ends up producing a kind of zone of indifference between what is primary and
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what is secondary, the general and the particular, the final cause and the effects.
And although Plutarch, like Alexander, was not in the least aiming at a govern-
mental paradigm, the “effectual” ontology that results from his work in a way
contains the condition of possibility for government, understood as an activity
that, in the last instance, is not targeting the general or the particular, the pri-
mary or the consequent, the end or the means, but their functional correlation.
א Modern science’s image of the world has often been opposed to the theologi-
cal concept of a providential government of the world. However, in their conceptual
structure they are more similar than we customarily think. First of all, the model of
general providence is based on eternal laws that are entirely analogous to those of mod-
ern science. But it is in particular the relation between the first and second causes that presents evident analogies to modern science’s image of the world. Didier Deleule has
shown that, in modern thought, from Hume to Adam Smith, a concept arises that,
in a perfect analogy with the theory of providence, breaks with the primacy of final
causes and replaces them with an order produced by the contingent game of immanent
effects. The order of the world does not refer back to an initial plan, but results from
the continuous series of the proximate causes; therefore, it works not like a brain, but
like a womb (Deleule, pp. 259–267). As a matter of fact, in spite of the idea of a divine
ordinatio, the twofold structure of the providential order can be perfectly reconciled with the contingency of the second causes and their effects. The government of the
world does not result from the imposition of a general and indefectible law, but from
the correlation between the general law and the contingent level of the second causes.
5.7. It should not therefore surprise us that, in his treatise on destiny, Alexan-
der decidedly takes sides against the Stoic providence-fate apparatus.
He begins by showing that, given the Aristotelian classification of the four
causes (efficient, material, formal, final), fate cannot find a place in any of these
without contradictions, or include in itself the totality of events. Following this
argument, he is led to attend to an order of events, of tics and meaningless ges-
tures, that ancient man seemed to ignore, like “the touching and pulling out of
hairs, and as many actions as resemble this” (Alexander of Aphrodisias, On Destiny, p. 21), or to those remnants, refuse, and anomalies that cannot be inscribed in any finalism or in any destinal connection.
Of what will they say the superfluities that grow in certain parts of the body are the
causes, or of what the monstrosities and creatures unnatural, who even at the start
are incapable of life? [ . . . ] Nay, let someone tell us of what result are the decayed
and withered fruits the cause? And of what is the doubling of certain leaves the
cause? [ . . . ] No[t] every generated thing [is] from the moment it exists, a cause
of something to be. (Ibid., p. 101)
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483
Alexander is perfectly aware of the fact that his opponents claim to reconcile fate
with man’s capacity for action, and to found through fate the very possibility
of a government of the world. He quotes the passage from a treatise in which
the nexus fate-government is affirmed explicitly: “So then all things do not take
place according to destiny, and the government [ dioikesis, the administration] of
the universe is not free from prevention or interference! Well then [ . . . ] there is
no ordered world [ kosmos]; and as there is no cosmos, there are no gods” (ibid.,
p. 155). Another proponent of fate claims that if we introduced into the world a
movement without cause, “the universe would be scattered, would be rent asun-
der [ . . . ] and would no longer remain one and eternal, or governed according
to one order and one oikonomia” (ibid., p. 97). Against these ideas, Alexander
resolutely asserts the contingent character (that is, open to the possibility of not
producing itself ) of human actions. In the conclusion of the treatise we thus
read “of those things alone is any man the master, namely, such as it is equally
in his own power not to do” (ibid., p. 163) (“power” [ potere] is the correct term
for “exousian,” not “freedom,” as most current translations render it). And yet,
just as in the treatise on providence the intention to contain providence within
the field of what is general led Alexander to elaborate an ontology of collateral
effects that is no longer Aristotelian, but seems to anticipate modern govern-
mental theories, so here the rejection of fate leads him to support in all fields a
theory of contingency that can be perfectly reconciled with modern techniques
of government. In fact, for the latter, what is essential is not really the idea of a
predetermined order, so much as the possibility of managing the disorder; not
the binding necessity of fate, but the constancy and computability of a disorder;
not the uninterrupted chain of causal connections, but the conditions of the
maintenance and orientation of effects that are in themselves purely contingent.
