“I Want to Judge! I Have to Judge!”: Judg-mentaility and the Theopolitics of the Apocalypse

Abstract

Abstract The apocalyptic genre was from the beginning in the centre of the theologico-political discourse which, according to Jacob Taubes, always has to choose one of the two fundamental options: either in favour of the apocalypse (“from above,” as in early Schmitt, or “from below,” as in Taubes himself), or against it in the katechonic defense against the apocalyptic chaos and destruction (late Schmitt). In Taubes’s account, apocalypse is simultaneously revelatory and destructive. By assuming the standpoint of the Last Judgment, it passes an ultimate verdict without appeal over the world – as indeed in Taubes’s most famous statement: “I have no spiritual investment in the world as it is. I can imagine as an apocalyptic: let it come down.” It is precisely this form of position assuming the uncompromising perspective of the Last Judgment, which will occupy me in my essay. I want to approach critically the most recent phenomenon of what we may call an absolute judg-mentaility – or, in Nietzschean terms, a “mentality of judgment” – which takes apocalyptic form of a violent negation, exposing the whole “world as it is” to the scorching light of the verdict and leaving no space that would be free from adjudication.