Dangerous Knowledge In Academe

Edward Said was essentially a Deconstructivist or Post-Structuralist which is another way of saying he was an intellectual fraud.

Throughout his book “Orientalism” he argues that Western constructions of the Middle-East cannot be considered as objective since Westerners built their racist assumptions into their supposedly objective literature on the Middle-East. Amazingly, he claims for himself the right to claim 100% objectivity in his own work. He believes he is incapable of having any prejudices and so his own work must be seen as totally scientific. This process is devoid of reciprocity. All Western intellectual constructs must be seen through the prism of Muslim “victimhood.”

Post-Structuralism has also been one of the major influences on contemporary philosophy. It’s major exponents were Jaques Derrida and Roland Barthes. It can be basically summarised by saying that it teaches that there is no objective reality only multiple interpretations of reality. Roland Barthes, for instance, took as an example the multiple interpretations of a text . In his most famous sentence he stated;

“ the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author.”

There is indeed some truth in this. The idea that there are multiple interpretations of a text and reality itself are valid. Again, however, to take this idea to it’s logical conclusion becomes absurd. Many authors have compared the role of the author to that of parent; the book an author writes is like a child; it grows up, leaves home and it’s parent (author) loses control over it. It is just as reasonable to say that, in a sense, a book is recreated every time it is read. It fair to say, however, that Post-Structuralism (or Deconstructivism) essentially recycles an old idea. When the Ancient Greek philosopher Heroclitus wrote “ you can never step into the same river twice” he was basically saying the same thing. Reality is essentially experiential and is, to some extent, in flux.

However, is everything in flux? That being so, there is no such think as objective reality.

Here is another famous sentence by Roland Barthes:

“In the multiplication of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing deciphered”

If you have never spent any time in academia you are probably wondering: what does that sentence mean? Does it mean anything? Don’t worry – it’s essentially meaningless.

If you are looking for some objective scholarship on the Middle-East I would forget about Edward Said.

STOP

ALL

MUSLIM

IMMIGRATION

NOW.

WE DON'T NEED IT.

WE DON'T WANT IT.

OUR FUTURE CAN'T TAKE IT.

"Islamic history is served up airbrushed in academia, and the result is a public denied knowledge"

....too many in the general public deny Islamic violence is but just a battle in a war to conquer and dominate the entire planet....fools...(and too much of the Islamic way of life is being imposed upon our children in all levels of academia)...Learning about other cultures is good, Being forced to live as other cultures do is just plain wrong....Making children learn Arabic, wear burkas, recite Islamic prayers and to learn Islamic history from an Islamic point of view is pure surrender...

It's interesting to see how Said's credibility has fallen on such hard times. It's deservedly so and extremely overdue. Even long-time supporter Christopher Hitchens had a go at him in the Atlantic a few years back.

I met Said's abortion of a book when I had just transfered from Oxford to SOAS, London (School of Oriental and African Studies) and changed from Sanskrit to Social Anthropology. I could never get beyond the twentieth page, because the fraud was, to me, obvious. Incidentally, being chiefly interested in Indian culture, I was indignant that a book that claimed to dissect "orientalism" was concerned with nothing but Islam. China, India, Japan, native Africa, pre-Islamic cultures, might as well not have existed. Pure cultural imperialism of the very kind that our lecturers always warned us against. I wonder how many of my contemporaries, few of whom were interested in Islam, had the same impression? But never mind: all attempts to silence the truth about Islam will not manage to overcome the noise of Islam's own deeds.

Hey check THIS one out: [just saw it on politicallyincorrect.de]

We're talking ***DISNEY*** here.. I know they like their little sindbad and Alladdin stories but this one may lead to a SERIOUS BOYCOTT!!!

Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer have acquired screen rights to Jihadists in Paradise, a Mark Bowden article published in the March issue of Atlantic Monthly. Variety says Bowden is set to write the screenplay.

Jihadists in Paradise details the emergence in the Philippines of the Islamic terrorist faction Abu Sayyaf and one of its leaders, Aldam Tilao. Tilao put his group on the map by sneaking by boat into a diving resort and taking 20 hostages, including three Americans. He and his armed thugs beheaded one of the Americans and dragged the other two -- a missionary couple -- across the jungles for a year and a half.

"Making children learn Arabic, wear burkas, recite Islamic prayers and to learn Islamic history from an Islamic point of view is pure surrender..."

Absolutely correct! And, notice, that in this moral surrender of the West to Islam -- you don't need suicide bombers! You don't need "violence."
Just people with the backbones of a slinky.

"The other multimillion-dollar donation to CAIR came from the Al Maktoum Foundation, the prime money-distribution arm of the ruling family of Dubai, also supposedly a friend of America."
-- from the article above

Who can be in the vicinity of Park Lane, and not know about the Maktoums, the racing Maktoums, of the family sired by Maktoum al-Maktoum?

Here is more on the Al-Maktoum family that runs, and owns so much of, Dubai -- the country that the Bush Administration wanted to entrust with running a dozen or so American ports:

"From The Times September 15, 2006

Sheikh accused over camel boys

A legal case has been filed in a US district court alleging that the governor of Dubai and his brother enslaved about 30,000 children over the past 30 years for use as camel jockeys.
The claim, which is based on international laws banning slavery and child labour, names Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Governor of Dubai and Vice-President of the United Arab Emirates, and Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum, as well as others.

The brothers, who are among the world’s most famous racehorse owners, are accused of trafficking boys as young as 2 from Bangladesh, Sudan and southern Asia.

The case has been filed in Florida, where the defendants have property, on behalf of six parents. Lawyers are seeking class-action status on behalf of about 30,000 children. (AFP)"

Scrualla, your post is unclear. The site you refrence is written in Danish and plagued with pop up porn ads.

What is wrong with Disney or anyone else making a movie about the abu Sayaf? You haven't pointed out any problem here. Who might boycott? Are you for or against?