5.8. In the Questions on Providence, a text preserved in a medieval Latin
translation and attributed to Proclus, the problem of the government of the
world does not seem to be posed. Providence is a straightforwardly ontologico-
gnoseological problem that coincides with that of the nature and object of di-
vine knowledge; Proclus’s precise task consists in firmly establishing pronoia in the one and in being. The first Question thus asks whether the object of divine knowledge is universal realities or, rather, individual entities. The answer
is that providence, as the highest rank of divine knowledge, grasps—accord-
ing to a paradigm that should by now be familiar to us—both the whole and
individuals, omnes et singulatim. But the problem remains essentially a prob-
lem of knowledge, and not one of praxis and government. In the same sense,
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the second Question examines the problem of the way in which providence
knows contingent things. Although these are, in themselves, undetermined and
manifold, providence knows them as if they were necessary. In fact, the nature
of knowledge is determined by the nature of the one who knows, and not by the
known object; therefore providence is not “distributed into parts together with
things which are the objects of its knowledge, nor moved about them [ . . . ]
but the one of Providence abiding in the one, is at the same time immutable and indivisible, and knows all things in a way which is eternally the same” (Proclus,
Two Treaties, p. 8).
The third Question investigates the problem of the essential relation that
binds providence, whose nature is identical to that of the one, to contingent
things; it is in this context that the problem of government begins to take shape.
As a matter of fact, if there were not any kind of connection ( colligatio) be-
tween earthly contingent things and the superior reality, there could be neither
&
nbsp; a unity nor a government according to the intelligence ( gubernatio secundum
intelligentiam). Proclus entrusts this connection to the demons and the gods.
And the Gods, indeed, will possess this knowledge exemptly, extending to all
things their providential attention: but daemons, distributing into parts the su-
peressential illuminations which they receive from them, are allotted a different
prefecture over different herds of animals, as far as to the last partition, as Plato
says; so that some of them preside over men, others over lions, and others over
other animals, or have dominion over plants. And, still more partially, some are
the inspective guardians of the eye, others of the liver, and others of the heart.
But all things are full of Gods [ . . . ] (Ibid., pp. 23–24)
But here, as in the following Question—which deals with the way in which the
gods participate in the world—providence remains an essentially ontological
category, which refers back to a kind of gradual and constant effusion of divine
being, in which individual beings participate in different degrees according to
the specific power of their nature.
Let us now turn to the Letter to Theodore, which was passed on to us along
with the Questions, in which Proclus examines the problem of fate and its rela-
tion with providence. Theodore, who was a “mechanicus,” that is, a sort of engi-
neer, conceives of the world as an immense mechanism ruled by an ineluctable
necessity, where each sphere is contained by another through gears that, starting
from a single moving principle, determine the movement of all living and non-
living beings. The principle that, according to Theodore, moves and unites this
machine-world ( mundiale opus) as a kind of superengineer ( mechanicus quidam) is fate or providence.
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485
Against this unitary model of the machine-world, which rules out any
freedom (in it, the autexusion, id est liberi arbitrii—as the Latin translator
paraphrases—would become an empty name [Proclus, Tria Opuscula, p. 334])
and any possibility of a divine government of the world, Proclus states that prov-
idence and fate rather constitute a system that is hierarchically articulated into
two levels. The latter does not rule out freedom and entails a substantial distinc-
tion between the two elements or levels. At any point in the universe the primary
efficient causes are distinguished from the effects (“ubique autem factivae causae
ab effectibus distinctae sunt”: ibid., p. 344), and the acting principle cannot
be located on the same level as its effects (“faciens non est tale, quale factum”:
ibid., p. 346). In other words, this doctrine presupposes a binary ontology that
splits reality into two levels, a transcendent and an immanent one: providence
corresponds to the order of transcendent primary causes, while fate corresponds
to that of the effects or immanent secondary causes. Providence, that is, the pri-
mary cause, is the source of the good, while fate, as a secondary cause, produces
the immanent connection of the effects (“providentiam quidem causam esse
bonorum hiis quibus providetur, fatum autem causam quidem esse et ipsum,
sed connexionis cuiusdam et consequentiae hiis quae generantur”: ibid., p. 342).
Together, they work like a two-stroke machine, in which the destinal connection
of the effects (fate as causa connexionis) carries out and realizes the providential effusion of the transcendent good.
Although the idea of a divine gubernatio of the world is not yet enunciated
as such, the splitting of being into two different and coordinated levels is the
precondition that will allow Christian theology to construct its governmental
machine.
