it so to speak gropingly finds and invents their use. The body parts precede their use, and use precedes and creates their function.
It is what is produced in the very act of exercise as a delight internal to the act, as if by gesticulating again and again the hand found in the end its pleasure and its “use,” the eyes by looking again and again fell in love with vision, the legs and thighs by bending
rhythmically invented walking.
א The testimony of Cicero agrees with that of Diogenes Laertius: “[The Stoics]
maintain that immediately upon birth (for that is the proper point to start from) a living creature is rendered familiar and given in care to itself [ sibi conciliari et commendari, with which Cicero renders oikeiousthai ] in order to preserve itself and to feel affection for its own constitution [ status, which translates systasis] and for those things which tend to preserve that constitution and is rendered foreign [ alienari, corresponding to allotriosai ]
to its own death and that which appears to threaten it” (Cicero 2, III, 16). The theme
of self-consciousness appears immediately afterward: “it would not be possible that they
should feel desire at all unless they possessed self-sensation and loved themselves” ( nisi sensum haberent sui eoque se diligerent).
5.2. We possess a brief treatise whose theme is precisely the relation between
familiarity, sensation, and use of self: Seneca’s Letter 121 to Lucilius. The ques-
tion to which the letter intends to respond is “whether all living beings have
sensation of their constitution” ( an esset omnibus animalibus constitutionis suae
1076
HOMO SACER IV, 2
sensus). Seneca’s response refers to the innate capacity that each living being has of “use-of-oneself ”:
That this is the case is proved particularly by their moving their members with
fitness and nimbleness, as though they were trained for the purpose. There is none
that does not show agility with respect to his own members. The skilled workman
handles his tools with an ease born of experience; the pilot knows how to steer his
ship skillfully; the painter can quickly lay on the colors which he has prepared in
great variety for the purpose of rendering the likeness, and passes with ready eye
and hand from palette to canvas. In the same way the animal is agile in all that
pertains to the use of its body [ sic animale in omnem usum sui mobilest]. We are
apt to wonder at skilled dancers because their gestures are perfectly adapted to
the meaning of the piece and its accompanying emotions, and their movements
match the speed of the dialogue. But that which art gives to the craftsman, is given
to the animal by nature. No animal handles its members with difficulty, no ani-
mal is at a loss how to use itself [ in usu sui haesitat]. (Seneca, vol. 3, pp. 399–401) To the objection that what drives the animal to move is fear of pain, Seneca
responds that animals incline toward their natural movement despite the im-
pediment of pain:
Thus the child who is trying to stand and is becoming used to carrying his
own weight, on beginning to test his strength, falls and rises again and again
with tears until through painful effort he has trained himself to the demands of
nature. . . . The tortoise on his back feels no suffering; but he is restless because
he misses his natural condition [ naturalis status], and does not cease to shake
himself about until he stands once more upon his feet. So all living things have
a sensation of their own constitution [ constitutionis suae sensus], and for that
reason can manage their limbs as readily as they do [ membrorum tam expedita
tractatio]; nor have we any better proof that they come into being equipped with
this knowledge [ notitia] than the fact that no animal is clumsy in use-of-itself
[ nullum animal ad usum sui rude est]. (Ibid., p. 401)
After having thus confirmed the constitutive connection between use of self
and self-consciousness, usus sui and constitutionis suae sensus, Seneca tackles the closely intertwined theme of oikeiosis (which, following Cicero’s example, he
renders with conciliatio and conciliari):
“You maintain, do you,” says the objector, “that every living thing is at the start
familiarized with its constitution [ constitutioni suae conciliari ], and that the human constitution is a reasoning one, and hence the human being is familiarized
with itself not as animal, but as rational. For the human being loves himself in
respect of that wherein he is human. How, then, can a child, not yet having
THE USE OF BODIES
1077
reason, be familiarized with its rational constitution?” But each age has its own
constitution, different in the case of the child, the body, and the old man. The
child is toothless, and he is familiarized with this constitution. Then his teeth
grow, and he is familiarized with that constitution. Vegetation also, which will
develop into grain and fruits, has a special constitution when young and scarcely
peeping over the tops of the furrows, another when it is strengthened and stands
upon a stalk which is soft but strong enough to bear its weight, and still another
when the color changes to yellow, prophesies threshing time, and hardens in the
ear—no matter what may be the constitution into which the plant comes, it keeps
it, and conforms to it. The periods of infancy, boyhood, youth, and old age, are
different; but I, who have been infant, boy, and youth, am still the same. Thus,
although each has at different times a different constitution, the familiarization
with its own constitution is always the same [ conciliatio constitutioni suae eadem
est]. For nature does not render dear to me [ commendat, the other verb with which Cicero translated oikeiosai ] boyhood or youth or old age, but myself.