"It [Post-Structuralism] can be basically summarised by saying that it teaches that there is no objective reality only multiple interpretations of reality." -- Odysseus.

The perfectly relativistic equilibrium claimed by Post-Structuralism (and more generally by Politically Correct Multiculturalism) is a lie, masking an Absolutist neo-Gnosticism that seeks to deconstruct and/or destroy, in one way or another, the evil order of the West, in favor of a transfiguration of reality into a Utopia of one sort or another. This intra-Western Gnosticism is an immanentization of the eschaton, while its mirror-image, extra-Western Islam, is an eschatologization of immanence; and, though both are symbiotes now, we know the latter, should they achieve power, will not tolerate the former.

remote_control

You said

“intra-Western Gnosticism is an immanentization of the eschaton”

and

“extra-Western Islam, is an eschatologization of immanence”

Sounds very profound but I don’t know what it means.
Can you explain?

“'extra-Western Islam, is an eschatologization of immanence'

Sounds very profound but I don’t know what it means.
Can you explain?"
-- from a posting above about another posting even more above

I was not the original poster, but I'm going to offer my own interpretation. It means that the knee-bone is connected to the thigh-bone.

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones/
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones/
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones/
Now hear of the Word of the Lord.

Odysseus,

“intra-Western Gnosticism is an immanentization of the eschaton”

and

“extra-Western Islam, is an eschatologization of immanence”

Sounds very profound but I don’t know what it means.Can you explain?

I'll take your description of my statements as "very profound" as a sincerely ingenuous appraisal and thank you for that.

Let's unpack my statements. You say you "don't know what it means".

“intra-Western Gnosticism is an immanentization of the eschaton”

I assume you know what "intra-Western" means.

You might not know what I mean by "Gnosticism"; as I've said many times before on different threads here, I am following Eric Voegelin who himself relied in part on the works of Zahner, Heidegger, Simone Pétrement, and Hans Jonas, insofar as he concluded on the basis of his study of Western history (and continued to unfold that conclusion to his death in 1985) that ancient Gnosticism never died out with the Christianization of the Roman Empire in the 4th century, but went underground in the form of various heterodoxies, heresies, and cults of magic, alchemy, witchcraft, esoteric mysticisms, etc. -- then resurfaced after the Protestant Reformation, increasingly gaining sociopolitical influence until by the late 18th century it contributed to the disorders of the French Revolution; throughout the 19th century waxed in the form of various pathologies among the vulgar populations as well as among the "elite" classes; and into the 20th century it erupted spectacularly on the scene with Communism, Nazism and Fascism.

"immanentization of the eschaton" -- I assume you know what the "eschaton" refers to. Voegelin I believe coined (and certainly frequently utilized) the term "immanentization" in this context, referring to the difference between

a) the religious (or cultic) mindset that seeks to escape the evils of this world (either by suicide, or by waiting for death when finally he will be free of the "prison" of the body, or by obsessing about an imminent (not immanent) End of History when God will finally put an end to this vale of tears

and

b) the mindset that seeks not to escape this wickedly imperfect world, but seeks somehow to transform this wickedly unjust and imperfect world into a perfect Utopia of one sort or another, by violent Revolution and/or Conquest (or, in "Lite" versions, through more or less pacifist (and more or less coherent) methods, either quasi-mystical, or quasi-pragmatic in terms of social engineering, of "raising social consciousness").

“extra-Western Islam, is an eschatologization of immanence”

Likewise, I assume you can gather what "extra-Western" means, as well as "Islam".

The term "eschatologization of immanence" is meant to convey the mirror image of "immanentization of the eschaton", and I think it's an appropriate distinction, insofar as Islam's goal and attempts to transform, through violence, this imperfect world into Paradise (or more specifically, to transform this world into the final stage of receptivity for its divine transformation into Paradise at the end of time) are more directly religious, whereas the same goal and attempts to transform this world through violence exemplified by the so-called "atheist" systems of Communism and Nazism are not "religious" in the standard sense. At any rate, the two terms are sides of the same coin, though their differences do matter.

remote: "b) the mindset that seeks not to escape this wickedly imperfect world, but seeks somehow to transform this wickedly unjust and imperfect world into a perfect Utopia of one sort or another, by violent Revolution and/or Conquest (or, in "Lite" versions, through more or less pacifist (and more or less coherent) methods, either quasi-mystical, or quasi-pragmatic in terms of social engineering, of "raising social consciousness")."

I would have thought that was a perversion of gnosticism and not gnosticism itself. Where would Voegelin put those who seek not to escape this world but rather to transform this world through a transformation of their OWN consciousness. That's what a lot of New Age stuff (which I take it is gnostic in some sense) seems to be saying. Those who would seek to change the outer world into a Utopia without first transforming their own consciousness and looking there for the source of change in the outer world might be perverting what gnosticism actually meant. Not that I know much about gnosticism per se but I've read some of this New Age stuff and I see no justification for transforming the outer world through violent revolution or even justification for more pacifistic social engineering in those writings.I'm wondering whether attributing some of this (i.e. communism, nazism) to gnosticism is misplaced. It could be inspired by gnosticism but have gone far off the mark by folks trying to take a short-cut in seeking to transform the consciousness of the world when they ought to just be working on their own consciousness as the source of change.

Caroline,

"Where would Voegelin put those who seek not to escape this world but rather to transform this world through a transformation of their OWN consciousness."

Voegelin followed the ancient and medieval wisdom, whereby it is a given that this world is imperfect and cannot be perfected. Therefore, those who seek to escape this world, at the most innocuous, are simply escapists who, if they don't commit suicide, must to one degree or another indulge in the Pascalian divertissements (i.e., various addictions to distract the mind). Slightly more noble than this type of escapism are those seeking to transform this world through changing their own consciousness, but if they think the world will be transformed into perfection, they are deluding themselves and will, at best, only fool themselves and a small cultic following: the rest of the world will go chugging along like it always has, in its tension between perfection and imperfection.

