The Omnibus Homo Sacer
Page 76
be taken into account: the plan for governing [ ratio gubernationis], that is, providence, and the carrying out [ executio] of this plan. As to the first, God governs all things immediately; as to the second, he governs some things through the
mediation of others” (ibid. 1, q. 103, a. 6). Governmental rationality is, as a mat-
ter of fact, a “knowledge having a practical aim, that consists in a knowledge
of particulars, the sphere of actions” (ibid.), and as such it certainly rests with
God. But since “that form of governing will be better which communicates a
higher perfection to the governed [ . . . ] God governs things in such a way that
he establishes some beings as causes over the governing of others” (ibid.), that
is, as the executors of his ratio gubernationis. The strict analogical correlation between the divine government of the world and the secular government of the
cities of the earth is proved by the fact that Thomas illustrates his hypothesis by
means of a genuinely political paradigm: just as the power of a rex terrenus who
uses ministers for his government is not for this reason diminished in his dig-
nity, but is rather made more illustrious by it (“ex ordine ministrorum potestas
regia praeclarior redditur”: ibid., 1, q. 103, 1. 6, ad 3), so God, leaving to others
the execution of his governmental ratio, makes his government more perfect.
In the Summa contra Gentiles (Book 3, Chapter 77), the distinction between
the two aspects of the divine government of the world is strongly restated. The
correlation between ratio gubernandi and executio corresponds to the correlation between ordinatio and ordinis executio; the first is carried out by means of a virtus cognoscitiva, and the second through a virtus operativa. But while, on the theoretical level, it is necessary to extend the ordinatio down to the smallest details, on the level of the executive practice, the divine government needs to
make use of subordinate agents ( agentes inferiores), who are the executors of
divine providence. “It belongs to the dignity of a ruler to have many ministers
and a variety of executors of his rule, for, the more subjects he has, on different
levels, the higher and greater is his dominion shown to be. But no ruler’s dig-
nity is comparable to the dignity of the divine rule. So, it is appropriate that
the execution of divine providence be carried out by diverse levels of agents”
(ibid., n. 4).
494
HOMO SACER II, 4
א The conceptual distinction between a power of general ordering ( ratio gubernandi, ordinatio) and an executive power appears in the field of theology before it does in politics.
The modern doctrine of the division of powers has its paradigm in this articulation of the providential machine. But even the modern distinction between legitimacy and legality,
which appears in the monarchic France of the age of Restoration, has its archetype in
the double structure of providence. What Schmitt calls the “legislative State,” that is, the modern rule of law in which every activity of government presents itself as an application and execution of a law enforced impersonally, is, in this perspective, the extreme
outcome of the providential paradigm, in which Kingdom and Government, legitimacy
and legality coincide.
5.12. In Question 116 of the treatise on the government of the world, Thomas
analyzes the providence-fate machine in terms that are almost identical to Boe-
thius’s description. To the question “is there fate in created things?” Thomas an-
swers that the divine providence brings to completion its effects using intermediate
causes (“per causas medias suos effectus exequitur”: Summa Theologiae, 1, q. 116, a.
2). According to the double structure of providence that is by now familiar to us,
we can therefore look at this ordering [ ordinatio] of effects in two ways. First,
with respect to God himself, and from this point of view the ordering of effects
is called Providence. Second, with respect to the intermediate causes ordered by
God to bring about certain effects, and from this point of view it has the character
of fate [ rationem fati]. (Ibid.)
In this sense, fate depends on God, and is nothing else but “the economy [ dispositio] itself, or the series, that is, the order of the secondary causes” (ibid., 1, q. 116 a. 2, ad 1). Dispositio, Thomas specifies, does not here mean something like a quality or a property of an entity, but should be understood in the “economic”
sense of order, which does not concern the substance, but the relation (“secun-
dum quod dispositio designat ordinem, qui non est substantia, sed relatio”: ibid.,
1, q. 116, a. 2, ad 3). If it is considered in relation to its divine principle, this order is single and unchangeable, while it is manifold and changeable in the second
causes. And yet not all creatures are submitted to the government of fate to the
same extent. Here the problem of providence shows its essential connection with
that of grace.
Thomas writes that providence does not arrange rational creatures in the
same way as the other creatures ( Contra Gentiles, Book 3, Chapter 147). Ra-
tional creatures are in fact assigned the intellect and reason, which make them
capable of seeking the truth. Furthermore, through language, they can com-
municate among themselves and form a society. However, the ultimate aim of
rational creatures exceeds their natural faculty and thus demands a kind of gov-
THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY
495
ernment that is different (“diversus gubernationis modus”: ibid.) from that of in-
ferior creatures. This special and higher way of governing (“altior gubernationis
modus”: ibid.) is grace. “If man is ordered to an end which exceeds his natural
capacity, some help must be divinely provided for him, in a supernatural way, by
which he may tend toward his end” (ibid., n. 3).