Therefore, the child is familiarized with its present constitution, not with that
which will be his in youth. For even if there is in store for him any higher phase
into which he must be changed, the state in which he is born is also according
to nature. It is with itself that the animal is first of all familiarized [ primum sibi ipsum conciliatur animal ], for there must be a pattern to which all other things
may be referred. I seek pleasure: for whom? For myself. I am therefore taking
care of myself [ mei curam ago]. I shrink from pain; on behalf of whom? Myself.
Therefore, I am taking care of myself. Since I do everything for care of myself,
therefore care of myself is anterior to all [ ante omnia est mei cura]. This quality inheres in all living beings and is not added to them at a second time, but is
innate. (Ibid., pp. 405–407)
Let us reflect on the extraordinary intertwining of familiarity and selfhood, of
consciousness and use-of-oneself that Seneca, though of course not without
some contradictions, develops in these very dense pages. Oikeiosis or conciliatio does not have as its ultimate object the constitution of the individual, which can
change over time, but, by means of it, its very self ( non enim puerum mihi aut
iuvenem aut senem, sed me natura commendat). This self—despite the fact that
the Stoics seem at times to preconstitute it in a nature or an innate knowledge—
is therefore not something substantial or a preestablished end but coincides en-
tirely with the use that the living being makes of it ( usus sui—which Seneca also
declines as care-of-oneself, cura mei).
If
one accepts this relational and non-substantial interpretation of the Stoic
self, then—whether it is a matter of self-sensation, of sibi conciliatio, or of use-of-oneself—the self coincides each time with the relation itself and not with a
predetermined telos. And if use, in the sense that we have seen, means being
1078
HOMO SACER IV, 2
affected, constituting-oneself insofar as one is in relation with something, then
use-of-oneself coincides with oikeiosis, insofar as this term names the very mode
of being of the living being. The living being uses-itself, in the sense that in its
life and in its entering into relationship with what is other than the self, it has to
do each time with its very self, feels the self and familiarizes itself with itself. The self is nothing other than use-of-oneself.
א In the De anima libri mantissa, Alexander of Aphrodisias refers to the Stoic doctrine of oikeiosis in these terms: “The Stoics . . . affirm that the animal is for itself the first familiar thing [ to proton oikeion einai to zoon hautoi] and that each animal—and also the human being—upon being born is familiarized with itself [ pros hauto oikeiousthai]”
(Alexander, p. 150/151); a similar doctrine is attributed in almost the same terms to Aristotle (“Some say that, according to Aristotle, we ourselves are the first thing familiar to ourselves”— einai proton oikeion emin emas autous; p. 150/152).
It is significant that Alexander resolutely identifies familiarity and seity. Familiarity
and relation with oneself are the same thing.
א The familiarity and self-sensation of which the Stoics speak do not entail a rational
consciousness but seem to be obscurely immanent to the very use-of-oneself. The living
being, Seneca writes in the above-cited letter, “does not know what a constitution is,
but knows its own constitution, does not know what a living creature is, but feels that
it is a living being. . . . Everyone of us understands that there is something that stirs his impulses, but he does not know what it is and where it comes from” ( quid sit constitutio non novit, constitutionem suam novit . . . quid sit animal nescit, animal esse se sentitconatum sibi esse scit, quid sit aut unde sit nescit; Seneca, vol. 3, p. 403). The self becomes aware of itself by means of the articulation of a zone of non-awareness.
5.3. It is perhaps in a passage from the Enneads (VI, 8, 10) that the speci-
ficity of use-of-oneself finds, so to speak, its ontological formulation. Seeking
a provisional expression for the mode of being of the One, here Plotinus, after
having denied that it could accidentally be what it is, definitively opposes use to
substance, chresthai to ousia:
Well then, suppose he did not come to be, but is as he is and is not of his own
substance. And if he is not master of his substance [ ouk on tes autou ousias kyrios], but is who he is, not hypostatizing himself but using-himself as what he is [ ouk
hypostesas heaouton, chromenos de heautoi hoios estin], then he is what he is of
necessity, and could not be otherwise.
What is decisive for us in this passage is not the strategy of Plotinus, who is
looking to exclude from the One both accidentality and necessity, so much as
the striking opposition that he establishes between use and hypostasis. Dörrie
THE USE OF BODIES
1079
has shown that beginning with Neoplatonism the term hypostais acquires the
meaning of “realization”: hyphistamai thus means “to be realized in an existence”
(Dörrie, p. 45). Using-oneself means not pre-supposing oneself, not appropriating
being to oneself in order to subjectivate oneself in a separate substance. The self
of which use makes use is expressed, for this reason, only by the anaphora hoios,
“some such,” which always recovers being from its hypostatization into a subject.
