Saturday, November 12, 2011

Was Dick's Epistemology "too far" into Gnosticism?


[54:N-20] I am probably too far into Gnosticism to turn back: the single term "mystagogue" points indubitably to it, and, then, to salvador salvandus. Which in turn fits in with my "bootstrap" view that is a revolutionary reappraisal of what "cause and effect" really signify, that "being saved" means "remembering" (your true identity and true situation and true history)—this at first seems to be Plato's anamnesis but is really Gnostic in the widest sense, knowledge regarded as ontologically primary both in terms of the fallen individual and, more, in terms of cosmic repair. And here, indeed, is the essence of Gnosticism, as H. Jonas says: not that the gnosis saves but, rather, the ontological value and meaning of it, that it is absolutely primary as the real thing, second to nothing. Thus in the final analysis Gnosticism assigns the utmost priority to knowing and thus regards epistemology as equal to the divine; for the Gnostic, epistemological inquiry is in itself—as a search—truly divine, and is the highest basis of and for spiritual life—and this is my view of epistemology a fortiori.

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