It queries the rationale and credibility of future tenses. The determinant of our current situation is more embracing. I would call it 'the eclipse of the messianic'. In western religious systems, the messianic, whether personalized or metaphoric, has signified renovation, the end of historical temporality and the coming in glory of an after-world. In a literal sense, hope has sprung eternal.
Western faiths are redemption narratives.
But the messianic is no less instrumental in secular programmes. For anarchist and Marxist imaginings of futurity, it will be represented by the 'withering away of the state'. Behind this figure lie Kant's argument on universal peace and the Hegelian thesis of an end to history. Inevitably, this eclipse of the messianic presses on the future tense. Future tenses are an idiom of the messianic.