And precisely because it maintains itself in use-of-itself, the One is abstracted not
only from the categories of modality (it is neither contingent nor necessary: “Nei-
ther his being such nor any way of being happen to him by accident: he is such
and not otherwise. . . . Now he is not as he is because he cannot be otherwise,
but because being what he is is best”; Plotinus, VI, 8, 9–10), but also from those
of being and its fundamental divisions (“beyond being means . . . that he is not a
slave to being or to himself”; VI, 8, 19).
Let us attempt to develop the idea of a non-hypostatic, non-substantializing
use-of-oneself, which Plotinus seems to let to the side immediately after having
formulated it. Use-of-oneself, in this sense, precedes being (or is beyond it and,
therefore, also beyond the division between essence and existence), is—as Plotinus
writes a little after of the One with a willfully paradoxical expression—“a primary
energeia without being,” in which the self itself takes the place of hypostasis (“it itself is, as it were, its hypostasis,” autò touto ton hoion hypostasin; VI, 8, 20). Or—
one can also say, reversing the argument— being, in its originary form, is not sub-
stance ( ousia ), but use-of-oneself, is not realized in a hypostasis, but dwells in use. And
“to use” is, in this sense, the archimodal verb, which defines being before or, in any
case, outside its articulation in the ontological difference existence/essence and in
the modalities: possibility, impossibility, contingency, necessity. It is necessary that
the self first be constituted in use outside any substantiality in order that some-
thing like a subject—a hypostasis—can say: I am, I can, I cannot, I must . . . .
5.4. It is from this perspective that we can read the messianic theory of use
that Paul elaborates in the First Letter to the Corinthians. “Were you called in
the condition of a slave?” he writes. “Do not be concerned about it. Even if
you can gain your freedom, rather make use” ( mallon chresai—that is, of your
condition as a slave; 1 Corinthians 7:21). That is to say, the factical and juridi-
co-political conditions in which each one finds himself must be neither hypos-
tatized nor simply changed. The messianic call does not confer a new substantial
identity but consists first of all in the capacity to “use” the factical condition in
which each one finds himself. And the way this new capacity of use must be
understood is stated a little further down: “I mean, brothers and sisters, time has
1080
HOMO SACER IV, 2
grown short; what remains is so that those who have wives may be as not [ hos
me] having, and those who mourn as not mourning, and those who rejoice as
not rejoicing, and those who buy as not possessing, and those who use the world
as not abusing. For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to
be without care” (7:29–32). The Pauline “as not,” by putting each factical con-
dition in tension with itself, revokes and deactivates it without altering its form
(weeping as not weeping, having a wife as not having a wife, slaves as not slaves).
That is to say, the messianic calling consists in the deactivation and disappropri-
ation of the factical condition, which is therefore opened to a new possible use.
The “new creature” is only the capacity to render the old inoperative and use it in
a new way: “if one is in the messiah, a new creature [ kaine ktisis]: the old things have passed away, behold they have become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
From this persp
ective, we can better understand the sense of the antitheses
of verses 30–31: “those who buy as not possessing, and those who use the world
as not abusing.” What is in question is an explicit reference to the definition of
ownership according to Roman law as ius utendi et abutendi. That is to say, Paul
counterposes usus to dominium: to dwell in the call in the form of the “as not”
signifies never making of the world an object of ownership but only of use.
6
Habitual Use
6.1. The tradition of Aristotelianism that culminates in Scholasticism
understands use as synonymous with energeia and therefore seeks
to keep it separate from potential and habit. “Use,” Aquinas writes, “denotes
the being-in-act of some habit or other [ usus significat actum cuiuslibet habitus].
The act of any habit and the use of potential belong to the one (or the thing)
to which the act belongs. Hence the term ‘use’ means the act and in no way the
potential or the habit” (Aquinas 1, q. 17, a. 1). Against this tradition, it is neces-
sary to think being-in-use as distinct from being-in-act and, at the same time, to
restore it to the dimension of habit, but of a habit that, insofar as it happens as
habitual use and is therefore always already in use, does not presuppose a poten-
tial that must at a certain point pass into the act or be put into work.
Galen had to think a dimension of this kind when, in his De usu partium, he
decisively opposes use to energeia, just as a state or a habit is opposed to a movement and an operation: “Now the use of a part differs from its energeia, from
its being-in-act, because energeia is an active motion ( kinesis drastike), and use is what is commonly called euchrestia” (Galen 1, p. 437/724). Euchrestia means the adequacy of a part to develop a certain function, good functionality, which
is to say, not an operation and passage from potential to act but something like
a habitual condition. It is in this sense that we intend to think here a “habitual
use,” a chresis-chreia, a being-always-already-in-use of habit and potential: that is, a potential that is never separate from act, which never needs to be put to
work, because it is always already in use, is always already euchrestia.
The Omnibus Homo Sacer Page 166