Apocalypse Now? - Peter Thiel on End Times

Paul Krause, "What is the Katechon?"

Katechon is a Greek word meaning “that which withholds” or “one that withholds.” It is a biblical concept found in the writing of Saint Paul in his letter to the Thessalonians. It has become a major point of focus in political philosophy (or if you prefer from the Hobbesian-Schmittian tradition: “political theology”). While the term as used by St. Paul has soteriological implications within the context of the story of salvation in Christianity, the term has become a “secularized” concept of the political – hence why it is popular in political theology if one agrees with Carl Schmitt’s understanding of the political as essentially being a form of secularized, or humanized, theology. The idea of the katechon is also popular in psychology too.

“Political Theology”

What is “political theology”? In academic studies political theology, an area that I do work in personally, is not “faith-based politics” as most illiterate commentators in the media perceive it to be. Political theology is a sub-discipline of political philosophy that explicitly looks at the role of theological concepts and how it has influenced political theory. Carl Schmitt, one of the most important (and controversial) political philosophers and theorists of the 20th century is generally credited with popularizing the term with his essay “Political Theology” in which he argued the conception of the political is based on theological concepts and language: the State (like God) is omnipotent, the State (like God) is Arbiter and Judge, the State (like God) is legislator of law, the State (like God) is all sovereign, the State (like God) is something eternal (an influence rooted in Schmitt’s radical Hegelianism).

The reason why the katechon is related to political theology is because religion was the first intellectual endeavor to deal with the question of being in relationship to order and chaos. This is the standard understanding of the mythogonies of the ancient Near East and classical world prior to the Hebrew Bible – although a closer examination of the Hebrew Bible (at least as it has been interpreted in Jewish tradition) reveals a world that isn’t too far removed from the old creation myths insofar as the ebb and flow of “rise and fall” is analogous to the chaos-order myths of Mesopotamia and Egypt. Thus, the ancient mythologies understand the world as one that is conflictual between chaos and order. This is generally represented by the gods: the sea god is disorder since water cannot be contained and is always in flux while the land god is the embodiment of order since one can live a sustainable and orderly life on land but land, as we all know from ancient stories, is still susceptible to floods and watery chaos. The idea of the katechon – as that which withholds – is understood within this context of chaos-order (katechon being something that allows for order in the world and allows for life to flourish).

A Brief History of Katechon

As for what the katechon is remains a contention in scholarship. The early idea of the katechon is the Logos: speech, reason, or wisdom which allows humans to communicate with one another and resolve their differences so as not to engage in violent conflict or struggle with one another. In this reading language is the great katechon because speech brings order to the world and allows for peaceable coexistence. This view is also rooted in the Judeo-Christian cosmological tradition where God brings order to the void through the act of speech (in Genesis) and that Jesus is understood as the Logos in traditional Trinitarian theology and Christology bringing order to the world and one’s life through spoken truth. This is a more psychological and sociological reading of the katechon.

The understanding of the katechon as speech or truth is also foundational to natural law theory: reason, as Cicero, along with traditional Christianity, affirms is the shared “divine spark” that humans share with Divinity. Since God is Reason and Reason is God, and since humans have the capacity for reason (though we may not always be reasonable in our thoughts and actions which is what “sin” really is), humans are “children of God” or “images of God.” Disorder, in this view, is brought about by uncontrollable passion which lead to destructive lives and the destruction of the external world and its system in uncontrolled fits of “passionate rage” or general ignorance. As Cicero says in Republic/Commonwealth, it is people “in their folly” who destroy “admirable systems” [of political order] despite their imperfections.

From the perspective of moral theory, especially moral theology and natural law theory, the katechon is the “moral law” that is – in the words of St. Paul – written on the hearts of all humans that help to guide human action. Of course, classical natural law asserts that this “voice of God,” so to speak, is pushing us toward happiness. But this happiness is primarily ontological in nature and not bodily (e.g. “hedonism”). There are also serious anthropological overtures in this reading that I do not have time to go into in this post but I might do in a later exploration of the katechon.