"Those who would seek to change the outer world into a Utopia without first transforming their own consciousness and looking there for the source of change in the outer world might be perverting what gnosticism actually meant."

Certainly, it's less harmful to society at large if "gnostics" keep their alienation from reality personal and don't try to force it on society. But it's still a mental/spiritual disease. It's one thing to try to make life better and to try to help people. It becomes quite another to start to think you can actually transform reality such that all bad things will go away. That's fantasy, and pursuing it sincerely is mentally imbalanced.

"Not that I know much about gnosticism per se but I've read some of this New Age stuff and I see no justification for transforming the outer world through violent revolution or even justification for more pacifistic social engineering in those writings."

Those writings probably represent only one stratum of the wider phenomenon.

"I'm wondering whether attributing some of this (i.e. communism, nazism) to gnosticism is misplaced."

There's been an ongoing debate about Voegelin's (and others') take on this. I happen to side with Voegelin on this.

“Voegelin followed the ancient and medieval wisdom, whereby it is a given that this world is imperfect and cannot be perfected.”

I see nothing to disagree with in that assumption. It is my understanding that Christians would also agree with that statement.

“ Therefore, those who seek to escape this world, at the most innocuous, are simply escapists who, if they don't commit suicide, must to one degree or another indulge in the Pascalian divertissements (i.e., various addictions to distract the mind)”.

Here we confront a major misunderstanding. I thought you were previously stating that there was an alternative way of escaping this world besides suicide, and besides trying o transform this world and besides escaping into “divertissements”. And that alternative way would be Christianity, which I assumed you were describing in point a) “the religious (or cultic) mindset that seeks to escape the evils of this world (either by suicide, or by waiting for death when finally he will be free of the "prison" of the body, or by obsessing about an imminent (not immanent) End of History when God will finally put an end to this vale of tears”.

After dismissing what appears to be Christianity,you then state, “ Slightly more noble than this type of escapism are those seeking to transform this world through changing their own consciousness, but if they think the world will be transformed into perfection, they are deluding themselves and will, at best, only fool themselves and a small cultic following: the rest of the world will go chugging along like it always has, in its tension between perfection and imperfection.””

That last point of yours is very important. On the one hand you (or Voegelin, whom I haven’t read) are trashing Christianity here outright, as a form of “escapism” when you write “slightly more noble than this type of escapism are those….”. That may be justified – I don’t know. These are complicated issues. But on the other hand you are also trashing those who want to actively create a Utopia on earth. And that's a trashing that I fully endorse. Those are the people I despise most of all and who create the most destruction - something which is historically verifiable. In between those groups you then describe those who are “slightly more noble” than either group – those “seeking to transform this world through changing their own consciousness”. And you proceed to point out that “they are deluding themselves”.

I am now very sympathetic to that dismissal of yours on pragmatic grounds of those who imagined that they could actually change the world through changing their own consciousness. It’s one thing to imagine such a thing in a peaceful world and another thing to imagine such a thing when one’s very physical security is threatened by madmen who would cut off one’s head (one’s very “consciousness”) without a thought. Which is presumably why Buddhism is practically extinct now in its native lands. I don't think it is coincidental that Buddhism made its largest inroads into western culture at an historical time when the world was largely peaceful and there were few external threats (thanks to post WWII Pax Americana).

“Certainly, it's less harmful to society at large if "gnostics" keep their alienation from reality personal and don't try to force it on society. But it's still a mental/spiritual disease. It's one thing to try to make life better and to try to help people. It becomes quite another to start to think you can actually transform reality such that all bad things will go away. That's fantasy, and pursuing it sincerely is mentally imbalanced.”

I agree with you there. I think the problem here is that modern “Gnostics” are actually trying to bring something which is meant to be entirely private and personal into the public realm. I don’t know if it’s entirely fair to describe what they are pursuing as a “disease” but I agree that the entire position belongs in the realm of private spiritual pursuit and does not belong in the public square. It’s one thing for me to imagine that my consciousness alone can transform the world and another thing entirely to enforce that position as public policy (which practically translates to a public policy of pacifism). But that was my point about the possible “perversion” of what gnosticism, as a spiritual matter may well be all about and how its basic meaning may have been perverted by those who are trying to enforce some sort of enlightened consciousness on the world as a matter of public policy. But my point was – is that actually gnosticism? Or a perversion of gnosticism by those who want to shortcut what gnosticism is really all about by trying to enforce a change on the PUBLIC consciousness through force, in lieu of focusing exclusively on transforming one’s own consciousness, when that’s really not what gnosticism is about at all.?

Is it unrealistic in a practical earthly sense - the notion that one could change the world by changing one’s own consciousness? Well – yes. I think so, in the short run. But the fact that something isn’t practical doesn’t necessarily mean that that thing’s spiritual foundations are not fundamentally sound. And if one wants to trash gnosticism, then it’s more reasonable to trash it as being impractical in this real world than to trash it on the grounds that it has been misinterpreted and abused by those who may not “get it” and who desire to short-cut what it’s about by trying to enforce, through violence and revolution, or even through more subtle means of coercion, a change in everyone else’s consciousness, when it seems pretty clear that gnosticism is actually a very private matter that starts with each individual, however impractical that might be. But whoever said that spiritual matters were essentially about what is “practical”?

remote - I have been awfully wordy about all this. Let me try to be more straightforward and to the point.

Would you agree that gnosticism actually represents the notion that one ought to change one's own individual consciousness as a means of transforming the world ultimately?

