The Apocalypse and the Politics of the Impossible

Abstract

This article outlines various concepts of the Apocalypse and their relationship to such political ideas of modernity as socialism, liberalism and conservatism. Eschatology is based on the idea that time is striving to elaborate itself and fulfil its own meaning and is therefore directly related to the concept of history as the link between the present, past and future. Different versions of the Apocalypse have become the basis for certain political perspectives: the aspiration to eradicate the old world and establish the Kingdom of God is related to the ambitions of emancipatory and revolutionary movements, while liberalism derives its coherence from a Kantian ethics in which the eschatological assumption provides the foundation for personal moral autonomy. However, the attempts of revolutionaries to realize the meaning of history and the eschatological “fulfilment of time” have become a key element in the criticism of emancipatory movements by conservatives. Contrary to the widespread idea that eschatological expectation and politics are opposed, the author argues that the very notion of politics is impossible without addressing certain concepts from the Apocalypse. The similarity of their eschatological tropes should not be taken as a suggestion that socialist, conservative or liberal ideas (which continue to be in a state of fundamental conflict) may possibly converge; but it does indicate a deep connection between politics as such and the notion of the end of time. These foundations of the political are now threatened by a post-politics associated with the disappearance of the experience of time — an “eternal present” in which the multitude of catastrophes we constantly experience devalues each of them as a unique event and inscribes the idea of the Apocalypse in the reproduction of the existing order of things.