A genealogical approach to thought is always limited, as is a crass materialism. But if one pulls at the official versions of European philosophy, one finds forgotten undercurrents. Most if not all of these forgotten thinkers are grouped under the label “Hermeticism.” The ones remembered who are connected to them are put under the Enlightenment label, but are typically different than thinkers like Voltaire who have no connection to the hermetics that I know of. Further, I find the thinkers like Hegel who straddle both traditions the most interesting. Also, note: the Hermetic tradition is very old, whereas the Enlightment starts in the 1600’s at the earliest.
What is the basis for each?
The Enlightenment perhaps is the expression of the intelligentsia of the newly forming capitalist society. It focuses on rights and reason: freedom from feudal society.
The hermetic thinkers I’m drawn to were apparently artisans. Under feudalism, “official” thought was stultifying Platonism it seems and independent thinkers were drawn from those with an independent means of supporting themselves and their more organic (rather than “rights”) worldview was connected to their means of living being transforming the world with their hands and head.
Hermetic thinkers:
Paracelsus (wandering healer)
Jakob Böhme (shoemaker)
Bruno (wandering intellectual, exception)
Blake (printmaker)
Social revolutionaries and hermetic like thought: Winstanley of the Diggers (tailor), Müntzer of the German Peasant Wars (preacher, but appears to have expressed the viewpoint of the small urban artisans)
Straddling the hermetic tradition and the enlightenment: Spinoza (lens maker), Hegel, Goethe.
(In contrast, my impression is that most Enlightenment thinkers were lawyers and professional writers.)
The hermetic tradition is definitely limited by its individualism–grounded perhaps in the artisan origins. And the Enlightenment tradition that Hegel et al. bring in definitely adds something, what? A counter to the individualism?
