Political theology and eschatological war

Abstract

The intent of this paper is to describe the antagonism that constitutes the eschatological position, i.e., the inseparability of eschatology from a concept of eschatological war, through 1) the political theology of Carl Schmitt, 2) Orthodox Christological anthropology and 3) the nomadology of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. Schmitt's political theology can be understood as a theory of eschatological war. The theological character of Schimtt's work entails that 'the secularisation of theological concepts' is constitutive of the eschatological concept of cosmological finitude. Moreover, Schmitt's distinction between friend and enemy, which informs his concept of politics as the 'political', aims to identify the primary antagonism of eschatological history. For Schmitt, the liberal end of history is the absolutisation of the enemy, as liberalism denies the fundamental distinction of the political, namely, liberalism maintains that war is over on the basis of its claim to immanent historical truth. From the position of Orthodox Christological anthropology, liberalism also contains a clear eschatological element. The anthropology of liberalism is consistent with the gnomic will, which, according to St. Maximus the Confessor, is the fallen definition of human freedom, i.e., freedom as choice. Freedom as the natural will, in contrast, determines the ethical mission of man as the soteriological deification of cosmos. The lines of eschatological war can be further illustrated through the work of Deleuze and Guattari as well as Heinz Von Foerster, whose concepts of diagram/ abstract machine and trivial/non-trivial machine may contribute to an understanding of how a concept of war informs the transformative cosmology which belongs to the eschatological logic of cosmic finitude and deification, theosis.

Keywords

• eschatology
• political theology
• eschatological war
• Carl Schmitt
• St. Maximus the Confessor
• natural will
• gnomic will
• nomadology