Abstract

This article analyses the core of Hans Kelsen's polemic against the attempt to reduce modern thought and politics to secularised religions, starting with Eric Voegelin's thesis according to which modernity is an immanent rethinking of the Gnostic heresy. The article analyses Voegelin's position against the historical sources of the anti-Gnosticism of the fathers of the "Great Church", as well as several texts from Nag Hammadi (1945) to the Avesta, from the Gnostic Gospels to the Cathar doctrine, reconsidering Kelsen's stance on "secular religions" and thereby acknowledging its solid grounding as well as its conformity to the sources.