The Greek word kairos has a long and interesting history. As opposed to chronos, the generic word for time, kairos stands for a specific moment in time - the opportune time, the 'right' time. Among the early medical philosophers it represented the moment in which a patient could be saved from disease, or would ultimately perish. Within oratory, it was seen as the opportune moment to shift and win a debate [unfortunately exemplified in history by Plato's straw men Sophists in his dialogues]. As it came into early Christian theology, it was understood as the moment of God's revelation - the moment God makes things right, according to 'his' time.
It is also the etymological root of our word 'crisis'.
As the idea has persisted in the western canon, it has almost always been appropriated for the purpose of 'right wing' politics [notable exceptions being christian leftists like Tillich, who may or may not actually be a leftist - but that is a different issue entirely]. But as my former mentor laid out in 'Historical Destiny' the idea of a breach in time, a moment of historical revelation - a redeeming action - is always the remedy proposed against gesellshaft - civil society.
There are far too many ideas to unpack in an abbreviated diary [as it is late & I have to work in the morning], but I'll try to succinctly explain.
First and foremost is the idea of 'fallen-ness' - taken from the initial use of the term - with respect to disease: We have fallen away from health & we require treatment to restore our health to what it formerly was - and there is a moment in which we can accomplish it. This seems completely benign when we think of it within our own biological lives, but when that biologistic metaphor is extrapolated to a city, or society, or history, or species, it takes on wholly other connotations. For one, it requires a notion of health that we have 'fallen away from'. How is that notion of health, as a society, or a species, determined? Were we 'healthy' in the prime of Rome? Were we 'healthy' in 1950's America? Are we 'healthier' now, or maybe 15 years ago?
The idea that we have 'fallen' in some way - that we once had the truth, or lived the truth, or lived the way we should be - is precisely the first problem with the idea of 'kairos', crisis.
The second is the idea of redemption. Again, with the original notion - that one can be cured of ill health is easy an easy association. We're all 'cured' of ill health many times in our biological lives [if we're lucky]. But if extrapolated to a societal, or species context, not only does the former question of 'original health' obtain, but what is the 'redemption'? What is the 'health' to which we are restored? Is it 'the primordial oneness of Being' [Heidegger joke], or the symbiotic feudal and orthodox orders of our history, outright Plutocracy?
Crisis requires these two ideas. And these two ideas, in tandem, are the basis of all right wing philosophy - a combination of a mythical past with a redemptive future that 'breaches' our time - that disrupts our history. And further, that sees our history as a disease. Something that we must be cured of, lest the patient die.
I tried to explain to Fritsche [my mentor] in grad school that this was the basis of the American right. He just couldn't see it, as he was German & didn't really understand American politics, and like me, was happily ensconced in the bubble of NYC. But this is clearly what the American right has become. We have a coalition of Christian dominionists, economic fascists and white nationalists that are all willing to 'breach our time' - take this moment as a kairos - to enforce whatever they think their 'cure' is upon our 'civil society'.
NOTE - this notion of history and civil society is entirely opposed to a Marxist notion of history, or, for that matter, an anarchist view of civil society, so please refrain from making uneducated comments in either direction.