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In political theory the katechon takes on a more political tone – naturally. For Hegel, although he does not use the term katechon, the first embodiment of the katechon is the Hero. For it is the hero who struggles against disorder and chaos, slays the monsters and foes, saves his tribe from destruction, and becomes the first “emperor” or “chief” or “king” of his people. Thus, the hero is the embodiment and outpouring of order in the world by which the state emerges as having been found by the hero (albeit unknowingly). This is foundational to Hegel’s philosophy of history. The katechon is a person: the great hero who brings order to a chaotic world so as to allow his people to flourish.

From the Hegelian concept of hero is also the more ancient view, although it is in this view Hegel took his idea of the first order of history: that the katechon is the “great monarch” or “great chief.” It is the monarch or chief who establishes the nomos of society by which order is manifested in society. Think of Hammurabi’s Code or Moses bringing the Decalogue down from Sinai. Thus, the great monarch can better be understood as the “great lawgiver.” This is even present in cinema and popular culture. Those who have seen the original Planet of the Apes film will remember “the Great Lawgiver” whom Dr. Zaius and the apes idolize as a literal hero (confirming Hegel’s reading of the first emperor, chief, or lawgiver as the “hero” whom individuals look up to and seek to emulate). In this reading the katechon is understood primarily in the form of law, for law establishes the order by which civil society can flourish without chaos. Law is the great withholder of chaos. (Here the katechon is rooted in a person but will transfer to his great accomplishment.)

But beginning in Hobbes we see a more important and common view of the katechon as the State itself. In Hobbes’s state of nature, in which the “moral law” is simply the law of self-preservation for the purpose of bodily comfort and pleasure (hence why Hobbes and Locke and the liberal tradition really doesn’t fit “natural law and natural rights” theory because it is revisionist), there is a war of all against all leading to a life that is poor, solitary, nasty, brutish, and short. Reason informs us that this unpleasant life, rooted in the chaos of the state of nature, can be better – if we only form the social contract and surrender our absolute freedom of action in the state of nature over to the sovereign “mortal god” that is the State in order to have comfort, peace, and security in life.

In Hobbes we see the katechon become the political apparatus – itself, perhaps, the logical ramification of understanding the katechon as the law which is foundational to the State. It is the State that literally saves us from killing one another and living miserable lives in the state of nature. This view is equally contained, albeit in a less pronounced form, in the political thought of John Locke (which is why Locke is universally regarded as “the wolf Hobbes in sheep’s clothing”). In this view the State as katechon is Schmitt’s secular god: the State embodies all the characteristics and attributes of God. Schmitt found this tradition of political philosophy as political theology beginning in Hobbes and Locke. Building from this is also Hegel’s statism in which he equally sees the State as the culmination of the world-spirit (although for Hegel the purpose of the State is not pleasurable political hedonism as in Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza, and the liberal tradition).

The Enduring Relevance of the Katechon

Is this idea of the katechon still relevant in political theory or general sociology? That depends, perhaps, on how one answers the question quid est autem homo, or how one understands the world in which we live and our relationship to the world we inhabit. If the world is chaotic and order must emerge from chaos, then the katechon is a relevant topic. As Schmitt wrote in his diary, the task of understanding history is knowing what the katechon actually is and isn’t. If humans are “fallen” or essentially “evil” and bring harm to each other, something would have to work as a barrier to such engagement as man encounters himself in the world and would rip himself apart. After all, such encounters of man with man would be a chaotic world.

Conversely, the self-centered anthropology of the Enlightenment, per Spinoza’s understanding of humanity in the state of nature as knowing no law and knowing no boundaries or barriers to his wanton desire of conatus (e.g. no barrier to acquisition), or Locke’s understanding of humans as homo economicus, if wrong – and humans are, in fact, social animals – then we have the conflict of self-interest and self-preservation that leads to the dissolution of the state of nature and the emergence of the commonwealth or State as the katechon to allow hedonistic flourishing in civil society. (In fact, the inherent contradictions of political liberalism testify to the need of the katechon in Hobbes, Locke and Spinoza since life in the state of nature is chaotic precisely because we live as atomized individuals and the commonwealth, or civil society, is necessary to live a peaceful, comfortable, secure, and orderly life – hence humans are social because sociality leads to order.)

On the other hand, if you’re a strict anarchist, and humans are essentially benign and the world not chaotic, then there is no reason for the katechon and the katechon, in whatever form one understands it, is a “barrier” to man’s natural state (e.g. as consuming animals per the Anarcho-Capitalists or free moving and free associating animals per traditional “left”-Anarchism).