to Gnostic, Hermetic, and mystical writings, including those of Joachim, Meister Eckhart (c1260-1328), and the Lutheran Pietist Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), the latter two of whom famously asserted the identity of man and God.xlvi Hegel adopts, mutatis mutandi, Joachim's views that history unfolds in three stages--the age of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—and that the divine Logos works out its destiny within human history. According to Eckhart, many of whose teachings were condemned as heretical in the middle ages, the Divine gives birth to itself not merely in Jesus Christ, but in each human soul. The soul, then, may be understood, according to 19th century Eckhart scholar Franz van Baader, as the “divine spark” or “breath” of God.xlvii Although the mature Hegel does not use such terms, which explicitly echo Gnostic discourse, O'Regan argues that Hegel interprets the relation between Christianity and the infinite dimension of the self “in a gnoseological [Gnostic] way.”

Finally, Boehme‟s writings, which show the influence of Joachim's understanding of history and Eckhart's idea of God-man identity, decisively influenced German idealism, including the work of Schelling and Hegel. For Boehme, “the post-Reformation age possesses a religious potential that surpasses the apostolic age. Boehme, therefore, provides for German religious thought a mode of Lutheranism, which…has a more relaxed attitude to heterodoxy.”xlviii In addition to adding a developmental component to Eckhart's idea of a relatively static Divine-human relationship, Boehme‟s use of dialectical concepts opens up ontological issues not broached by Joachim's conception of the historical Divine-human relation. Hegel takes all of this to the next level, in his incomparable Bildungsroman of Divine-human historical development, The Phenomenology of Spirit. And, arguably, Kurzweil and other Singularity posthumanists have taken to the ultimate level the idea that humankind is in the service of making possible the self-realization of God.

Using the six traits of Gnosticism devised by Voegelin, it does not take much to come up with parallels for Gnostic and Hermetic attitudes in Singularity humanism. Such humanisms maintains that: 1) there is much to be dissatisfied with about the world (including being trapped in a pathetic, weak, and mortal human body); 2) this world is replete with suffering, ignorance, and death that should be eliminated; 3) salvation from such evil is possible; 4) the order of being must be changed and perfected through a developmental/evolutionary human process; 5) humans are capable of effecting such change, first through transhumanism, but definitively through posthumanism; and 6) humans are now discovering the gnosis needed to bring about such change. Prophets now proclaim that proxy human self-realization and transcendence will be brought about by our descendents, Singularity posthumans. Gnosticism in Singularity posthumanism, then, may be discerned in its negative attitude toward the human body, Hermeticism in its proclamation that humankind is destined to take control over and transform nature, mysticism in its belief that humankind will be absorbed into God, and Joachim's tripartite developmental scheme is recognizable in the posthumanist account of cosmic development: the prehuman, the human, and the posthuman.

Singularity posthumanists put forth an immanent eschatology that envisions a dramatic transcendence of existing conditions. According to Kurzweil, “the freeing of the human mind from its severe physical limitations of scope and duration [is] the next step in evolution. Evolution, in my view, represents the purpose of life. That is, the purpose of life--and of our lives--is to evolve.”xlix Moreover, Kurzweil claims to see transcendence at work everywhere. “To transcend means to „go beyond,‟ but this need not compel us to an ornate dualist view that regards transcendent levels of reality (e.g., the spiritual level) to be not of this world…. Rather than a materialist, I would prefer to consider myself a „patternist.‟ It's through the emergent power of patterns that we transcend.”l Clearly, for Kurzweil, transcendence and the eschaton have been immanentized, but for the sake of bringing forth what he believes deserves the name “God.” We need not restrict our understanding of God to one tradition. In fact, perhaps those traditions are no longer viable “because they were attempts to express transcendent ideas in language poorly equipped for such a purpose. It makes sense to update not the truths themselves but our expressions of those truths in keeping with our evolving understanding of the world we live in.”li Kurzweil, then, understands that “God” continues to play a crucial role in Western self-understanding. Indeed, only by conceiving of the universe as evolving toward an all-encompassing God-like power that can “spiritualize” all matter, can Kurzweil express in adequate terms both the grandeur and importance of humankind's task and opportunity at this decisive historical moment.