The divine government of men has therefore two eminent modes: nature
and grace. For this, starting from the end of the sixteenth century, the problem
of the government of the world will overlap more and more with that of the
modes and the efficacy of grace: the treatises and debates on providence will take
the shape of analyses and definitions of the figures of grace as preventative grace,
concomitant grace, gratuitous grace, habitual grace, sufficient grace, efficient
grace, and so on. And not only do the forms of government immediately corre-
spond to the figures of grace, but the necessity for the gratuitous help of God,
without which man cannot achieve his aim, corresponds to the necessity of gov-
ernment, without which nature would not be preserved in its being. In any case,
just as in the case of nature, grace subscribes to the principle according to which
the providential government cannot in any way constrain the free will of men.
For this, grace as a figure of government cannot be seen as a “divine compulsion
to the good” (“coactio homini [ . . . ] ad bene agendum:” ibid., Chapter 148).
That divine help is provided to man so that he may act well is to be understood
in this way: it performs our works in us, as the primary cause performs the
operations of secondary causes, and as a principal agent performs the action of
an instrument. Hence, it is said in Isaiah (26:12–13): “Thou hast wrought all our
works for us, O Lord.” Now the first cause causes the operation of the secondary
cause according to the me
asure of the latter. So, God also causes our works in
us in accord with our measure, which means that we act voluntarily and not as
forced. Therefore, no one is forced to right action by the divine help. (Ibid., n. 3)
The government of the world is the place of a concurrence between grace and
our freedom, such that, as Suárez will reassert against the “Lutheran error,” “the
necessity of grace is combined with the real use of liberty and the use of liberty
[ . . . ] cannot be separated from the operation and cooperation of grace” (Suárez,
p. 384). The providential paradigm of the government of men is not tyrannical,
but democratic.
5.13. We cannot understand the functioning of the governmental machine
if we do not realize that the relation between its two poles—the Kingdom and
the Government—is essentially vicarious. Both the emperor and the pope define
themselves as vicarius Christi or vicarius Dei, and it is known that the exclusive
496
HOMO SACER II, 4
claim to this title gave rise to a long series of conflicts between spiritual and secu-
lar powers. Maccarrone and Kantorowicz have reconstructed the history of these
claims through which what was originally, especially in the East, the exclusive
title of the emperor became, from the fifth century onward, at least in the West,
the title par excellence of the bishop of Rome. But, in the perspective of the
Trinitarian economy, the vicariousness of power—of any power—appears in a
particular light, which, so to speak, makes of it the essential structure of supreme
power, the intimate vicissitudinary articulation of the archē.
The vicariousness of pontifical power with regard to Christ was theologically
founded on the delay of the parousia.
Given that Christ had to subtract his carnal presence from the Church [ praesentiam suam carnalem erat Ecclesiae subtracturus], it was necessary to institute ministers who would administer sacraments to men. These are called priests [ . . . ]
And after the subtraction of Christ’s corporeal presence, given that questions
concerning faith were going to occur, which would have divided the Church,
whose unity requires the unity of faith [ . . . ] the one who has this power is Peter,
and his successors. (Quidort, p. 111)
Yet, according to a principle that has its paradigm in Paul, the power of Christ is
in turn vicarious with respect to that of the Father. In 1 Corinthians 24:28, Paul
in fact clearly affirms that, by the time the end comes, after having subjected
to himself every power (with the exception of that of the Father, from which
his power derives), Christ will return the Kingdom to God, who had subjected
everything to Christ. In other words, the power of Christ is, in its relation to the
Father, an essentially vicarious power, in which he acts and governs, so to speak,
in the name of the Father. And, more generally, the intra-Trinitarian relation be-
tween the Father and the Son can be considered to be the theological paradigm
of every potestas vicaria, in which every act of the vicar is considered to be a manifestation of the will of the one who is represented by him. And yet, as we have
seen, the an-archic character of the Son, who is not founded ontologically in the
Father, is essential to the Trinitarian economy. That is, the Trinitarian economy is
the expression of an anarchic power and being that circulates among the three persons
according to an essentially vicarious paradigm.
