The Inner Journey of the Gnostic Self: Ethics and Politics

Abstract

We have already had occasion to cite Jürgen Habermas’s remarks on the “new, deinstitutionalized forms of a fickle religiosity that [have] withdrawn entirely into the subjective” (cited in Mendieta 2010), a jibe that seems to have been prompted by the “growth and increasing visibility of a demographic identifying as ‘spiritual-not-religious [SPNR]’ in North America,”¹ including its embrace of Eastern spirituality. In this, Habermas gives voice to a view that is quite common among Western intellectuals, namely that what they like to call “New Age” spirituality is both morally and politically bankrupt. And this stems from the judgment that all such modern/postmodern forms of spirituality involve a selfish, egocentric pursuit of authenticity on the part of individualized, New Age selves.

Less and less frequently do we encounter people with the ability to tell a tale properly. More and more often there is embarrassment all around when the wish to hear a story is expressed. It is as if something that seemed inalienable to us, the securest things among our possessions, were taken from us: the ability to exchange experiences.

(Benjamin “The Storyteller,” 1968: 83)