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Dr. Clyde N. Wilson

What’s Happened to the Eschaton?

11/7/2021

5 Comments

 
Picture

Many, many years ago, in my callow and misspent youth, I had a lapel button that said:  “Don’t let them immanentize the eschaton.” This was a pretty good saying and conversation starter despite the fact, as I recall, that it was popularized by the intellectually shallow poseur William Buckley.

The saying was an  over-simplified reference to the vast, erudite, and dense writings of Eric Voegelin. Reduced shamefully to the simplest terms, immanentizing the eschaton is an attempt to bring Heaven to earth by the actions of men.  For Christian civilization the given universe is a divine design which includes the human soul.  Immanentising the eschaton  attempts to make men into gods who control history and create a perfect regime according to their ideological dreams. This is, of course, impossible.  Man cannot re-create himself and basic  human nature is a reality in all times and places.  The attempt violates the order of the universe and indicates disorder in the minds of men and in society.  In creating the future perfect world of which they dream, men reject reality in favour   of an imaginary, impossible  world.

This, according to Voegelin, is the characteristic condition of “modernity,”  the defects of which have brought us Communism, Nazism, progressivism, the rejection of traditional wisdom, moral dissolution, and a host of other ills.  The ultimate finish of an attempt to create a dream world is tyranny---the criminalization of dissent followed by  the firing squad.  Failure to create the “new man”  does not deter the progressive, it merely causes him to double down---the inevitable end of which is force against dissidents. We are seeing that now.

Our present American society with Cultural Marxism seems to be progressing toward that end, in some ways even more damaging than Bolshevism.   

The Dream World holds sway.   

The evidence is overwhelming.
5 Comments
H. V. Traywick, Jr. link
11/8/2021 03:29:20 am

As Hannah Arendt said in her "Origins of Totalitarianism," man forgets that he is merely the Master, not the Creator, of the world.

Reply
Joyce Bennett
11/8/2021 05:51:33 am

The Fox News viewers and their ilk are blissfully unaware of the dangers ahead.

Reply
Bill Hill
11/8/2021 04:16:25 pm

They are our target group to reach out to.

Reply
Joe Johnsosn
11/9/2021 05:10:31 am

We see with Civil Rights, LGBTism, Social Justice Activism, Great Society, Global Democracy, New World Order, etc.

Reply
Preston Brooks
11/10/2021 10:03:07 pm

I never went past my one required philosophy class. So, when I read Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminati series and his characters would discuss "immanentizing the Eschaton", I honestly thought it was just some nonsense phrase like "the frumious bandersnatch".

Reply



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    Author

    Clyde Wilson is a distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at the University of South Carolina He is the author or editor of over thirty books and published over 600 articles, essays and reviews

    Dr. Wilson is also is co-publisher of Shotwell Publishing, a source  for unreconstructed Southern books. 

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