Singularity posthumanism would seem to be the high point of the Promethean mode of modern humanism, so sharply criticized by literary-philosophical posthumanism. There are, however, curious parallels here. The latter calls for (or at least announces) the end of humanism, the death of the man, and the erasure of the subject. The former calls for the eclipse (and possibly death) of the human species by the God-like robots that we have a hand in creating. Neither discourse exhibits any nostalgia or hesitation in calling for the death of the human subject. Moreover, both forms of humanism regard post-Christian, bourgeois subjectivity as a temporary historical moment. But, whereas literary-philosophical posthumanists abandon a developmental view of history and instead view human affairs as either an endless play of signifiers or as a contest of power-relations, Singularity posthumanists maintain that history is in fact imbued with a telos, namely, the ultimate self-actualization and self-manifestation of the Incarnate Deity.

For Singularity posthumans to be possible, many present and future humans might have to pay a very steep cost. In the name of a glorious posthuman future, one can imagine fanatical Singularity posthumanists justifying the extinction of mythic-Christian, post-Christian, and humanistic ideals such as individual liberty, self-realization, and outmoded personal and public morality. 20th century movements that demanded the subjugation or outright elimination of “bourgeois subjectivity” include Soviet Marxism and German National Socialism, each of which promised to produce its own version of the “higher” human. Keep in mind that literary-philosophical humanism arose in the 1960s, in part in critical response to the Gulag and other excesses of modernity's grand narratives.

According to Michel Foucault, socio-political formations--including socialism and liberal capitalism--exert “biopower,” that is, they install practices, institutions, and ideologies that control people for a particular good. Although critical of dire forms of biopower, Foucault agreed with Nietzsche that power is required to create as well as to destroy. To bring to fruition the astounding goal of creating superhumans, Singularity posthumanists may feel justified in exercising considerable biopower on a number of different fronts. Many eggs will have to be broken to create the Singularity omelet. If history is written by the victors, then the coming superhumans will surely find a way to justify the suffering involved in their origin, particularly given that those who suffered (that is, we humans) were not very evolved to begin with. Were Foucault alive today, I wonder whether he would say that in fact we do live in an exceptional moment in history, a moment in which we are preparing the way for the end of human history, and the beginning of something else entirely. Or, whether he would say instead: “Don't get too excited, and be wary. We've heard all this before, in different words.”lii

