Apocalyptic Phenomenology and Political Evil

Abstract

“Apocalyptic phenomenology” is a development of the phenomenological movement that brings us to a grasp of the real in its essence and ramifications, while the real still retains its incomprehensibility. The term “apocalyptic” here means revelation of the real. There are individual, communal, and historical aspects to all of this, all of which are “political” in the Platonic sense of the word. In the course of the concept’s development, this comprehensive meaning of the political is revealed, on the one hand, in the techniques of community management and, on the other, in the increasingly characteristic figure of the subject of the political, i.e., the political leader. These two processes are taking place in parallel, that is, in the emergence of community mechanisms and the shaping of the role of the leader. It is in this latter area that the political evil may be most pronounced since it is not simply a procedural defect or a legal inadequacy that is at issue here, but the personality of the freely acting individual. Thus, evil is no longer physical, moral, or metaphysical, but emphatically personal.