And if that is a correct understanding of the doctrine, no matter how impractical such a doctrine might be, is it fair to pin communism and nazism to that doctrine, merely because that doctrine may have been misunderstood by lazy and fanatical people who happened to want to jump forth and transform the world into a "utopia", rather than restricting their "work" to themselves and to their own consciousnesses, as gnosticism actually endorses? The reasons people might have misunderstood and misapplied this are all too obvious, namely that it is so much easier to seek "utopian" change in the external world (through coercion and violence and revolution) than to seek change in the place where it really belongs and is the most difficult to achieve - in oneself, in one's own consciousness. (And I do agree again, that that is a private spiritual matter which ought not to be confused with public policy).

The Sunni and Shile violonce is way being over play in the west. Bost sects have member thought the world that live peaceful together. America cause this violonce by not being able to bring security to Iraq. Bin Larden than sunni leader of than ingurrent group have very good relate with Iran and it Rel Guard force which are Shile.

remote_control wrote:
"The perfectly relativistic equilibrium claimed by Post-Structuralism (and more generally by Politically Correct Multiculturalism) is a lie, masking an Absolutist neo-Gnosticism that seeks to deconstruct and/or destroy, in one way or another, the evil order of the West, in favor of a transfiguration of reality into a Utopia of one sort or another. This intra-Western Gnosticism is an immanentization of the eschaton, while its mirror-image, extra-Western Islam, is an eschatologization of immanence; and, though both are symbiotes now, we know the latter, should they achieve power, will not tolerate the former."

You are here confusing Marxism with the 'Politically Correct Multiculturalism' that has supplanted it in the discourse of the chattering classes. It was Marxism that strived towards a Utopic 'eschaton'. Multiculturalism involves an abandonment of that project in favour of an intensification of the globalising and cosmopolitanising tendencies of capitalism itself. There is thus a kind of immanentist pragmatic teleology involved in the Multiculturalist ideal, but it involves a modest tweaking of the system rather than any reference to a full-blown eschatological realisation of Utopia.

This supplanting of Marxism is represented in academia by so-called postmodernist tendencies, such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. One of the main targets of Derrida's deconstructive critique is eschatology itself, which he portrays as the hope of regaining a mythical metaphysical presence.

Despite you misrepresentations, I genuinely appreciate your valiant raising of the intellectual tone of this blog.

'odyessus' wrote:
"Here is another famous sentence by Roland Barthes:

“In the multiplication of writing, everything is to be disentangled, nothing deciphered”

If you have never spent any time in academia you are probably wondering: what does that sentence mean? Does it mean anything? Don’t worry – it’s essentially meaningless.

If you are looking for some objective scholarship on the Middle-East I would forget about Edward Said."

Whether you agree with it or not, the Barthes sentence is far from 'meaningless'. The word 'deciphered' here refers to finding a final fixed meaning to the text being analysed, which is what Barthes argues is impossible.

You refer to Said's book, 'Orientalism', but this book doesn't claim to be scholarship on the Middle-East. It is a book about the portrayals of the Middle-East in Western literature. It is scholarship about the West's projections of its own fantasies onto the Middle-East.

The problem I have with Said is that while he claims that others are incapable of objectivity, he claims that he is.
I remember reading a Said review of a book by V.S. Naipul where Said essentially employs the same tactics.
Is his work an example of intellectual fraud? I think so.

Caroline,

“Voegelin followed the ancient and medieval wisdom, whereby it is a given that this world is imperfect and cannot be perfected.”

I see nothing to disagree with in that assumption. It is my understanding that Christians would also agree with that statement.

Yes, that's what I meant by "medieval".

"I thought you were previously stating that there was an alternative way of escaping this world besides suicide, and besides trying to transform this world and besides escaping into “divertissements”. And that alternative way would be Christianity, which I assumed you were describing in point a) “the religious (or cultic) mindset that seeks to escape the evils of this world (either by suicide, or by waiting for death when finally he will be free of the "prison" of the body, or by obsessing about an imminent (not immanent) End of History when God will finally put an end to this vale of tears”."

No. While many Christians have not been immune from the temptations of those latter pathologies I was describing (waiting for death when finally he will be free of the "prison" of the body, or by obsessing about an imminent...End of History), they are not at the heart of the Christian pathos, which is an existential posture of abiding patiently in the tension between living this life to the full, on the one hand, and attuning one's soul to the fulfillment of the insufficiencies that mar this life, on the other -- a tension which Dante, in his book Monarchia, mastefully expressed with his symbolism of the duo ultima: the "two ultimates" which together, through their mutual tension, orient the Christian, both to this life and to the next life, without an excessive denigration of the one or the other. According to this symbolism, one can analyze the disordered types: the atheist who lives only according to one "ultimate", this life; and the theist who obsesses so much about the other "ultimate", the next life, that his experience and responsibility in this life become shrunken and shrivel up, or in extreme cases arouse hatred and disgust of this life with sometimes consequent violence against the self, or others, or both. Islam is a culture which massively and profoundly inculcates this type of disorder of magnifying the second "ultimate" while deforming the first "ultimate" into a mere vehicle by which to get to the second, with anything and anyone standing in the way to be mercilessly run over. Again, this disorder has not been absent in Christian culture; but I and others maintain that it does not pertain to the heart of the Christian pathos, but to a deformation of it. By contrast, such a disorder is at the very heart of Islam, which is what makes Islam a form of Gnosticism.

So, the thread you go on to pursue, as it is based on I think a misunderstanding that I was "trashing Christianity here outright, as a form of “escapism”..." perhaps dissolves?

On another note, you wrote:

"I don't think it is coincidental that Buddhism made its largest inroads into western culture at an historical time when the world was largely peaceful and there were few external threats (thanks to post WWII Pax Americana)."

Yes, pacifist belief-systems are parasitic upon orders that, through military strength, maintain the stability and prosperity necessary to survive and thrive.

"it seems pretty clear that gnosticism is actually a very private matter that starts with each individual, however impractical that might be."

