Table Of ContentLocations of Knowledge in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe
Brill’s Studies in
Intellectual History
General Editor
A.J. Vanderjagt, University of Groningen
Editorial Board
C.S. Celenza, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
M. Colish, Oberlin College
J.I. Israel, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
M. Mugnai, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
W. Otten, University of Chicago
VOLUME 186
Locations of Knowledge
in Medieval and
Early Modern Europe
Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities
By
Kocku von Stuckrad
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2010
Cover Illustration: Christian Freiherr Knorr von Rosenroth, Kabbala Denudata, Sulzbach:
Abraham Lichtentaler 1677, 2 vols., reprint Hildesheim etc.: Georg Olms 1999, vol. 2,
page 231.
Th is book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Stuckrad, Kocku von, 1966–
Locations of knowledge in medieval and early modern Europe : esoteric discourse
and Western identities / by Kocku von Stuckrad.
p. cm. — (Brill’s studies in intellectual history, ISSN 0920-8607 ; v. 186)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-18422-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Occultism—Europe—History.
2. Europe—Intellectual life. 3. Discourse analysis—Europe. 4. Occultism—Europe—
History—Sources. 5. Europe—Intellectual life—Sources. 6. Group identity—Europe—
History. 7. Europe—Social conditions. 8. Cultural pluralism—Europe—History.
9. Social change—Europe—History. 10. Europe—Religious life and customs. I. Title.
II. Series.
BF1434.E85S78 2010
130.94—dc22
2010001511
ISSN 0920-8607
ISBN 978 90 04 18422 0
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CONTENTS
Preface ................................................................................................. ix
Part One
Esoteric Discourse and the European
History of Religion
Introduction ........................................................................................ 3
Chapter One Europe and the Christendom Narrative:
From Singularization to Pluralism ............................................. 7
Th e Secularization Th eory Revisited .......................................... 7
Christian Occident? ...................................................................... 13
Th e Two-Fold Pluralism .............................................................. 18
Chapter Two Th e Polemical Construction of Tradition ......... 25
Th e Construction of Prisca Th eologia ........................................ 26
Genealogies of Wisdom ............................................................... 30
Jewish Perspectives ........................................................................ 33
Beyond Tradition .......................................................................... 41
Chapter Th ree Conceptualizing the Study of Esoteric
Discourse ........................................................................................ 43
Approaches to Esotericism .......................................................... 45
Secrecy as Social Capital .............................................................. 54
Discourses of Perfect Knowledge ............................................... 59
Part Two
Shared Passions
Introduction ........................................................................................ 67
Chapter Four Th e Secrets of Experience: Wisdom beyond
Demonstration ............................................................................... 71
vi contents
Neoplatonism and Th eurgy in Late Antiquity ......................... 72
Experiential Knowledge in Suhrawardī’s Illuminationist
Philosophy .................................................................................. 82
Chapter Five Th e Secrets of Texts: Esoteric Hermeneutics .... 89
Th e Readability of the Cosmos: Europe’s Obsession with
Words .......................................................................................... 89
Th e Textile of the Divine in Early Kabbalah ............................ 93
Linguistic Ontologies in Christian Kabbalah ........................... 103
Humanistic Philology: Universal Languages and the Quest
for the Ursprache ....................................................................... 110
Chapter Six Th e Secrets of Time: Astrology and Sacred
History ............................................................................................. 115
Critical Response to Ancient Traditions: Medieval Arabic
Astrology .................................................................................... 115
Sharing Muslim Knowledge: Christian Astrology ................... 126
Part Three
Interferences
Introduction ........................................................................................ 137
Chapter Seven Scientifi c Encounters ........................................... 139
“Occult Sciences”: Th e Science-Religion Divide Revisited ..... 139
John Dee: A Scholar Gone Mad? ............................................... 146
Natural Philosophy in an Apocalyptic Age .............................. 152
Chapter Eight Visual Seductions ................................................. 157
Th e Problem of ‘Renaissance Paganism’ ................................... 158
Image Acts and Visual Culture ................................................... 163
Th e Presence of Images as Visual Practice ............................... 168
Chapter Nine Political Consideration ......................................... 175
Johann Heinrich Alsted: Hermeticism and Universal Reform 177
Perfect Knowledge in the “Circle of Learning”:
Alsted’s Encyclopaedia ............................................................. 186
contents vii
Chapter Ten Conclusion: Locations of Knowledge .................. 195
Writing Histories, Narrating Pasts ............................................. 195
Esoteric Discourse and Western Identities ............................... 200
Bibliography ........................................................................................ 205
Index .................................................................................................... 233
PREFACE
Begriff e ohne Anschauung sind leer; Anschauungen
ohne Begriff e sind blind.
Immanuel Kant
Th is is a book about junctures. I have always been fascinated by the
way people make diff erentiations and distinctions. Of course, this is a
necessary procedure if we want to fi nd our place in the world; at the
same time, it is a highly complex maneuver, with arbitrary elements
and structures, the full power of which is usually outside our aware-
ness. If we look at these processes on a larger scale, on the level of
groups, communities, and even societies, we see the same maneuvers
and strategies at work, and it is the task of the scholar to critically
engage these processes of identity-building—even if he or she is part
of the structures and thus never really independent of them.
European identities are a complex phenomenon. While Westerners
like to portray themselves as rational, enlightened, and scientifi cally
enhanced inhabitants of the modern world, recently such a narrative
of modernity has been called into question, making room for a more
nuanced analysis. Th e customary narrative does not explain the con-
tinued presence and power of religious identities in western Europe,
a fact that reveals a transformation of religion rather than a process
of secularization during the past three hundred years. What is more,
if we put these processes into historical perspective, we see that the
terms and concepts that are applied in order to distinguish the ‘mod-
ern mind’ from pre-modern or non-Western conditions are in fact of
very recent origin and charged with a high degree of polemic. Th ey
are the result of a post-Enlightenment process of disjunction: in an
ideology of modernity, European thinkers diff erentiated magic and
religion from science, Hermeticism from rationality, astrology from
astronomy, alchemy from chemistry, and so on. It would be wrong
to assume a conscious decision here; rather, what we see at work is
the power of a newly emerging episteme, that is—according to Michel
Foucault—a general and undeniable agreement about what can be
reasonably thought about the world. Th is episteme and the discourse
related to it have had an impact on all areas of society, including the
