The Omnibus Homo Sacer

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by Giorgio Agamben


  and almost summarizes the first division of the work and where what is in

  question is an analogous—and equally aporetic—primacy of care over use.

  Here care is not understood simply as preoccupation ( Besorgnis, as opposed to

  carelessness, Sorglosigkeit; Heidegger 1, p. 192/237) but in an ontological sense

  as the fundamental structure of Dasein, as “the originary totality of Dasein’s

  structural whole” ( die ursprüngliche Ganzheit des Strukturganzen des Daseins;

  ibid., p. 180/225). The “primacy” ( Vorrang) that belongs to care as “originary

  totality” implies that it comes before “every factical ‘attitude’ [ Verhaltung] and

  ‘situation’ [ Lage] of Dasein” (p. 193/238) and that it is “ontologically ‘earlier’

  [ früher]” than phenomena like “willing and wishing or urge and addiction”

  (p. 194/238).

  However, if we seek to understand how this ontological priority of care is

  articulated, we realize that it is neither chronological nor genetic but on the

  contrary has the striking form of a finding oneself always already in something

  else. The phrase that we just cited in an incomplete form reads in its entirety:

  “Care, as a primordial structural totality, lies ‘before’ every factical ‘attitude’ and

  ‘situation’ of Dasein, and it does so existentially a priori [ existential-apriorisch]”

  (p. 193/238). The existential a priori of care, like every a priori, always already inheres in something other than care itself. This character of “being-in” is, however, implied in the definition of the structure of care that immediately precedes

  it: “the Being of Dasein means ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the-world) as

  Being-alongside” ( Sich-vorweg-schon-Sein-in (der Welt) als Sein-bei; p. 192/236).

  Dasein, which has the structure of care, finds itself always already factically

  thrown into the world and inserted into that series of references and relations

  that according to Heidegger define the “worldhood of the world.” And im-

  mediately afterward, he specifies what the “where” of this being-alongside is:

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  “Ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-a-world essentially includes one’s falling and

  one’s Being-alongside those things ready-to-hand within-the-world with which

  one concerns oneself” ( besorgten innerweltlichen Zuhanden; p. 192/237).

  Heidegger dedicates paragraphs 15 and 22 of Being and Time in particular

  to the definition of “handiness,” being-ready-to-hand ( Zuhandenheit); but the

  entire analysis of being-in, starting from paragraph 12 up to the end of the third

  chapter of the book, attempts to define the “familiarity that uses and handles”

  ( der gebrauchende-hantierende Umgang) that constitutes the originary relation of

  Dasein to its world.

  4.2. In his book entitled Umgang mit Göttlichem, Kerényi dwelled on the

  untranslatability of the German term Umgang, with which he expresses the

  originary relationship of the human being with the divine. The English word

  “intercourse” seems to him to be insufficient, because “it is limited to the total

  exchangeability of subject and object, to a running back and forth of the event”

  between the two terms of the relationship; in French and Italian one would have

  to choose between commerce and commercio, on the one hand, and familiarité and dimestichezza, on the other, while the German term unites both meanings in

  itself. The peculiarity of the term Umgang is that it entails both exchangeability between subject and object (“the object of familiarity must be able to change

  itself at any moment into the subject of that same familiarity; and we, who cul-

  tivate familiarity with it, must be able to become its object”; Kerényi, p. 5) and

  immediacy (“the relationship between subject and object that stands at the basis

  of familiarity excludes every mediation on the part of a third”; p. 8).

  It is in this semantic perspective that one must situate the “familiarity that

  uses and handles” in Being and Time. Like Kerényi’s Umgang, it is immediate, because nothing separates it from the world, and at the same time it is a place

  of indetermination between subject and object, because Dasein, which is al-

  ways ahead of itself, finds itself always already in the power of the things of

  which it takes care. Analogous considerations could be made for the other two

  terms by means of which Heidegger characterizes the immediate and originary

  relation of being-in between Dasein and the world: “handiness” and relevance

  ( das Bewandtnis, the being satisfactory or sufficient of something with respect to something else). In every case, it is a matter of something so immediate and constitutive for Dasein that this latter cannot at all be conceived as a subject “which

  sometimes has the inclination to take up a ‘relation’ with the world” (Heideg-

  ger 1, p. 57/84); familiarity, handiness, and relevance name the very structure of

  Dasein in its originary relation to the world.

