description
The text deals with the specific modality of the end, manifested as a pervasive sense of the constant, immediate and real threat of total destruction of the planet, global conflict and the extinction of the human species (viruses and pandemics and natural disasters, the nuclear threat, the threat of artificial intelligence). The theme of the end is introduced by presenting the most important and up-to-date eschatological theorisations of radical political-philosophical thought, especially of the left-wing, post-Marxist province: W. Benjamin, J. Taubes, G. Agamben, S. Žižek, and A. Badiou, who derive their political theology from St. Paul. The aim of the text is to show how, in a situation where the emancipatory potential of concepts that could offer a construction of a political continuation in the time of the end has been exhausted, the most radical political thinkers move into an ephemeral beyond-political realm, where political hope is built on theological concepts. After that, the text offers a reflection on what political dynamics, implications and consequences such theorizations can establish and how they can help us to think through the present time of the end. In the concluding section, the text argues that the end can only be avoided if we posit the political emancipatory potential theologically, that is, if we infuse it with theological notions of renunciation, self-control, and self-sacrifice. It means that in order to construct some possible continuation in the time of the end, it is crucial to find ways to exit from the economic logic that has become deeply embedded in all aspects of life. Only the construction of pleasure beyond the capitalist logic can deliver us from the nihilism of the present time. It means that, unlike the idea of a mass (as a collection, a quantity) culture of individuality based on difference, on the idea of the Other, it is necessary to re-ground an emancipatory conception of politics based on the idea that ‘there is one world’, co-created by all of us, and which is built on the idea of community, of collectivity (as a quality), on the idea of the Same.