The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  tirely unresolved: “The question of what the human being is possesses now for

  the first time the openness of a path which nevertheless runs amid the uncovered

  and upon which the storm of Being is thus allowed to rage” (p. 300/237).

  5. The central problem of the Beiträge and, in a certain sense, of the whole

  of Heidegger’s thought is therefore precisely the one that every first-year philos-

  ophy student immediately sees and just as immediately lets drop: the relation

  between the living human being and Da-sein. If Dasein—as Heidegger never

  stops repeating—consists solely in being-the-there, in offering the clearing and

  opening for the truth of Being, where does the “there” come from and where

  is it situated, this “there” that Dasein is and has to be? Only a rereading of §28

  and §29 of Being and Time, devoted to the analysis of being-there as mood or

  state-of-mind, allows one to single out the starting point from which a response

  becomes possible.

  Mood or state-of-mind “reveals Dasein in its being consigned [ Überantwor-

  tetsein] to the ‘there’” (p. 134/173). That is to say, Dasein is “always already disclosed as that entity to which it is consigned in its Being; and in this way it has

  been consigned to the Being which, in existing, it has to be”; and yet precisely

  the “whence and whither” ( das Woher und das Wo) of this “there” remain obsti-

  nately in darkness ( im Dunkel; ibid.). It is this characteristic of Dasein, of being veiled in its whence and its where and, nevertheless and precisely for this reason,

  “disclosed all the more unveiledly,” that Heidegger calls the being-thrown of

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  Dasein in “its ‘there’” ( in sein Da; p. 135). A few lines later, the foreignness and obscurity of the “there” are affirmed even more forcefully: “mood or attunement

  brings Dasein before the ‘that-it-is’ of its ‘there,’ which as such stares it in the face

  with the inexorability of an enigma” (p. 136/175).

  And yet, in the same context, the “there” is defined, with respect to Dasein,

  as “its own,” and a little before, we read that “Dasein from the very beginning

  [ von Hause aus] brings its ‘there’ along with it” (p. 133/171). It is this original belonging, this character of “itsness” that must here be interrogated and called into

  question. Why is Dasein “consigned” to its “there” like an inexorable enigma,

  and why, in being its own “there,” is it always already disposed to a certain

  mood or attunement? Where does this character of veiling and foreignness of the

  “there” come from? Why does the “there” remain so impenetrable for Dasein?

  The only possible response is that the “there” is foreign, veiled, and emo-

  tionally disposed because it does not originarily belong to Dasein but to the

  human being, to the living being who offers to Dasein the place that this latter

  needs in order to find “its” “there.” The involvement of the human being and

  Dasein takes place in the “there”; the “there” is the place of an originary conflict,

  of an expropriation and an appropriation, in which the living human being is

  abolished and suspended so that Dasein may have a place. The “gigantomachy

  concerning Being” that Being and Time proposes to renew presupposes a prelim-

  inary gigantomachy over the “there,” which unfolds between the living human

  being and Dasein.

  The “there” of Dasein takes place in the non-place of the living human being.

  And nevertheless, this conflict—or this reciprocal being-opened—that in Being

  and Time is not thematized as such and in the Beiträge appears only as a demand for a “transformation of the human being into Dasein,” remains covered

  over and absorbed by the relation between Dasein and Being. In this way, the

  “there” is the object of a game of dialectical sleight of hand between Dasein and

  the human being, in which the “there,” which can only come from the human

  being, is made proper to Dasein as if it were always already “its own” and is then

  appropriated by Being as its own clearing.

  6. The presupposition of the living being as the anthropophoric element

  that functions, so to speak, as a substrate for the human being is a constant trait

  in modern philosophy. What is in question here is the problem—a strictly ar-

  cheological one—of all the definitions—like that of the human being as animal

  rationale—that consist in adding a qualificative determination to an element

  that functions as foundation. If the human being is truly such only when a

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  simply living being becomes rational, then one would have to presuppose an

  animal-human that is not yet truly human. In the same way, if the human being

  is truly such only when, in becoming Dasein, it is opened to Being, if the human

  being is essentially such only when “it is the clearing of Being,” this means that

  there is before or beneath it a non-human human being that can or must be

  transformed into Dasein.

  In the Letter on Humanism, Heidegger seems somehow aware of this di-

  lemma. Metaphysics, he writes, “thinks the human being on the basis of its

  animalitas and does not think in the direction of his humanitas” (Heidegger 10, p. 155/246–247). What one must ask above all is “whether the essence of the

  human being primordially and most decisively lies in the dimension of animalitas

  at all,” whether we can grasp this essence, as long as we define the human being

  as one living being ( Lebewesen) among others. The error of biologism is not yet

  overcome insofar as one adds to the corporeity of the human being the soul,

  and to the soul the spirit. The human being dwells in its essence only insofar as

  it is claimed by Being, it ek-sists ecstatically “in the clearing of Being” ( in der

  Lichtung des Seins), and this ek-sistence “can also never be thought as one specific modality of living creature among others.” From this perspective, “even what we

  attribute to the human being as animalitas on the basis of the comparison with

  ‘beasts’” must be thought starting from its ek-sistence (ibid.).