________________________

iMichel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), 40. Cited in Hans Sluga, Heidegger’s Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
ii Michel Foucault, Foucault Live (Interviews, 1966-84), trans. John Johnston (New York: Semiotext(e), 1989), 251. Cited by Sluga in Heidegger’s Crisis, 74.
iii Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, op cit., 375. See also 361, 362, 364, 387, and 476. See also Hans Moravec, Mind Children: the Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 116.
iv Ibid., 476; final sentence from 389. My emphasis.
v Ibid. On Earth‟s uniqueness, see Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 2004).
vi Bill Joy, “Why the Future Doesn‟t Need Us,” Wired, Vol. 8, No. 4 (April, 2000), http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html
vii See Richard Firestone, Allen West, and Simon Warwick-Smith, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes: How a Stone-Age Comet Changed the Course of World Culture, (Rochester, Vermont: Bear and Company, 2006).
viii See Andy Clark, Natural-Born Cyborgs: Minds, Technologies, and the Future of Human Intelligence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
ix The difficulty involved in knowing what will happen after the Singularity has not slowed people from making predictions. See Damien Broderick, ed., Year Million: Science at the Far End of Knowledge (New York: Atlas & Co., Publishers, 2008)
x For a debate about the prospects of posthuman intelligence, see IEEE Spectrum Special Report: The Singularity: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/singularity
xi Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, 1977), prologue, section 4.
xii Erik Davis, Techgnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information (New York: Harmony Books, 2004), 5.
xiii Ibid., 12.
xiv Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), 7.
xv St. Paul, Letter to the Romans, 8: 22-23 (My emphasis.)
xvi See Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).
xvii Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985)
xviii Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, 65. Cited by Martin Jay in his review in History and Theory, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1985), 183-196. Citation is found on 185.
xix Michael Allen Gillespie, The Theological Origins of Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 12.
xx See Western Esotericism and the Science of Religion, ed. Antoine Faivre and Wouter J. Hanegraaff (Leuven: Peeters, 1998).
xxi Ibid., 33-34.
xxii See Mark S. Morrisson, Modern Alchemy: Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
xxiii Stephen McKnight has argued for the religious and esoteric origins of modern thought. See his Sacralizing the Secular: The Renaissance Origins of Modernity (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989) and The Modern Age and the Recovery of Ancient Wisdom (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991).
xxiv Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? Trans. Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 69, 59.
xxv On this topic, see Felicia Bonaparte‟s introduction to George Eliot, Middlemarch, ed. David Carroll (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
xxvi Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion: The Message of the Alien God and the Beginnings of Christianity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958). This is a modified version of the two-volume work which stemmed from Jonas‟s dissertation, directed by Martin Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann. For criticism of Jonas‟s view of Gnosticism, see Michael Waldstein, “Hans Jonas‟ Construct „Gnosticism‟: Analysis and Critique,” Journal of Early Christian Studies, 8: 3, 2000, 341-372.
xxvii See Hans Jonas, “Delimitation of the Gnostic Phenomenon--Typological and Historical,” in The Origins of Gnosticism, 90-108. Jonas anticipates some later criticism, when he acknowledges the diversity of views among ancient Gnostics.
xxviii See Benjamin Lazier, “Overcoming Gnosticism: Hans Jonas, Hans Blumenberg, and the Legitimacy of the Modern World,” Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 64, No. 4 2003, 619-637.
xxix Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics, Vol. 5, The Collected Works of Erik Voegelin, ed. Manfred Henningsen (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 192-194. For criticism, see Eugene Webb, "Voegelin's Gnosticism Reconsidered," Political Science Reviewer, 34 (2005): 48-76; and Stephen A. McKnight, “Eric Voegelin and the Changing Perspective on the Gnostic Features of Modernity,” in The Allure of Gnosticism, ed. Robert A. Segal (Chicago: Open Court, 1995, 136-146. On modern Gnosticism, see Kirsten J. Grimstad, The Modern Revival Gnosticism and Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (Rochester, New York: Camden House, 2002).
xxx Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millennarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (New York: Galaxy Books/Oxford University Press, 1971).
xxxi Voegelin later concluded that he needed to differentiate between Gnosticism and other movements such as Hermeticism.
xxxii Voegelin, Science Politics, and Consciousness in Modernity without Restraint, Vol. 5 of The Collected Works of Eric Voegelin, ed. Manfred Henningsen (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2000), 300-304.
xxxiii See Jerry L. Walls, The Oxford Handbook of Eschatology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
xxxiv Voegelin and Heidegger share so many sharp criticisms of modernity that it is somewhat surprising to discover that Voegelin views Heidegger as a Gnostic thinker.
xxxv On this issue, see Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, especially the epilogue, “Gnosticism, Nihilism and Existentialism.”
xxxvi See Michael E. Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).
xxxvii Susan Anima Taubes, “The Gnostic Foundations of Heidegger‟s Nihilism,” The Journal of Religion, XXXIV, No. 3 (July, 1954), 155-172. Quotation is from 161.
xxxviii On the mythic dimension of Marx‟s thought, see Robert C. Tucker, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971, and Leonard P. Wessel, Jr., Prometheus Bound: The Mythic Structure of Karl Marx’s Scientific Thinking (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1984).
xxxix Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism, 297-298.
xl See Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. Roelof van den Broek and Wouter J. Hanagraaff (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998).
xli See in particular Roelof van den Broek, “Gnosticism and Hermetism in Antiquity: Two Roads to Salvation,” in Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, 1-20,
xlii Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition, “Introduction,” 1-17.
xliii In the Orthodox Christian tradition, the Feast of Christ‟s Transfiguration—which anticipates human theosis—is second in importance only to Easter.
xliv Cyril O‟Regan, The Heterodox Hegel (Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 241, and O‟Regan, Gnostic Return in Modernity (Albany: SUNY Press, 2001).
xlv See O‟Regan, The Heterodox Hegel, 247-249.
xlvi Cyril O‟Regan, Gnostic Apocalypse: Jakob Boehme’s Haunted Narrative (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002).
xlvii O‟Regan, The Heterodox Hegel, 251.
xlviii Ibid., 284.
xlix Ray Kurzweil, “The Evolution of Mind in the Twenty-First Century,” in Are We Spiritual Machines? 53. l Kurzweil, “The Material World: „Is That All there Is?” in Are We Spiritual Machines?, 211.
li Ibid., 218.
lii In The Politics of Life Itself (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), Nikolas Rose argues that the future will neither be discontinuous with the present, nor without significant changes. Following Foucault, he encourages us not to get carried away with breathless predictions about a completely new world.

http://www.colorado.edu/artssciences/CH ... manism.pdf

*

[tazmic]

more Zimmerman:

The Singularity: A Crucial Phase in Divine Self-Actualization?

