Patrick Deneen On Russia, America, And The Danger Of Political Gnosticism

Those who are familiar with the orginal Meaning and History blog will know that I’m generally a supporter of Patrick Deneen’s critique of “Liberalism”—I put that word within quotation marks to indicate that Deneen—a professor of political philosophy—uses the term in ways that may be unfamiliar to many. Those who are interested can find past references to Deneen here—they have been imported to this substack, but are difficult to locate using a search function, so I refer readers to the older site. The first entry is to a post that contains links to the five part summary of Deneen’s book Why Liberalism Failed—this is a separate link to that post with some excerpts that indicate the subject matter:

Patrick Deneen On The Future Of Conservatism

Deneen's overall thesis is that all liberalism contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction--progressive liberalism may get to the bottom of the slippery slope faster, but classical liberalism or libertarianism will get to the bottom just as surely because their fundamental principles are the same. Indeed, in a notable quote (see below) Deneen states with regard to the historical ignorance of his students: 

     The pervasive ignorance of our students ... is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. 

The civilization he speaks of, of course, is that of Western liberalism.

Deneen approaches the question of liberalism's death-wish from a philosophical and historical perspective but, before dismissing this as arcane theorizing, be advised that Deneen--writing in 2018--is keenly aware of current political realities. He writes with Trump--and "populism" generally--very much at the front of his mind.

This thesis was summarized elsewhere in this succinct form:

The thesis of “Why Liberalism Failed” can be shoved into a nutshell of, “liberalism is failing because liberalism is succeeding.” Deneen provides clarity in the definitions of conservatism and liberalism. He explains that there’s been confusion in what we typically call conservatism in the United States. Deneen suggests that we might more appropriately call conservatives, “classical liberals.” He goes on to say that, “we need to understand there are two variants or versions of liberalism itself.”

The other day a commenter, whose name I regrettably forget, linked a video of a “debate” at ISI between Deneen and a writer who may be much more familiar to most readers: Michael Anton. I say “debate” because Anton makes it very clear that he basically agrees with Deneen. However, he does offer a certain critique of Deneen’s thought with a view to, Where do we go from here? What I mean is, Anton, while agreeing with Deneen from a philosophical standpoint, asks: As a practical matter, how should conservatives proceed in the current civilizational context of 21st century America? What should be the goal of conservative activism? Is a specific goal even realistic?

OK. I say “civilizational context” because both Anton and Deneen share a theory of Western history that derives largely from the work of Eric Voegelin (if you go to the orginal blog, you can search that name, too), breaking Western civilization down into three general movements. This is a very summary theory and is based on Voegelin’s early (1950) and seminal lecture series The New Science of Politics. Bear in mind, however, that that early work is certainly not Voegelin’s last word on the matter.

In any event, the joint Anton/Deneen discussion led me to do some searching and I came across an essay by Deneen that dates from the beginning of Putin’s SMO in Ukraine. The essay, which is embodied in my title, attempts to place the conflict between the collective globalist (and, in Deneen’s sense, liberal) West and Russia in a civilizational context that is framed by Voegelin’s triple vision of Western history. To put it slightly differently, borrowing from Samuel Huntington’s vocabulary, Deneen sees this conflict as a Clash of Civilizations, but one which reflects the divisions within what we normally understand as Western civilization (The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order).

So, let’s start with a link to Deneen’s essay:

Russia, America, and the Danger of Political Gnosticism

What Eric Voegelin can teach us about today’s international crisis

What I’ll do here is present Deneen’s basic ideas, but with comments to indicate some of the complicating factors that are present throughout Western history. Deneen begins by recounting that at the time of the start of Putin’s SMO he was teaching a seminar:

It was pure serendipity that we were reading Voegelin’s The New Science of Politics in the opening days of the war in Ukraine. Arguably more than any of his contemporaries, Voegelin analysis remains stunningly relevant and even prophetic in this moment. He provides an instructive set of categories by which to understand the current global situation.

