ABSTRACT
The chapter addresses a variety of predictions prophesying the development and the end of culture. The argument revolves around their clash, or perhaps their intersection, with the medical concept of terminal lucidity, which means a sudden upsurge of mental clarity in people who have seemed unconscious for years. I build on this concept to discuss social and cultural predictions. I focus on Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as a utopia of perfect power and its demise, and on G.W.F Hegel’s famous remark about the owl of Minerva as a starting point for pondering on the adventures of future predictions in Marxism. Besides Marx himself, I reference the concepts developed by György Lukács, Walter Benjamin, Antonio Gramsci, Luis Althusser, and contemporary post-Marxists. These considerations are juxtaposed with the unresolved enigma of Kaspar Hauser. The chapter is concluded with a scrutiny of concepts proposed by Spengler and Fukuyama and a reflection on the possibilities of clairvoyance in the face of global challenges which beset humanity today.