It is not surprising that the same vicarious structure can be found in secular
power. In On the Government of Rulers (Book 3, Chapter 13), Thomas writes
that Augustus wielded a vicarious power with respect to Christ, who was the
real monarch and lord of the world (“verus erat mundi Dominus et Monarcha,
cuius vices gerebat Augustus”). The entire duration of Augustus’s principality is
THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY
497
thus presented as if it were a “deputizing for [ fare le veci] Christ’s monarchy”
(“quas quidem vices monarchiae post Christi veri domini nativitatem gessit Au-
gusto”: ibid.). The Norman Anonymous writes in the same sense that “the king
is God and Christ, but according to grace [ . . . ] Even the one who is by nature
God and Christ acts by means of his vicar; the latter acts in his stead [ per quem
vices suas exequitur].” But also Christ, who is God by nature, somehow acts
by grace, “since according to his human nature he is deified and sanctified by
the Father” (Kantorowicz 2005, pp. 101–102). And in the fourth century, the
Ambrosiaster had already claimed that the king owns the imperium of God as a
vicar, since he bears its image (ibid., p. 114).
In other words, power has the structure of a gerere vices; it is in its very es-
sence vices, vicariousness. That is, the term vices names the original vicariousness of sovereign power, or, if you like it, its absolutely insubstantial and “economical” character. The twofold (or threefold) structure of the governmental machine
(Kingdom and Government, auctoritas and potestas, ordinatio and executio, but also the distinction of powers in modern democracies) acquires in this perspective its proper sense. The Government certainly acts vicariously with regard to
the Kingdom; but this has a meaning only within “an economy of the in lieu of
[ un’economia delle veci],” in which the two powers depend on each other.
In other words, vicariousness entails an ontology—or better, the replace-
ment of classical ontology with an “economic” paradigm—in which no figure of
being is, as such, in the position of the archē, while what is original is the very Trinitarian relation, whereby each figure gerit vices, deputizes for the other [ fa le veci dell’altra]. The mystery of being and of the deity coincides entirely with its
“economical” mystery. There is no substance of power, but only an “economy,”
only a “government.”
Threshold
WE can now attempt to list in the guise of theses the essential character-
istics that have been brought to light by our analysis of the providential
paradigm. These characteristics define a kind of ontology of the acts of government: (1) Providence (the government) is that through which theology and philosophy try to come to terms with the splitting of classical ontology into two
separate realities: being and praxis, transcendent and immanent good, theol-
ogy and oikonomia. Providence presents itself as a machine aimed at joining
back together the two fragments in the gubernatio dei, the divine government
of the world.
(2) Providence represents, in the same sense and to the same extent, an at-
tempt to reconcile the Gnostic splitting between a God who is foreign to the
world and a God that governs, which Christian theology had inherited through
the “economical” articulation of the Father and the Son. In the Christian
oikonomia, God as creator faces a corrupted and extraneous nature, which God
as savior—who was entrusted with the government of the world—needs to re-
deem and save for a kingdom that is not, however, “of this world.” The price
to be paid by the Trinitarian overcoming of the Gnostic splitting between two
deities is the fundamental extraneousness of the world. The Christian govern-
ment of the world consequently assumes the paradoxical figure of the immanent
/>
government of a world that is and needs to remain extraneous.
א This “gnostic” structure, which the theological oikonomia has transmitted to modern governmentality, reaches its apex in the paradigm of the government of the world that
the great Western powers (in particular the United States) try today to put into practice on both a local and a global scale. Independently of whether what is at stake is the breakup
of preexisting constitutional forms or the imposition, through military occupation, of
so-called democratic constitutional models upon peoples for whom these models turn
out to be unworkable, the basic point is that a country—and even the entire world—is
being governed by remaining completely extraneous to it.
498
THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY
499
The tourist, which is the radical reincarnation of the Christian peregrinus in terra, is the planetary figure of this irreducible extraneousness with regard to the world. In
this sense, he is a figure whose “political” meaning is consubstantial with the prevailing governmental paradigm, just as the peregrinus was the figure that corresponded to the providential paradigm. In other words, the pilgrim and the tourist are the collateral effects of the same “economy” (in its theological and secularized versions).
(3) Although the providential machine is unitary, it articulates itself, for this
very reason, into two different planes or levels: transcendence/immanence, gen-
eral providence/special providence (or fate), first causes/second causes, eternity/
temporality, intellectual knowledge/praxis. The two levels are strictly entwined,
so that the first founds, legitimates, and makes possible the second, while the
second concretely puts into practice in the chain of causes and effects the general
decisions of the divine mind. The government of the world is what results from
this functional correlation.
(4) In its pure form, the paradigm of the act of government is, consequently,
the collateral effect. Insofar as it is not aimed at a particular purpose, but derives,
as a concomitant effect, from a general law and economy, the act of government
represents an area of undecidability between what is general and what is partic-
ular, between what is calculated and what is not-wanted. This is its “economy.”