In Arendt's "What is Authority?", she reflects on Plato's original definition of "theology": "the measure of measures".
It seems clear to me that, in Lyotard's "Postmodern Condition", his discussion of "scientific meta-narrative" is really a discussion of the shifting [Platonic] "theology of science": what is the ultimate measure of science itself?
Thus Lyotard's comparison of "science as building the encyclopedia of Spirit" vs "science as a means for societal progress" vs "science as a means for enhancing [capitalistic techno-]performativity" is fundamentally theological, despite its lack of reference to the Church.
Arendt describes the "Roman trifecta" of "religion, tradition, authority", and criticizes "the humanists" for their belief that "it would be possible to remain within an unbroken tradition of Western civilization without religion and without authority."
To be clear, by "religion" Arendt remains literal. She means the Latin "religio": "to be tied back, obligated, to the enormous, almost superhuman and hence always legendary effort to lay the foundations, to build the cornerstone, to found for eternity... to be tied to the past."
Similarly literal, Arendt's notion of "authority" returns to a definition of "augmentation". To invoke authority is "to augment... the foundation".
"More than advice and less than a command, [Authority issues] advice which one may not safely ignore"... "the will and the actions of the people like those of children are exposed to error and mistakes and therefore need 'augmentation' and confirmation..."
But what foundation does authority augment? Arendt sees "foundation" as a sacred interpretation of a literal act of making, best exemplified by the American Revolution as foundation of a new "body politic".
Humanism as a universal stance lacks authority because it lacks a historical foundation to augment. Similarly, Humanism lacks religion because it is not "bound" to any such foundation. Thus there can be no Humanist "gravitas, the ability to bear this weight [of the past]".
Yet, today, we see plenty of speakers assuming a position of "gravitas", claiming to bear the weight of the past. Could we be witnessing an accidental rediscovery of the Roman trifecta, akin to how, as Arendt describes, the Church "took over" the foundation from the Romans?
Could "the right side of history" (and, in a degenerate way, "Roko's Basilisk") be seen as a reinvention of the church's usage of "Platonic Hell", that one must accept belief in the afterlife (within the Spirit of History) to be deemed trustworthy in the present?
