Deferring the End
Raphael (1483-1520), “Study for St. Paul Preaching in Athens”
In my previous article, I introduced Schmitt’s concept of the katechon, arguing that its relevance is usually assigned exclusively to the domain of the political. If the word seems to retain any kind of theological resonance, then, this is considered to be secondary and vestigial. Indeed, one critic argues that Schmitt purposefully linked his genealogical understanding of the term with Tertullian in order to select “an exegetic variant of the concept that was closely tied to imperial, and not to ecclesial, discourse.”
Yet, I wish to argue that this is a highly reductive reading. For it causes Schmitt’s deployment of the term to be shifted out of the political-theological register in which it was originally conceived, and from which it gains its essential clarity.
Schmitt himself warns us against this taking this route. In a short essay entitled “Three Possibilities for a Christian Conception of History” (1950), he carefully designates the katechon as the central element of an exclusively Christian contribution to political thought and advises us not to “transform the term into a generalized designation of simply conservative or reactionary forces.” So, whilst he is certainly prepared to leverage the concept to analyze the contemporary politico-legal order, he emphasizes that it is in its essence a religious idea and that it should not be abstracted from this context. For Schmitt, it is religion, and Christianity in particular, that has the function of holding back or restraining the end of time. Thus, we might say that rather than reinforcing the Tertullian axis (the katechon as a function of temporal power), Schmitt nudges us instead towards the Augustine-Calvin axis (the katechon as a function of spiritual power and the sovereign activity of God).
If this interpretation is correct, it opens up the possibility of a more nuanced reading of Schmitt’s political theology than has hitherto been supposed. All critics agree that this provides a resource for critique (of the modern idealization of the state as having the form of “a secularized theological concept”). However, in light of his understanding of the katechon, we can see how his political theology has a more positive and constructive function as well. Schmitt argues that a stable political order must entail the re-imagining or recovery of “a properly Christian conception of history.” His political theology therefore should not be understood as a theory of the state that has been merely overlaid with a superficial veneer of Christian conceptuality. Rather, it consists in a thoroughgoing re-contextualization of politics itself by means of an originary theo-logic. For Schmitt, a robustly theological vision of the eschaton will be needed if we are to counter the depoliticizations and neutralizations of modern life (as he diagnosed them), and to re-establish a robust and healthy political society.
But how can this fully Christianized katechon accomplish this?
For Schmitt, the crucial point is that the eschatological deferral encoded in the idea of the katechon is guaranteed not by a temporal power, but by God Himself. The reason God holds the end of time in abeyance is so that His people can get to work in the here-and-now, promoting and extending the values of His kingdom throughout the world. Schmitt straightforwardly translates this mandate for Christian mission into the discourse of contemporary politics. In the space wedged open by this eschatological deferral, the present moment takes on a new force and potential as an arena for meaningful political action and as a matrix out of which goodness can be expected to emerge. Thus, for Schmitt, when the language of the katechon is rooted in this vision of Christian eschatology, it provides an antidote to the sense of depoliticization and disenfranchisement that characterizes the contemporary public space in many different forms. “I believe in the katechon,” writes Schmitt, “it is for me the only possibility as a Christian to understand history and find it meaningful.”
It is here that we find a surprising connection with certain strands of contemporary philosophy. Recently, a number of continental theorists, including Peter Sloterdijk, Paul Virilio, Frédéric Neyrat, and Bruno Latour, have begun to embrace Schmitt’s political theology, especially the concept of the katechon, as a means of articulating their own political ideas.
The case of Bruno Latour is particularly interesting. References to Schmitt abound in his work (most significantly in his 2016 book Facing Gaia). On the one hand, his engagement is cautious. He acknowledges Schmitt as a “reactionary” and even a “toxic” thinker. The recommended “dosage” of his thought should be watched “as carefully as we would do with a powerful poison.” But he agrees that Schmitt’s work is “unavoidable.” Perhaps, then, there are concepts one can “pilfer from him”?
The one he seems most keen to swipe is the katechon, which he uses analogously to Schmitt. He too seeks a politics that will not only hold back and defer the threat of future societal disintegration, but that will also hold open and facilitate the conditions for radical contestations and new activist movements in the present. Latour agrees with Schmitt that modernity is based on “the strange idea that history is already finished.” Bound in on every side by the apparently inexorable trajectories of globalization, neoliberal economics, and scientific-technological development, we find it hard to envisage any future than the one that has apparently been prescribed for us. The public space therefore becomes de-animated and depoliticized.
For Latour, this is especially pernicious at the time of the “new climatic regime,” where novel expressions of political coordination are desperately needed if we are to address the environmental challenges that are facing us on a massive scale. What is needed, then, is “a return of the important question of the katechon, the ability to slow down, to suspend, to delay the end of time that is no longer in front of us but, in an unforeseen way, behind us, as if it consisted of a move that had already been made.” Latour is arguing that an appropriate sense of agency to address the “new climatic regime” will only come when we appreciate that we do not yet know the end that has been ordained for human society and that the catastrophe that seems to be coming our way with inexorable force can still be held back by decisions we ourselves are able to make and put into effect in the present time. For Latour, then, the concept of the katechon must be at the heart of the political society we need to build today.
It is crucial to understand that, just as was the case for Schmitt, Latour links this with a specifically Christian eschatological vision. The “minimal form of restraint” that is required to keep the contemporary public space open for political interactions is provided by a spiritual, not by a temporal, power. “I am a professing Roman Catholic,” writes Latour. Although the point is rarely appreciated in the critical literature, he proposes throughout his work that religion, and the apocalyptic motifs of the Christian Gospels in particular, is that which alone can send us back into the world with a renewed strength for political engagement and activism. “We shouldn’t deprive ourselves of the resources of Christian apocalypse,” Latour writes, “for they allow us to pose the problem of our presence in the world, of how to be present to the challenges we are now facing.”
Latour is one of a number of contemporary continental philosophers who not only refer to Christian conceptualities, but also are prepared to explore and embrace the theo-logic that undergirds them. This new wave provides a challenge to the political visions of a previous generation, represented by the work of Badiou and Nancy, that are rigorously “atheistic” in structure (although, as Chris Watkin points out in this brilliant book, perhaps these were never as consistently “atheistic” as they claimed). References to the concept of the katechon in the work of Latour and others are a key signifier of this shift.
It remains to be seen what further value it might yield as these theorists continue to explore, in the wake of Schmitt, how contemporary politics can be re-politicized by a vision of the future that was first given articulation within Christian theology.
Timothy Howles is a Junior Research Fellow at Campion Hall, University of Oxford, and Associate Director for Research Programming at the Laudato Si’ Research Institute, Campion Hall, University of Oxford. His monograph “The Political Theology of Bruno Latour: Globalization, Secularization, and Environmental Crisis” will be published with Edinburgh University Press in 2022.
