The Omnibus Homo Sacer

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by Giorgio Agamben


  sense of this difficult articulation becomes fully comprehensible. According to

  the Monotheletists, whose manifesto is Heraclius’s Ekthesis (638) and who are

  represented in the dialogue by Pyrrhus, there are two natures in Christ, but

  only one will ( thelēsis) and one activity ( energeia), “which performs both divine and human works” (Simonetti, p. 516). Dyophysitism, brought to the extreme,

  may end up introducing a division even in the economy—that is, in the divine

  praxis—identifying in Christ “two wills that oppose one another, almost as if

  God’s logos intends to realize the salvific passion while what is human in him

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  obstructs and contrasts with his will” (ibid., p. 518). Monotheletists wish to

  avoid this division. Responding to Maximus, who affirms that two wills and two

  different operations must necessarily correspond to the two natures of Christ,

  Pyrrhus thus claims that “that has been said by the Fathers with regard to theol-

  ogy, and not economy. It is not worthy of a thought that loves truth to transfer

  to economy that which has been affirmed with regard to theology, putting to-

  gether such an absurdity” ( PG, 91, 348).

  Maximus’s answer is categorical and shows that the articulation of the two

  discourses coincides with a problem that is decisive in all senses. He writes that if

  what the Fathers say about theology were not also valid for the economy, “then,

  after the incarnation, the Son is not theologized together [ syntheologeitai] with

  the Father. And if he is not, then he cannot be enumerated together with him

  in the invocation of baptism, and faith and predication will be vain” (ibid.). In

  another work, emphasizing the inseparability of theology and economy, Maxi-

  mus can thus write: “The incarnated logos of God [that is, the representative of

  economy] teaches theology” ( PG, 90, 876).

  It is not surprising that a radical “economism”—which, distinguishing two

  wills in the Son, threatens the very identity of the Christological subject—needs

  to affirm the unity of theology and economy, while a “theologism”—which at-

  tempts to protect at all costs that unity—does not hesitate to strongly oppose

  the two discourses. The difference between the two rationalities continuously

  intersects with the level of theological disputes and, just as Trinitarian and Chris-

  tological dogmatics were formed together and cannot be divided in any way, so

  theology and economy cannot be separated. Just as the two natures coexist in

  Christ, following a stereotypical formulation, “without division or confusion”

  ( adiairetos kai asynchytos), so the two discourses must coincide without confus-

  ing themselves, and differentiate themselves without dividing. What is at stake

  in their relation is not only the caesura between the humanity and the divinity

  of the Son, but, more generally, that between being and praxis. Economic and

  theological rationality must operate, as it were, “in divergent agreement,” so that

  the economy of the son is not negated and a substantial division is not intro-

  duced in God.

  However, the economic rationality, by means of which Christology came

  to know its first, uncertain formulation, will not cease to cast its shadow on

  theology. When the vocabulary of the homoousia and of the homoiousia, of the hypostasis and of nature, have almost completely covered over the first formulation of the Trinity, the economic rationality—with its pragmatic-managerial,

  and not ontologic-epistemic, paradigm—will continue to operate underground

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  as a force that tends to undermine and break the unity of ontology and praxis,

  divinity and humanity.

  א The fracture between being and praxis, and the anarchic character of the divine

  oikonomia constitute the logical place in which the fundamental nexus that, in our culture, unites government and anarchy becomes comprehensible. Not only is something

  like a providential government of the world possible just because praxis does not have any foundation in being, but also this government—which, as we shall see, has its paradigm

  in the Son and his oikonomia—is itself intimately anarchic. Anarchy is what government must presuppose and assume as the origin from which it derives and, at the same time,

  as the destination toward which it is traveling. (Benjamin was in this sense right when

  he wrote that there is nothing as anarchic as the bourgeois order. Similarly, the remark

  of one of the Fascist dignitaries in Pasolini’s film Salò according to which “the only real anarchy is that of power” is perfectly serious.)

  From this follows the insufficiency of Reiner Schürmann’s attempt—in his nonethe-

  less wonderful book on the Principe d’anarchie—to think an “anarchic economy”—that is, an unfounded economy—from the perspective of the overcoming of metaphysics and

  the history of being. Among post-Heideggerian philosophers, Schürmann is the only one

  to have understood the nexus that links the theological notion of oikonomia (which he, however, leaves unquestioned) to the problem of ontology and, in particular, to Heidegger’s reading of the ontological difference and of the “epochal” structure of the history of being. It is in this perspective that Schürmann tries to think praxis and history without

  any foundation in being (that is, in a completely an-archic way). But ontotheology always

  already thinks the divine praxis as lacking a foundation in being, and, as a matter of fact, intends to find an articulation between that which it has always already divided. In other words, the oikonomia is always already anarchic, without foundation, and a rethinking of the problem of anarchy in our political tradition becomes possible only if we begin with

  an awareness of the secret theological nexus that links it to government and providence.