  “The human body,” Heidegger writes at this point, “is something essentially

  other than an animal organism” (ibid., p. 155/247). This enigmatic thesis, ad-

  vanced hurriedly and yet unreservedly, could perhaps have constituted the germ

  of a different conception of the relationship not only between animalitas and

  humanitas but also between the human being and Dasein. What is in question

  here, as with the body of the slave in Aristotle, is nothing less than the possibility

  of another body of the human being. Nevertheless, in the text of the Letter, it is not taken up again or further developed. On the contrary, a few pages later, the

  relation between the human being and Dasein is evoked in terms that, despite

  the attempt to take a distance from them, seem to fall back into the aporia of

  a living being who becomes truly human only by accepting the claim of Being:

  But the essence of the human being consists in his being more than merely human

  [ mehr als der blosse Mensch], if this is represented as “being a rational creature.”

  “More” must not be understood here additively, as if the traditional definition

  of the hum
an being were indeed to remain basic, only to be elaborated by means

  of an existentiell postscript. The “more” means: more originally and therefore

  more essentially in terms of his essence. But here something enigmatic manifests

  itself: the human being is in thrownness. This means that the human being, as

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  the ek-sisting counterthrow [ Gegenwurf ] of being, is more than animale rationale precisely to the extent that he is less bound up with the human being conceived

  from subjectivity. The human being is not the lord of beings. The human being

  is the shepherd of Being. Human beings lose nothing in this “less”; rather, they

  gain in that they attain to the truth of Being. They gain the essential poverty

  of the shepherd, whose dignity consists in being called by Being itself into the

  preservation of being’s truth. The call comes as the throw [ Wurf ], from which

  the thrownness of Da-sein derives. (pp. 172–173/260–261)

  Here we see how first philosophy is always above all the thought of anthro-

  pogenesis, of becoming human. But what is thrown here? If Dasein is what is

  generated as a repercussion of the call of Being, something like an animality or

  non-humanity is still a presupposition to the truly human, to the Dasein that,

  pro-jected into its “there,” arrives in the truth of Being. Certainly the repercus-

  sion, according to a dialectical scheme that Hegel has rendered familiar to us,

  is more originary than the presupposition, namely, the animal rationale. But

  the presupposition here conceals the fact that the dialectical operation leaves a

  remainder that is still uninterrogated. The anthropogenetic event of appropria-

  tion on the part of Being can be produced only in a living being, whose destiny

  cannot fail to be in question in Dasein. Only a conception of the human that

  not only does not add anything to animality but does not supervene upon any-

  thing at all will be truly emancipated from the metaphysical definition of the

  human being. Such a humanity nonetheless could never be thought as a task to

  be “taken on” or as the response to a call.

  7. In §10 and §12 of Being and Time, the relation between Dasein and life

  had been briefly treated and resolved in the direction of an ontic and ontological

  priority of Dasein over the simply living. “Life,” we read,

  is a particular mode of Being; but essentially it is accessible only in Dasein. The

  ontology of life is accomplished by way of a privative interpretation; it determines

  what must be the case if there can be anything like still-only-life [ Nur-noch-leben].

  Life is not a mere being-available, nor is it Dasein. In turn, Dasein is never to

  be defined ontologically by regarding it as life (in an ontologically indefinite

  manner) plus something else. (p. 50/75)

  Clearly any definition of what precedes thought and language—the understand-

  ing of Being proper to Dasein—can only be presupposed by them and a presup-

  position to them. The event, the appropriation of the human being on the part

  of Being by means of Dasein, is something that presupposes the living being to

  which and in which the event has produced itself. Heidegger knows perfectly

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  well that what contemporary language and the natural sciences call life is, like

  sense certainty in Hegel, a presupposition that, as such, is obtained only in a

  privative way starting from Dasein, to return to which it is then necessary to

  add back in what has been taken away. But what is in question is precisely the

  status of this presupposition—in this case, the “still-only-life”—and it cannot

  be simply set aside. Heidegger suggests that life is not a “simple being-available”

  ( pures Vorhandensein; ibid.), but neither does it have the structure of Dasein.

