Eric Voegelin - Order and History (1956-1987)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Gnostic Interpretation of Totalitarianism
Eric Voegelin (1901-1985) occupies a special position in this chapter. We already treated him briefly in Chapter 2 in the context of totalitarian-theory critique. But he developed his comprehensive critique of Hegel only later, in his monumental work Order and History (1956-1987, originally in English), written after his emigration to the United States.[1]
Voegelin’s central thesis is: modern totalitarianism is no aberration but the consequence of a gnostic disposition that has run through Western intellectual history since the Middle Ages. Gnosis means: the claim to attain salvation through knowledge (gnosis), to perfect the world, to overcome evil. This disposition, according to Voegelin, necessarily leads to totalitarian orders—because it denies transcendence and wants to attain salvation within the world.
And Hegel? For Voegelin, Hegel is one of the main representatives of this gnosis. His philosophy of history promises the “end of history,” his logic “absolute knowledge,” his system the complete penetration of reality by the concept. All this, according to Voegelin, is hubris—the arrogance of assuming God’s standpoint.[2]
The Philosophy-of-Religion Perspective
Voegelin’s critique differs from all the others we have treated so far. Popper criticized Hegel logically-methodologically. Arendt, politically-phenomenologically. The Ritter school read him as a conservative thinker of modernity. Voegelin, by contrast, reads Hegel through the philosophy of religion—as an attempt at a secularized doctrine of salvation.
His analysis: the Christian tradition distinguished between immanence (the earthly world) and transcendence (the divine, which lies beyond the world). This distinction protected against hubris: the human being could not attain the absolute; he remained dependent on hope and faith.
Gnosis, according to Voegelin, abolishes this distinction. It promises: the absolute is attainable—through knowledge, through historical action, through revolution. This is the immanentization of the eschaton: the final goal (eschaton) is no longer expected beyond the world but is realized within it.
Hegel’s system is, for Voegelin, the philosophical paradigm of this immanentization: “absolute knowing” is God’s standpoint, attained within the world. The philosophy of history promises the “end of history”—the complete realization of reason in the world. This is, according to Voegelin, not philosophy but gnosis—a secularized doctrine of salvation that leads to totalitarian consequences.
What Is True in This? The Warning Against Hubris
Voegelin’s critique contains a true core: the danger of hubris in systematic thought. When a philosopher claims to see through the whole, when he believes he knows the logic of history, when he places himself at the standpoint of the absolute—then there is the danger that this knowledge becomes the legitimation of violence.
This is no abstract worry. The history of the twentieth century shows: ideologies that claimed to know the course of history legitimized monstrous crimes. Stalinism justified millions of deaths with the “historical necessity” of class struggle. National Socialism, with the “logic” of racial struggle.
Voegelin grasps a real structure: closed systems that consider themselves absolute tend toward violence. They can no longer learn, they immunize themselves against criticism, they sacrifice human beings to the system.
This warning is important. Every systematic philosophy must ask itself: where are my limits? What can I not know? How do I protect myself against dogmatization? The ninth ethical criterion—self-reflexivity—captures precisely this necessity: a system must remain, in principle, open to criticism, to revision, to self-correction.
The Internal Tensions: Where Voegelin Overshoots the Mark
But as justified as Voegelin’s warning is, his critique of Hegel is nonetheless one-sided.
First error: the confusion of Hegel with his vulgar forms. Voegelin’s critique hits Stalinist Diamat, which mechanically applies the “laws of history.” It hits National Socialist philosophies of history that assert biologistic necessities. But does it hit Hegel?
Hegel’s “absolute knowing” is not omniscience. It is not knowledge of all facts, not prediction of the future. It is self-transparency of the method—the awareness of how we think, what structures underlie our thinking. This is something fundamentally different from gnostic certainty of salvation.
Hegel’s “end of history” is not the end of events. It is the insight that certain principles have been achieved—for instance, the recognition of equal rights for all human beings. That these principles must be realized ever anew, that history goes on—Hegel never disputed this.
Second error: ignoring Hegel’s self-critique. Voegelin attributes to Hegel a closed, dogmatic claim to system. But this misses Hegel’s method: the dialectic is precisely the method of self-critique. Every position is thought through until it shows its own limits, until it contradicts itself and presses toward a higher position.
This is the opposite of dogmatism. It is the systematic refusal to rest at any position. Hegel’s system is not closed but self-critically open—even if Hegel himself did not always explicate this sufficiently.
Third error: the alternative is no solution. Voegelin’s alternative to Hegel is: recognition of transcendence, modesty of knowledge, renunciation of systematic penetration. But this is no tenable philosophical position.
For Voegelin too claims to know: how order should be, what gnosis is and what it is not, where the boundary lies between legitimate philosophy and illegitimate hubris. He too raises universal claims—only grounded in philosophy of religion rather than dialectically.
The question is: if systematic thought is per se hubristic—what then remains? Intuition? Faith? But faith too can lead to violence, religious certainties too can become dogmatic. Voegelin’s critique misses the actual problem: the problem is not systematicity but lack of self-critique.
Systematic Placement: A Productive Warning, Wrongly Addressed
Voegelin stands outside the main currents of the reception of Hegel. His philosophy-of-religion perspective is singular. But his warning against the hubris of closed systems is important—even if it does not hit Hegel himself.
What remains of Voegelin? The warning against dogmatization: systems that consider themselves absolute are dangerous. The question of limits: every philosophy must reflect on its own limits. The necessity of transcendence: there must be something not available, something that remains critical toward all claims.
But also the insight: this warning does not hit Hegel, but the perversion of his philosophy. A dialectical method that takes itself seriously, that applies its own principles to itself, that remains open to critique—such a method is the opposite of gnosis.
The task would be to take up Voegelin’s warning without adopting his misdiagnosis: systematic philosophy is possible and necessary—but only as self-critical systematics, one that reflects on its own limits, that never claims to have the last word, that remains open to revision.
Eric Voegelin, Order and History, 5 vols., Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1956–1987. German translation: Ordnung und Geschichte, 10 vols., Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 1991–2005. As an introduction: Peter J. Opitz (ed.), Eric Voegelin. Ordnung, Bewußtsein, Geschichte, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 1988. ↩︎
Voegelin treats Hegel in several contexts, most extensively in: Order and History, Vol. 4 (1974); id., “On Hegel: A Study in Sorcery” (1971), in: Published Essays 1966-1985, Columbia: University of Missouri Press 1990, pp. 213–255. ↩︎