Eric Voegelin e a crise do espírito : como o fechamento para as ordens transcendentes dá origem aos messianismos políticos modernos

Abstract

The reality of the spirit occupies a place of prominence throughout Voegelin's entire work. It is no surprise, therefore, that this very reality provided the philosopher with the foundations upon which his political science rests. As a grateful recipient of the events originating from Greek philosophy and early Christianity, Voegelin's philosophy was only able to analyze and judge the political phenomena it addressed because the Greek and Christian openness to the spirit, to the transcendent realm, relativized worldly orders. From this new perspective, the philosopher could henceforth view these orders with greater independence. We analyze, therefore, how modern Gnosticism, later also referred to as egophanic revolt, dogmatically closes itself off from this reality of the spirit, resacralizing the realm of worldly power that had previously been desacralized by philosophy and Christian revelation. Once closed to the reality of the spirit, humanity seeks to realize it on earth. In other words, the crisis of the spirit, now eclipsed by the apocalypse and deification of man, gives rise to the grandiose outbursts we see so vividly embodied in the totalitarian phenomenon: the man who arrogates total powers to himself is none other than the one who, first, discarded transcendent realities to become more fully the master of the world — of a world to be rectified, redeemed, and managed with an iron hand by the political messianisms that dominated the modern political landscape over the past two centuries. For philosophy — a point our investigation will ultimately reach — the consequences of this closure result in what Voegelin terms idophobia or the prohibition of any fundamentally philosophical question that might once again bring the reality of the spirit back to light. The crisis of the spirit, it will become clear, constitutes not only a religious crisis but also, and fundamentally, a philosophical one.