Reductionism and gnosticism

In a comment in the long thread on Randianism and reductionism, I explain how ideological reductionism is an outgrowth of gnosticism. The gnostic rejects Christian transcendence and seeks to return the world to a simpler, less difficult structure. But he can’t get rid of the transcendent, because it is a fundamental aspect of reality and of the human experience of reality. As a human being, he still needs the transcendent. So he creates a substitute transcendent, by squeezing the transcendent into some reductionist, immanent value, such as equality, tolerance, freedom, the economy, Randian reason, a cult leader, the German race, the black race, etc. I then connect that idea with Voegelin’s account of gnosticism as (in my words) “the enlargement of the soul so as to include God within man, and thus eliminate the frustrating and uncomfortable experience that God is outside and above man.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 22, 2009 09:42 AM | Send