Lana Zdravković participated in the international scientific seminar “Identity of Europe” in Dubrovnik

In August Dr. Lana Zdravković participated for the fifth year in a row in the international scientific seminar “Identity of Europe” at the Inter University Center in Dubrovnik, which was held on the topic “War, Politics, and Ideology”. She presented paper “Eschatology of St. Paul as an attempt to re-invent hope in emancipatory politics in the end times”, in which she thematized tradition of eschatological theorization of the radical thought of political philosophy observable primarily among the left post-Marxist philosophers (W. Benjamin, J. Taubes, G. Agamben, S. Žižek, A. Badiou). She claimed that the central figure of contemporary political theology and philosophy of history of above-mentioned authors is often St. Paul, and especially his concept of messianic time, the enigmatic notion of katéchon, and egalitarian universality beyond law. One among the reasons for resorting to St. Paul is definitely the fact that his epistles are eschatological by nature. As a member of the early Christian community, St. Paul expected the end of time to come soon, and he thematized the concept with characteristic “eschatological indifference”. It is also worth mentioning that St. Paul was a convert and a big “church trouble-maker”, who preached revolutionary, subversive and antidogmatic methods for the transition from the path of flesh to the path of spirit, from the kingdom of earth to the kingdom of heaven and from the obedience of the worldly laws to the annihilation of all laws in faith. As a result, in contemporary political philosophy, St. Paul became a paradigm of the rebellious subject giving rise to calls for weak messianic power (Benjamin), the creation of counter-power in the messianic (Agamben, Taubes), the concepts of egalitarian universalism (Badiou) and revolutionary emancipatory politics (Žižek).

Photo: Waltraud Meints-Stender