  Nevertheless, the modality of being of life is not subsequently interrogated in

  Being in Time, and Heidegger limits himself to confirming that the ontologi-

  cal constitution of life can be determined (for example, by biology) by way of

  privation only starting from the ontological structure of Dasein: “Ontically as

  well as ontologically, the priority belongs to Being-in-the-world as taking care”

  (p. 58/85). But being-in-the-world ( In-der-Welt-sein) as originary structure of

  Dasein is not the same thing as the animal environment ( Umwelt).

  8. In the winter semester of 1929–30, two years after the publication of Being

  and Time, Heidegger devoted an entire course to the animal and the human,

  the text of which, published in 1983 under the title Fundamental Concepts of

  Metaphysics, is certainly one of his major works (cf. above, Part I, §8.8). Here the relationship between the human being and the animal (and, even if Heidegger

  does not mention it explicitly, between the living human being and Dasein) is

  posed in the much more radical way than the critique of the dialectic of priva-

  tion and addition that is implicit in the metaphysical definition of the animal

  rationale. The animal’s mode of Being here appears, with respect to that of the

  human being, as closer and at the same time more difficult to think. The course

  opens by opposing the “world-forming” ( weltbildend) human being and the on-

  tological status of the animal with its “poverty of world” ( Weltarmut), the open

  of human being-in-the-world and the non-open of the animal’s relation with its

  environment (which is only the sum of its disinhibitors).

  As soon as the analysis is developed and deepened, however, things become

  more complicated and the opposition loses its clarity. For the animal, who is

  captured by its disinhibitors and remains captivated ( benommen) in them, the

  environment is not simply closed. On the contrary, it is open ( offen), and per-

  haps more forcefully than the world can ever be open for the human being; and

  yet it is not revealed ( offenbar) in its Being:

  In its captivation [ Benommenheit], beings are not manifest, are not disclosed, but neither are they closed off. Captivation stands outside this possibility. As far as

  the animal is concerned we cannot say that beings are closed off from it. . . . But

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  the captivation of the animal places the animal essentially outside the possibility

  that beings could be disclosed to it or closed off from it. To say that captivation

  is the essence of animality means: the animal as such does not stand within a

  revealedness [ Offenbarkeit] of beings. (Heidegger 5, p. 361/248)

  That is to say, if we attempt to define the ontological status of the animal’s rela-

  tion to its environment as it follows from the course, we must say that the ani-

  mal is at the same time open and not open—or better, that it is neither one nor

  the other: it is open in a non-unveiling that, in one respect, captivates and cap-

  tures it with unheard-of vehemence in its disinhibitor and, in another respect,

  never reveals as a being what holds it so fascinated and enchanted. Heidegger

  here seems to oscillate between two opposed poles, which in a way recall the par-

  adoxes of mystical unknowing. On the one hand, animal captivation is a more

  intense opening than any human awareness (Heidegger can thus write that “life

  is a domain which pos
sesses a wealth of openness with which the human world

  may have nothing to compare”; ibid., p. 371/255). On the other hand, insofar

  as it is not in a position to unveil and perceive its own disinhibitor as such, it is

  enclosed in a total opacity. Like human ek-sistence, captivation is in this sense

  also a form of ecstasy, in which “the animal in its captivation finds itself essen-

  tially exposed to something other than itself, something that can indeed never

  be manifest to the animal either as a being or as a non-being, but that . . . brings

  an essential disruption [ wesenhafte Erschütterung] to the essence of the animal”

  (p. 396/273). It is not surprising, however, that, perhaps with a tacit illusion to

  the dark night of mysticism, Heidegger feels the need to evoke, in connection

  with the captivation of the living being with its disinhibitor, one of the most

  ancient symbols of the unio mystica, the moth that, out of love, lets itself be consumed by the flames, to which Debord was to compare his life many years later.

  9. In the course, what corresponds to animal captivation in the human being

  and brings the open of the world into “the closest proximity” (p. 409/282) to the

  neither-open-nor-closed of the environment is profound boredom. The lengthy

  section that Heidegger devotes to the analysis of this “fundamental mood or

  attunement” has the strategic function of defining the metaphysical operator

  in which the passage from animal to human, from poverty of world to world,

  is carried out. In profound boredom, in fact, just as in animal captivation, the

  human being is stunned and consigned to “beings as a whole,” which now stand

  before it in absolute opacity. “Beings as a whole,” writes Heidegger,

  do not disappear, however, but show themselves precisely as such in their in-

  difference. . . . This means that through this boredom Dasein finds itself set in

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  place precisely before beings as a whole, to the extent that in this boredom the

  beings that surround us offer us no further possibility of acting and no further

  possibility of our doing anything. . . . Dasein thus finds itself delivered over to

  beings’ telling refusal of themselves as a whole. (pp. 208–210/138–139)