The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  Ethics 1219a19ff.). For the same reason, Aristotle can affirm that “the ergon is better than the hexis” and at the same time assert, with perfect circularity, that “the better the hexis, the better the ergon” (ibid., 1219a6).

  It remains the case that habit is the logical place where something like a theory

  of subjectivity could have arisen. Melville’s Bartleby, a man who by definition has the

  potential to write but is not able to exercise it, is the perfect cipher of the aporias of Aristotelian ethics.

  5. It is against this aporetic background of Aristotelian ethics that the scho-

  lastic theory of the virtues in their relation with officium becomes fully intelligible. The joining of officium and virtue that is already implicit in Cicero and

  Ambrose, and constitutes the specific work of the ethics of late scholasticism, in

  fact has the goal of conferring effectiveness to virtue in the governance of habit

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  and potential. For this reason, in Aquinas’s Summa the treatment of the virtues

  is preceded by a theorization of the problem of habitus ( Summa theologica IaIIae, qq. 49–54), which articulates and unfolds in a systematic way the hints scattered

  in Aristotle’s work.

  First of all, habit is presented here as a specifically human form of potential.

  While natural potentials are particular to only one operation ( secundum se ipsas

  sunt determinae ad unum), and for this reason have need of a habit to be able

  to pass into action, human potential can operate in different ways and with

  different ends ( se habet ad multa) and thus has need of a principle that disposes

  it to the operation. This principle, which leads human potential (in itself con-

  stitutively undecided) to action, is habitus (ibid., q. 49, art. 4). But habit also distinguishes human potential from natural potential for another reason. The

  potential of a natural agent is always and only an active principle of its action, as

  one sees in fire, which can only burn ( sicut in igne est solum principium activum

  calefaciendi). The act of such an agent can never be translated into a habit: “for this reason natural things cannot become accustomed or unaccustomed ( et inde

  est quod res naturales non possunt aliquid consuescere vel dissuescere).” For human acts, by contrast, there is both an active principle and a passive principle of their

  action, and in this second aspect they produce habits. Passivity is therefore the

  specific foundation of human habitus: “For everything that is passive and moved

  by another is disposed by the action of the agent; wherefore if the acts be multi-

  plied a certain quality is formed in the power which is passive and moved, which

  quality is called a habit” (ibid., q. 51, art. 2).

  What properly defines habit is, according to Aquinas, its essential connec-

  tion with action. Responding positively to the question “whether habit implies

  a disposition to action,” Aquinas specifies that every habit, insofar as it is related

  to a potential, is constitutively ordered to the act ( primo et principaliter importat

  ordinem ad actum; ibid., q. 49, art. 3). It is because of this essential proximity to the act that habit is defined as “first act” ( actus primus) with respect to the operation, conceived as actus secundus (ibid.). Developing Averroës’s affirmation

  according to which “habit is that whereby we act when we will,” the seat of habit

  is located in the will:

  In the will and in every appetitive power there must be something by which the

  power is inclined to its object. . . . And therefore in respect of those things to

  which it is inclined sufficiently by the nature of the power itself, the power needs

  no special quality to incline it. But since it is necessary, for the end of human

  life, that the appetitive power be inclined to something fixed, to which it is not

  inclined by the nature of the power, which in humans has a relation to many

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  and various things, therefore it is necessary that, in the will and in the other

  appetitive powers, there be certain qualities to incline them, and these are called

  habits. (Ibid., q. 50, art. 5)

  The aporetic connection between habit and the ability not to pass into action,

  which defined the echein kai mē energein of Aristotle’s sleeper, is thus bracketed.

  6. It is this constitutive ordering of habit to action that the theory of the

  virtues develops and pushes to an extreme. From the beginning of the treatise on

  the virtues in the Summa ( Summa theologica IaIIae, qq. 55–67), virtue is defined unreservedly—with a term that recalls the one ( operatorius) with which Ambrose

  had defined the operativity of the word of Christ—as “operative habit” ( habitus

  operativus). If virtue is a perfection of potential and this is both potential to be ( ad esse), which has to do with the body, and to act ( ad agere), which concerns the rational faculty, human virtue refers only to the potential to act: “human

  virtue, of which we are speaking now, cannot belong to the body, but belongs

  only to that which is proper to the soul. Wherefore human virtue does not imply

  reference to being, but rather to act. Consequently it is essential to human virtue

  to be an operative habit” (ibid., q. 55, art. 2). If, with respect to the Aristotelian

  hexis, the Thomistic habitus was already oriented toward action, virtue is the apparatus that must guarantee its belonging to the act, its being in every case

  “operative.”

