RECKONIN'
  • Features
    • Clyde Wilson CLASSICS
    • Book Bench
    • Charlottesville
    • COVID Commentary
    • Dixie These Days
    • Links
    • Magnolia Muse
    • Matters of Faith
    • Movie Room
    • Rekindling the Flame
    • Southern History
    • Writing Contest 2022
  • Contributors
    • Full List
    • Carolina Contrarian
    • Enoch Cade
    • Dissident Mama
    • Ted Ehmann
    • Walt Garlington
    • Caryl Johnston
    • Gene Kizer, Jr.
    • Perrin Lovett
    • Tom Riley
    • Joseph R. Stromberg
    • H.V. Traywick, Jr.
    • Clyde Wilson
    • Paul Yarbrough
  • Contact
  • Features
    • Clyde Wilson CLASSICS
    • Book Bench
    • Charlottesville
    • COVID Commentary
    • Dixie These Days
    • Links
    • Magnolia Muse
    • Matters of Faith
    • Movie Room
    • Rekindling the Flame
    • Southern History
    • Writing Contest 2022
  • Contributors
    • Full List
    • Carolina Contrarian
    • Enoch Cade
    • Dissident Mama
    • Ted Ehmann
    • Walt Garlington
    • Caryl Johnston
    • Gene Kizer, Jr.
    • Perrin Lovett
    • Tom Riley
    • Joseph R. Stromberg
    • H.V. Traywick, Jr.
    • Clyde Wilson
    • Paul Yarbrough
  • Contact

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



Leave a Reply.

    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. 

    Archives

    June 2025
    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    May 2018

Proudly powered by Weebly