eschatonとは 意味・読み方・使い方

語源

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἔσχατον (éskhaton, “last thing”), from the neuter singular of ἔσχατος (éskhatos, “last”).

発音

• enPR: ĕs'kə-tŏn
• IPA: (General American) /ˈɛs.kə.tɑn/, (英国発音) /-tɒn/

名詞

eschaton (plural eschatons or eschata)

1. (Christianity, theology) The apocalypse; the approach of Christ’s reign immediately preceding the end of the world; a conception of or circumstance pertaining to this era.

   Synonyms: end times, end of days

   Coordinate terms: millennium, Millennium (predicted to come afterward)

   Near-synonyms: Revelation, Armageddon

   • 1953, F. W. Dillistone, “The Church and Time”, in Scottish Journal of Theology, volume 6, page 163:

     Only in the eschaton will God’s purpose gain its final fulfilment, a fulfilment, be it noted, which may still include some form of movement within a time-series.

   • 1966 [1962], Karl Rahner, “The Hermeneutics of Eschatological Associations”, in Karl Rahner, translated by Kevin Smyth, Theological Investigations, volume 4, page 336:

     And this is also true of the revelation of the eschata: they do not reach us in a discourse about the future still to come, but in an action, in which God has already really begun them in us.

   • 1994, Marcus J. Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship, →ISBN, page 86:

     Without these sayings, the textual basis for saying Jesus expected an imminent eschaton becomes very slender.

2. (by extension) An end or fulfilment of history in general.

   Synonym: end of history

   Coordinate terms: millennium, Millennium, new age, New Age (predicted to come afterward)

   immanentize the eschaton

   • 1949 December, Helmut Kuhn, “[Review of Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History]”, in The Journal of Philosophy, volume 46, number 25, →JSTOR, page 825:

     He, too, constructs a philosophical history towards an eschaton. In a peculiarly inverted manner he is among the believers in progress—the goal being the undoing of the things done.

   • 2011, Darrin Drda, The Four Global Truths: Awakening to the Peril and Promise of Our Times, →ISBN, page 152:

     The most major of these eschatons involves the 65-million-year Cenozoic era, which began with the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event that decimated the dinosaurs and is now closing with another mass extinction event.

   • 2016, J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Introduction: Technology, Utopianism and Eschatology”, in J. Benjamin Hurlbut, Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, editors, Perfecting Human Futures: Transhuman Visions and Technological Imaginations, →ISBN, page 10:

     From predictions of an imminent technological eschaton to theologically inflected ideas of human perfectibility achieved through technological means, there is ample warrant to see transhumanism as culturally other.

   • 2025 September 4, Ross Douthat, quoting Dan Wang, “This Is Why America Is Losing to China”, in The New York Times‎, New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC:

     And I think there is this eschaton that they [Silicon Valley's technologists] want to bring about in which the world ends in something like 2027. And they don’t have a great vision beyond 2027.

     (Can we archive this URL?)

関連する語

• eschatology

参考

アナグラム

• Atcheson