For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the
sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because
of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from
its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth
together until now.
~ St. Paul, Letter to the Romans, 8: 19-23

Universal history is the exhibition of Spirit in the process of working out the
knowledge of what it [Spirit] potentially is. Just as the seed bears in itself the
whole nature of the tree, including the taste and form of its fruit, so do the first
traces of Spirit virtually contain the whole of its own history.
~ Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History

This is the ultimate destiny of the Singularity and of the universe. [….] Our
civilization will … expand outward, turning all the dumb matter and energy we
encounter into sublimely intelligent—transcendent—matter and energy. So in a
sense, we can say that the Singularity will ultimately infuse the universe with
spirit….
~ Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near

http://www.colorado.edu/artssciences/CHA/profiles/zimmpdf/Singularity.pdf

Published in Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy (2008).

For the OP, this is all covered in great detail, rather heavily, but without the monolithic presumptions, in Steve Fuller's book Humanity 2.0.



part 3 covers his 'moral entrepreneur' obsession. As a policy adviser, he's worth paying attention to.

(I wonder who is paying him to find out to what extent 'people are being primed'?)

He has a new book out:

Preparing for Life in Humanity 2.0 is a follow-up to Fuller's widely discussed Humanity 2.0. It provides a more detailed analysis of several quite divergent futures for 'being human' in the 21st century. The book begins by discussing the philosophical foundations of Humanity 2.0, drawing attention to how recent changes in the conduct of science and its social relations reflect implicit changes in human self-understanding. Here three possible futures of 'being human' are sketched and ideologically interrelated: the ecological, the biomedical and the cybernetic. Then the book moves to Humanity 2.0's emerging political economy, which involves the redefinition of classical political and economic concepts, such as justice and productivity. Next the book turns to Humanity 2.0's 'anthropology', which means the living conditions and aspirations available to this new being. Then Humanity 2.0's ethical horizons are considered, focusing on the normative sensibility of the 'moral entrepreneur', a natural risk-taker whose blurring of traditional intuitions of 'good' and 'evil' may acquire greater significance and legitimacy in the future. Finally the book concludes with a revised general education curriculum for Humanity 2.0 that gives centre stage to changing attitudes to the brain.

http://us.macmillan.com/preparingforlifeinhumanity20/SteveFuller

[Sounder]

Wonderful material vanlose kid, if you are so inclined, do feel free to post more.

I blame it all on the innovations of Mani being adopted by other faith traditions.

and thanks for the Fuller vid, tasmic.

[vanlose kid]

@tazmic, apart from the fact that Fuller's work is a blue-eyed manifesto, presenting this development as a natural projection of inevitable evolutionary forces in nature at work which we are only beginning to understand and explicate, which is the opposite of what I've been posting here: i.e. a planned, concerted, ideological, political, economical, human effort of the few over many generations, then yeah, i guess it is the same.

thanks.

*

[vanlose kid]

In the mainstream.

http://www.upi.com/blog/2013/07/29/Vale ... 375106982/



*

[tazmic]

@tazmic, apart from the fact that Fuller's work is a blue-eyed manifesto, presenting this development as a natural projection of inevitable evolutionary forces in nature at work which we are only beginning to understand and explicate, which is the opposite of what I've been posting here: i.e. a planned, concerted, ideological, political, economical, human effort of the few over many generations, then yeah, i guess it is the same.

thanks.

*

Like I said, without the monolithic presumptions.

If that's your obelisk, try "The ascendency of the scientific dictatorship."

Or listen to the authors. I recommend, for you

Nothing Beyond The Flesh - The Theocracy of Prima Materia (mp3 - part1)

Up your alley?

[Hammer of Los]

...

I rather liked Space Barbie.

They could have gone easier on the breast enhancement.

And I wasn't at all sue about the beard look.

Sorry.

Of course the idea of space aliens telling us God is Love and we are all one, that's just crazy.

...

[semper occultus]

I posted the above mainly because it struck me as singular. (First and only run in HB, 1989. Never issued in PB. Stumbled on it while looking into empiricism, Hobbes and Bacon.) But it does tack closer to what I think is going on. I've mentioned it before, I think: "British Israel".