He then plunges right into a presentation of Voegelin’s analysis. It is, indeed, a “simplified summary” in more ways than one—those who have read Voegelin will be aware that his style of writing is anything but simple:

Voegelin’s thesis is rich, but fairly straightforward. For those who haven’t read him, here is a simplified summary.

There have been three political-theological “stages” or “chapters” in western history. The first was the age of Civil Religion: when the gods existed in the service of human cities, and human allegiance to the gods was equal to allegiance to the city. Thus, those who questioned the gods or suggested alternatives were subject to civic censoring, the most infamous instance being the prosecution, condemnation, and execution of Socrates for, among other things, “introducing new gods to the city.

The second stage was the age of Christendom. Christianity represented a “radical revolution” in the history of the world, teaching that humans were citizens of two cities - the City of God and the City of Man. Christians aspired to becoming full members of the City of God, and thus understood that their citizenship in any earthly city was temporary and conditional - we were better understood to be pilgrims than “love it or leave it” citizens. Voegelin called this the “de-divination” of the earthly cities: not that divinity ceased to exist, but God’s existence was ultimately beyond and outside any earthly city.

The third state developed as an outgrowth of the Christian revolution: immediately, along with what would become Augustinian Christianity, there arose a number of heresies, most importantly (in Voegelin’s view) Gnosticism. Gnosticism was the belief that the world was a fallen and imperfect place (true), but that humans equipped with a form of divine knowledge (gnosis) could transcend these imperfections, achieving through gnosis a perfected existence outside and beyond the fallen world. Voegelin argued that modern Gnosticism was an effort to “redivinize” the political world - not now by bringing the gods in to the service of the city, but by making the city into a heaven on earth. Voegelin saw the rise of totalitarianism as a potent form of fully political Gnosticism - or the belief in human perfectibility through politics - in the form of Fascism and Marxism, aligned against the still-extant forms of Christendom that he saw especially vital in the United States and Great Britain.

Before getting into the Russia aspect of this, let’s unpack this summary a bit.

First, Voegelin’s concept of Civil Religion is based on his understanding of Roman religion and politics. In a broader sense, what he’s referring to is similar to is the form of civilization or society which prevailed broadly until the advent of Christianity. In this form of organized human life the polity or society was regarded as a reflection of the divine order that ordered the universe. This form of thought provided the inhabitants of such social orders with a sense of security and of belonging in a world that is, to one extent or another, always somewhat threatening. It reflects the Israelite and Greek understanding of the universe as divinely ordered and good—and that order and goodness is viewed as reflected in societal institutions. The meaning in historical existence is to live in harmony with the divine order as we know it in this world. To revolt against or question those institutions is thus viewed as a revolt against the very structure of reality.

Voegelin, of course, is well aware of the vicissitudes of historical existence. When bad things happen on a large enough scale, as inevitably happens, man in historical existence questions the meaning of it all—Is there, after all, any meaning in history? Or, if the sense of alienation becomes strong enough, is it possible that—as Buddha and Luther (very much in the Augustinian tradition) would say—all existence is simply suffering and meaninglessness. Our goal should be to exit this life. This dynamic can certainly be seen in Egyptian writings from their Time of Troubles, turmoil in the divine order of pharaonic dynasties. It is also reflected in Indian and Chinese civilization in Buddhism and Taoism. These are complicated topics that I’ll leave alone, but we need to be aware that Voegelin’s summary is not intended to reflect a structure of history that proceeds in a rigidly linear fashion.

Second, as Christianity became civilizationally dominant in most of the West, the Dominical teaching of “render unto Caesar / render unto God” came into tension with the needs of Roman society. As Christianity called into question the truth and value of the Roman viewpoint—above all in Augustine’s City of God—the question of how Christian’s should view a society and polity that was dominantly Christian naturally arose. The political authorities naturally sought support from the Church, but the question was, could the Church be true to itself while identifying closely with any polity? For many Christians in a nominal sense the notion of a Christian state was a comforting one—in effect, it was simply a substitution for the previous Roman state.

