‘Gnosis’ in Eric Voegelin’s philosophy

This is a very substantial essay reviewing Eric Voegelin’s use of terms such as ‘gnosis’, ‘gnostic’, ‘Gnosticism’. This is a key question for the Voegelin reception because his suggestion that ‘gnosticism’ was the ‘essence of modernity’ promoted him to the stardom of US political science in the 1950s. The essays shows that Voegelin’s work on ‘gnosticism’ is empirically wrong but still expresses a serious philosophical argument. The essay is based on archival research at the Eric Voegelin Papers (Stanford University) and draws on Voegelin’s published and unpublished writings, his letters (archived at Stanford) and the secondary literature on Voegelin.