The Eclipse of Eschatology: Conversing with Taubes's Messianism and the Common Body

Abstract

In this article Jacob Taubes's idea of eschatology is examined. Taubes's own understanding of eschatology has profound implications on the very expression of political theology and political practice. If politics— as a practice— assumes that time has a terminal point, than it will invariably change this practice and encumber and even neutralize political action of a common-body that gives voice to the oppressed. This article agrees with Taubes in that eschatology must announce an end to itself, which is at once a birth of a postmodern possibility of the principle of immanence in which a common-body announces its infinite possibility. The end of eschatology is the end of transcendence and the beginning of a struggle for liberating the infinite possibility of a common-body of labor.