The "elite" or ruling class, even when they propagate and fund atheism (and they do) do so not because they are atheists. The people who run Dr. Strangelove, the Overlook, who throw parties in EWS, or in Lapham's film (thanks for that) are not atheist at all. Like scientism, they only sell it to the rabble of the null degree.

The best way to protect and propagate a mystery religion for the very few is by pretending that it doesn't exist."The greatest trick the devil ever pulled..." They are a very committed group of people and it is not purely money that drives them but Mammon (Moloch, the Demiurge, the Great Architect, Athene, Prometheus, the Lightbringer, etc.). Atheism (secularism) is just one more veil adorning Mystery Babylon.

You have to ask yourself whether the person preaching it (e.g. Dawkins, Dennett) really does believe what he preaches. Their rulers, it is clear, do not.

I've always been struck by the relation: empiricism-empire. (The Royal Society.) How about you? Follow the obelisk.

.....you are very welcome back VK........what a post....!

........yes..."they" think they have solely inherited, by right & by dint of their inate superiority, the promethean gift of spiritual fire – & deem themselves alone amongst the entire human tribe worthy to tread its path which is...simply put....to achieve power through communication, interaction & congess with higher non-human intelligence with the ultimate eventuality of personal ascent to a super-human form...a solar entity…..effectively godhood....the Luciferian heresy.....

.......the practitioners, as certain select men of considerable intellectual & material resources, may cloak themselves behind the walls of august college-halls, select clubs & secluded country estates down the years, from both the pitchforks & burning torches of the unwashed village mob & their Priests & Bishops alike, to embark undisturbed upon the study & practice of knowledge that has been protected from the profane classically by secrecy, by the "demonisation" of its practices & effects via the good offices of the Inquisition & their remarkably persuasive red-hot pokers, by the Witch-finders General & latterly by their modern-day equivalents - the fundamentalist Dawkinsists touting their brazen, bare-faced denial of the evident reality of a whole range of super-normal human faculties of cognition & the influence at physical & temporal distance of mind, matter & flesh...

…..interestingly it is also said of Crowley ( by Dion Fortune ) that his public domain magick contains certain highly dangerous hidden traps or omissions in its workings - bottomless black holes in the floor of the unlit passageway to swallow up those who, uninvited, would stumble blindly or carelessly along its rocky path in the wake of the elect amongst the elitist fraternities…..

a couple of names spring to mind ....Maurice Bowra the leading Crowleyite of his time at Oxford..….Evan Morgan, 2nd Viscount Tredegar

.....I stumbled across this on Amazon the other day......










……some interesting material here I think…..

Interview with Kathleen Sullivan (Part Four)

Could you tell us something of "Lucian," and the Luciferian beliefs he shared with you?

Lucian is highly regarded within the ranks of the Illuminati, although his popularity with the public has definitely waned in the past several years. He is a former DC-level politician who, due to the circumstances of his birth, cannot become President. For that reason, and because he appears to have an extreme, life-long need to wield power and control everyone and everything around him, he has operated in the background of almost every administration since at least the 1970s. Extremely wealthy, he perversely enjoys entrapping and blackmailing politicians and using the “evidence” of their indiscretions to continue to blackmail them throughout their careers. He especially likes to entrap politicians who claim to be born-again Christians. He told me, more than once, that they are all “hypocrites” and that he is determined to prove that.

He is also not above doing more ugly things to people who get in his way or cause problems for him. The last time I saw him, shortly after Clinton became President, “Lucian” informed me that when “they” have total power over our government (whoever “they” are), he’ll have me back with him as his “pet.”

Concerning the Luciferian beliefs that Lucian taught me: as a person who did not come from a Christian family, Lucian seemed to be primarily interested in the Old Testament. He told me that he and other Luciferians consider Jesus to have been a usurper, in that Jesus stole Lucifer’s rightful position as the true son of God. In a Yin/Yang way, he stated that while Lucifer was thrown down to rule the earth, he has become known as Satan, the evil one, to most people. But Lucian and his associates know him as Lucifer, the light-bearer. This is why they prefer the word, “Illuminati.” The “illumined ones.” He and others like him have grandiose schemes to develop a one-world religion and one-world government that would originally pretend to tolerate Christianity, but would eventually have all Christians either convert to their more global religion, or face ugly consequences. But of course, Lucian – who is a flaming pedophile – is also convinced that they will be able to convince the masses that adult/child sex should be legalized.

