The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  Lord commanded, and every creature was produced. You see, therefore, how

  effective is the word of Christ. If, therefore, there is such power in the word of

  the Lord Jesus, that the things which were not began to be, how much more is

  it effective, that things previously existing should, without ceasing to exist, be

  changed into something else?)

  The effectiveness of the liturgical action coincides here with the performa-

  tivity of Christ’s word. And it is striking that what modern linguistics defines

  as the structural characteristic of performative verbs becomes fully intelligible on

  the level of the effective ontology that is in question in the sacramental liturgy

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  (and probably derives from it). That words act, carrying out what they signify,

  implies that the being that they bring about is purely effective.

  11. The decisive characteristic of the new effective ontology in this sense is

  operativity, to which the coinage of the adjective operatorius on the part of Am-

  brose and, even earlier, the enormous diffusion of the term operatio (extremely

  rare in classical Latin, with seven total occurrences registered in the Thesaurus) both testify. Classical Latin knew the adjective operativus to designate the efficacy of a drug. That now the neologism operatorius in Ambrose instead ac-

  quires an ontological meaning is obvious, beyond the two passages already cited

  on the divine Word, in the introduction of his Hexameron, which pronounces

  an unheard-of thesis about the history of philosophy: “Still others . . . like

  Aristotle . . . postulate two principles, matter and form, and along with these

  a third principle which is called ‘efficient,’ to which effective operation belongs

  [ dua principia ponerent, materiem et speciem et tertium cum his, quod operatorium

  dicitur, cui suppeteret . . . efficere]” ( Exameron 1.1.1).

  It is not clear which Aristotelian concept Ambrose is referring to, but it is

  certain that operatorium here designates a third thing between material and form

  and therefore between potential and act. It is in this sense that both Ambrose

  and, after him, Augustine and Isidore most often use the expression operatoria

  virtus (or operatoria potentia), referring to the divine potency. Scholars have asked which Greek equivalent Ambrose could have had in mind for his neologism:

  energētikon, as Albert Blaise suggests, or, as Jean Pépin maintains, poiētikon (this sense is found in Philo, in the syntagma poiētikē dynamis; Pépin, 338–39). In

  any case the reference to Aristotle and the connection to potential show that

  Ambrose has in mind an ontological dimension that is not simply potential nor

  simply actual but is rather an operatoria virtus, that is, a potential that is given reality through its own operation.

  It is from this perspective that it is necessary to consider the diffusion of the

  word operatio in patristic terminology. Particularly significant is its occurrence in trinitarian theology, in which it designates the Logos as an operation internal

  to the divine being. “‘To be,’” writes Marius Victorinus,

  is the Father, [and] “to act” is the Son. . . . Certainly “to be” itself has innate ac-

  tion within [ habet quidem ipsum quod est esse intus insitam operationem]; for without motion, that is, without action, what is life or what is understanding? . . . For

  with the appearance of action, it both is and is called action, and it both is and

  is regarded as self-begetting. Thus therefore, that itself which is “to act” has also

  “to be” itself [ sic igitur id ipsum quod est operari et ipsum esse habet]; but, rather,

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  it does not have it; for “to act” is itself “to be”—for they are simultaneous and

  simple [ ipsum enim operari esse est, simul et simplex]. (Victorinus, 196/94–95)

  In this extraordinary passage the new ontological paradigm finds perhaps its

  fullest formulation: being contains within itself an operation, is this operation,

  and at the same time is distinguished from it, as the Son is distinguished and at

  the same time is indiscernible from the Father. It is not being in action but ipsum

  enim operari esse est; operativity itself is being and being is in itself operative.

  א It is significant from this perspective that the term operatio is technicized to designate the operativity of the liturgical action, distinct from the simple opus in which it is materialized. As Ambrose can write with reference to baptism ( On the Sacraments 1.15):

  “The work is one thing, the working another [ aliud opus, aliud operatio]. The water is the work, the working is of the Holy Spirit.” While classical ontology put the accent on the

  work rather than on the operation that produces it, it is the superiority of the operation over the work that defines the new ontological paradigm. Contemporaneously, the same

  term, operatio, becomes specialized to mean the operativity of the trinitarian economy.

  In the letter from the Arian Candidus to Marius Victorinus already cited, Jesus Christ

  proceeds from God “not by begetting, but by operation” [ neque generatione a deo, sed operatione a deo],” and “he is in the Father and the Father is in him and both are one according to act [ secundum operationem et in patre est ipse et in ipso pater est]” (Victorinus, 122/55–56).

  In the same sense the Son is defined by Candidus as effectus and opus of the Father’s will.

  Certainly the anti-Arian orthodoxy will insist instead on the thesis according to which

  the Son coincides with the very will of the Father and, for that reason, cannot be said to be

  “effectuated” ( effectum) by the latter. Nevertheless, beyond the difference that separates the two doctrines, it is significant that in both cases the presupposed ontology is an energetic-operative ontology, in which the divine being is hypostatized, is actualized in the Son.

