The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism [Hardcover]

Arthur Versluis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 27, 2006

The only book of its kind, The New Inquisitions is an exhilarating investigation into the intellectual origins of totalitarianism. Arthur Versluis unveils the connections between heretic hunting in early and medieval Christianity, and the emergence of totalitarianism in the twentieth century. He shows how secular political thinkers in the nineteenth century inaugurated a tradition of defending the Inquisition, and how Inquisition-style heretic-hunting later manifested across the spectrum of twentieth-century totalitarianism. An exceptionally wide-ranging work, The New Inquisitions begins with early Christianity, and traces heretic-hunting as a phenomenon through the middle ages and right into the twentieth century, showing how the same inquisitional modes of thought recur both on the political Left and on the political Right.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The New Inquisitions is a fascinating and highly original book that traces the intellectual, religious and political genealogy of modern totalitarianism. Versluis has drawn together a remarkable variety of historical threads and uncovered surprising but extremely persuasive connections between a wide range of figures, from Joseph de Maistre to Theodore Adorno to Pat Robertson, moving fluidly from early Christianity down to the contemporary United States. Despite its ambitious breadth, Versluis's book presents a coherent narrative of the origins of totalitarianism that is of central relevance to our own historical moment."-- Hugh Urban, author of Tantra: Sex, Secrecy, Politics, and Power in the Study of Religions

"Arthur Versluis's The New Inquisitions addresses urgent questions. It proposes intriguing links between today's inquisitions and those of the past, and in so doing casts new light on fascinating but often neglected thinkers. Agree or disagree with its conclusions, but enjoy the territory this provocative book will take you through." --Mark Sedgwick, author of Against the Modern World: Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the Twentieth Century

"In The New Inquisitions, Arthur Versluis takes a generation of work describing Western Esotericism and launches a new exploration of key issues in Western intellectual history, among others the origins of totalitarianism, the willingness of 'good' people to countenance genocide, and the shared roots of fascism and communism. Using our current knowledge of the despised esoteric thinkers, found under a number of labels -- Gnostic, occult, mystic, theosophic -- he offers a fresh analysis of the emergence of the ideological state and how mystical transhistorical thought/experience might provide a way to avoid its need to squelch all dissent even to the point of employing torture and death. Versluis is adding an important new direction in discussing key contemporary global problems." --J. Gordon Melton, Institute for the Study of American Religion

"This is a timely and important book in which a major historian of western esotericism takes up the mantle of the public intellectual and demonstrates how the West's modern political pathologies stem back to the dualistic logic of the late medieval Inquisition and almost two millennia of heretic-hunting. Versluis shows how this same irrational fear of religious dissent is disturbingly prevalent among intellectuals on both the right and the left. The result is a call for a return to that 'first America' of Jeffersonian pluralism, and a plea for a more mature religious view that can help us find our way out of that Cave of religious terror and political insanity in which we now all live." --Jeffrey J. Kripal, author of The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion

About the Author

Arthur Versluis is a Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Culture, Michigan State University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (July 27, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195306376
• ISBN-13: 978-0195306378
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,445,422 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Loved it, December 9, 2011

By 

Prokopton (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Hardcover)

A marvellous and scholarly book making explicit a whole range of human motives for intolerance of heresy, through a big historical view. 20th century totalitarian terror-mongering has rigorously demonstrable roots in one strand of Christianity, beginning with such Fathers as Tertullian and resulting in the Inquisition, a machine for enforcing 'ideocracy' (rule of unquestionable ideations) with torture.

The combination of the prosecuting and judging roles into one body makes the Inquisition a very modern-looking institution anyhow, but Versluis proves this is more than coincidence. This becomes a precise demonstration of how conservative Catholicism could inspire very different later figures and philosophies who also claimed a 'one right answer' with a similar itch to smoke out the wrong-thinking and put them to the poker. That yen pops up everywhere from the obvious (Pat Robertson) to the less expected but no less deserving (Theodor Adorno).