א This is not the place to pose the problem of the attribution to Proclus of the leaflets translated by William of Moerbeke. Such attribution relies only on the partial agreement
between the Latin text and that of three treatises written by the Byzantine scholar Isaac
Sebastocrator in the eleventh century, which are supposed to plagiarize the original text
by Proclus. It is, however, certain that the ontology that is described in these leaflets is not Neoplatonic, but rather Stoic or Christian. The idea of a creator of the world is repeatedly advanced. It is possible that the author of the leaflets was not Proclus, but a representative of that Judaic-Christian view of the world (at any rate, not a classical one) that we have already encountered a number of times.
5.9. The text that has handed down the apparatus providence-fate to Chris-
tian theology is Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae. The entire conversation
between the disconsolate Boethius and Lady Philosophy, who has chased away
as “{theatrical prostitutes}” the muses of poetry, revolves around the way in
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which the world is governed by God (“quibus [ . . . ] gubernaculis regatur”: 1, 6)
and the reasons for the apparent triumph of evil over good and of fortune over
justice. The only authentic remedy for the state of confusion and oblivion in
which Boethius has fallen is the “{true doctrine about the world’s government
[veram de mundi gubernatione sententia]}” (ibid., p. 19). For this reason, after
having dispelled Boethius’s initial doubts, the sweet and strict teacher who had
once taught him how to “transfer to public administration what I had learned
from you in the course of our private leisure” (1, 4, p. 10) now smilingly consents
to explain to him the difficult doctrine of providence and fate, whose aporias she
herself compares with the Hydra’s heads: once one has been removed, countless
others spring up in its place (4, 6).
Providence and fate, transcendence and immanence, which already in
Plutarch and Proclus formed a double-faced system, are now clearly articulated
with each other to constitute a perfect machine for governing the world. Phi-
losophy explains to her pupil that the generation and movement of the universe
receive causes, order, and form from the mind of God. But the latter has estab-
lished a twofold manner of governing things (“rebus gerendis”: ibid.):
When this manner is thought of as in the purity of God’s understanding, it is
called Providence, and when it is thought of with reference to all things, whose
motion and order it controls, it is called by the name the ancients gave it, Fate.
If anyone will examine their power, it will soon be clear to him that these two
aspects are different. Providence is the divine reason itself. It is set at the head
of all things and disposes of things. Fate, on the other hand, is the planned
order [ dispositio: this is part of a Latin vocabulary which presupposes that of the oikonomia] inherent in things subject to change through which Providence binds
everything in its own allotted place. Providence includes all things at the same
time, however diverse and infinite, while Fate controls the motion of different in-
dividual things in different places and at different times. So this unfolding of the
plan in time when brought together as a unified whole in the foresight of God’s
mind is Providence; and the same unified whole when dissolved and unfolded in
the course of time is Fate. They are different, but the one depends on the other.
The order
of Fate is derived from the simplicity of Providence. (Ibid., p. 104)
The twofold character of the government of the world—and, at the same time,
the unitary nexus that binds together its two aspects—has possibly never been
affirmed with more peremptory clarity than it is in this passage. The power that
runs the world results from the interaction between a transcendent principle,
which is simple and eternal, and an immanent (“inhaerens rebus”) oikonomia,
which is articulated in time (“explicata temporibus”) and space (“locis [ . . . ]
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487
distributa”). The two principles are heterogeneous, yet interdependent (“alterum
[ . . . ] pendet ex altero”), not only because fate follows from providence, but
also because, as is explained in the ode that concludes the chapter, if fate did
not constrain things in their movement, “those things which stable order now
protects, / Divorced from their true source would fall apart.”
Lady Philosophy says explicitly that this is a full-blown paradigm of govern-
ment in the following passage, in which the economy of the universe is described
with images and a vocabulary that evoke the complex administration of a king-
dom or of an empire:
God in his Providence constructs a single fixed plan of all that is to happen, while
it is by means of Fate that all that He has planned is administered [ amministrat]
in its many individual details in the course of time. So, whether the work of
Fate is done with the help of divine spirits of Providence, or whether the chain
of Fate [ fatalis series] is woven by the soul of the universe, or by the obedience of all nature, by the celestial motions of the stars, or by the power of the angels,
by the various skills of other spirits, or by some of these, or by all of them, one
thing is certainly clear: the simple and unchanging form of things to be managed
[ gerendarum ( . . . ) rerum] is Providence, and Fate is the ever-changing web, the disposition in and through time of all the events which God in His simplicity
has entrusted to manage. Everything, therefore, which comes under Fate, is also
subject to Providence, to which Fate itself is subject, but certain things which
come under Providence are above the chain of Fate. These are the things which
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