In the second half of the 20th century, humankind’s increased awareness of the likely consequences of nuclear war and climate change led to the emergence of a new temporality: humanity’s future was now seen as potentially finite, with a possible end that was completely negative and required prevention. This new temporality, which the article proposes to call “katechontic,” differs from all previous modes of time perception, including the ideas of cyclical eternity and infinite progress, as well as eschatological expectations of the end. At the same time, these previous temporal perspectives have become connected to the most significant political forms of today, such as the empire and the state. This raises the question of whether these political forms can be adapted to the katechontic temporality. The state, as an essentially pluralist political form, is structurally embedded within the infinite temporal horizon of modernity and requires the neutralization of eschatology. It is unable to adapt to the katechontic temporality, as collective action to prevent a global catastrophe would de-legitimize sovereign plurality. The imperial political form, contrary to the popular thesis of Carl Schmitt about the katechontic nature of the medieval Christian empire, has historically been oriented towards either the eschatological end of time or eternity. The main obstacle to adapting the empire to the katechontic temporality is the violent nature of imperial expansion. Another reason why the state and empire are incompatible with the katechontic temporality is their hierarchical centralization of power. Sovereign centralization has intrinsic value when there are no external criteria for the correctness of a political decision. The katechontic temporality introduces such criteria demanding that political decisions correctly reflect the external (natural and technological) context. Therefore, the political must be subordinated to this external truth, which might be implemented via the model of “double representation.”