From Sovereignty to Negeschatology

In this chapter we argue, first, that, since early modernity and its political innovation (absolutism), the model and basis of any sovereign power that has been taken as just and trustworthy is built upon a precisely circumscribed postulate: the double fixture between a mundane potential to reign in emerging challenges and a spiritual belief that this super-power happens to be in the right hands, or on ‘the right side of history’. Secondly, we show how this occurred in a manner directly informed by the medieval religious canon's outline of the events due to take place at the end of times (eschatology, the doctrine of the Last Things). Comparing with the situation at the beginning of the 21st century, we find that this correlation has been done away with and, in its place, another, secularised paradigm has been put into place: one of permanent crisis and of mere coping with contingency by momentary measures accepted even before their specific features have been elucidated. Everything looks as if this new paradigm revoked the previous eschatological promise of something that holds out beyond the present horizon.