  12. Aquinas’s most original contribution to the doctrine of sacramental ef-

  fectiveness has to do with the concept of cause. The Aristotelian tradition dis-

  tinguished four types of cause: final, efficient, formal, and material. To explain

  the special efficacy of the sacraments, Aquinas adds to these a fifth, which in

  truth is presented as a specification of the efficient cause and which he defines as

  “instrumental cause” ( causa or agens instrumentale).

  What defines the instrumental cause is its twofold action, insofar as it acts

  according to its nature only insofar as it is moved by a principal agent, which

  uses it as instrument. “An instrument has a twofold action; one is instrumen-

  tal, in respect of which it works not by its own power but by the power of the

  principal agent [ non in virtute propria, sed in virtute principalis agentis]: the other is its proper action, which belongs to it in respect of its proper form: thus it belongs to an axe to cut asunder by reason of its sharpness, but to make a couch,

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  insofar as it is the instrument of an art” ( Summa theologica III, q. 62, art. 1). The two actions, while distinct, coincide perfectly: the axe “does not accomplish the

  instrumental action save by exercising its proper action: for it is by cutting that

  it makes a couch [ scindendo enim facit lectum]” (ibid.).

  It is in this way that God makes use of the sacraments: “The principal agent

  of justification is God, who in himself has no need for instruments; but, in

  accordance with the human being who must be saved . . . he makes use of sacra-
<
br />   ments as instruments of justification” ( Scriptum super sententiis IV, 32). And both the sacrament (thus the baptismal water, which “in respect of its proper power,

  cleanses the body, and thereby, inasmuch as it is the instrument of the Divine

  power, cleanses the soul”; Summa theologica III, q. 62, art. 1) and the priest who administers the sacrament ( eadem ratio est ministri et sacramenti, q. 64, art. 1).

  It might be surprising that Aquinas was able to think the mystery of the

  liturgical action by means of a humble and quotidian category. But it is pre-

  cisely the paradigm of instrumentality (that is, of something whose own action

  is always also the action of another) that allows Aquinas to define the effective

  nature of the sacraments, as “signs that effect what they signify.” “The princi-

  pal cause cannot properly be called a sign of its effect [ signum effectus], even

  though the latter be hidden and the cause itself sensible and manifest. But an

  instrumental cause, if manifest, can be called a sign of a hidden effect [ signum

  effectus occulti], for this reason, that it is not merely a cause but also in a measure an effect insofar as it is moved by the principal agent. And in this sense

  the sacraments of the New Law are both cause and signs. Hence, too, is it that,

  to use the common expression, ‘they effect what they signify’ [ efficiunt quod

  figurant]” (ibid., q. 62, art. 1, sol. 1).

  Let us reflect on the paradoxical nature of this cause that is at the same time

  an effect and that solely and precisely as effect carries out its principal action

  (justification). The instrumental cause is not, therefore, a simple specification

  of the Aristotelian efficient cause but a new element, which subverts the very

  distinction of cause and effect on which the four Aristotelian causes are founded.

  In the horizon of a totally operative and effective ontology, the cause is cause

  insofar as it is effect, and the effect is effect insofar as it is cause.

  13. It is this instrumental character of the priest as minister of the sacraments

  that allows us to understand in what sense theologians can define the priestly

  function as a “taking the place of Christ” ( sacerdotes vicem gerunt Christi; Du-

  rand, bk. 1, 169) or “works in Christ’s person” ( sacerdos novae legis in persona ipsius

  [Christi] operatur; Summa theologica III, q. 22, art. 4).

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  Here it is not a matter of a figure of juridical representation so much as, so to

  speak, a constitutive vicariousness, which concerns the priest’s ontological nature

  and renders indifferent the accidental qualities of the individual who exercises

  the ministry.

  A minister is of the nature of an instrument. . . . An instrument acts not by rea-

  son of its own form, but by the power of the one who moves it. Consequently,

  whatever form or power an instrument has, in addition to that which it has as an

  instrument, is accidental to it: for instance, that a physician’s body, which is the

  instrument of his soul, wherein is his medical art, be healthy or sickly; or that a

  pipe, through which water passes, be of silver or lead. Therefore the ministers of

  the Church can confer the sacraments, though they be wicked. (Ibid., q. 64, art. 5)

  The phrase “to act in his place” ( fare le veci) is here to be taken literally: there is not an originary place of priestly praxis, but this is always constitutively an

  “alteration” ( vece); it is something “done” or “acted out” and never a substance.

  The one in whose “stead” ( vece) the function is carried out in his turn takes

  the place of another and precisely this constitutive vicariousness defines the

  “function.” Not only does “functioning” always imply an alterity in whose name the

  “function” is carried out, but the very being that is here in question is factical and functional—it refers each time to a praxis that defines and actualizes it.