  The governmental paradigm, of which we are here reconstructing the genealogy, is actually

  always already “anarchic-governmental.”

  This does not mean that, beyond government and anarchy, it is not possible to think

  an Ungovernable [ un Ingovernabile], that is, something that could never assume the form of an oikonomia.

  Threshold

  AT the end of classical civilization, when the unity of the ancient cosmos is

  broken, and being and acting, ontology and praxis, seem to part ways irre-

  versibly, we see a complex doctrine developing in Christian theology, one in which

  Judaic and pagan elements merge. Such a doc trine attempts to interpret—and,

  at the same, recompose—this fracture through a managerial and non- epistemic

  paradigm: the oikonomia. According to this paradigm, the divine praxis, from

  creation to redemption, does not have a foundation in God’s being, and differs

  from it to the extent that it realizes itself in a separate person, the Logos, or

  Son. However, this anarchic and unfounded praxis must be reconciled with the

  unity of the substance. Through the idea of a free and voluntary action—which

  associates creation with redemption—this paradigm had to overcome both the

  Gnostic antithesis between a God foreign to the world and a demiurge who is

  creator and Lord of the world, and the pagan identity of being and acting, which

  made the very idea of creation unconvincing. The challenge that Christian the-

  ology thus presents to Gnosis is to succeed in reconciling God’s transcendence


  with the creation of the world, as well as his noninvolvement in it with the Stoic

  and Judaic idea of a God who takes care of the world and governs it providen-

  tially. In the face of this aporetic task, the oikonomia—given its managerial and

  administrative root—offered a ductile tool, which presented itself, at the same

  time, as a logos, a rationality removed from any external constraint, and a praxis unanchored to any ontological necessity or preestablished norm. Being both

  a discourse and a reality, a non-epistemic knowledge and an anarchic praxis,

  the oikonomia allowed theologians to define the novelty of Christian faith for

  centuries and, at the same time, make the outcome of late classical, Stoic, and

  neo-Pythagorean thought that had already oriented itself in an “economic” sense

  merge with it. It is in the context of this paradigm that the original kernels of

  the Trinitarian dogmatics and of Christology were formed: they have never fully

  dissociated themselves from this genesis, remaining tributary to both its aporias

  and successes.

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  We can then understand in what sense it is possible to say that Christian

  theology is, from its beginning, economic-managerial, and not politico-statal

  [ politico­statuale]—this was our original thesis contra Schmitt. The fact that

  Christian theology entails an economy and not just a politics does not mean,

  however, that it is irrelevant for the history of Western political ideas and prac-

  tices. On the contrary, the theological-economic paradigm obliges us to think

  this history once more and from a new perspective, keeping track of the deci-

  sive junctures between political tradition in the strict sense and the “economic-

  governmental” tradition— which, what is more, will acquire a precise form, as

  we shall see, in the medieval treatises de gubernatione mundi. The two paradigms

  live together and intersect with one another to the point of constituting a bi-

  polar system, whose understanding preliminarily conditions any interpretation

  of the political history of the West.

  In his great monograph on Tertullian, Moingt rightly suggests at a certain point

  that the most correct translation of the phrase unicus deus cum sua oikonomia—the only one able to hold together the various meanings of the term “economy”—

  would probably be “a single God with his government, in the sense in which ‘gov-

  ernment’ designates the king’s ministers, whose power is an emanation of the royal

  power and is not counted along with it, but is necessary to its exercise”; under-

  stood in this way, “the economy means the mode of administration by means of a

  plurality of the divine power” (Moingt, p. 923). In this genuinely “governmental”

  meaning, the impolitical paradigm of the economy also shows its political implica-

  tions. The fracture between theology and oikonomia, being and action, insofar as it makes the praxis free and “anarchic,” opens in fact, at the same time, the possibility

  and necessity of its government.

  In a historical moment that witnesses a radical crisis of classical concep-

  tuality, both ontological and political, the harmony between the transcendent

  and eternal principle and the immanent order of the cosmos is broken, and the

  problem of the “government” of the world and of its legitimization becomes

  the political problem that is in every sense decisive.

