L'orologio dell'apocalisse. Sacro e tecnoscienza nel tempo della "crisi permanente"

The theme of the end of the world in the form of "cultural apocalypse" (de Martino 1964) is firmly placed at the center of global social life and public debate. We can consider two significant examples: the “Doomsday Clock” and the “Climate Clock”. The article offers a reflection on the topic by taking up the thought of Norbert Elias on time (1986), and offering some lines of investigation regarding: 1) the concept of crisis as a "permanent crisis" (Koselleck 2015); 2) the components of religious origin and utopian in technoscience (e.g. Segal 2005, Noble 2013); 3) the problem of the legitimation of political and legal institutions and activist movements in relation to technoscience (Lyotard 1979). The article asks whether the time has come to put a stop to technoscience, the main instrument and deep core of historical and contemporary capitalism, in favor of a liberation from its material and cultural logic and a recognition of the fundamental value of the world of life for a resumption of the human journey along the interrupted paths of the sacred.