The Messiah and the Great Architect: On the Difference Between the Messianic and the Utopian

In: Utopian studies, Band 29, Heft 2, S. 133-158

Abstract

ABSTRACT
This articles criticizes utopian thinking—but not from the conservative perspective, seeing human society as inherently flawed and unable to progress, morally and politically. It opposes utopia in the name of messianic philosophico-theological heritage, often confused with the utopian strain or overshadowed by it. Today, mostly thanks to Derrida and his own philosophical version of "messianicity" derived from Abrahamic religions, though by no means reducible to them—the messianic idea is undergoing a revival. The article examines this revival as an interesting alternative to utopian thinking: equally optimistic anthropologically and politically, yet free of certain "architectonic" aspirations that Derrida criticizes as too strongly rooted in the "social ontology" and thus defending the political status quo. What Bloch and Derrida propose is a serious investment in the "objective fantasy," not to be fully actualized but operative as a spectral source of "in-spiration" in the progressive transformation of social laws.