In this paper, we understand we advent of a ''scientific spirit'' as a revival of Gnosticism, which proclaims the superiority of man over his creator and considers knowledge (gnosis) to be the key to salvation. Salvation is here understood as from of ''emancipation''. Empirically, toe see our interpretation confirmed in the tremendous influence of the Corpus Hermeticum and the Lurianic Cabala on all the Renaissance scientists. In the second part of this essay, we continue a line of research inaugurated by (...) Ferdinand Christian Baur in the 19th century, and look for Gnostic outlooks in contemporary philosophy and social science. By reading Niklas Luhmann's systems theory as a modem version of Gnostic mysticism, we do not intend to dismiss the relevance of his work. For if Gnosticism defines ''modernity'', we should not be surprised to find a speculative Gnostic system among society's self-descriptions. (shrink)

This article examines the impact of `exile' — as an individual or collective experience — on how human experience is theorized. The relationship between `exile' and thought is initially approached historically by looking at the period that Eric Dodds famously called the `age of anxiety' in late antiquity, i.e. the period between the emperors Aurelius and Constantine. A particular interest is in the dynamics of `empire' and the concomitant religious ferment as a context in which `exile', both experientially and symbolically, (...) appears to assume an overbearing significance. Plotinus' narrative of emanation and epistrophe as well as a group of narratives often classified as `Gnosticism' are juxtaposed as two radical examples of a wider spiritual trend at the time according to which `exile' could be considered constitutive of human experience. By way of an historical analogy, the insights gained from this study of late antiquity are then used to guide an analysis of the current, `restless' epoch, in which experiences of displacement and exile on a mass scale undermine traditional notions of belonging, thus reviving the gnostic vision of cosmic reality as an alien, exilic environment. The article concludes with a discussion of Jacques Derrida's work as an example of contemporary gnosticism, in which a `metaphysics of exile' is presented in the disguise of an `exile from metaphysics'. (shrink)