Esotericism and Community

One thing that can lead to esotericism among intellectuals (particularly, but not exclusively, young intellectuals) is a gnostic vision of community, according to which community formation is pretty much a matter of (your) agreement (with me). But, if I may borrow a distinction from arch-Wittgensteinian Stanley Cavell (which he doesn’t really use for this purpose), community is not a matter of agreement but attunement. This mutual attunement is a matter of common life (practice, desire, history, heritage, ‘culture’), of speaking the same language (literally and metaphorically). Think about what it’s like when something you find hilarious fails to move or even offends a friend. You don’t say you disagree about the joke, but that your friend just doesn’t get it. (If you did say you disagreed, you would mean that you disagreed about why it was or was not funny, or about what in general makes for a funny joke, etc. But the failure to find the same things funny is not registered in not agreeing, it’s registered in not laughing.) It’s the “get” and the “it” (each undefined and hard to put your finger on) that make for attunement. Agreement is a good thing, but it arises out of a prior attunement (at least logically prior); which is to say, agreement arises only within community. It does not create community, anymore than explaining a joke to your unimpressed friend brings about quite the same guffaws as come from someone who gets it the first time.

So much for why gnosticism doesn’t work. The reason I think it’s even important to talk about visions of community when thinking about esotericism is, I think, that the context in which we do the things that run the esoteric risk – discuss authors, bandy ideas, engage in dialogue; in short, be thinkers – is that of our relations to our communities. Our rationality, our ability to agree, disagree and discern reasons for one or the other – our ability to communicate - is a matter of attunement, which means, of community membership. This is why Descartes, when it’s time to begin a project of skeptically destroying all knowledge and building it up again himself (a rejection, warranted or not, of the community and its rationality), goes off alone and meditates. The gnostic, again, tries to build the community he desires (he tries to secure himself a place in a community) on the basis of agreement. He (rightly) feels the fracturing of community and wants to repair it (again, rightly), but in his disintegration (from others and thus from himself) he runs first to agreement, because putting ideas together is kind of like putting people together. Right?

The thinker desires the integration of community, and thus the integration of himself. That’s why he thinks. He doesn’t have to take that desire in a gnostic direction. The thinker is, though, constantly tempted by the gnostic in himself to make integration a matter of agreement. On the personal level, this will mean an insatiable quest for the acquisition of knowledge; on the communal level, it will mean a constant need to persuade others. But when agreement is made ultimate in this way, it becomes a coercive, intellectually violent endeavour. Facts are wielded, arguments marshaled, theses laid down as challenges. The thinker’s desire for the integration of Same and Different that is community becomes a quest to convert the Other into the Same. (Sorry for all the capital letters.)

This quest is hard work. An easier way for the gnostic to accomplish the goal of community is to move to a high level of abstraction, exclusivity and specialization – i.e., esotericism. This strategy is a good way for the gnostic to assure himself that he really is onto something, that the problem is with the others who can’t/won’t understand, that if they could/would bring themselves to think on this level (i.e. to become more like him), they would finally get it. In this way esotericism functions as a cheap knock-off of attunement, a way of creating a quasicommunity among the circle of intimates. An Inner Ring (as described by C. S. Lewis in his excellent essay of that name) precisely defines itself as the group that gets it, that knows (knows the way things are really run around here, knows the actual problems others ignore, knows the way to the top of the ladder, knows theology really well). But an Inner Ring is not a real community.

The way to avoid esotericism, then, is to avoid gnosticism. And we know how this is done: not by abstaining from being thinkers, but by immersing our thinking in the common forms of life that are community, by acting as members of what is, according to our gospel, the only true community, the church. And this is done by acting as members of the church through the means ordained by its Head: Word, Sacrament, the many kinds of fellowship with each other God has given us. And being part of this Body is the way God has given us for immersing ourselves in Christ the Head of the Body, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. And this leads us into immersion in He who is true community from all eternity, God in Trinity. So in being a community issue, esotericism is a gospel issue. The gnostic tries to create community by thinking; the Christian believes the gospel alone brings true community, and that we have (already/not yet) been given this community in Christ (through his Church).

So what I’m saying is, I don’t have any good strategies or bits of practical advice for avoiding esotericism. But I think a good way to find those ways is to take the sacraments, tithe, serve people, confess, pray together, sing together, get coffee (or beer) together. In other words, be a person in community, and that will lessen the gnostic temptation (the need) to create community by agreement – even and especially the sham agreement that is only the esotericism of the Inner Ring.