The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  the life of the monks. What is in any case essential, however, is that in the text the exposition of the rule is inseparable from that of the life.

  1.4. Starting with Wittgenstein, contemporary thought and more recently

  philosophers of law have sought to define a peculiar type of norms, the norms

  called constitutive, which do not prescribe a certain act or regulate a preexisting

  state of things, but themselves bring into being the action or state of things. The

  examples Wittgenstein uses are chess pieces, which do not exist before the game,

  but are constituted by the rules of the game (“The pawn is the sum of the rules

  for its moves”; Wittgenstein 2, pp. 325–26/327). It is obvious that the execution

  946

  HOMO SACER IV, 1

  of a rule of this type, which does not limit itself to prescribing to an agent a cer-

  tain conduct but produces this conduct, becomes extremely problematic.

  Paraphrasing the scholastic saying forma dat esse rei (“form gives being to

  the thing”), one could state here that norma dat esse rei (“norm gives being to the thing”; Conte, p. 526). A form of life would thus be the collection of constitutive rules that define it. But can one say in this sense that the monk, like the

  pawn in chess, is defined by the sum of the prescriptions according to which he

  lives? Could one not rather say with greater truth exactly the opposite, that it

  is the monk’s form of life that creates his rules? Perhaps both theses are true, on

  the condition that we specify that rules and life enter here into a zone of indif-

  ference, in which—as there is no longer the very possibility of distinguishing

  them—they allow a third thing to appear, which the Franciscans, albeit without

  succeeding in defining it with precision, will call “use,” as we will see.

  In reality, as Wittgenstein seems to suggest, the very idea of a constitutive

  rule implies that the common representation according to which the problem of

  the rule would consist simply in the application of a general principle to an indi-

  vidual case—that is, according to the Kantian model of determinate judgment,

  in a merely logical operation—is neutralized. The cenobitic project, by shifting

  the ethical problem from the level of the relation between norm and action to

  that of form of life, seems to call into question the very dichotomy of rule and

  life, universal and particular, necessity and liberty, through which we are used to

  comprehending ethics.

  2

  Orality and Writing

  2.1. It is from this perspective that we will now seek to interrogate the

  nature of the rules starting from their textual structure, as it appears

  in the earliest rules and in particular the Rule of the Master, a text which has

  received special attention from scholars due to its influence on the Benedictine

  rule. It has been observed that in the earliest monastic literature, the often anon-

  ymous authors seem to more or less consciously introduce a complex relation-

  ship and almost a tension between orality and writing, in light of which one has

  been able to speak of a “fictitious orality” (Frank, p. 55). Already in the archetype

  of Basil, the introduction of the Regulae fusius tractatae opens by referring to

  a “gathering” ( synelēlythamen, “we gathered together”), whose participants, in-

  tending to “live according to piety” ( tou biou tou kat’ eusebeian), propose getting to know what can guide them toward salvation ( mathein ta ton pros sōtērian;

  Basil, Regulae fusius tractatae, preface). That it is a matter of a veritable staging is proven by the fact that the text proceeds to evoke an indeterminate but opportune place and time, in which it must be supposed that they pronounced

  (and later put in writing) the questions and answers that make up the rule (“the

  present is the most opportune time and this place provides quiet and complete

  freedom from external disturbances”; ibid.).

  The opening of the Rule of the Four Fathers refers in an analogous way to

  an encounter and conversation among the four protagonists in order to “de-

  termine the manner and the rule of the life of the brothers” ( Sedentibus nobis

  in unum—“While we were sitting together”— qualiter fratrum conversationem

  vel regulam vitae ordinare possimus; Vogüé 1, pp. 180/17). And in the second

  discourse, that of Macarius, the father refers explicitly to the fact that the rule

  was put into writing while the conversation was unfolding: quoniam fratrum

  insignia virtutum . . . superius conscripta praevenerunt (“since the marks of the

  brothers’ virtues . . . have already been written down”; ibid., pp. 180/19). With

  singular artifice and through an expert staging of orality, the text refers to its

  own writing.

  947

  948

  HOMO SACER IV, 1

  In the Second Rule of the Fathers, if the staging seems to be the same ( Residentibus nobis in unum . . . ), the tension between orality and writing changes, since it is now expressly a matter of conscribere vel ordinare regulam, quae in monasterio

  teneatur ad profectum fratrum, “putting in writing and setting in order a rule that might be kept in the monastery for the progress of the brothers” (pp. 274/33).

  Once the goal of the session is explicitly that of writing down the rule, the pos-

  sibility is opened of a semantic oscillation that allows us to read the term regula, not only in the sense of “way of life” (as it was in the incipit of the Rule of the

  Four Fathers), but also in that of a “written text.”