Key in Versluis is that mystical experience, in the form of Gnosticism, becomes a whipping boy in early Christian agendas. It can then play the same role in modern materialist ones which dislike it equally. From the beginning Christian imperialism there was speculation that those who followed anything like a Gnostic path were in some way foul, and finding things foul was a part of early Christianity in any case as readers of Ramsey MacMullen will know. Again and again Versluis corrects the record and shows that the mystics are likely completely free of blame but almost never free of slander. Definitions of mysticism by those who hate it are often not merely incorrect but 180 degrees wrong.

The links in the chain include many writers I didn't know such as Joseph de Maistre or Georges Sorel. Examining them in their due order down the ages, Versluis makes crystal clear their influence on later writers such as Carl Schmitt. He pinpoints telling details in Eric Voegelin and others which show how easily, in a materialist-dogmatic environment, "Gnosticism" or "occultism" or "esotericism" can be thoroughly straw-manned and seen as a pervasive "disordering influence" in need of correction. In every passage quoted the lack of any backup or reasoning signals the danger of yet another auto-da-fe.

Left and right are equally wrongheaded. The filthy enemy could be anyone from the Illuminati to the Cathars to the Satanists to the counter-revolutionaries. Most ordinary folks will happily join in a public lynching rather than wonder where the truth lies. The cure for that, which is the capacity to think and feel for oneself, is rather rare and corresponds to psychological self-actualisation which is itself usually a big part of mystical practice. Versluis gets that.

The value of the book lies in its anatomisation of what makes state torture and marginalisation of freedom possible, and indeed necessary, respectable, and right, in the eyes of mad-eyed fanatics and supposedly insightful intellectuals alike. Why it has taken so long to correct the record about the nature and influence of mysticism I'm not sure, but Versluis is clearly part of a movement doing that with some panache. It's a fun read, not least because people I always suspected were talking out of anatomical areas other than their mouths are caught absolutely bang to rights. Dostoevsky with his "Grand Inquisitor" turns out to be ahead of numerous academic theorists.

A very enjoyable survey, teaching affably and indefatigably some very worthwhile lessons, I recommend this book to anyone whose interest it piques.

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The New Inquisitions--arguing from a stilted perspective, December 30, 2011

By 

Derek E Iverson - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Inquisitions: Heretic-Hunting and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Totalitarianism (Hardcover)

The author's primary purpose in this polemic is to place blame for aggressive oppression of those expressing opposing world views at the feet of Christianity, a thesis which is staggeringly ignorant! Aggressive opposition to people with opposing viewpoints is as old as Cain's murder of Abel as recorded in the book of Genesis in the Bible. It was present with the school of Pathagoras in ancient Greece; the book of Daniel records several incidents where religious motivations of the dominant religion of emperor worship attempted execution of some Jewish officials in first Babylonian and then Persian government; Jesus was executed by Roman authority in response to Jewish political pressure; the Bolsheviks executed millions to establish their control of Russia; Islamic countries continue to execute those who choose to leave Islam, or those who even challenge the sayings of Mohammed; Hindus in the state of Orissa recently (2008) conducted a program of killing and burning against Christians; and the list goes on and on. The book "Slaughter of the Dissidents" by Jerry Bergman documents the persecution faced by any who challenge the popular secular naturalism of our day and its creation myth of evolution. Persecution of opposing viewpoints has a long and distinguished history quite apart from Christianity, and is alive and well today in both secular and religious domains.

There have certainly been those in history who have used Christian organizations as a vehicle for persecution of others, exemplified by the murder of Wm. Tyndale in the 16th century for the crime of translating the Bible into English. This was done as part of the political struggles between the secular kings of England and the Catholic Church, using the local religious authorities. A few short years after this event the English kings saw it to their advantage to divorce the English local church from the Catholic Church and authorize the translation of the Bible into English, which was done in 1611 and resulted in the well known King James Version of the Bible. So it is ill considered to even place the blame on religious organizations in general--there are many other factors. This reminds me of attempts to claim that Columbus discovered that the world was round, or that the Galileo was persecuted for disproving Biblical tenants. Both have been ably shown to be false, despite their propagation in popular culture.