The power of ideas: esotericism,historicism, and the limits of discourse

This article is a response to the reviews by Giovanni Filoramo, Olav Hammer, Bernd-Christian Otto, Marco Pasi, and Michael Stausberg of Wouter J. Hanegraaff's book Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture. The author attempts to clarify his view of the relation between history and theory, and between intellectual history and discourse theory in particular; he provides a summary of his motivations for writing the book and of its main argument; he concludes by addressing a number of theoretical issues raised by the respondents.