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and figure, are the two faces of the doxa that, as such, ceaselessly interweave and separate themselves in contemporary society. In this interlacing of elements, the
“democratic” and secular theorists of communicative action risk finding them-
selves side by side with conservative thinkers of acclamation such as Schmitt and
Peterson; but this is precisely the price that must be paid each time by theoretical
elaborations that think they can do without archaeological precautions.
That “government by consent”† and the social communication on which, in
the last instance, consensus rests, in reality hark back to acclamations is what can
be shown even through a summary genealogical inquest. The first time that the
concept of “consensus” appears in the technical context of public law is in a cru-
cial passage from Augustus’s Res gestae divi Augusti, where he briefly summarizes
* The English translation omits this passage from the 1990 Suhrkamp edition.—Trans.
† In English in the original.—Trans.
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607
the concentration of constitutional powers in his person: “In consulatu sexto et
septimo, postquam bella civilia extinxeram, per consensum universorum potitus
rerum omnium” (“In my sixth and seventh consulates, after putting out the civil
war, {having obtained everybody’s consent, I assumed all powers}”: Res gestae
divi Augusti, §34). The historians of Roman law questioned the foundation of
this extraordinary concentration of powers in public law. Mommsen and Korne-
mann, for example, maintain that it was no longer based on the function of
the triumvirate, but upon a state of exception of a certain kind ( Notsstandkommando) (Kornemann, p. 336). It is peculiar, however, that Augustus unequivocally founds it upon consent (“per consensum universorum”), and also that
immediately beforehand he specifies the ways in which that consent manifested
itself: “Twice I triumphed with an ovation, and three times I enjoyed a curule
triumph and twenty-one times I was named emperor [ Bis ovans triumphavi, tris
egi curulis triumphos et appellatus sum viciens et semel imperator]” ( Res gestae divi Augusti, §4). For a historian such as Mommsen, who had never heard of “communicative action,” it was certainly not easy to relate the notion of consensus
back to a foundation in public law; but if one understands the essential link that
ties it to acclamation, consensus can be defined without difficulty, paraphrasing
Schmitt’s thesis on public opinion, as the “modern form of acclamation” (it
matters little that the acclamation is expressed by a physically present multitude,
as in Schmitt, or by the flow of communicative procedures, as in Habermas). In
any case, consensual democracy, which Debord called “the society of the specta-
cle” and which is so dear to the theorists of communicative action, is a glorious
democracy, in which the oikonomia is fully resolved into glory and the doxo-
logical function, freeing itself of liturgy and ceremonials, absolutizes itself to an
unheard of extent and penetrates every area of social life.
Philosophy and the science of politics have omitted to pose the questions
that appear decisive in every way, whenever the techniques and strategies of gov-
ernment and power are analyzed, from a genealogical and functional perspec-
tive: Where does our culture draw the criterion of politicality—mythologically
and in fact? What is the substance—or the procedure, or threshold—that allows
one to confer on something a properly political character? The answer that our
investigation suggests is: glory, in its dual aspect, divine and human, ontologi-
cal and economic, of the Father and the Son, of the people-substance and the
people-communication. The people—whether real or communicational—to
which in some sense the “government by consent”* and the oikonomia of con-
* In English in the original.—Trans.
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temporary democracies must hark back, is, in essence, acclamation and doxa. Es-
tablishing whether, as we have tried to show liminally, glory covers and captures
in the guise of “eternal life” that particular praxis of man as living being [ vivente
uomo] that we have defined as inoperativity, and whether it is possible, as was
announced at the end of Homo Sacer I, to think politics—beyond the economy
and beyond glory—beginning from the inoperative disarticulation of both bios
and zōē, is the task for a future investigation.
Appendix
The Economy of the Moderns
1. The Law and the Miracle
1.1. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the question of providence
assumed in France the forms that Pascal ridicules in his Provincial Letters. Due
to the increasing interest in all areas for governmental practices and for the the-
ory of power, the debate among theologians also focused on the ways in which
providence governs (and hence on nature and on grace, which are its principal
instruments) and on the relation between government and the governed (to
what extent providence obligates rational creatures and in what sense they re-
main free with respect to the grace they receive). According to Pascal’s testimony,
what irreducibly divides Jesuits, Molinists, Thomists, and Jansenists is precisely
the question of “sufficient” grace and “effective” grace; that is, the ways in which
God intervenes in the government of the second causes.
