Gnostic Modernity

We must realize in all this that time-as-practice must confront a deeply abiding Gnosticism powering Modernity’s temporality. Montaigne’s easy-going attitude may not always be a useful response. Any attempt to maintain this attitude as a permanent, or even preferred, state is bound to run up against the intransigent disregard of what the Stoics called fortuna or what Shakespeare’s Hamlet called “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” An anodyne Epicureanism, an indifferent Stoicism, or an oversimplified Buddhist’s detached Nirvana as preferred states of being are not solutions.

Throughout this project, I will be leaning on Hans Blumenberg’s understanding of Gnosticism as “radical anthropocentrism combined with a negative characterization of man’s position in the cosmos.”[1] Blumenberg’s tracing of Christianity’s long-standing struggles with Gnosticism shows us how anthropocentrism reigns even in the various attempts to resolve the Gnostic denigration of God’s creation. On the one hand, the cosmos actively opposes humankind’s interests – we are an afterthought in the process of creation. Salvation becomes a confrontation with the cosmos as an attempt to either exit it (transcendence as pure exteriority) or subdue it by putting it to use. On the other hand, Christianity’s false resolution has been to deify the cosmos as “God’s creation.” This imbues it with a benign and autonomous harmony that we simply marvel at. Blumenberg’s compelling point is that this attempt to resolve Gnosticism fell flat – it keeps Gnosticism hanging around as it oscillates between contemplation and instrumental domination: “This attitude of man to the world is also formed by the biblical offer of dominion; he is no longer only an observer, who comes to rest in contemplation – instead, he knows in order to exercise dominion.”[2]In later terms, the Romantic and the Instrumental are two sides of the same Gnostic coin. We have been unable to fully deconstruct these implications because we have never been Modern.

The importance of Blumenberg’s understanding of Gnosticism has been underappreciated. At least since Nietzsche, Modernity has focused on Nihilism. At the risk of my splitting a hair, Blumenberg’s critique of Gnosticism emphasizes Modernity’s emergence from problems within theology and theodicy, which were deeply interwoven with science, philosophy, economics, educations, et cetera. Nihilism tends to be thought of as emerging from the Death of God and the relegation of theology to a minor role in the onward march of Modernity’s rational progress. Gnosticism allows us to re-frame the relationship between Modernity and Nihilism without looking to an oversimplified version of Religion and Theology as the savior that returns from exile. Rather, we see Modernity as a specific transformation of Theology that left nothing untouched. Far from being a sidelined player, Theology has always been central to Modernity. This project will spend significant time understanding this connection, particularly how Theology lost its practical mission when it was forced to take up the problem of proving God’s existence.

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[1] See The Genesis of the Copernican World, 25-26.

[2] Ibid, 27-28.