200 Essays in Anarchism and Religion: Volume 1
individual comes to know all other realities, and that the self is
the starting point in the struggle for change. This claim is read as
mystical to the extent that the experience of the self involves the
rediscovery of a primary or originary union with the world.
A short introduction to Landauer and Voegelin
At first sight, the anarchist-socialist revolutionary Landauer,
considered to be the “most influential German anarchist intel-
lectual of the twentieth century,”^5 and German born American
political scientist Eric Voegelin, known for his philosophy of con-
sciousness, seem to have little in common. Landauer promoted
anarchism,^6 Voegelin was highly critical of it; Landauer sought
to overcome not just the state but politics altogether,^7 Voegelin
seemingly considered it a necessary evil; Landauer participated
in the revolutionary Bavarian Council Republic, Voegelin held
a deep-seated mistrust of the masses and utopian ideas. There
is no evidence of any personal connection between the two phi-
losophers, and Voegelin does not appear to have read Landauer.
However, Voegelin might have studied Landauer’s translations
of German mystic Meister Eckhart’s sermons, while researching
the latter, or his translations of Bakunin, Tolstoy or Kropotkin,
when he formulated his criticism of their anarchism. Moreover,
Voegelin studied the works of Jewish philosopher, and friend of
Landauer, Martin Buber^8 whose work was partly influenced by
Landauer and vice versa.^9
A short summary of Landauer’s and Voegelin’s respective bi-
ographies shows how, despite their writing within different his-
torical contexts and challenging different forces of authoritarian
oppression, a common concern and thread of investigation none-
theless emerges in their work. Beneath Landauer’s various anar-
chist projects, practical as well as literary, can be found a common
unifying theme that “We are piteously divided.”^10 Landauer re-
ferred to the division between society and politics, to the division
between members of an increasingly atomised society and, most
importantly, to the division of the individual from herself. This
theme remained prominent throughout Landauer’s life, thought
and activism, forming the centre of his work. Already as a young