  In the Third Rule of the Fathers (which according to Vogüé is the work of a

  bishop), the passage from orality to writing has already taken place and it is thus

  a matter not so much of writing the rule but of reading it: “When we convened

  together with our brothers in the name of the Lord, it seemed good that at the

  very first the rule and institutes of the Fathers be read in order [ regula et instituta patrum per ordinem legerenter]” (pp. 532/53). The rule is already a written text that therefore can and must be read, above all to the convert who asks to enter into

  the monastery (“it seemed appropriate that when someone wants to be converted

  from the world to the monastery, the rule be read to him when he enters”; ibid.).

  With the Benedictine rule we arrive at the end of the tension between

  orality and writing that had animated the rules of the Fathers, from which it

  perhaps derives. The rule is already solely a text, which the last chapter desig-

  nates as regula descripta ( regulam hanc descripsimus . . . hanc minimam regulam descriptam . . . perfice; chap. 73; Pricoco, pp. 270–72). While the conscribere of the early rules evoked a text dictated from the living voice of the Fathers and

  extracted and transcribed from the monks’ very life, describere is the technical

  term for the scribe who copies from another text. According to a custom that, as

  we have seen, first becomes obligatory in the Carolingian era, the rule is always

  regula descripta, in which the tension between orality and writing as much as

  that between the subjective and objective meanings of the syntagma regula vitae

  is already stifled.

  2.2. What is the meaning of this dialectic that, at least up to St. Benedict,

  the text of the rules establishes between orality and writing? Why do the rules

  stage their writing as obstinately as their reading? It is not simply a matter of t
he

  rhetorical construction of a fictitious orality, nor only of showing (as is almost

  certainly the case), through the interplay between orality and writing, the rule

  in the act of being constructed as a text and acquiring its authority by passing

  from the rule-form of life to the rule-text. What is in question here seems to be

  THE HIGHEST POVERTY

  949

  the constitution of the special status of the text of the rule, which is not only a

  written text or simply an oral discourse and whose basis does not coincide with

  the transcription of a vital practice or, conversely, with the practical execution of

  a written rule. The rule, that is to say, stages something that is not exhausted in

  either of these dimensions, but finds its truth precisely and solely in the tension

  that it installs between them. Neither written word nor living voice, the rule

  constantly moves between these polarities, in search of an ideal of the perfect

  common life that is precisely meant to define.

  From this perspective, the Rule of the Master offers some exemplary cues.

  Already the prologue, pushing the paradigm of fictitious orality to the point

  of paroxysm, erases and renders almost indiscernible the boundaries between

  orality and writing. It opens with an apostrophe, whose structure is perhaps

  so grammatically complicated that the interpreters, while also pointing out its

  peculiarity, have preferred to ignore it:

  O homo, primo tibi qui legis, deinde et tibi qui me auscultas discentem, dimitte

  alia modo quae cogitas et me tibi loquentem et per os meum deum te conveni-

  entem cognosce [O man, (I say) first of all to you (the dative tibi seems to imply dico) who read (me), and then you who are listening to me as I speak, dismiss

  now other thoughts and realize that I am speaking to you and that through my

  words God is instructing you].” (Vogüé 2, 1, pp. 288/92)

  Who is speaking here? Whether it is a matter, as seems most likely, of the rule

  itself or, as Vogüé seems to think, of its author, in any case the relation between

  orality and writing here is truly inextricable. On the one hand, the primordial-

  ity of writing is beyond question from the moment the text speaks to a reader

  ( tibi qui legis) and in the following lines refers deictically to itself as a written document: “You, therefore, who hear me speaking, listen through what is written here [ per hanc scripturam] to what is being said to you not by my mouth

  but by God.” On the other hand, however, the written text, which is put in

  some way en abîme within itself, speaks and refers, curiously enough, not only

  to a reader but also to an auditor ( deinde et tibi qui me auscultas dicentem). And a little earlier, the one who in speaking had nevertheless presupposed a reader

  presents himself as the one who will read aloud “what is here written” ( hanc

  scripturam quam tibi lecturus sum; ibid., pp. 292/93, evidently referring to the

  text of the rule).

  If the identity of the apostrophizer, divided as it is between writing and speak-

  ing, is truly indiscernible, no less problematic is that of the one who is apostro-

  phized as homo. He too is split, in fact, into a reader and a listener, apparently

  950

  HOMO SACER IV, 1

  finding his unity only as an addressee of “this writing” and “this rule” ( haec regula; ibid.), which he must faithfully observe.

  2.3. There is, nonetheless, in the text of the rule, a passage that seems to

  contain the key to all these enigmas and that, in addition, permits us to define

  the proper basis and nature of the rule. I am referring to chapter 24, whose title

  reads De ebdomadario lectore ad mensas (The Weekly Reader in the Refectory).