Lucian was one of the few members of Illuminati who seemed to truly hate Christians with a passion. I don’t know how that came about.

Like the others he worshipped with, he called the sun, “Ra,” and stated that the sun’s light, when it comes into our bodies, transforms us to be more like that top God. At one location, they had a wall made of round crystals at least the size of golf balls. They believed that they could stand inside that wall and that the sunlight would somehow be concentrated by the crystals and speed their transformation. He stated that he and others like him would transform into Godlike beings that would rule the world and universe. He also mentioned something I still think is extremely odd, because I’ve not heard of it from any other source. He talked about what he called “Saint Peter’s Net.” He stated that as godlike beings, they would form a “net” and capture the energy of others who die and use their spirit-energy to become even more godlike. (In a way, this reminds me of cannibalism and ingestion of blood by some occultists in rituals, to gain the life force of their newly deceased, or dying, victims.)

Some of the Illuminati wives of politicians I was ordered to “worship” with, as a slave, included Greco-Roman religious traditions in their daytime rituals. Forced female-female and adult-child sex was often perpetrated at their rituals. At each of their rituals, at least some of the wives would also have sex with each other. They did not believe in cannibalism or drinking blood. Instead, (this is gross, sorry), they drank semen from the men, after it had been processed somehow to “purify” it. They believed it would also increase their energy. I didn’t.

Lucian, who often gave my father orders, was – like my father – since at least the 50’s, closely aligned with Nazi immigrants who were brought to the US by the OSS/CIA and U.S. Army. Like my father, Lucian was also into Gnosticism, and truly seemed to believe that by physically suffering and depriving himself of certain pleasures (excluding sex with children) he would become more spiritually godlike and elevated. That didn’t seem to keep him and Dad from tormenting and depriving their victims, however. Perhaps they failed to realize that they were also making us spiritually stronger, if their beliefs were true.

Did you first hear the name "Maitreya" from Lucian?

Yes.

Did anyone else in the network speak of Maitreya to you?

Lucian was one of extremely few persons in the Illuminati who talked with me, instead of to me. But he only did this when I was alone with him. All of the others seemed to view me as an object, a bought-and-paid-for slave who was of no importance, other than what I could do for them. So, to make a long answer shorter, I have no memory of any of the others discussing Maitreya with me. I have since learned, however, that Lucian has strong connections to Lucis Trust, and so does Maitreya.

According to Lucian, what's Maitreya's purpose?

First, more background about my experiences with Lucian. I am not claiming that anything that Lucian told me was true. He and the other people who believed they “owned” me did believe, however, that I would never be able to remember what occurred when I was in their presence – including what they said. I had what they referred to as “failsafe” programming. This means that, if all else failed, I was supposed to suicide when the memories started to emerge. Fortunately, I have had a succession of competent therapists who have kept me alive whenever suicide conditioning kicked in. (Usually, when I had to be hospitalized to keep me safe until I worked through the program, I was diagnosed as having “major depression with suicidal ideations.”)

Because I was considered “failsafe,” and because Lucian was a master hypnotist who was proficient in mind control, he seemed quite confident that I would never remember him, let alone talk about what he told me. As a pedophile and abuse survivor (I can’t go into that further), he seemed to have great difficulty socializing comfortably with other males. This may have been one of the reasons why he, unlike most of the other slave-owners, chose to “teach” me, from my teenage years on, what he believed was really going on in the world and in politics, and even in specific politicians’ lives. This included “their” plans for Maitreya.

He basically told me that Lucis Trust is really a springboard for the Illuminati’s eventual creation of a one-world religion. He stated that they were using Maitreya, who Lucian said was a master hypnotist and was already performing documented faked “miracles,” to convince the “masses” that Maitreya was the second coming of Jesus. Lucian and his associates sometimes discussed the possibility of using other smoke-and-mirror techniques, including holographs in the sky, to convince the “cattle” (he had serious disdain for anyone “lower” than himself, socially) that Jesus had returned, and that other parts of the Bible’s Book of Revelations were also occurring.

Lucian said that if “they” were successful, then those among the masses who believe in the rapture would give up everything and just sit and wait for it to occur. He said that those people would be “easy pickings.”

He also said that Maitreya was being mentioned as the possible figurehead for the new one-world religion, which they hoped to center in Rome. Again, these were things he said over a decade ago. I don’t know how much of it, if any, was true – at least to him.