Epilogue

the politics of (im)pure criticism

Herbert Spiegelberg

pp. 221-231

in: Vassilios Paipais, Political ontology and international political thought, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

This chapter is offered in lieu of conclusion and as a "preface" to the kind of politics that may issue from the reflexive nihilist position adopted in this book. It recapitulates the book's main points and bears out the implications of the reconceptualisation of political subjectivity as a tragicomic embodiment of a theopolitical meontology. Political action in a diverse world should not abandon the pretensions to universality but, rather, it should undermine the logic of utility and commandment resting behind such claims, while also divesting itself from any illusions of purity or self-righteousness in pursuing its goals. Political action is born in the creative tension between a re-enchanted "already", wholly embracing the dimensions of loss and temporality in the here and now of everyday politics, and an eschatological "not yet" that undercuts the destructive logics of domination and exploitation that permeate our world.