The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

aware of it, nor even less to resolve it—in Scotus’s formal distinction. What

  he calls formal being or formalitas—distinguishing it from both real being and

  mental being—is, in truth, being-said. Such a being-said is not to be in any

  way conceived as a being in the mind, dependent on the knowing relation of a

  subject: it is instead the quality or character that the entity receives insofar as it

  is said, insofar as it has always already received a name and, as such, has always

  already been pre-supposed. Here the name is an ontological attribute of the

  thing and not an exterior label.

  In developing in a new direction the Augustinian thesis according to which

  the relation exists in itself independently of the relative, Scotus defines the being of

  the relation as a form and the ontological status of this form as an ens debilissimum.

  The relation is something existent, but it is among all beings the weakest, because

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  it consists solely in the mode of being of two entities (“relatio inter omnia entia

  est ens debilissimum, cum sit sola habitudo duorum”; Sup. Praed. , q. 25, 10; qtd.

  in Beckmann, p. 45). Precisely for this reason it is difficult to know (“et ita min-

  imum cognoscibile in se”; ibid.): if we seek to grasp it—if we seek to grasp the

  being-said—it slips away between our hands. The ens debilissimum is being-said,

  is the name.

  The error that Scotus repeats in Augustine’s trail is that of conceiving essence

  in itself as something that must be a presupposition to its being said relatively

  and that can, as such, be considered and enjoyed independently of the relative.

  In the case of God’s trinitarian essence, it is thus possible, according to Scotus,

  to desire and enjoy it without reference to one of the divine persons: “I affirm

  that it is possible for the human being in this world to enjoy the divine essence

  without enjoying the person [ frui essentia divina non fruendo persona] and the

  proof is that, according to Augustine, if the essence is said in a relative way, it is

  not an essence, because every essence that is said in a relative way is something

  excluding the relative” ( Ox. , 1, d. 1, p. 1, q 2., 31; qtd. in Beckmann, p. 205).

  This would mean—and the error is in this way immediately refuted—that it

  is possible to love God without loving Christ or—if we translate it into the terms

  that interest us here—that it is possible to love Emma’s identity with herself (her

  essence) without loving the singularity that is called Emma (her existence).

  The whole problem of the relation between essence and existence, between

  being and relative being appears in a new light if it is placed in the context of a

  modal ontology. Essence cannot be without the relative nor being without the en-

  tity, because the modal relation—granted that one can speak here of a relation—

  passes between the entity and its identity with itself, between the singularity that

  has the name Emma and her being-called Emma. Modal ontology has its place

  in the primordial fact—which Aristotle merely presupposed without thematizing

  it—that being is always already said: to on legetai . . . Emma is not the particular individuation of a universal human essence, but insofar as she is a mode, she is

  that being for whom it is a matter, in her existence, of her having a name, of her

  being in language.

  א It is from this perspective that it is necessary to consider Benjamin’s intuition that, in an aphorism of Short Shadow s, defines Platonic love as the love that “preserves and guards the name of the beloved” and for which “the existence of the loved one proceeds

  from her name like rays from a glowing nucleus” (Benjamin 2, p. 369/268). In this sense,

  love is a category of ontology: it is the care of that ens debilissimum that is the relation between a thing and its name, the assumption without reserve of the relation between

  the entity and its being in language.

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  3.19. Our goal here is not the interpretation of Spinoza or Leibniz’s thought

  but the elaboration of categories that escape from the aporias of the ontological

  apparatus. Alongside the immanent cause, another precious concept from this

  perspective is that of demand, which we have already encountered in Leibniz. A

  rethinking of the categories of modality is not possible without a definition of

  the concept of demand. Not only existence but also possibility and contingency

  are transformed and modified through demand. That is to say, a definition of de-

  mand implies as a preliminary task a redefinition of the fundamental ontological

  categories, above all those of modality.

  Leibniz thought demand as an attribute of possibility: omne possibile exigit

  existere (“everything possible demands to exist”; Leibniz 2, p. 176). What the possible demands is to become real, the potential—or essence—demands existence.

  For this reason Leibniz defines existence as a demand of essence: “Si existentia

  esset aliud quiddam quam essentiae exigentia, sequeretur ipsam habere quan-

  dam essentiam, seu aliquid novum superadditum rebus, de quo rursus quaeri

  potest, an haec essentia existat, et cur ista potius quam alia” (ibid.). Existence is

  not a quid, a something other with respect to essence or possibility; it is only a demand contained in essence. But how should we understand this demand? In

  a fragment from 1689, Leibniz calls this demand existiturientia (a term formed

  from the future infinitive of existere), and it is by means of it that he sees to

  render comprehensible the principle of reason. The reason why something exists

  rather than nothing “consists in the prevalence of reasons to exist [ ad existendum]

  over those not to exist, that is, if it is permissible to say it with one word, of the

  demand to exist of essence [ in existurientia essentiae]” (Leibniz 3, pp. 1634–1635).