Their differences on the subject of sufficient grace is chiefly this. The Jesuits
maintain there is a general grace bestowed upon all mankind, but in a sense
subordinated to free will, so that this grace is rendered effective or ineffective as
the world chooses, without any additional assistance from God. It does not need
anything external to itself to make its operations effectual. On this account it
is distinguished by the word sufficient. In contrast, the Jansenists affirm that no grace is actually sufficient unless it is also effective. That is, all principles that do
not determine the will to act effectively are insufficient for action because, they
say, no one can act with effective grace. (Pascal 2003, pp. 245–246)
Although Jesuits and Thomists are in agreement in condemning the Jansenists,
great confusion also reigns among them with regard to the definition of grace
(whether sufficient or effective)—the instrument par excellence of providential
government. Indeed, the Thomists call sufficient that grace that is not sufficient,
since it is not enough to determine action. “That is to say, all men have grace
enough, and all have not grace enough—this grace is sufficient and it is insufficient;
609
610
HOMO SACER II, 4
that is to say, it is nominally sufficient and really insufficient” (ibid., pp. 247–248).
“Where are we now?” Pascal continues ironically.
Which side am I to take here? If I deny sufficient grace, I am a Jansenist. If I admit
it with the Jesuits in such a sense that there is no necessity for efficacious grace,
I am, you tell me, a heretic. If I agree with you, I fly against common sense. I
am a madman, say the Jesuits. What then am I to do in this inevitable situation
of being either considered a madman,
a heretic, or a Jansenist? (Ibid., p. 248)
In reality, what hides behind an apparently terminological question is the very
way in which we are to conceive the divine government of the world, and, in
a more or less witting way, the theologians are in fact discussing politics. The
providential government of the world is derived from a difficult balance between
the action of governing (grace, in its various forms) and the free will of governed
individuals. If Cornelius Jansen’s position is unacceptable to the Church, this is
because, in affirming that grace is always efficacious and, as such, invincible, he
destroys the freedom of men and transforms the activity of providence into an
absolute and impenetrable government that—like the government of the large
baroque states, with their mysteries and their “reasons”—saves the elect and
condemns the others to eternal damnation through its will.
1.2. It is in this context that Malebranche publishes in 1680—fifteen years
after the vociferous debate surrounding the publication of the Provincial
Letters—his Treatise on Nature and Grace. In this text he gives a new formulation to the doctrine of general providence and special providence, of first causes and
secondary causes, which would exert a lasting influence not only among theolo-
gians but also and above all on philosophers, to whom it was explicitly directed
(“pour lesquels j’ai écrit le Traité”: Malebranche 1979, p. 146). Since it is a case of
nothing less than an absolutization of divine government, which radically trans-
forms the sense of secondary causes (now conceived of as occasional causes), it is
worth following the summary exposition that Malebranche gives of his doctrine
in the Eclaircissements appended to the treatise.
The subject of providential action is the divine will. Therefore, Malebranche
begins by distinguishing the general wills from the particular wills.
I say that God acts by general wills, when he acts in consequence of general laws
which he has established. For example, I say that God acts in me by general will
when he makes me feel pain at the time when I am pricked; because in conse-
quence of the general and efficacious laws of the union of the soul and the body
which he has established, he makes me feel pain when my body is ill disposed. In
the same way, when a ball strikes a second one, I say that God moves the second
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by a general will, because he moves it in consequence of the general and effica-
cious laws of the communication of motion—God having generally established
at the moment that the two bodies strike, the motion is divided between the two
according to certain proportions; and it is through the efficacy of this general
will that bodies have the power to move each other. (Malebranche 1992, p. 195).
It will, on the other hand, be said that God acts with a particular will if this pro-
duces its effects independently of a general law. If God makes me feel the pain
of a prick without a cause having acted on my body, within me or outside me,
and if a body begins to move without being struck by another, this could be the
effect of a particular will, that is, of a miracle.
Malebranche’s strategy consists in more or less completely excluding from
providence the particular wills and reducing the problem of the divine govern-
ment of the world to the terms of the relationship between general will and the
causes that he defines as occasional (in other words, he transforms secondary
causes into occasional ones).
