Two forms of overcoming nihilism: The theology of the death of god and contemporary messianism

This paper examines some parallelisms between two theoretical debates that began in the first decades of the 20^th century and that have as a starting point the belief that the world, in its present form, lacks sense - the philosophical and theological reflections following the death of God, on the one hand, and the contemporary discussion on the messianic notion of history, on the other. Both consider god as absent from this world, both maintain that this world is therefore meaningless, and both look for ways to overcome the lack of sense of the present world. The former explore the paths opened up by the death of god, and rises within Christianity - although the holocaust unleashed a similar discussion within Judaism. The second revolves around how history and the mythic stage will be lead to a conclusion by a messiah that will bring with him redemption, and acquires a significant dimension among some libertarian authors within contemporary Jewish philosophy. among the various reactions to the death of god there are several proposals that do not consist in overcoming such nihilism, but rather regard it as a fertile ground and therefore propose embracing it and accommodating it - the proposals of the authors belonging to the so-called radical theology, which can be traced back to Bonhoeffer and Jüngel but is also nurtured by postmodern continental philosophy. The aim of this paper is to point out that within contemporary messianism there is also at least a proposal that reads the absence of god in such a fertile way - Derrida's messianicity without messianism -, and to analyze its logic and compare it to the one underlying the celebrative reactions of radical theology.