In Western Europe, the fall of the Roman Empire—or, its separation from the center of the Empire in the East—and the waves of barbarian invasions led to a power vacuum that resulted in a constant struggle between Church and State, with now one, then the other dominant. This tension held more or less through the Middle Ages, even as Christian thought was dissolving into skeptical forms of philosophy—voluntarism and nominalism. I leave the reader to review the history of the West in this regard mentally.

In the East, on the other hand, the Roman Empire largely endured in a highly organized form. The Church in the East tended to become the religious arm of the state in a sense that was not even true of the confessional nation states of the later West. This type of “caesaro-papism” will be at the core of Voegelin’s analysis of Russian society. In his view, the tendency on the part of the state—with varying degrees of success in East and West, more successfully in the East—was transform the Christian church into something like Voegelin’s notion of a Civil Religion.

Third, the origins of Gnosticism are complex. In its ancient form it reflects the sense of extreme alienation from bodily, and therefore societal, existence. This attitude was transmitted to the early Church in the West along with the influx of intellectuals into the Church, many of them steeped in Neo-Platonic philosophy that was congenial to gnostic influences. Not surprisingly, given Augustine’s long involvement in Manachaeism, that mix of Neoplatonism and gnosticism was transmitted to the West through the dominant intellectual tradition of the West: the Augustinian tradition. This was the tradition that lay behind the religious elements of the Protestant Revolt (which Voegelin, a Lutheran, characterizes as the inbreaking of gnosticism into the social institutions of the West). It was also the tradition that led to the breakdown of Christian philosophy into skeptical forms of thought that undergird what later became liberalism both of the Right—in the Anglosphere—and of the Left via the German ideologies beginning with Kant. In point of fact, virtually all of the well known German thinkers were very much influenced by explicity gnostic thought (another complex topic).

Importantly, however, with the technological and scientific progress of Western Europe, gnosticism took on a radically optimistic form. Whereas earlier gnostic influences in the West—reflected in alchemy, hermetic thought, Newton’s Rosicrucianism, etc.—where esoteric and otherworldly, these influences became transformed into forms of political activism that were more and more explicitly based on, not just a “redivinization” of the state, but as a divinization of Man himself into the Creator of himself and the world. These developments are reflected, of course, in the transhumanist movement, but also in more mainstream forms of liberalism—consider Anthony Kennedy’s famous notion that each person invents his own “sweet mystery of life” (Scalia’s sarcastic words). Above all, we see it in the conviction that whatever new transformationist obsession they advance is “history on our side.” As Voegelin saw it, these influences were especially explicit in ideologies such as Communism, but in Wokeism gnostic influences have achieved social dominance in the West, at least among the ruling elites.

So, with that lengthy excursion, we turn to Russia. And it should be clear where Voegelin’s analysis will lead. Gnostic revolutionaries of the Left managed to place themselves at the top of Russian society—that is the meaning of the Russian Revolution. But, in doing so, they essentially aped the essential forms of traditional Russian society. The tsar was replaced by Lenin and Stalin, and Communism became the replacement Civic Religion—an anti-religion, if you will. Thus Deneen writes:

Having noted that communism is a modern form of political gnosticism, [Voegelin] nevertheless discerns that the Communist mission of Russia was, in some fundamental respects, simply an overlay on the more foundational civil religion of ancient Russia. Take away the gnosticism of communism - which he thought was a possibility, and indeed, that the West should pursue victory against modern gnosticism - nevertheless, he argued, Russia would remain distinct from the Augustinian west for deeper theo-political reasons. Russia was still most foundationally a nation forged in the theology of the ancient form of Civil Religion.