  4

  The Kingdom and the Government

  4.1. One of the most memorable figures of the prose cycle of the Grail

  Legend is that of the roi mehaignié, the wounded or mutilated

  king (the word mehaignié corresponds to the Italian magagnato [in poor shape; shabby]) who reigns over a terre gaste, a devastated land, “where crops do not

  grow and trees do not bear fruits.” According to Chrétien de Troyes, the king

  was wounded in battle between his thighs and mutilated in such a way that he

  cannot stand or ride. For this reason, when he wants to enjoy himself, he asks to

  be put in a boat and goes fishing (the nickname “Fisher King” originated here),

  while his falconers, archers, and hunters scour his forests. This must be, however,

  a rather strange kind of fishing, given that Chrétien specifies shortly after that

  it has been fifteen years since the king last left his room, where he is kept alive

  with communion bread that is served to him in the holy Grail. According to an-

  other and less authoritative source—which recalls Kafka’s story about the hunter

  Gracchus—the king lost his hounds and his hunters while hunting in the forest.

  Once he reached the seashore, he found a glimmering sword on a boat, and

  when he attempted to pull the sword from its sheath, he was magically wounded

  between the thighs by a spear.

  In any case, the mutilated king will be healed only when, at the end of his

  quête, Galahad will smear his wound with the blood left on the tip of the spear

  that inflicted the wound on Christ’s side.

  This figure of a mutilated and impotent king has been given the most various

  interpretations. In a book that has exercised a considerable influence not only

  on Arthurian studies but also on twentieth-century poetry, Jesse Weston has

  juxtaposed the figure of the Fisher King with the “divine principle of life and

  fertility,” that “Spirit of Vegetation” that, following the studies of Frazer and the

  Anglo-Saxon folklorists, the author recovers—with a good dose of eclecticism—

  in rituals and mythological figures that belong to the most divergent cultures,

  from the Babylonian Tammuz to the Greek-Phoenician Adonis.

  These interpretations overlook the fact that the legend undoubtedly also

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  contains a genuinely political mythologem, which can be read, without forcing

  things, as the paradigm of a divided and impotent sovereignty. Even if he does

  not lose any of his legitimacy and sacredness, the king has in fact for some reason

  been separated from his powers and activities, and reduced to impotence. Not

  only can he not hunt and ride (here these activities seem to symbolize secular

  power), but he must also stay in his room while his ministers (the falconers,

  archers, and hunters) govern in his name and place. In this sense, the splitting

  of sovereignty dramatized in the figure of the Fisher King seems to evoke the

  duality that Benveniste identifies in Indo-European regality between a mostly

  magic-religious and a more properly political function. But, in the Grail legends,

  the emphasis is rather put on the inoperative and separated character of the mu-

  tilated king, who will be excluded from any concrete activity of government at

  least until he is healed by the touch of the magic spear. The roi mehaignié thus

  contains a kind of anticipation of the modern sovereign who “reigns but does

  not govern”; in this sense, the legend could have a meaning that concerns us

  more closely.

  4.2. At the beginning of his book on Monotheism as a Political Problem,

  just before tackling the problem of divine monarchy, Peterson briefly analyzes

  the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise On the World, which represents for him some-

  thing like a bridge between Aristotelian p
olitics and the Judaic idea of divine

  monarchy. While, in Aristotle, God is the transcendent principle of every move-

  ment, who leads the world like a strategist leads his army, in On the World—

  Peterson observes—God is compared with a puppeteer who, remaining invisible,

  moves the threads of his puppet, or with the Great King of the Persians who lives

  hidden in his palace and governs the world by means of the innumerable crowd

  of ministers and officials.

  Here, the crucial question for the image of divine monarchy is not whether there

  is one or more powers [ Gewalten], but whether God participates in the powers

  [ Mächten] that act in the cosmos. The author wants to say: God is the precondi-

  tion for powers to act in the cosmos (he uses the term dynamis, adopting a Stoic

  terminology, but he means rather the Aristotelian kynesis), yet, precisely for this reason, he himself is not power: le roi règne, mais il ne gouverne pas. (Peterson

  1994, p. 27)

  According to Peterson, in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise, metaphysico- theological

  and political paradigms are strictly entwined. The ultimate formulation of a

  meta physical image of the world—Peterson writes, repeating almost literally

  a Schmittian thesis—is always determined by a political decision. In this sense,

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  HOMO SACER II, 4

  “the difference between Macht ( potestas, dynamis) and Gewalt ( archē), which the author of the treatise posits with regard to God, is a metaphysico-political problem,” which can assume different forms and meanings and can be developed in

  the direction of the distinction between auctoritas and potestas as much as in that of the Gnostic opposition between god and the demiurge.

  Before analyzing the strategic reasons for this peculiar excursus on the theo-

  logical meaning of the opposition between kingdom and government, it is a

  good idea to examine more closely the text from which it takes its marks in

  order to check if it is well founded. The unknown author—who according to the

  majority of scholars could belong to the same circle of Hellenistic Stoic Judaism

  from which Philo and Aristobulus came—does not really distinguish between

  archē and dynamis in God, but rather, with a gesture that brings him close to the Fathers who elaborate the Christian paradigm of the oikonomia, between essence

 

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