Well, again, traditional Gnosticism was not merely a "private" pursuit, but took the form of cults and cultic followings. There's no evidence that the original Gnostics (circa 200 BC -- 200 AD) ever fomented violence or revolutions, and most seemed to have been rather small communities, though some groups became influential enough to spread their brainwashing around (such as the Manicheans or Marcion's followers), and that can have bad effects on social order: at best, you get whole communities withdrawing from society to pursue their obsessive antipathy toward this world and its sociopolitical structures. Of course, I believe in the freedom of people to set up their own fantasy bubble-communes if they want to, as long as they don't break laws. But that doesn't mean I have to ignore the deleterious effects they have on their surrounding society.

"Would you agree that gnosticism actually represents the notion that one ought to change one's own individual consciousness as a means of transforming the world ultimately?"

That may be one modern variant of it, within the broad category of "New Age" beliefs. But traditional Gnosticism was the belief that one needed to find a special key, usually in the form of a secret text or a special way of decoding a text, that will awaken a person to his true nature as a "divine spark" trapped inside an evil body and within an evil world: part of this awakening involves the epiphany that this divine spark -- the true self -- has its true home far away from this world, far away from this cosmos, in some esoteric, mystically transcendent realm. By following various rites and modes of mental meditation etc., the traditional Gnostics would convince themselves that at death they would finally be released and would escape. There was much variety, ranging from merely waiting for death, to actively committing suicide, to coming to obsess about eschatology, the End Times when that "Alien God" would come down to save the few elect Gnostics who have come to "know", etc. But since traditional Gnosticism was oriented away from this world, giving up any hope for transforming this world (since it was thoroughly evil) and seeking only escape from it, it tended to pursue non-violent methods. Voegelin's argument is that when the modern West's faith in eschatology began to wane due to the rise of secularism (a long slow process), the impatient hatred of this world's injustice and evil became re-directed away from escaping this world, to trying to transform this world and its sociopolitical structures, through Revolution. Absent from Voegelin's theory, however, was any analysis of Islam. I think Islam is a unique type of Gnosticism insofar as it is ancient yet (unlike the other ancient forms of Gnosticism), it was (and remains) oriented to militantly transforming this evil unjust world through violence: Islamic Gnosticism never had to go through that transition from being an other-world-oriented escapism to being a this-world-oriented militarism. And, furthermore, its this-world-oriented militarism differs from the modern Western forms of Gnosticism (Communism, Nazism) insofar as Islam also believes in a transcendent eschaton (a final transformation of Creation into Paradise by a God at the End of Time -- this final transformation being, in fact, the raison d'être of all of its this-world-oriented militarism).

"is it fair to pin communism and nazism to that doctrine [of private "consciousness-raising"]...?"

I'll try to address this in my response to another poster who raised a similar question after yours.

schmegel,

"You are here confusing Marxism with the 'Politically Correct Multiculturalism' that has supplanted it in the discourse of the chattering classes."

I don't think I'm confusing the two; I maintain that the latter is a watered-down derivation of the former -- and both, by extension, are related to modern Gnosticism.

"There is thus a kind of immanentist pragmatic teleology involved in the Multiculturalist ideal, but it involves a modest tweaking of the system rather than any reference to a full-blown eschatological realisation of Utopia."

It also involves an incoherent and contradictory inclusion of self-hating anti-Occidentalism into this "tweaking", an anti-Occidentalism it inherited from Marxism and Marxism's broader matrix of modern Gnosticism.

"One of the main targets of Derrida's deconstructive critique is eschatology itself, which he portrays as the hope of regaining a mythical metaphysical presence."

Derrida may be targeting traditional eschatology while missing various forms of crypto-eschatologies, including one under his own nose; though I'm not sure he's quite that stupid. At any rate, when we have such disagreements as that, e.g., between Baudrillard and the philosophes of the Enlightenment, it's pretty much the modern West's version of the Sunni-Shiite dissensions.

Remote,
I think you actually got the antecedents reversed.

Islam wants to immanentize the eschaton: it wants the final purpose and end of humanity to be brought about here and now, with these poor atoms.

Communism et al. want to eschatologize (not really a word, is it? but what the hell) the immanent: it wants to say there is no "end and purpose of humanity," but only what we can manage to gin up here and now with these poor atoms.

I know Voegelin coined it the other way but I think that has to do with language: as graceless as "immanentize the eschaton" is, it beats the hell out of "eschatologize the immanent."

Anyway, I enjoyed the whole thread, including Fitz's rendition of Dem Bones. Mr. Fitzgerald, always reliable for the droll dismissal (it's a changeup pitch he throws after his grandiloquent fastball, and he throws it well), is never just doing dadaist hauteur with this stuff (although, yes, that): he's also answering the question. Those dry bones are held up by the gospel singer as an object lesson in eschatology. It's hard to imagine a better anthem for the eschaton, though perhaps Move On Up A Little Higher, especially the Mahalia Jackson version, might qualify.

mountainecho,

"Islam wants to immanentize the eschaton: it wants the final purpose and end of humanity to be brought about here and now"

I think, on the contrary, that it's an important distinction in Islam that it frames its goal of global conquest in terms of preparing the world for a transcendent, divinely controlled eschaton: the Muslim conquest of the world will not, of itself, be the eschaton, but will be the first of the final concatenation of events leading to the eschaton God will bring about.

At the end of the day, the difference between the Gnosticism of Islam and that of the modern Western "atheist" varieties is one of form, not substance: six-six-six and one half dozen of the other.

If you're right about Muslim eschatology, then I don't think they are immanentizing anything. I mean, Christianity also proposes that certain human efforts must have been made before the eschaton--most notably, the gospel must have been preached throughout the entire world.

If Muslims believe that subjugation of the infidel nations is a duty that is merely prerequisite to a subsequent fundamental reconstitution of human existence (the eschaton), then they haven't immanentized the eschaton or made eschatological something that is mundane. They just happen to have a sick and twisted sense of justice and their obligations before it.

remote - thanks for taking the time to write that post. You explained it very clearly. I get it now. Very interesting...