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  4.3. That this relation has to do with the sphere of use, that what is in ques-

  tion in it is something like a “use of the world” is implied in the fact that the par-

  adigm of handiness is equipment ( das Zeug, something like Aristotle’s organon or ktema), exemplified par excellence in the hammer:

  Straightforward familiarity with equipment can genuinely show itself only in

  dealings cut to its own measure (hammering with a hammer, for example); but

  in such dealings an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occur-

  ring thing, nor is the equipment-structure known as such even in the using

  [ das Gebrauchen]. The hammering does not simply have knowledge about the

  hammer’s character as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in

  a way that could not possibly be more suitable. In this familiarity that makes

  use [ gebrauchenden Umgang], our concern [ das Besorgen] subordinates itself to the end-oriented characteristic [ Um-zu, “in-order-to”] which is constitutive

  for the equipment we are employing at the time; the less we just stare at the

  hammer-thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it [ gebraucht], the more

  originary does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it en-

  countered as that which it is—as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers

  the specific “manipulability” [ Handlichkeit] of the hammer. The mode of Being

  which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we

  call “handiness” [ Zuhandenheit]. (Heidegger 1, p. 69/98)

  This originary and immediate relation with the world—which Heidegger, to

  emphasize its inescapable character, also calls “facticity” ( Faktizität)—is so in-

  volved and absolute that, to express it, it is necessary to make recourse to the

  same term that, in juridical language, designates the state of arrest: “the concept

  of ‘facticity’ implies that an entity ‘within-the-world’ has Being-in-the-world in

  such a way that it can understand itself as captured [ verhaftet] in its ‘destiny’ with the Being of those entities which it encounters within its own world” (p. 56/82).

  And it is due to this unheard-of involvement of Dasein that Heidegger can speak

  of an originary “intimacy” ( Vertrautheit, “confident familiarity”) between Dasein
<
br />   and the world: “Any concern [ das Besorgen] is always already as it is, because of

  some intimacy with the world. In this intimacy Dasein can lose itself in what it

  encounters in the world and be fascinated [ benommen] by it” (p. 76/107).

  In familiarity with the world we again find the plurality of senses and forms,

  of “ways of being-in” ( Weisen des In-Seins), that we had seen to define the poly-

  semy of the Greek chresis: “having to do with something [ zutunhaben mit etwas], producing [ herstellen] something, attending to something and looking after it,

  making use of [ verwenden] something, giving something up and letting it go,

  undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing,

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  determining . . .” (p. 56/83). And all these modalities of being-in are included

  in that “familiarity with the world and with entities within-the-world” that

  Heidegger expressly defines as “those entities which we encounter first of all”

  ( nächstebegegnenden Seienden; p. 66/95). These first and immediate entities are

  pre-thematic, because they “are not objects for knowing the world theoretically,

  they are rather what gets used [ das Gebrauchte], what gets produced, and so forth.

  As entities so encountered, they become the preliminary theme for the purview

  of a ‘knowing’ which, as phenomenological, looks primarily toward Being, and

  which, in thus taking Being as its theme, takes these entities as its accompanying

  theme” (p. 67/95). And Dasein has no need to transpose itself ( sich versetzen) into this familiarity: it “is always already in this mode of Being: when I open the door, for instance, I use the latch” (p. 67/96). The use of the world is, once again, the

  first and immediate relationship ( die nächste Art des Umganges; ibid.) of Dasein.

  א The relation between use and care can be compared with that between use value

  and exchange value, which Marx deduces from the economists. The privilege that Marx

  seems to grant to use value is founded on the fact that, for him, the process of production is in itself oriented to use value and not to exchange value, and only the surplus of use

  values over demand allows them to be transformed into means of exchange and com-

  modities. However, Marx did not clearly show what one is to understand by a surplus

  of use values and seems, on the other hand, to conceive use value only as utilizability of an object. Now it is obvious that at the moment when an object is brought to market to

  sell it one cannot use it, which implies that use value in some way constitutively exceeds effective utilization. Exchange value is founded on a possibility or surplus contained in

  use value itself, which can be suspended and maintained in the potential state, just as,

  according to Heidegger, the suspension of handiness allows care to appear. From the

  perspective that interests us, it will be a question of thinking a surplus—or an alterity—of use with respect to utilizability that is intrinsic to use itself, independently of its surplus with respect to demand.

  4.4. It is over this “familiarity that uses and handles” that care must affirm its

  primacy. It is a matter, on the one hand, even before confronting it thematically

  in the analysis of paragraphs 39–43, of presupposing and inscribing care into the

  very structure of being-in that defines the originary relation of Dasein with its

  world. In paragraph 12, at a point where he is characterizing the essential spatial-

  ity of Dasein and the ways of its being-in-the-world, Heidegger anticipates with

  these words the theme of care:

  All these ways of Being-in have concern [ Besorgen] as their mode of Being—a

  mode of Being which we have yet to characterize in detail. . . . This term has

  been chosen not because Dasein happens to be proximally and to a large extent

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  “practical” and economic, but because the Being of Dasein itself must [ soll] be

  made visible as care. This term must be understood [ istzu fassen] as an ontological structural concept. (p. 57/83–84)

  Even though neither handiness nor relevance nor any of the other characteristics

  that define familiarity with the world seem to imply anything like a “taking care”

  (indeed, in their immediacy and their “nearness” they would seem to presuppose

  the contrary; cf. §22), here care is inserted as a necessity that does not need to be

  argued for and whose explanation is postponed to a later time.