And that, of course, is exactly what happened with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Moreover, that reversion of Russia to its roots has also allowed for the recovery of Russia’s own critique of Liberalism, based on writers such as Dostoevsky. These are trends of recovery that Putin has explicitly encouraged, and it is precisely this that has enraged the Gnostic revolutionaries of the West.

For what remains, I will simply paste in what are simply snippets of Deneens reflections on America v. Russia today—I think readers will find value in ths. Deneen, as a Catholic, sees Christians as caught between radical Gnostic revolutionaries of the West, and a resurgent Caesaropapist Russia—with Christianity as the state religion of Russian nationalism. He opposes this to what he regards as the true Christian tradition of separation of God and Caesar—Augustinian Christianity. For my part, I agree with Anton that this is naive—but not only in the practical sense that Anton intends. I believe Deneen’s view in this regard is flawed theoretically, because he fails to understand the gnostic baggage that has been part and parcel of the Augustinian tradition, and which led to the triumph of Political Gnosticism in the West. My position is that there’s no perfect solution, but that individual spiritual reform combined with recovery of the Apostolic Tradition of the Christain faith is our only best hope. I will add one additional note of criticism with regard to Deneen: I am unconvinced—as against Deneen—that Russia in its current form is an aggressively expansionist state, such as was the Roman Empire. The influence of Christianity, even in a caesaro-papist form, offers hope. Deneen, here, I think, falls into the same trap as the conservatives he criticizes below—there may, in fact, be a real possibility for a Christian America to reach a modus vivendi with Russia.

So, Deneen:

America

...

Western liberal democracies were no less susceptible to the tendency toward gnosticism as their more radical counterparts in Germany and Russia; but, rather than making an appearance in a revolutionary form, the gnosticism was more likely to develop out of a “reformist,” what he called “right” gnosticism; - or, more clearly, the progressivist left. ... he believed - or feared - that an internal tendency within liberalism tilted toward a more revolutionary form of Gnosticism. ...

The experience of the past several decades have only confirmed Voegelin’s fear and warning. What was once a “reformist left” is today a radicalized messianic party, advancing its gnostic vision amid the ruins of the Christian civilization that once balanced these forces. What we today call “woke” is merely a new articulation of the revolutionary dream that was once vested in Communism. The examples are legion: the wholesale transformation and even elimination of the “traditional” - i.e., natural - family. The effort to define sexuality according to human desire, aided by technological interventions. ...

America and Russia Today

Grasping Voegelin’s analysis, we can now ask, where in contemporary age do we witness the greatest dangers of utopian gnosticism? Where are its dynamics most on display as a new revolutionary ideology? ...

Today it should be clear even to casual observers that Voegelin’s fears have come true. The progressive ruling class that populates and runs the main institutions of American and European society are now the most thoroughgoing and ideological exemplars of political gnosticism. Their relentless efforts to extirpate any remnant of the predecessor “classical and Christian” society is daily on display. As Voegelin observed, gnostics necessarily become the most vocal anti-Christians, rightly detecting that they are the greatest threat to the “re-divination” of the political order. ...

...

For those who have been paying close attention, Ukraine - tragically - has been a pawn of American gnostic dynamics. ...

The hubristic expansionism on display - heedless of history, geography, culture, and political realism - has become a hallmark of a liberal gnosticism, the feverish faith that nothing can nor should stand in the way of the End of History. All corners of the world must be remade in the image of liberal gnosticism, whether the globe, your classroom, your workplace, your church, or your very biology.

...

The Gnostic left - revolutionary gnosticism - rightly sees Russia as a theo-political competitor. ... The lust to destroy existing Russia - to engage in “regime change” or even wager that a victory is possible in a nuclear war - reflects a deeply Gnostic dream of remaking the world in the image of a universalized heaven on earth.

The war fervency of the conservative ruling class burns no less intensely. ... They are the pawns of the “messianic gnostics,” no less so than Ukraine has been the pawn of the whole rotten ruling class.