Thinking the End Times: Towards a Philosophical Eschatology

Nothing seems less rational than the belief that the end of time is near. Eschatological speculations are typically based on religious faith, even on delusion, rather than on rational insight. This project wants to think what seems to be beyond reason: it develops a ‘philosophical eschatology’. Philosophers have often been under the spell of eschatology, the discipline concerned with the last things. However, they have focused on developing eschatological philosophies of history and failed to address the underlying question what is so compelling about the end of time in the first place. Therefore, this project develops a philosophical meta-reflection on the nature of eschatological beliefs and on their cultural, existential and historical functions. It argues that eschatological speculations are attempts to come to terms with human finitude. The main philosophical source that the project will rely on is the work of Hans Blumenberg, in particular his unpublished book manuscript on eschatology. This philosophical understanding of eschatology will help to shed light on the role of eschatology in current debates about climate change and the Anthropocene. Indeed, end time prophecies are still omnipresent in secular societies. Today, visions of nuclear apocalypse and environmental catastrophe have casted off eschatology’s redemptive and religious functions. The project thus wants to determine what it means for eschatology to lose its redemptive vision and be secularized.