  The rule says that in every season, in summer as in winter, “whether the meal

  is at the sixth or the ninth hour, each of the deans of all the deaneries will do

  the reading at table for a week at a time” from the text of the rule (ibid., 2, pp.

  122/177). As the text specifies further down, it is a matter of a lectio continua, that is of a reading that is taken up again every day from the point where it was

  interrupted: “Every day he [the reader] reads this rule [ regulam hanc], marking

  the place to which he reads day after day, so that it is read in daily sequence

  [ sequenter cottidie] yet in its entirety, and thus in successive weeks the reading of it can be finished and started over again” (pp. 126/178–79). The rule specifies

  the way in which the reader will assume his function (“this brother who is to

  read presents himself by saying aloud: ‘Please, my lords, pray for me because I

  am entering upon my week of reading at table’”; pp. 124/178), and how he must

  read, without hurrying ( non urguendo) and in such a way that the listeners can

  understand clearly what the rule commands them to do.

  One must thus imagine that there will necessarily be a moment when the

  reader, having reached chapter 24, will read the passage that enjoins him to

  read the rule every day. What will happen at that moment? In reading the other

  passages of the rule, the reader executes the precept of the reading, but does

  not actualize what the text enjoins him to do in that moment. In this case,

  however, the reading and putting into action of the rule coincide without re-

  mainder. By reading the rule that prescribes to him the reading of the rule, the

  reader performatively executes the rule ipso facto. His lectio realizes, that is to say, the exemplary instance of an enunciation of the rule that coincides with its

  execution, of an observance that is rendered indiscernible from the command

  that it obeys.

  The dialectic between orality and writing is perfected here: there is a written

  text, but in reality it only lives through the reading that is made of it. And the

  rule suggests as much further down, when it defines, in a significant interpola-

  tion, the daily reading of the rule as an in usu mittere ( nam cum cottidie in usu ipsa regula mittitur, ex notitia melius observatur, “even though the Rule itself is daily put into use, knowledge of it leads to better observance”; pp. 130/180). The

  THE HIGHEST POVERTY

  951

  rule presupposes a precedence of writing, but what is at stake is a writing that

  is inert in itself, which must be “put into use” by its reading. This is confirmed

  some pages later, where it recommends that the traveling monk do the reading

  and, if he cannot, have recourse to meditatio, to recitation from memory, “in

  order to give the rule its due each day” ( ut cottidie regulae reddat quod suum est; pp. 268/223). Lectio and meditatio belong constitutively to the rule and define its status.

  3

  The Rule as a Liturgical Text

  3.1. Lectio has been an essential part of the Christian liturgy since its

  origins. Today it is generally acknowledged that it derives from the

  practice of the (most likely sung) reading of the Torah ( qeri’at Torah) in the synagogue. Two of the earliest testimonies to this reading, whose origin the tradi-

  tion traces back to Moses (Deut. 31:10–11: “Every seventh year, in the scheduled

  year of remission, during the festival of booths, when all Israel comes to appear

  before the lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this

  law before all Israel in their hearing”), are in the New Testament. The first (Acts

  13:15) shows Paul attending th
e reading of the law ( anagnosis tou nomou) with his

  companions in the synagogue of Antioch, where he is later invited to comment

  on the passage read (“After the reading of the law and the prophets, the officials

  of the synagogue sent them a message, saying, ‘Brothers, if you have any word

  of exhortation for the people, give it’”). In the second (Luke 4:16–21), it is Jesus

  himself who is to perform the reading in the synagogue of Nazareth and com-

  ment on it:

  He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood

  up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled

  the scroll and found the place where it was written: “The Spirit of the Lord is

  upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has

  sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind,

  to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he

  rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all

  in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this

  scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

  These two testimonies show that the text of the Torah was read in the synagogue

  already at the time of Jesus, perhaps already divided (as we know from later

  sources) into parachot (pericopes); that beyond the Pentateuch, passages from the

  prophets (called haftarot) were also read; and that the reading was followed by a

  homiletical commentary ( derashah), of which Paul and Jesus offer us an example.

  952

  THE HIGHEST POVERTY

  953

  The reading of the Torah gradually assumes the form of a lectio continua,

  which in Palestine was articulated according to a triennial cycle that began the

  first or second Sabbath of the month of Nisan. In Babylon, the length was one

  year, with a beginning after the Feast of Tabernacles (Werner, p. 89). The read-

  ing of the prophets was not continual, however, but consisted each time of an

  isolated passage chosen to correspond to the passage from the Torah that was

  read that day.

  The Church followed the example of the synagogue by instituting readings