  The ultimate root of this demand is God (“for the demand of essences to exist

  [ existuritionis essentiarum] it is necessary that there be a root a parte rei and this root can be nothing but the necessary entity, foundation [ fundus] of essences and

  source [ fons] of existences, namely God . . . if not in God and through God,

  essences could never find a way to existence [ ad existendum]”; ibid.).

  3.20. Demand is therefore a category of ontology. But this must entail a

  redefinition of the ontological categories that Leibniz refrained from under-

  taking. Thus, he attributes the demand to essence (or potential) and makes

  existence the object of the demand. That is to say, his thought still remains

  a tributary of the ontological apparatus, which divides essence and existence,

  potential and act in being, and sees in God their point of indifference, the

  “existificating” ( existificans) principle, in which essence is made always already existent. But what is a possibility that contains a demand? And how are we to

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  think existence, if it is nothing other than a demand? And what if demand is

  more original than the very distinction between essence and existence, potential

  and act? If being itself is to be thought starting from a demand, of which the

  categories of modality (possibility, contingency, necessity) are only the inade-

  quate specifications, what must be decisively ca
lled into question?

  3.21. According to Leibniz, the nature of demand is defined by the fact that it

  does not logically entail its object. That is to say, one says that a thing demands

  another, when if the first is, the other will also be, however, without the first

  logically implying it or containing it in its own concept and without it obliging

  the other to be. Demand is not a logical category. Thus, Leibniz can write in the

  correspondence with Des Bosses that “the substantial bond demands [ exigit] the

  monads, but does not essentially entail [ involvit] them, since it can exist without the monads and they can exist without it.” To demand ( exigere) is not to entail

  ( involvere). (In the same sense Benjamin can write that the life of Prince Myshkin demands to remain unforgettable even when no one remembers it.) But what does

  it mean to demand that something be, without it necessarily being? Hence the pe-

  culiar ontological status of demand: it is not of the order of essence (it is not a log-

  ical implication contained in the essence), but neither does it coincide with actual

  reality. In the onto-logical, it consists of the threshold—the hyphen—that unites

  and at the same time separates the ontic and the logical, existence and essence.

  Thus, demand is the most adequate category to think the ambiguity of logic

  and ontology that the Aristotelian apparatus has left as an inheritance to West-

  ern philosophy. It corresponds neither to language nor to the world, neither to

  thought nor to the real, but to their articulation. If ontology thinks being insofar

  as it is said, demand corresponds to the insofar that at once separates and unites the two terms.

  The problem, however, is precisely that of how one is to think this articula-

  tion. It cannot be something like a substantial connection. For this reason it is at

  the same time real and not factual, neither simply logical nor completely real. If

  language and world stand opposite one another without any articulation, what

  happens between them is a pure demand—namely, a pure sayability. Being is a

  pure demand held in tension between language and world. The thing demands its

  own sayability, and this sayability is the meaning of the word. But in reality there

  is only the sayability: the word and the thing are only its two fragments.

  3.22. An essence that becomes a demand is no longer a simple possibility or

  potential but something else. One could say that demand, in the sense that we

  have in mind, is a mode of potential. One would nevertheless therefore repeat

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  the error of the Scholastics, who sought to reconcile mode with a conceptuality

  that is, in the last analysis, alien to it. Not only are possibility and essence trans-

  formed by demand; act and essence as well, invested with demand, lose their

  fixity and, contracting themselves on potential, demand to be possible, demand

  their own potential. If existence becomes a demand for possibility, then possibility

  becomes a demand for existence. Leibniz’s posing of the problem of demand is

  here reversed: the possible does not demand to exist, but rather, it is the real

  that demands its own possibility. Being itself, declined in the middle voice, is a

  demand, which neutralizes and renders inoperative both essence and existence,

  both potential and act. These latter are only the figures that demand assumes if

  considered from the point of view of traditional ontology.

  3.23. The problem of the vinculum substantiale must at this point be com-

  pletely rethought. Being does not preexist the modes but constitutes itself in

  being modified, is nothing other than its modifications. One can then under-

  stand why Leibniz could write, in his still contradictory vocabulary, that the

  bond is something like an echo, “which once posited demands the monads.”

