Who Pulls John Gray's Strings?
My review of John Gray's most recent book is online at The American Conservative.
Libertarians, My Libertarians!
Cruel to be kind means that I love you . Because, while I think you are mistaken, your hearts are in the right place -- yes, even you, Silas -- unlike some people . This Breitbart fellow (discussed in the link above), by all appearances, deliberately doctored a video of Shirley Sherrod to make her remarks appear virulently racist, when they had, in fact, the opposite import. I heard that at a recent Austrian conference, some folks were talking about "Callahan's conservative turn." While that description is not entirely inaccurate, I must say that a lot of these people who today call themselves conservative give me the heebie-jeebies.
Gene, this is an interesting review, but I'm not sure that 'Gnosticism' is a good or correct way of categorizing the beliefs that Gray seems to espouse. Eugene Webb, someone who knew Voegelin personally, has a great essay on this: 'Voegelin’s 'Gnosticism” Reconsidered.'
ReplyDeleteVoegelin thought (and I think you even mentioned this in a comment on here) that he would have to reevaluate his thought on Gnosticism given light of new historical findings.
In light of these recent findings, Eugene Webb seems to think (and I'm curious as to what you think about this) that Voegelin should be read as someone found profound patterns of consciousness that led to spiritual and social disorder. Of course, this does not make Voegelin any less interesting and profound. I would say that my continued reading of him and the study of his thought is perhaps the high point of my philosophical journey so far.
"but I'm not sure that 'Gnosticism' is a good or correct way of categorizing the beliefs that Gray seems to espouse."
DeleteNo: Gray is a *critic* of Gnosticism! And Gray is the one using the term: I didn't pick it.
Ahh right. Yeah I see that now.
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