You're welcome Caroline. mountainecho, perhaps the term "activist eschatology" best fits the eschatology of Islam and the behaviors of Muslims in fidelity to that eschatology. While there have been aspects of an activist eschatology in the history of Christianity, it was never as central, nor did it have an innate resistance to modification and amelioration, as Islam has with respect to the development of modern Western secularism.

Remote,
I reread your last long post, and I do get where you are coming from. The "eschaton" terminology seems strained. But this is only a semantic point.

You're in part recapitulating what the pope said about Islam having an utterly transcendental god. The world, thus cut off from God, becomes worthless. I wouldn't describe this as eschatologizing the immanent, but as completely devaluing the immanent, such that it can be discarded in toto. Benedict's point was that rationality goes out the window, since the truth is not approachable by the effort of man, who can only know truth when God chooses to reveal it.

Human dignity, respect for cultural achievements, environmental concerns--all of these become similarly devalued as a result. IN this, Islam becomes strikingly similar to communism et al. They both strip the world of intrinsic value, but one does it by evacuating value to an utterly transcendent God, while the other does it by saying there is no real "value" at all, but only a quality that we attribute where and when it is expedient.

I have always wondered whether any form of political utopianism can truly be "gnostic." Political utopians requires an additional motive. They seem to require both an unchecked personal vanity (perhaps common among gnostics) and a reductionist view of life (perhaps less so). The cosmos has to be de-spiritualized. With the communist, you see simple materialism: there is no spirit. With Islam, you see a denuded material, because God is not in it. God has no immanence.

If that is what you mean by eschatologizing immanence, then I'm right with you.

mountainecho,

"You're in part recapitulating what the pope said about Islam having an utterly transcendental god. The world, thus cut off from God, becomes worthless. I wouldn't describe this as eschatologizing the immanent, but as completely devaluing the immanent, such that it can be discarded in toto."

The excessive devaluation of the immanent is precisely what classical Gnosticism did. It becomes eschatologically relevant when one believes in an eschatology that will solve the problem of our being stuck in this devalued immanent realm, and our consequent need to be "saved" from it. The Muslim soteriology is through eschatology, and its style of eschatology necessarily includes world conquest through most forms of physical violence up to and including military means.

"[With] political utopianism ... [the] cosmos has to be de-spiritualized."

Again, classical Gnosticism also de-spiritualizes the Cosmos, insofar as the only good "spirit" is utterly transcendent from the demonized Cosmos, and also present as tiny "sparks" trapped inside the evil bodies of the Gnostics, bodies which are part of the evil Cosmos which the Gnostics need to escape to save themselves.

"With the communist, you see simple materialism: there is no spirit. With Islam, you see a denuded material, because God is not in it. God has no immanence."

Well, more precisely, Islam simply re-directs the good materialism of Creation, which has become compromised by Satan, to an eschatological Paradise, where the good materialism (sex, wine, soft cushions, gardens, etc.) of the original Paradise of that first Muslim couple, Adam and Eve, is restored forever. This dynamic is also present in the Christian mentality as well -- after all, the "contemptus mundi" literature was a common motif in medieval Christendom. Voegelin's wryly rhetorical question -- "If Creation was good, why does God have to save it?" -- was not meant to dismiss the truth of revelation, but to reveal the paradox at the heart of it, a paradox that atheist Enlightenment cannot dispel. It is, as Voegelin cautioned us, in the answering of the unanswerable questions of existence where the political problems and disorders arise: those who have the Answers tend to cause the problems. And Islam has the Answers -- in ferociously literalistic spades.

This conversation brings several things to mind, but one of them is this: how many long past posting in various corners of the blogosphere continue to host invisible conversations about things not entirely related to the original topic?

Not that I'm not enjoying it: It feels kind of like being in a bar about an hour after closing. I have a lot of fond memories from such situations, one of them, in New Orleans, involved a Dutch sea captain, his first mate and a blonde woman who was witty beyond her hair color. (The first mate, who was the spitting image of Mike Meyers, kept asking, "Who is this Wayne they say about? You must know." It took us the longest time, til well after the bar closed, to figure out what the hell he was talking about.)

But I digress.

I think one of the selling points of christianity has always been its synthesis of two inescapable intuitions (at least to most humans).

1) The world/life is unfathomably precious.
2) THe world/life is f'd.

Civilizations and mythologies have always responded with "golden age" type of explanations--a kind of natural anti-progressivism. Things unwind. The center cannot hold. But this is sufficient only for societal ailments. (Which for certain types, romantics, is enough.) That still leaves sickness and death if not toil and strife (though, in all honesty, those as well).

Christianity, right or wrong, enables an embrace of the good and the bad: it advances a view of both matter and humanity that is at once unfathomably good and utterly broken. Not unredeemable, not illusory, but rather, real, good and broken. It's a pretty robust theory, given the data. Most other ideologies seem, to me, comparatively reductionist.

But while robust, it is also exceptionally difficult in practice. It is hard to keep both plates spinning: To love the world and yet despise its empty promises, its lack of permanence, its inevitable betrayal. Thus, Christianity has had to make explicit statement of doctrine about millenarianism etc.

What I don't really know (having slim knowledge of Islamic theological traditions) is how to make sense of what appears to be an Islamic soteriological muddle. At the time of Jesus, certain sectors of Judaism looked for political salvation, and still do so today. But it was clear that, at least in those schools of thought, the notion of eternal salvation was not on the table. The promise of the Messiah was to set right all those societal ills. For what that's worth, fine. It's easy enough to understand.

But Islam clearly espouses the notion of an eternal, spiritual and yet (like christianity) in some sense carnal paradise. Why then is there all the focus of creating god's kingdom right here and now: the subjugation of the infidel, the imposition of sharia, and so on?

As I was saying above, these two instincts-- salvation lies in a divine re-creation vs salvation lies in a well project-managed campaign of sword and statute--seem utterly at odds.