  By means of the paradigm of vicariousness and instrumental cause, the

  principle—one which will find its broadest application in public law—is intro-

  duced into ethics according to which the moral or physical characteristics of the

  agent are indifferent to the validity and effectiveness of his or her action. “He who

  approaches a sacrament, receives it from a minister of the Church, not because

  he is such and such a man, but because he is a minister of the Church [ non in

  quantum est talis persona, sed in quantum est Ecclesiae minister]” (ibid., art. 6). The distinction between the opus operans, which can at times be impure ( aliquando

  immundum) and the opus operatum, which semper est mundum (is always pure; Durand, bk. 1, 245) here has its foundation. But in this way the action becomes

  indifferent to the subject who carries it out and the subject becomes indifferent

  to the ethical quality of his action.

  14. If we turn now to the thesis of Casel from which we began, we can

  only note its exactness: effectus in liturgical language means Wirklichkeit, an eminent mode of reality and presence. This mode of presence is nevertheless

  indiscernible from its effects and its actualization—it is, in the sense we have

  seen, operativity and praxis. From this perspective it is the very essence of the

  liturgical mystery that is clarified: the mystery is the effect; what is mysterious

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  is effectiveness, insofar as in it being is resolved into praxis and praxis is sub-

  stantiated into being. The mystery of the liturgy coincides totally with the mystery

  of operativity. In conformity with the indetermination of potency and act, of

  being and praxis, which is here in question, this coincidence is operative, in

  the sense that in it a decisive transformation in the history of ontology is car-

  ried out: the passage from energeia to effectiveness.

  In this ontological dimension the connection between mysterium and oiko-

  nomia that defines the Trinity also reaches a point of clarity: there is a liturgical mystery because there is an economy of the divine being. In the words of

  a modern theologian, the liturgy is not a third level of the mystery, after the

  mystery of the intradivine economy and that of the historical economy: the

  liturgical mystery is the indissoluble unity of the first two (Kilmartin, 196–97).

  The sacramental celebration only causes the divine economy to be commemo-

  rated and rendered each time newly effective. There is an oikonomia —that is, an operativity—of the divine being: this and nothing else is the mystery.

  One can say then that what is at stake in both the conception of the Trinity

  as an economy and that of the liturgy as a mystery is the constitution of an

  ontology of the effectus, in which potency and act, being and acting are distinct

  and, at the same time, articulated through a threshold of indiscernibility. To

  what extent this effective ontology, which has progressively taken the place of

  classical ontology, is the root of our conception of being—to what extent, that

  is to say, we do not have at our disposal any experience of being other than op-

  erativity—this is the hypothesis that all genealogical research on modernity will

  have to confront.

  15. Let us try to translate this new ontological paradigm into the conceptu-

  ality of classical ontology. Perhaps nowhere else is the transformation that this

&n
bsp; latter undergoes so evident as in the philosopher who made the Aristotelian

  Organon known to the Latins through his activity as a translator: Boethius. He

  is the one to whom we owe, among other things, the translation of ousia with

  substantia, which transmitted to the Middle Ages the substantialist conception

  of being as “what stands under” the accidents. But let us read the passage of the

  Contra Eutychen in which he seeks to define the meaning of the term substantia (which in this treatise corresponds instead to the term hypostasis). “That thing

  has substance [ substat],” writes Boethius, “which furnishes from below [ subministrat] to other accidental things a subject [ subiectum] enabling them to be [ ut esse valeant]; for it ‘subtends’ [ sub illis enim stat] those things so long as it is subjected to accidents [ subiectum est accidentibus]” (Boethius, 88–89).

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  Not only is substance here plainly an operation that renders the accidents

  capable of being ( minister and ministrare—from which subministrare derives—

  are already part and parcel of the technical liturgical vocabulary in the age of

  Boethius), but being, too, which they attain by means of substance, is some-

  thing operative that results from this operation. And it is in this sense that

  Boethius writes a little earlier that “the subsistentiae are present [ sint] in universals but acquire substance [ capiant substantiam] in particulars” (ibid., 86–87):

  substance is something that is “taken” and effective, and it does not have a

  being independent of its effectuation. Commenting on this singular expres-

  sion, which has no parallels in the Greek texts from which Boethius draws his

  terminology, de Libera writes that “the term substantia, like the verb substare, signifies a property for Boethius. Capere substantiam signifies acquiring the

  property of working in hiding in such a way as to permit something to serve as

  subject to accidents” (de Libera, 185). In reality it is not a matter of a property

  but of an operativity within being, through which the latter, which in the uni-

  versals simply is, is realized and rendered effective in individual beings.

  The Contra Eutychen is a treatise on trinitarian theology, and the semantic