  It is another apparatus, however, that proves to be decisive in the strategy di-

  rected toward establishing the primacy of care. I am speaking of anxiety. Already

  in paragraph 16, familiarity had displayed points of fracture: a tool can be dam-

  aged and unusable and, precisely for this reason, can surprise us; it can be miss-

  ing and, precisely for this reason, become intrusive; finally, it can be out of place

  or in the way, almost as though it was rebelling against every possibility of use.

  In all these cases, familiarity gives way to a simple availability ( Vorhandenheit) but does not for this reason disappear. Since it appears to be a matter of accessory or subsequent phenomena, which do not call into question the primary

  characteristic of handiness, Heidegger can write that “handiness does not vanish

  simply, but takes its farewell, as it were, in the conspicuousness of the unusable.

  Handiness still shows itself, and it is precisely here that the worldly character of

  the handy shows itself too” (p. 74/104).

  In anxiety, by contrast, the first and immediate relationship with the world

  proper to familiarity is called radically into question. “Here the totality of relevance

  of the handy and the available discovered within-the-world, is, as such, of no con-

  sequence; it collapses into itself; the world has the character of completely lacking

  significance” (p. 186/231). It is not simply a matter, as in the preceding cases, of an

  occasional unutilizability. The specific power of anxiety is rather that of annihilat-

  ing handiness, of producing a “nothing of handiness” ( Nichts von Zuhandenheit;

  p. 187/232). In annihilating handiness, anxiety does not withdraw from the world

  but unveils a relation with the world more originary than any familiarity:

  That in the face of which anxiety is anxious is nothing handy within-the-

  world. . . . The “nothing” of handiness is grounded in the most primordial

  “something”—in the world. . . . Being-in-the-world itself is that in the face of which anxiety is anxious. Being-anxious discloses, originarily and directly, the world as world. (p. 187/231–232)

  It is with this neutralization of handiness that, with a radical subversion of

  the rank (up until then primary) of the “familiarity that uses and handles,” he

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  can propose the striking thesis according to which intimacy with the world

  “is a mode of Dasein’s uncanniness [ Unheimlichkeit], not the reverse. From an

  existential-ontological point of view, the ‘not-at-home’ [ das Un-zu-hause ] must be conceived as the more primordial phenomenon” (p. 189/234).

  And it is only after the apparent primacy of familiarity has been swept aside

  thanks to anxiety that care can appear, in the paragraph immediately following,

  as the original structure of Dasein. That is to say, the primacy of care has been

  rendered possible only by means of an operatio
n of annulling and neutralizing

  familiarity. The originary place of care is situated in the non-place of handiness,

  its primacy in making the primacy of use disappear.

  א To the primacy of care over use there corresponds, in the second division of the

  book, the primacy of temporality over spatiality. In paragraphs 22–24 of Being and Time, the sphere of the “familiarity that uses and handles” defined the “spatiality” of Dasein, its constitutive character as “being-in.” The concepts Heidegger uses here are all of a spatial order: “de-removal” ( die Ent-fernung), “proximity” ( dis Nähe), “region” ( die Gegend ),

  “making room” ( Einräumen). And spatiality is not something in which Dasein finds

  itself or that at a certain point happens to it: “Dasein is originarily spatial,” and “in every encounter with the handy” of which it takes care “the encounter with space as region” is

  already inherent (p. 111/145).

  Starting from paragraph 65, by contrast, not only is it temporality and not spatiality

  that constitutes the ontological meaning of care, but the very structure of this latter

  (being-already-ahead-of-oneself in a world as being-alongside the beings that one en-

  counters in the world) acquires its proper sense from the three “ecstasies” of temporality: future, past, and present. It is not an accident that while “being-already” and “being-ahead-of-oneself” refer immediately to the past and the future, Heidegger observes that

  “we lack such an indication” (p. 328/376) proper to that third constitutive moment of

  care—the being-alongside that defines the sphere of handiness. The attempt to return

  being-alongside as well to temporality in the form of a “making-present” ( Gegenwärtigen, p. 328/376) appears necessarily forced since in paragraphs 22–23, being-alongside defines

  Dasein’s spatiality, a spatial nearness ( Nähe) and not a temporal present. It is for this reason that in paragraphs 69 and 70, Heidegger persistently seeks to lead spatiality back

  to temporality (“Only on the basis of its ecstatico-horizonal temporality is it possible

  for Dasein to break into space”; p. 369/421). But it is significant that many years later, in the seminar on Time and Being, we read the laconic admission that “the attempt in Being and Time, §70, to derive human spatiality from temporality is untenable” (Heidegger 2, p. 24/23).

 

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