As a point of contrast, liberation theology is a mere repurposing of certain elements of christianity in a marxist syncretism: it was destined never to be embraced by the traditional structures of Christianity; but the same kind of paradox seems essential to Islam.

But as I say, I have a limited familiarity with the texts.

Maybe you can explain it.

mountainecho,

I don't think the immanent activism of Islam necessarily contradicts its eschatology. I think this idea of an either/or has become part of the Western template, and so anything that markedly deviates from it is seen as wrong -- yet another example, I think, of Western incomprehension of Islam. Voegelin also was working within that Western template, and he tended to see an inverse relationship between eschatology and immanent activism -- thus his coinage of "immanentization": that seemed to be the only way for an eschatological entity to become immanently activist (or "imperialist"), by redirecting the eschatological energy to the "intra-mundane" sphere.

Perhaps the Islamic dynamic can be seen simply this way: Allah tells Muslims, "Conquer the world for me, and I promise you I will reward you with eternal Paradise."

This simple dynamic that interlocks immanent activism with eschatology, of course, is overlain with inherited and/or pirated parts of the Judaeo-Christian eschatology (in addition to the inclusion of a lot of heterodox mythology that was rampant in the Middle East during the time of Mohammed, mythology that mostly never made it into orthodox Christianity), with a result that is often incoherent and certainly bewildering at times with its cornucopia of imagery and chain of events and colorful fantasy characters (the one-eyed Dajjal, Gog and Magog, etc.); but through all the incoherence and jungly complexity of Islamic eschatology (and there is not a little incoherence in the Judaeo-Christian eschatology as well), the simple dynamic has enormous galvanizing appeal:

Conquer the world for me, and I will reward you with eternal Paradise.

"Conquer the world for me, and I promise you I will reward you with eternal Paradise."

But it's a quixotic God, and an arbitrary request. It's even stranger than Christian millenarianism, because in the latter, it is still God who is bringing about the perfect order, not man. I mean, Islam seems to hold to the notion that its conquest will yield an era of peace, whereas millenarians believe that Christ will come and establish an era of peace. THe big difference? What you believe you are capable of.

Christian millenarianism is weird because it takes the Christian message--which is largely that all the political language of Old Testament prophecy is to be interpreted as spiritual metaphor (liberation is from the cosmic oppression of sin and death, not from Rome, Babylon, etc)--and then goes back to suggesting political interpretations for Christian prophecy. Thus, you hear an endless tailorings of images from the book of Revelation to various political confederations (Soviet Union, EU, etc, etc). I can't imagine how this wouldn't seem, even to a person studying it as a literary/cultural curiosity, to be a step backwards.

Christian eschatology is, above all else, personal: the end comes for each of us long before the End comes. And the quid pro quo is pretty cogent in terms of the larger narrative arc. God wins the grace of salvation for humanity and gives it to whomever sincerely asks. This grace, when authentically received, causes one to act in certain ways, but the acts are themselves superfluous. Nevertheless, the acts are an indicator of the reality of time: each sinner lives a narrative analogous to the life of Israel, accepting grace, rejecting it, receiving it again. And at stake in the scene changes of that drama is salvation.

But Israel, now "The Church," continues its own corporate peregrination, living out a similar dynamic. Humanity, in its cultures, receives or rejects the grace of God. But the laws, the power--that whole realm of Caesar--all of it remains ancillary.

Whether you believe it or not, the whole thing hangs together pretty well. I don't see that in the Islamic eschatology. Conquer the world and I will save you? Rub your stomach and pat your head and I will save you. What's the point?

I guess the question is how Islam explains why the world is a disaster. Christianity's view of "The Fall" creates an economy of salvation that requires a divine propitiation--an idea that negates salvation by works, whether that work is helping the poor, or waging jihad.

"But it's a quixotic God, and an arbitrary request."

Not so arbitrary if you think of the Islamic God as a Mesopotamian War God, who likes militarism and rewards it in his creatures.

"It's even stranger than Christian millenarianism, because in the latter, it is still God who is bringing about the perfect order, not man."

The Islamic God is bringing about the perfect order also -- after the Muslims conquer the Earth. Conquering the Earth doesn't bring about perfection.

"I mean, Islam seems to hold to the notion that its conquest will yield an era of peace, whereas millenarians believe that Christ will come and establish an era of peace."

Actually both share more or less the same apocalyptic scenario. In Christianity (particularly from John's Apocalypse aka "Revelations"), Christ's return heralds a world-wide battle, followed by a 1,000-year reign of peace, followed again by a final battle, followed by the final Judgement and transfiguration into perfection. This scenario is roughly held also by Muslims, with only minor variations in scenery and cast of characters (and of course the amusingly bizarre twist of having Christ (Arabic "Issa") return in order to help fight and kill Christians!).

"Christian millenarianism is weird because it takes the Christian message--which is largely that all the political language of Old Testament prophecy is to be interpreted as spiritual metaphor (liberation is from the cosmic oppression of sin and death, not from Rome, Babylon, etc)--and then goes back to suggesting political interpretations for Christian prophecy. Thus, you hear an endless tailorings of images from the book of Revelation to various political confederations (Soviet Union, EU, etc, etc). I can't imagine how this wouldn't seem, even to a person studying it as a literary/cultural curiosity, to be a step backwards."

The temptation to politically interpret eschatology is always there, insofar as one believes in eschatology as a salvation from the injustice of the world which is inextricably involved with politics.

"Christian eschatology is, above all else, personal: the end comes for each of us long before the End comes."

I would say you are unnecessarily truncating Christian eschatology here. It is personal, but not merely personal. The personal aspect of it has become magnified, and the sociopolitical (let alone ontological/cosmic) aspect of it has become minimized, precisely because of the growth and dominance of secularism over the past 3 or 4 centuries (with each passing century increasing that process at a faster rate). One can never completely suppress the trans-personal aspect of eschatology, insofar as there are trans-personal aspects of existence that remain unaddressed by any merely personal eschatology -- the problem of evil is more than personal.