  This proposition becomes intelligible only if one restores to the concept of de-

  mand its full ontological meaning. If demand and not substance is the central

  concept of ontology, one can then say that being is a demand of the modes just

  as the modes are a demand of being, on condition that we specify that demand

  here is neither a logical entailment nor a moral imperative. And this is also the

  only sense of the doctrine of the transcendentals: the being that is always already

  its modifications; it demands to be unum, verum, bonum seu perfectum, demands

  truth, justice, and perfection in the same sense in which Benjamin affirmed that

  justice is not a virtue but a state of the world.

  3.24. It is here that the concept of conatus finds its proper place. When Spi-

  noza defines essence as conatus, as “the force by which it endeavors to persist in its own being” (Spinoza 2, III, prop. 7: Conatus, quo unaquaeque res in suo esse

  perseverare conatur, nihil est praeter ipsius rei actualis essentia), he thinks something like a demand (in the scholium it says: potentia sive conatus— conatus is potential insofar as it is, in truth, a demand). The oxymoron “actual essence”

  shows the inadequacy of the categories of traditional ontology with respect to

  what is to be thought here.

  The fact that the verb conor is in the middle voice shows once again its

  pertinence to the ontology that we are seeking to delineate here. If we propose

  to translate conor with “to demand” and conatus with “demand” (“The demand by means of which each thing demands to persevere in its being”), it is on the

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  condition of not forgetting the medial nature of the process that is here in ques-

  tion: the being that desires and demands, in demanding, modifies, desires, and

  constitutes itself. “To persevere in its being” means this and nothing else.

  א In Plotinus’s footsteps, in his treatise, Herrera identifies being ( ser) and desiring ( querer): “And as Plotinus learnedly proves, [the first Cause] is in itself no less what it wants than it wants what it is in itself” (Herrera, p. 264). On the other hand, to show

  how in the En-sof something like an impulse toward creation can be produced, he

  thinks this first movement as a delight, which he calls sha’ashu’a, “deleytable alteración”:

  “And this emergence from itself, which is infinite, toward another which is finite, as

  it should be, is the sha’ashu’a or virtual movement by which (although in itself and entirely the same as the Cause) it appears to differ from itself and in effect be directed and inclined toward another. . . .” (ibid., p. 294). Conatus is in its most intimate nature desire and pleasure.

  3.25. An adequate category for thinking conatus is that of ductus, which is defined as tenor sub aliqua figura servatus, “a tension preserved under a certain

  figure.” This concept, which in some sense recalls the Stoic notions of plege and tonos (Cleanthes had spoken of a “tonos in the substance of all things”; SVF, fr. 497), which designate the internal tension of being, found an early application in the vocabulary of graphology, in which it designates the tension that

  guides the hand’s gesture in the formation of letters.

  It is according to this graphological paradigm that we can represent to our-

  selves the relationship between the demand—or tension—of substance and its

  modes. The modes are the figures in which substance preserves its demand (its

  ductus). Just as, in a line of writing, the hand’s ductus passes continually from the common form of the letters to the particular tr
aits that identify their singular

  presence, without it being possible at any point to draw a real boundary between

  the two, so also, in a mode—for example, a certain human face—human na-

  ture crosses over into existence in a continuous way and precisely this incessant

  emergence constitutes its expressivity. Common nature and singularity, essence

  and existence are only the two appearances generated by the incessant ductus of

  substance. And singular existence—the mode—is neither a substance nor a pre-

  cise fact but an infinite series of modal oscillations, by means of which substance

  always constitutes and expresses itself.

  3.26. In the formula that expresses the theme of ontology: on he on, ens qua

  ens, “being as being,” thought has lingered on the first ens (existence, that something is) and on the second (essence, what something is) and has left unthought

  the middle term, the qua, the “as.” The proper place of mode is in this “as.” The

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  being that is here in question is neither the quod est nor the quid est, neither a

  “that it is” nor a “what” but an as. This originary “as” is the source of modifications (the Italian come, “as,” derives etymologically from quo-modo). Restoring being to its as means restoring it to its com-moditas, namely, to its just measure, to its rhythm and its ease ( commodus, which in Latin is both an adjective and a

  proper noun, has precisely these meanings, and commoditas membrorum desig-

  nates the harmonic proportion of the parts of the body). One of the fundamen-

  tal meanings of “mode” is in fact the musical one of rhythm, just modulation

  ( modificare means, in Latin, to modulate harmonically: it is in this sense that we have said that the “as” of being is the source of modifications).

  Benveniste has shown that “rhythm” ( rhythmos) is a technical term of pre-

  Socratic philosophy that designates form, not in its fixity (for this, Greek prefers

  to use the term schema) but in the moment in which it is assumed by what is

  moving, what is mobile and fluid (Benveniste, p. 33/286). Plato applies this term

  to the ordered movements of the body: “Order in movement is called ‘rhythm,’

  and order in the vocal sounds—the combination of high and low notes—is