by
Ted Daniels, Ph.D.
Electronic version copyright © Ted Daniels 1997. All rights reserved
Originally published in Millennialism: An International Bibliography
by Garland Publishing New York, 1992. Reproduced here by permission.
URL for this article is http://www.
Altizer, Thomas J.J. "Imagination and Apocalypse." Soundings 53, 1970: 398-412.
"May we surmise that in an apocalyptic and dialectical transformation earthly events must first appear and be as real as being totally opposed to the invisible and transcendent before they can become open to the possibility of passing into their own inherent opposite?" (p. 408). This is a typical sentence from this barely comprehensible article, which, after murky discussion of literary heavyweights like Dante, Joyce, and Rilke, as well as Lèvi-Strauss, Kant, and Hegel, arrives at the conclusion that the Western dualism of subject and object "offers the promise of a dialectical [and apocalyptic] fulfillment and transcendence of [these] opposites" (p. 411).
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