The Voegelin Gnostic Diagnostic

How gnostic is your political thinking?

In The New Science of Politics (1952), Eric Voegelin identified six criteria that characterize gnostic political movements — from progressivism to Marxism to National Socialism. This diagnostic measures the degree to which your thinking follows that pattern.


Voegelin's argument: when politics takes on the structure of a salvation drama — total diagnosis, total cure, total knowledge — it becomes dangerous.


18 questions · About 5 minutes