Voegelin On The Crisis Of Modernity And Its Salvation

This article mainly studies the diagnosis and treatment of the crisis of modernity by the political philosopher Voegelin.Voegelin reflected on the crisis of his time.He started from the origin of modernity,the Renaissance and the Reformation,and summarized the characteristics of modernity as "internalization." The pursuit and use of power is at the core of politics.From the voegelin claims "gnosticism" is the essence of modernity,explore the gnostic voegelin this important terms,from the origin and development of gnosticism,extract the gnostic’s symbols and essence,namely joachim sanctification symbols and Christianity to the good ideas of correction,the essence is to make the spirit of the people from the state of alienation in the universe,through the knowledge and return beyond the spirit of god,the god is not god,the god of creation,but a complete stranger and in god.Voegelin then uses the concept of Gnosticism to look at the various ideas and movements that take place in modern Western politics.The reason why Voegelin thinks that the essence of modernity is Gnosticism is that modernity and Gnosticism lead to the transition from transcendence to inwardness.Modernity passes through the complete inwardness while Gnosticism is the complete transcendence.Modernity and Gnosticism both advocate dualism,and eventually develop into a kind of "self-salvation" and abandon the transcendental realm of being.These both destroy the tension structure of the "concurrent" in Voegelin’s political philosophy,thus breaking the balance and causing the disorder of politics and society.Voegelin’s way to save the crisis of modernity is to construct his own philosophy of consciousness,to restore the former political philosophy,and to restore the knowledge discovered by the former political philosophy,but later forgotten and distorted.With his own philosophy of consciousness,he helps people distinguish between "truth" and "opinion",so that people will not follow blindly,so that they can live under order and perfection.