  However, because a habit can be operative also with respect to evil, it is

  necessary that virtuous habit be defined as “good.” With respect to simple

  potential, which can be disposed to good as much as to evil, good habit is

  distinguished from bad not because it has a good object but because it is in

  harmony with the nature of the agent ( habitus bonus dicitur qui disponit ad

  actum convenientem naturae agentis; ibid., q. 55, art. 3). In the same way, virtue implies the perfection of a potential, but evil knows no perfection and is, so to

  speak, constitutively “infirm” ( omne malum defectum quemdam importat; unde

  et Dionysios dicit quod omne malum est infirmum). If in the last analysis “every

  virtue is necessarily ordered to the good, therefore human virtue, which is an

  operative habit, is a good habit and operative of the good [ bonus habitus et boni

  operativus]” (ibid.).

  What is decisive here is not the coherence of the argument, from which one

  can in any case draw the consequence that the good does not define potential,

  but the perfection or imperfection of potential determines what is good and

  what is bad. What is essential, once more, is the effectiveness of virtue, its ren-

  dering habit operative. The goodness of virtue is its effectiveness, its pushing

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  and orienting potential toward its perfection. And for human beings this does

  not consist in being but in working. Only through action is the human being

  assimilated to God:

  Virtue which is referred to being [ virtus ad esse] is not proper to humanity;

  but only that virtue which is referred to works of reason, which are proper to

  humanity. . . . As God’s substance is His act, the highest likeness of man to God

  is in respect of some operation. Wherefore . . . happiness or bliss by which man

  is made most perfectly conformed to God, and which is the end of human life,


  consists in an operation [ in operatione consistit]. (Ibid., q. 55, art. 2)

  7. The definition of virtue that follows (which the article significantly places

  under the heading: “Whether virtue is suitably defined?”) repeats observations

  already made, without contending with the problems and aporias that the dis-

  cussion had come up against. Both the absolutely operative character of virtue

  and its unfailing orientation to the good are repeated. But what confers its power

  to virtue and what differentiates it from vice, the other operative power, is in no

  way explained: “The end of virtue, since it is an operative habit, is operation.

  But it must be observed that some operative habits are always referred to evil,

  as vicious habits: others are sometimes referred to good, sometimes to evil; for

  instance, opinion is referred both to the true and to the untrue: whereas virtue is

  a habit which is always referred to good” ( Summa theologica IaIIae, q. 55, art. 4).

  On the one hand, the end of virtue consists in its very operativity, but on the

  other, insofar as it is a form of habit, it refers necessarily to the nature of the sub-

  ject with which it must fit. The very expression “operative habit” seems in itself

  contradictory, insofar as it refers at once to ontology (habit) and to praxis (op-

  erativity). Virtue is that by means of which being is indeterminated into praxis

  and action is substantialized into being (or in the words of Aristotle, that thanks

  to which a human being “becomes good” and, at the same time, that thanks to

  which “he does his work well”).

  In this sense the definition of virtue presents more than an analogy with the

  circularity that characterizes the effectiveness of officium. The priest has to carry out his office as priest, but he is a priest insofar as he carries out his office. And

  just as the subject of the liturgical act is not truly such, but is acted upon by

  Christ ex opere operato, so also the subject of the virtuous act is acted upon by operative habit, so that Aquinas can write that in virtue, “God works in us without

  us” ( Deus in nobis sine nobis operatur; ibid.).

  It is not surprising, then, that in the person of the priest virtue and office

  enter into a durable constellation. For this reason, already starting with Ambrose,

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  treatises on the priestly office are also treatises on the priests’ virtues. Both office

  and virtue are brought into the same circle: the good (the virtuous) is such be-

  cause it acts well and acts well because it is good (virtuous).

  8. The place where virtue and office enter into a threshold of indetermi-

  nation is the theory of religio. Here, in the definition of the status religionis as virtue, the liturgical tradition of officium and that of the moral treatise on the virtues are united in the figure of a virtue whose essential content is a duty and

  an officium that appears in every sense as a virtue.

  Let us consider the discussion of religio in the Summa, in which “religion”

  is counted among the “virtues attached to justice” ( Summa theologica, IIaIIae,

  q. 81). Aquinas opens with a brief analysis of the etymologies of the term, both

  that of Isidore (which goes back to Cicero) from religere ( religiousus a religione appelatus, qui retractat et tamquam relegit ea quae ad cultum Domnini pertinent

  [a man is said to be religious from religio, because he often ponders over and, as it were, reads again ( relegit) the things which pertain to the worship of God])

  and the Augustinian etymology from religare ( a religando, ut Agostinus: religet nos religion uni omnipotenti deo [from religare, wherefore Augustine says: May religion bind us to the one Almighty God]). In both cases religion designates a

  special and exclusive relationship of the human being with God ( religio ordinat

  hominem solum ad Deum [religion directs the human being to God alone];

  ibid., art. 1).

