Essays in Anarchism and Religion

A Reflection on Mystical Anarchism in the Works of Gustav Landauer^219

Both Voegelin and Landauer, though Landauer has not criticised
the particular anarchists named above, considered naive the belief
in the perfectibility of the human situation, which assumes that
the destruction of the state would release a natural instinct for
freedom and peace. According to Voegelin this belief failed to rec-
ognise that the state and its politics are symbols created to over-
come the metaxy’s tension, which, defining the human situation,
cannot be overcome. Voegelin’s criticism thus targeted a specific
misconception, which attached concrete problems of injustice, in-
equality and violence to an imaginary and generalised evil, rather
than anarchism per se.^105 Likewise, Voegelin’s criticism of utopian
thought did not simply condemn radically idealistic thought, but
the creations of blueprints which, rather than seeking luminous
knowledge from within the metaxy, built their visions of an ideal
society on the eradication of either pole of existence, thereby lim-
iting, rather than fostering, society’s becoming.^106 Consequently,
Voegelin’s mistrust of the masses was the fear that, rallied under
such promises, liberation might turn totalitarian.
Yet, Voegelin did not promote political quietism. On the con-
trary, he argued,

One can, indeed, not root out traditional vices at a moment’s no-

tice; but there is a limit beyond which delay is impermissible. And

that all men are not good and therefore all things cannot be well,

is sound admonition to a perfectionist; but it easily can become a

cover for condoning crimes. What makes this argument so flat is

the renunciation of the spirit as the ultimate authority beyond the

temporal order and its insufficiencies.^107

Much in line with Landauer, Voegelin stated that genuine change
could occur only from embracing the nature of reality in the
metaxy and proceeding in a process of trial and error, or, as
Landauer argued, experimentation and learning. Through failure
one learns and fails better. According to Voegelin, axioms, princi-
ples or categorical imperatives, as they occurred, for example, in
the sacred texts which Gandhi and Tolstoy used, had no bearing
in reality. Rather, they exposed human imperfection and its fail-
ures that result from conscious participation in the tension of ex-
istence. Voegelin’s major criticism of Christianity, thus, concerned