Extremism and disenchantment. The birth of modernity from the spirit of radical politics

Abstract

This essay consists of three parts: first, a brief historical study of the emergence of radical policies, with particular attention to the political role played in Europe throughout the sixteenth century by the social revolutions inspired by Protestant Reformation. Second, a critical reading of secularization as a paradigm of modernization that transformed the former gods, essentials in the political radicalism of the past. It includes a commentary on the debate between Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg about the emergence of a modern conception of the historical temporality -and the relationship between progress and eschatology. And third, a philosophical note about the semantic «drift» of the notion of «extremism », as a symptom of the postmodern «oblivion of politics». Finally, the historical analysis of the relationship between Extremism and Disenchantment focuses on the importance that Fiction has acquired in modern times as a figure of political power.