Llegamos por la carne y el vino... y nos quedemos por la carne y el vino.

We came for the steak and wine... and we stayed for the steak and wine. 

They shed their sense of responsibility

Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the bribes; the mob

That used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything,

Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for two things only,

Bread and circuses. 

~ Juvenal, Satire X

How can we have a free will if there is such a thing as fate?

A way of better understanding this is to look at apoptosis within our own bodies, a death of the cells in a controlled and normal way of life; there is a time it cannot go beyond.  We can help the body as much as we would like, but there is a time it will shut down.  So do we have free-will?  Maybe, until we can have no more, but I lean more towards Schopenhauer, who basically says that whatever we do, Will is what determines it, and that is Will outside the illusion of self.  Self is a modern word; I do not think it exists in ancient languages as a noun, but rather as a grammatical reflexive. ( I could be wrong here.)  Did we choose our partner or did Will just put us together?  So, we could call this fate and if agreed upon it becomes a truth in the language game.

--Herman H, San Francisco

I was interested by the proposition of a desire to immanentize the eschaton. 

As a therapist I am inclined to link it with the 'denial of death'. This might appear contradictory at first but I will clarify what I mean. The egocentric organism, I choose this term deliberately as it representative of both individuals and collectives, cannot accept/conceive - as you allude in your precis - of existence outwith its own sensed being. Accordingly, its reactive position is predicated on the internalized notion that all existence stops with its own. 

So it makes a kind of sense for this kind of organism to envisage its own end as the end of all things and actually to look forward to witnessing the end of all things within its lifetime. To the denying organism the 'end of all things' allows the displacement of its own mortality onto the end of all existence. The reality, of course, is that individuals, nations, political parties, religions all die. 

The unhealthy displacement of the organisms’ 'personal' death into the death of existence leads, in my understanding of it, when it is more powerful or extreme to the highly reactive destructiveness that underpins some of the more unpleasant manifestations we see (murder-suicide, attempted wars of mutual annihilation, funerary human sacrifice, reactive collective religious fundamentalism). 

The truly self aware and self accepting 'organism' is aware of its individual mortality as inevitable and making peace with that does not seek an orgiastic end of the universe at its own passing. To complete the classical link I think the stoics are pretty explicit on the matter of individual mortality. 

I think the idea I'm trying to convey might be condensed to something like: 

Conscious or unconscious ego-centrism denies death and when faced with the reality of its mortality requires pathologically that this is the end of all things. 

I look forward to reading others observations and insights, 

Best regards,

J L Thomas 

It is not the end of the world if you live to see it. Only death can bring about el fin del mundo. Therefore, anyone wishing to "Immanentize the Eschaton" seeks death which is non-transcendent. So... Why? Is there more to living than just life?

Respectfully yours,

Darrell P. B.

Some thoughts on the subject of ‘immanence’ and 'the eschaton':

When one makes a philosophic reference to the “The End of the World”, there is a very interesting play on words which comes to mind; one that somehow gets to the point of it - or perhaps even more - gets to the 'alpha & omega' of your question.

As a trope, The ‘END' (of the world) finds meaningful (yet paradoxical) expression through a single Greek term:  TELOS.

Meaning ‘End’ (as in 'a purpose'), Telos has a very special place in the history of Greek philosophical and religious thought. As the root of Teleology, its meaning remains pregnant with controversy, even today. 

So substitute the notion of TELOS into our equation for 'the End of the World' (or the 'End of Days'), and perhaps you'll get a more ‘fleshed' out answer regarding ‘end’ times and human yearning.  

Simply put: It is the idea that 'the beginning' (of any thing) is somehow in 'its end’ (its purpose), so that the end is also in its beginning… That is the nuance of Telos (when speaking of 'the end' of the world) which has become lost in translation: The idea that the beginning of the world, and the end (of the world), are some ‘how’ intimately connected.  And in our perennial search for meaning, we humans are literally “dying to know” the answer.  

It’s something like an implicit riddle (or mystery) built into the nature of language itself which keeps us “hooked” and glued to our screens - waiting to see what comes next.  

I see it as both the etiological core narrative that’s at the center of all logical discourse, and the 'mysterious something' that is at the heart of any story that's ever been worth telling.

That somehow in the end  is its beginning… And that in the beginning was the word.

AB