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Article
A secular acceleration:
Theological foundationsof the sociologicalconcept ‘‘socialacceleration’’
Felipe TorresInstituto de Humanidades, Universidad Diego
Portales—Santiago of Chile, Santiago, Chile
Abstract
The term ‘‘shortening of time’’ is related to the Judeo-Christian tradition thatannounces the end of time as the moment when God, for the sake of the elect,
shortens the duration of days and hours, because without this shortening noone would survive (This means that only a God’s will could ended Time. The
Christian perspective believes that the last days will be chaotic, and God will
preclude History, ending time, to save a few men of goodwill.). While in thissense salvation is associated with divine intervention, the thesis of acceleration
would reverse the above formula, making human beings responsible for thenarrowing of time. But if the shortening of time in the Apocalypse is aimed atthe salvation of the World: Where does acceleration, a secular idea of the
shortening of time, aim? What is it that justifies the increase in the speed of completing tasks that previously took considerable time, which are today per-
formed in just a few hours? How can we justify the frenzy to obtain what we
want in the shortest time possible? In this paper we propose to address this and
other questions, in order to show the relationship between a sociologicalunderstanding of acceleration with a theological-Christian view of time. Inother words, the main claim exposes the transfer of teleology from a religiousconception to a historical-worldly conception of time.
Keywords
Time, acceleration, shortening, modernity
Time & Society
0(0) 1–21
! The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/0961463X15622395tas.sagepub.com
Corresponding author:Felipe Torres, Instituto de Humanidades, Universidad Diego Portales—Santiago of Chile, Manuel
Rodrı́guez Sur 415, Santiago, Chile.
Email: [email protected]
at TRENT UNIV on December 24, 2015tas.sagepub.comDownloaded from