A Reflection on Mystical Anarchism in the Works of Gustav Landauer^209type of science is an existential, lifelong process, which, despite the
awareness that ultimate knowledge is impossible, resists escaping
through arche. This conception of science resembles the philosophy
of common sense which influenced Voegelin. Both are intuitive, the
everyday person’s experience of self-reflective reality, and both seek
order and resistance against indoctrination and dogma.
However, Landauer also argued that the purpose of modern
science has become radically different. He dated the root of that
change back to the Middle Ages, when the sacred texts and tra-
ditions of Christianity underwent a divorce from their symbol-
ic meaning.^49 As scripture was reduced to literal meaning and
opaque facts, the Christian community split into the Church on
the one hand, seeking knowledge through literary interpretation,
and into mystics and heretics on the other, seeking to protect sym-
bolism from rationalist analysis. The principle of the unity of ex-
istence and common spirit, as they were revealed through those
symbolisms^50 , were thenceforth no longer valid as a communi-
ty’s ordering force. Its surrogate became a new form of science,
focusing on the natural world to generate meaning.^51 Subjective
input was eliminated, and sciences based on the immediate datum
of experience were declared superstition. As knowledge was ob-
jectified, producing mental abstractions and mechanical laws, the
individual came to be viewed as an isolated body whose existence
in the world was accidental, without further meaning or purpose.
Humanity no longer considered itself a part of the universe it
could only become its conqueror, transforming science into the
method to achieve power and domination, instead of knowledge,
to disguise its lack thereof. Landauer stated,
But they do not have you [spirit], and therefore they replace you.
Therefore they concoct their illusory counterfeit, the surrogate
product of their historical patch work and their scientific laws:
they recognize only one convincing general principle that forms,
correlates and coordinates details and connects scattered facts,
namely: science. Indeed science is spirit, order, unity and solidarity:
when it is science. But when it is a swindle and monkey-business,
when the supposed man of science is only a journalist in disguise...
when statistically formulated heaps of facts...claim to be a sort of
higher mathematics of history and an infallible instruction-manual