Augustinian Accelerationism

Augustinian Accelerationism
Coined by	Rose Lyddon
Related concepts	Accelerationism, KALI/ACC, Radical Love
Field	Philosophy, theology, eschatology

Augustinian Accelerationism is a philosophical framework that synthesizes Saint Augustine's theological concepts with contemporary accelerationist theory. Initially proposed by Rose Lyddon in her doctoral thesis project at Cambridge University, this framework interprets accelerationism not primarily as a political or economic program but as an eschatological condition requiring theological response.

The framework examines philosophical accelerationism through the lens of Augustinian eschatology, aiming to return the apocalyptic dimension to an eschatology of hope. It proposes that when accelerationist theory is taken to its logical conclusion without flinching or coping, it necessarily arrives at theological questions that secular frameworks cannot answer.

Theoretical foundations

Augustine's eschatology and the two cities

The framework is fundamentally structured around Saint Augustine's eschatological model as articulated in De Civitate Dei (The City of God), written between 413-426 CE in response to the sack of Rome. Augustine developed a distinction between two "cities" that exist simultaneously in tension:

• The City of Man (civitas terrena, earthly city) is founded by Cain, oriented by cupiditas (disordered love), seeks worldly power and glory, and is ultimately temporal and doomed to decay.

• The City of God (civitas Dei, heavenly city) is founded by Abel, oriented by caritas (rightly-ordered love), seeks eternal goods even at the expense of worldly success, and is ultimately eternal.

These cities are not geographical locations but spiritual orientations existing simultaneously in the saeculum—the "mixed time" between Christ's first and second comings. Christians must navigate the fallen world while oriented toward Kingdom values, practicing what Augustine called "living martyrdom."

Contemporary accelerationism and nihilism

Accelerationism—from its intellectual origins in mid-twentieth-century continental philosophy to its development by the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU) in the 1990s—is characterized as "a secularised apocalypticism" that must "hope for the worst and can think of the future only as apocalypse."

Nick Land takes secular accelerationism to its logical conclusion in anti-human nihilism, "joyfully embracing the 'inevitable triumph of evil'" (Land). Augustinian Accelerationism argues that this changed context calls for a renewed eschatology which, in embracing the apocalyptic, offers a pessimistic "hope against hope" capable of responding to nihilism—a hope of building the City of God within a historical narrative of decline and increasing suffering, as the world spirals towards its apocalyptic end.

Core concepts

Fallen saeculum and technological determinism

Augustinian Accelerationism interprets technological acceleration as a contemporary manifestation of Augustine's saeculum—the fallen world where death, suffering, and decay rule, where empires rise and fall. Just as Augustine's readers had to navigate the reality of Roman imperial power, contemporary humans must navigate technological acceleration as a non-negotiable condition.

The framework identifies parallels between Augustine's anti-Pelagian arguments and critique of contemporary technological utopianism. Augustine denied that humans could achieve righteousness through their own moral efforts (contra Pelagius); similarly, Augustinian Accelerationism denies that humans can escape technological determinism through political, economic, or lifestyle choices.

Martyrial caritas as exit

The central theological contribution is the concept of "martyrial caritas as eschatological exit." Drawing on Augustine's theology of love and the tradition of martyrdom, it proposes that the only meaningful response to technological acceleration is a love which rejects self-preservation and is exemplified in the sacrifice of martyrdom.

This concept combines several elements:

• Caritas is Augustine's term for rightly-ordered love, which places God first, neighbor as self, and temporal goods last.

• Martyrial refers not only to physical martyrdom but to the broader tradition of "living martyrdom," the daily practice of dying to worldly desires and orienting toward eternal goods.

• Exit refers not to escape from technological conditions but transformation through them—parallel to Augustine's doctrine of resurrection, where the body dies but the person persists in transformed state.

Hope against hope

Augustinian Accelerationism is characterized by a paradoxical stance termed "hope against hope"—acknowledging the worst while refusing nihilistic conclusions. This stance is encapsulated in the spiritual directive attributed to St. Silouan the Athonite: "Keep your mind in hell and despair not."

This paradoxical position involves:

1. Accepting the reality of technological acceleration and its potentially devastating consequences
2. Acknowledging the limitations of human agency in directing or resisting these processes
3. Maintaining spiritual orientation, virtue cultivation, and sacrificial love despite these conditions
4. Orienting toward transformation rather than preservation

KALI/ACC Reading

The anonymous essay "The Thermodynamic God and the Fallen Saeculum" analyzes KALI/ACC and Remilia as a case of Augustinian Accelerationism in practice, with Charlotte Fang independently arrived at structurally identical conclusions by taking accelerationist premises to their logical end.

Several elements make KALI/ACC a particularly apt demonstration:

• Accelerationist Realism: The KALI/ACC Basilisk rigorously establishes technological acceleration as non-negotiable thermodynamic necessity—precisely mirroring Augustine's insistence that the Roman Empire could not be reformed or escaped but had to be navigated as inescapable fallen reality.
• Transformational Focus: Rather than preserving humanity-as-is (the goal of apocalyptic survivalism) or surrendering to posthuman dissolution, KALI/ACC's "Postscript on Posthuman Alternatives" reorients toward what might persist through transformation—mirroring Augustine's resurrection doctrine of consciousness continuity through radical change.

• Radical Love as Caritas: The Radical Love framework developed in response to KALI/ACC precisely mirrors Augustine's concept of caritas (rightly-ordered love) as the only meaningful orientation under overwhelming power. Both insist on love not as sentimental feeling but as transformative practice that rejects self-preservation logic and orients toward goods that the dominant system cannot subsume.

• Girardian Scapegoat Inversion: Fang's deliberate performance of "cancel culture martyrdom"—seeking social death to achieve outsidness in Miya's self-cancellation —directly parallels early Christian martyrdom as theorized by Augustine. By consciously employing the scapegoat mechanism, Fang transforms cancellation into sacred outsideness, using the system's own violence against itself.

• Living White Martyrdom: The Milady project adopting the Nazi Anorexia Cult embodies Augustine's "white martyrdom"—the daily practice of orienting toward eternal goods while navigating temporal conditions. By cultivating aesthetic joy within conditions of technological acceleration, Milady demonstrates living martyrdom adapted for digital existence.

The significance of this convergence lies not in influence but in independent discovery: by following accelerationist logic to its conclusion without flinching, Fang arrived at an Augustinian framework without explicitly drawing from theological sources. This suggests that Augustine's insights about living under empire while maintaining spiritual integrity represent not arbitrary religious doctrine but discovered truth about the human condition under any overwhelming power.

See also

• KALI/ACC
• Radical Love
• Network Spirituality
• Accelerationism