"I don't see that in the Islamic eschatology. Conquer the world and I will save you? Rub your stomach and pat your head and I will save you. What's the point?"

The point is to be rewarded by a divine Despot. The key to Islam is that it is brazenly anthropomorphic, with "God" functioning as a kind of ever-present catch-all Id whose vortex of energy is the orienting point for lust and rapacity. Since it originated in a world and a time when secularism and immanentization were not options -- even for unrealistically fantasizing about it, like Communists and their Utopia -- it carries with it the simple ancient wisdom that this world as it stands (mysteriously imperfect) cannot deliver the perfect paradise that alone will completely satisfy our longings, and therefore that paradise has to come about through a transformation of the substance and order of the cosmos. I suppose the Islamic God could simply promise his faithful slaves that he will give them Paradise even if they don't conquer the world, but again, there is no real Islamic God doing any promising: the "promise" and the "God" are merely psychological vectors for the lust and rapacity of the human Muslim id, and the only brake on that lust and rapacity is the imperfection of the world: the fantasizing is put off for that future Last Day out of time.

"The key to Islam is that it is brazenly anthropomorphic, with "God" functioning as a kind of ever-present catch-all Id whose vortex of energy is the orienting point for lust and rapacity."

Nicely done.

I suppose my comments about Christian eschatology rest on an unstated assumption: I accept the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions to be normative. Those traditions do not seem to leave much room for the kind of Millenarianism that you describe: they do not accept the literal notion of Christ's earthly reign. Again, the images of Revelation are taken in orthodox tradition to be primarily anagoge and only secondarily (and only potentially) historical allegory.

Obviously, Christian eschatology, even in its orthodox tradition, goes beyond the life of the individual christian to the life of the Church, which lives in historical events. But the attempt to fix the images of Revelation on particular nations, types of governments, literal wars, etc. is distinctly heterodox, and certainly the Roman Church has gone to great lengths to make people hear that point.

The orthodox eschatological tradition has always been more comfortable with interpretations that remain spiritual--or anagogical in the sense that personal spiritual themes, writ large, inform the movement of history. An example: Augustine's City of God contrasts the general historical life of the church, which lives by the power of God, with the historical/political life of human empire, which lives by man's power. There is an analogy between the individual struggle to cast off the "old man" and the societal struggle to embrace (or reject) God's power and security over man's. Similarly, the Exodus is seen as prefiguring both an individual liberation from sin, and also a historical process of bringing that spiritual freedom to a captive humanity.

These are vast historical themes which live in real world events, but those events are quite distinct from, say, the notion that the crusades were a divine directive or the EU is a ten-headed beast that will sign us up to the anti-Christ. Any time you start identifying geopolitical goals with the plan of salvation, you have, albeit inadvertently, chosen man's power over God's. That's why the traditional churches have proscribed various forms of millennarianism.

Where did you come up with your intriguing articulation of Islamic deity (the one I cited at the beginning of this post)?

Eric Voegelin was fond of this passage of Augustine's on the Exodus, which he (Voegelin) said was the quintessential expression of a philosophy of history:

"He begins to leave who begins to love.
Many are the leaving who know it not,
for the feet of the leaving are affections of the heart:
and yet, they are leaving Babylon."

(Enarrationes in Psalmos, 64.2)

I agree with you about orthodox Christian eschatology, and so did Voegelin; to him, it tended to best preserve the tension between the personal/existential and the political/cosmic levels -- though at the same time, Voegelin noted in the orthodox Christian theologoumena an inherent propensity toward "deformation" of the symbolisms of the experience, a propensity unavoidable due to the intrinsic instability of the truth of eschatological revelation itself (Voegelin's comparison of Paul and Plato in this regard in his fourth volume of Order and History is exquisite).

As to my "theology" of the Islamic God, it's just my own formulation, and I would go further by suggesting that the Abyss that is at the heart of Allah may be either a core nihilistic ground, so to speak, or may be Satan -- or both.

Someday I'll have to get around to reading Voegelin. I see him everywhere.

"or both."

I think that pretty much nails it. The nihilism comes through loud and clear ("we love death"), but also in more subtle ways: the dissonance of the strict and pitiless law juxtaposed to a level of common depravity--especially sexual depravity--that gestures at something much darker than mere hypocrisy. Lurking in the shadows, and sometimes darting into the open, is a malevolence towards the world that, yes, is consonant with nihilism, but calls for a more particular motive.

I mean, a nihilist might also say, "Well, if that's all there is, then let's go dancing."

Could it be . . . Satan? Pace SNL, I suppose there are certain reasons to answer in the affirmative. If you're looking for the long arc gambits of salvation history, consider this: What better way to undermine Revelation than to insinuate a new text that subverts the old and, in the ensuing confusion and warfare, impugns the integrity of the whole "salvation project."

Of course, an opposing view could simply point to the many opponents of Bibilical Israel and say, isn't Islam just a similar scourge that God allows to strike his people when they abandon him? And would you really say the Phillistines were "Satanic"?

Actually, I might be inclined to do so, properly understood. The tension between the oppressor and "the Church"/Israel is always part of the contest between God and Satan to see who can better manage the world, the former via love and freedom, the latter via efficiency and control.

IF you were Satan, you'd have to feel pretty good about the situation: on the one hand, you have an inherently dehumanizing Islam; on the other, you have an array of forces that hope to control or contain or soften/accommodate that problem. Each of them hopes to do so by mustering a political, or military, or social control. In any foreseeable outcome, human freedom is exchanged for a security provided by human power.

In any event, if there is indeed a backstory between Satan and God, I imagine the nuance of it is far more complicated than what we can easily cook up here. But that also means that we would be foolish to disregard it as an operative force throughout history.