Abstract

After decades of cultural and historical relativism in so-called continental philosophy one can observe a return to thinking in universalistic terms. In this paper I consider three authors who point to the figure of Saint Paul as to the framework for their respective universalistic discourses as „neopaulinists”. Their atheist interpretations of Christian themes enable us to deepen our understanding of the political universality and its practical implications for our daily lives. Along this line Badiou’s „evential universality”, Agamben’s „divided universality”, and Žižek’s „fighting universality” are three forms of universalistic thought caught in their mutual dialectical tension. Reading these theories as a kind of a quarrel within one family I try to show that, instead of seeking an end of this dialectics, we should see their arguments as deepening the notion of universality. In the conclusion of the paper I state that neopaulinist theories significantly contribute to the renewal of political imagination in contemporary critical thought reorienting it towards thinking in universalistic terms. Their universalistic way of the distribution of the sensible seems to be a strong point of departure for establishing future universal egalitarianism