Peace in the Face of War

grim endlessness. 1 The End of the world can only be thought of as the end
of time, an exit from time, the time of this world, and not as an end in time,
within time. A naturalistic eschatology is unthinkable and absurd; only a
spiritual eschatology is possible. The end of time, the End of the world, the
end of history means a transition to another dimension of consciousness.
The End of the world cannot be revealed to any structure of consciousness
corresponding to cosmic and historical time, establishing that kind of time.
It is revealed rather to a different structure of consciousness, not weighed
down by the constraints and heaviness of this world, but within existential
time; it is revealed in the spirit and to the spirit. In the creative activity of
the spirit, human beings in freedom leave behind the power of this world,
subject to necessity and endless time, and enter into existential time, into
meta-history. They are able to achieve existential acts which, by the same
token, can be called eschatological acts. Then eternity opens up before them,
not a grim endlessness. Because human beings are not only spiritual, but also
natural and historical beings who are capable of objectifying the perspective
of the End, they then foresee horrific, apocalyptic pictures of the destruction
of the world and the triumph of evil. They remain riveted to the objectivized,
material world. There lies the division of the world, the contrast of the End.
We see the End of the world in time, instead of seeing it as the end of time.
Within time, the End can only be seen as destruction, but from the viewpoint
of eternity, the End can be seen as transfiguration.
History cannot not be war, and war is connected to the End, understood as
the immanent result of evil. Everyone is prepared to admit that war in itself is
evil, even if the lesser of evils. There is a demonic principle in war. Moreover,
when war breaks out, people and nations cannot fail to ask the question
about the meaning of war. They try to make sense of it, as they do with all
the significant events of life. But it is a contradiction in terms to ask about
the meaning of war. War has no meaning; it cannot bear the appearance
of any meaning. War is meaningless, it is an outrage against meaning, and
irrational, deadly forces are at work in it. The only purpose of war is victory
over the foe. But the question can be put in a different way. One can ask about
the causes of war and the tasks it sets before people and nations. War in itself
does not create new life; it is destructive. But people who have lived through
the horrors of war, who have discovered a creative freedom in themselves,
can direct their powers to creating a new, better, and more human life. By
walking in these paths they are preparing for the End as transfiguration. One
can say that the world will end in terrible war, and equally well in eternal
1
Lit. a ‘bad infinity’, a term used by Hegel within a specialist philosophical context, but whose
meaning corresponds to the one conveyed here, that of a grim endlessness.
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