When one sees that an effect is produced immediately after the action of an
occasional cause, one must judge that this effect is produced by the efficacy of a general will. A body moves immediately after having been struck: the collision of
the bodies is the action of the occasional cause; thus this body moves by a general will. A stone falls on the head of a man and kills him; and this stone falls like all
others, I mean that its movement continues nearly according to the arithmetical
progression 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, etc. That supposed, I say that it moves by the efficacy of
a general will, or according to the laws of the communication of motion, as it is
easy to demonstrate. (Ibid., p. 197)
But also when an effect is produced without there being an occasional cause
(if, for example, a body moves without having been knocked by another), we
cannot be sure whether it is a particular will or a miracle that has intervened.
One can suppose, in fact, that God has established a general law according to
which the angels have the power to move bodies with their will; the particular
angelic will will act as an occasional cause of the will of God and the mechanism
of providential government will in all cases be the same.
Thus one can often be assured that God acts by general wills; but one cannot in
the same way be assured that he acts by particular wills even in the most attested
miracles. (Ibid.)
The fact is that, according to Malebranche, it conforms better to divine wisdom
to act according to simple and general ways than through a multiplicity of par-
ticular wills. In this way he formulates a kind of Ockham’s razor with respect to
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miracles: miracles, like entities, non sunt multiplicanda extra necessitatem. If one sees the rain fall on a field that was much in need of it, it is not necessary to verify
whether or not it also fell on neighboring fields or on the roads that did not need
it, “for one must not, without necessity, have recourse to miracles” (ibid., p. 200).
For, since there is more wisdom in executing his plans by simple and general
means than in complex and particular ways [ . . . ] one must do this honor to God,
to believe that this way of acting is general, uniform, constant, and proportioned
to the idea that we have of an infinite wisdom. (Ibid., pp. 200–201)
The paradigm of providential government is not the miracle but the law; not the
particular will but the general.
This is also the only reasonable way to account for the evils that seem to us
to be irreconcilable with what we suppose to be the designs of providence. God
has established as a general law that we should feel a pleasant sensation when
we enjoy the fruits that are suited to nourishing our bodies. If we feel that same
sensation when we eat poisoned fruit, this does not mean that God departs from
the law that he has established through a particular will. On the contrary:
[ . . . ] since a poisoned fruit excites in our brain motions like those which good
fruit produces therein, God gives us the same feeling, because of the general laws
which unify the soul and the body—in order that it be wakeful to its preser-
vation. In the same way God gives those who have lost an arm feelings of pain
with respect to this arm only by a general will [ . . . ] Thus it is certain that rains
which are useless or harmful to the fruits of the earth are necessary consequences
of the general laws of the communication of motion which God has established
to produce the effects in the world [ . . . ] (Ibid., pp. 198–199)
The Stoic theory of collateral effects is here taken up against and inscribed within
the divine government of the world
that is dominated by general laws, the order
of which corresponds perfectly to that which the natural sciences are just begin-
ning to decipher.
A wise man must act wisely; God cannot deny himself; his ways of acting must
bear the character of his attributes. Now God knows all, and foresees all; his
intelligence has no limits. Thus his way of acting must bear the character of an
infinite intelligence. Now to choose occasional causes, and to establish the gen-
eral laws to execute some work, indicates a knowledge infinitely more extensive,
than to change his wills at every moment, or to act by particular wills. Thus God
executes his plans by general laws, whose efficacy is determined by occasional
causes. Certainly it requires a greater breadth of mind to create a watch which,
according to the laws of mechanism, goes by itself and regularly—whether one
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carries it oneself, whether one holds it suspended, whether one shakes it as one
pleases—than to make one which cannot run correctly if he who has made it
does not change something in it at every moment according to the situation it is
placed in [ . . . ] Thus to establish general laws, and to choose the simplest ones,
which are at the same time the most fruitful, is a way of acting worthy of him
whose wisdom has no bounds; and by contrast to act by particular wills indicates
a limited intelligence [ . . . ] (Ibid., pp. 210–211)
This is not, for Malebranche, to deny or play down the power of providence; on
the contrary, it now coincides so perfectly with the order of the world that it is no
longer necessary to distinguish it from nature; nature is nothing other than “the
general laws which God has established to construct or to preserve his work by
very simple means, by an action which is uniform [and] constant” (ibid., p. 196).
Every other conception of nature, for instance, that of pagan philosophers, is a
“chimera.” But this nature, in which God “does all in all things” (ibid.), to the
extent that he acts only through the general wills and laws, is in no way distin-
guishable from that of modern science. For this reason Fénelon, commenting on
Malebranche’s treatise, perceptively observes that “his God must coincide with