?
Онтотеологический «остаток» современного политического нигилизма
This article examines the transformation of political theology, or political ontotheology, in the era of late capitalism. The author first analyzes the specifics of nihilism as interpreted by Nietzsche and Heidegger, then moves on to a consideration of epistemological, ethical, and political relativism, the general essence of which consists of a nihilistic rejection of a unified value-based worldview. The author then concludes that nihilism is a bulwark for the implementation of a particular type of 21st-century political theology: the neoliberal disposition is characterized by the increasing “economization” of governance, leading to a particularly “psychoticized” type of political exercise. It is suggested that this disposition develops from an extreme form of nihilism — value relativism. Nihilistic thinking in the socio-political sphere, lacking strict semantic guidelines, seeks meaning in the very freedom of meaning-making, in the dynamics of free market relations, where very processes of interaction become a source of unstable legitimacy. The article’s central thesis is that relativism, as a nihilistic worldview, not only rejects the transcendental power of thought and political theology/ontotheology, but builds a unique, “immanentized” ideological regime of neoliberalism on this rejection. Neoliberalism is understood in the article as a holistic political-theological paradigm, where market logic, media, the internet, individualized responsibility, and mechanisms of political “demonization” perform functions analogous to religious ones, yet have undergone a “secular” transformation. The author demonstrates how the sacred core of power in the contemporary world is immanentized, and the legitimization of sovereign power is transferred to the economic and digital sphere. As a result, the ontotheological “residue” of value-based thinking manifests itself not in the transcendent figure of the sovereign, but in impersonal, networked, and economic mechanisms of governance that, masquerading as pluralism and freedom, reproduce the nihilistic devaluation of meaning and maintain the status quo.