  But it is in article 2, in response to the question “whether religion is a virtue,”

  that the essential relation between virtue and duty is formulated for the first

  time. If virtue, according to the Aristotelian definition, is “that which makes its

  possessor good, and his act good likewise [ virtus est quae bonum facit habentem et

  opus eius bonum reddit],” then every good action will necessarily belong to virtue.

  And since by all appearances, rendering someone his due ( reddere debitum alicui)

  is a good, religion, which consists in rendering to God the honor that is owed to

  him ( reddere honorem debitum Deo), is a virtue par excellence.

  To the objection according to which virtue presupposes a free will and not an

  obligation like that which defines the service that the human being owes to God,

  Aquinas responds that “even a slave can voluntarily do his duty by his master,

  and so he makes a virtue of necessity [ et sic facit de necessitate virtutem]. . . . In a similar manner, to render due service [ debitam servitutem] to God may be an act

  of virtue.” Further, “insofar as its actions are directly and immediately ordered to

  the honor of God, religion excels among the moral virtues [ praeminet inter alias

  virtutes morales]” (ibid., art. 6).

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  Let us reflect on the striking practical paradigm that is in question here,

  which seems to constitute in some way the model of the Kantian and pre-

  Kantian “duty of virtue” ( Tugendpflicht). In the concept of a virtue whose sole

  object is a debitum, of a being that coincides totally with a having to be, virtue and officium coincide without remainder. The “duty to be” is, therefore, the

  apparatus that permits the theologians to resolve the circularity between being

  and acting in which the doctrine of the virtues remained caught. The act carried

  out thanks to the operative inclination of virtuous habit is, in reality and to the

  same extent, the execution of a duty. Literally making “a virtue of necessity,” the

  religious person is at once inclined to duty and obligated to virtue.

  9. A gauge of the process that brings the liturgical tradition and the ethical

  tradition to coincide is the evolution of the concept of “devotion.” Theologians

  never lost awareness of the pagan origin of devotio, with which the commander

  consecrated his own life to the infernal gods to obtain victory in a battle. Aquinas

  still knows perfectly well that olim, apud gentiles, devoti dicebantur qui se ipsos

  idolis devovebant in mortem pro sui salute exercitus (in olden times among the

  heathens a devotee was one who vowed to his idols to suffer death for the safety

  of his army) ( Summa theologica IIaIIae, q. 82, art. 1) and that therefore “those

  persons are said to be ‘devout’ who, in a way, devote themselves to God, so as

  to subject themselves wholly to Him.” And moreover, already with Tertullian

  and Lactantius, while the term votum maintains its originary technical sense,

  the meaning of the term devotio is progressively transformed to designate both

  the cultic activity of the faithful and the interior attitude with which this is car-

  ried out. Students of Casel’s school, who have analyzed the use of the term in the

  earliest sacramentaries, speak in this connection of two meanings of the term,

  one moral and one liturgical (thus in Leo the Great devotio means at times sim-

  ply the celebration of the Eucharist; cf.
Daniels, 47). In reality one must speak

  not of two meanings but two aspects of one meaning, one practical and exterior

  and one psychological and interior. Outside of liturgical texts in the strict sense,

  in fact, and particularly in the monastic sphere, the term more and more often

  indicates the unconditional interior dedication that accompanies the carrying

  out of the exterior acts of the religious life. In this sense devotion is assimilated

  to a virtue. In Cassian’s Cenobitic Institutions devotion is not only presented as the willing abnegation with which the monastic offices are carried out ( quae

  explere tanta devotione et humilitate; Cassian, 146), but as such it is classified among the virtues, alongside faith and justice (ibid., 438: tantae iustitiae, tantae

  virtutes, tanta fides atque devotio).

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  It is therefore not surprising that in Aquinas the discussion of devotion im-

  mediately follows that of religio. It is part of the interior acts of religion and designates in this sense the prompta voluntas, the willing impulse and prompt-ness in carrying out the acts of divine worship: “It belongs to the same virtue, to

  will to do something, and to have the will ready to do it. . . . Now it is evident

  that to do what pertains to the worship or service of God belongs properly to

  religion. . . . Wherefore it belongs to that virtue to have the will ready to do

  such things, and this is to be devout [ quod est esse devotum]” ( Summa theologica IIaIIae, q. 82, art. 2). As in the religio of which it forms a part, in devotion officium becomes immediately virtue.

  10. The problem of religio-virtue, to which Aquinas dedicates only one ques-

  tion in the Summa, assumes in Suárez the dimensions of an entire treatise in three books. According to the characteristic strategy of the Spanish theologian, the De

  natura et essentia virtutis religionis is not only—as it in fact is—a detailed and faithful commentary on the text of the Summa, so much as its systematic and almost

  imperceptible dislocation into a new systematic-juridical context. The concept of

  debitum, which in Aquinas was hardly formulated, becomes first of all the formal

  definition of religion and the nucleus around which the entire treatise revolves.