The Omnibus Homo Sacer
Page 187
a person [ ten zoen pherousi toi anthropoi]”; Nutriment, 32: “Potential is one and not one, by which all these things and those of a different sort are managed; one for the life of the whole and the part [ zoen holou kai merou], not one for the sensation of the whole and the part.” This last occurrence is the only one in which, through the opposition between
life and sensation, the term zoè seems to acquire a less generic meaning.
1203
1204
HOMO SACER IV, 2
The verb zen, to live, which appears in the Corpus fifty-five times, also never has a technical meaning, and when it does not generically designate the “living,” it refers to
the duration of life or, in the stereotypical form ouk an dynaito zen, to the impossibility of surviving in a determinate condition.
The other term for “life” in Greek, bios (in the sense that interests us here, that of form of life or qualified human life) appears in the Corpus thirty-five times, first of all in the celebrated incipit of the Aphorismi [LCL 4]: Ho bios brachys, he de techne makrè (“Life is short, art is long”). In confirmation of the lack of technicalization of the concept “life” in the medical sphere, the texts of the Corpus show, with respect to literary and philosophical texts, a certain indetermination of the opposition zoè/bios (cf., for example, On Breaths, 4).
1.2. Let us now open Aristotle’s Politics. Even though it is not concerned
with citizens as natural living bodies but with the city as hierarchically supreme
community, the concept “life” assumes a technical meaning from its very first
pages. It is not necessary that it be defined for a term to have a technical char-
acter; it is sufficient that it develops a decisive strategic function in the theory.
A summary survey of the meanings of the terms zoè and zen shows that, even if Aristotle never gives it an axiomatic definition, it is precisely its articulation in
the couple “living/living well,” “natural life/politically qualified life,” “zoè/ bios”
that allows one to define the sphere of politics. The celebrated definition of the
polis as “born in view of living [ tou zen], but existing in view of living well [ tou eu zen]” ( Politics 1252b 28–30) has given canonical form to this interweaving of life and politically qualified life, of zoè and bios, that was to remain decisive in the history of Western politics.
It is the structure of this interweaving that we have sought to define in Homo
Sacer I.
1.3. As Aristotle never ceases to remind us, men have not united together
“only in view of living but rather for living well” ( tou zen monon heneka, alla
mallon tou eu zen). Otherwise, he adds, “there would also be a polis of slaves and animals” (ibid., 1280a 30–31), which for him was obviously impossible. The
perfect community consequently results from the articulation of two communi-
ties: a community of the simply living ( koinonia tes zoes; 1278b 17) and a polit-
ical community ( politikè koinonia; 1278b 25). Even if the first implies a certain
“ serenity” and a “natural sweetness” (1278b 30), it is in view of the second that
the first is constituted (“the polis is by nature prior to the family [ oikia] and to each individual, because the whole is necessarily prior to the parts”; 1253a 19–20).
The threshold that marks the passage from one community to the other is
autarchy ( autarkeia). This concept develops an essential function in Aristotelian
politics, which has perhaps not yet received its due attention. Victor Goldschmidt
THE USE OF BODIES
1205
has shown that in Aristotle “autarchy” is not a juridical or economic or political
concept but a biological one (Goldschmidt, p. 86). The polis is autarchic, whose
population has reached the just numeric consistency. An initial examination of
the passages of the Politics in which Aristotle makes use of this concept seems to confirm this thesis. The term in fact appears in a strategic function already in the
above-cited definition of the polis at the beginning of the treatise: the polis is “a complete community, which has reached the limit of complete autarchy [ pases
echousa peras tes autarkeias], born in view of living but existing in view of living well” (1252b 28–30). The definition is confirmed in the course of the treatise in
almost the same words: “a community of living well for both families and ag-
gregations of families, for the sake of a perfect and autarchic life” (1280b33), “a
community of families and villages in a perfect and autarchic life” ( zoes teleias kai
autarkous; 1281a 1). But what is an “autarchic life”?
A passage from Book VII specifies in what sense one should understand the
term:
To the size of the polis there is a limit, as there is in other things, plants, animals, and implements; for none of these retain their natural power [ dynamin]
when they are too large or too small. . . . In like manner a polis when composed
of too few is not autarchic—and the polis is something autarchic—and when of
too many, though autarchic in necessities, like an ethnic community ( ethnos),
but not like a polis, being almost incapable of a political organization ( politeia).
For who can be the general of such a vast multitude, or who the herald, unless
he have the voice of Stentor? It is necessary, then, so that there may be a polis, that it have a multitude ( plethos, a quantity of population) that is autarchic with respect to the good life in accordance with political community. . . . Clearly then,
this is the best limit of a polis: the greatest extent of the multitude with respect to autarchy of life, which can be taken in at a single view. (1326a 35–1326b 9)
1.4. The concept of autarchy serves to define the measure of population and
“life” that permits one to pass from a mere koinonia zoes or a purely ethnic com-
munity to a political community. Political life is necessarily an “autarchic life.”
This implies, however, that there is a life that is insufficient for politics and that
it must become autarchic to be able to accede to the political community. That
is to say, autarchy, like stasis , is a biopolitical operator, which allows or negates the passage from the community of life to the political community, from simple zoè to politically qualified life.
This is all the more problematic, insofar as there are, within the confines
of the polis, human lives that participate in a community of zoè but that are constitutively excluded from the political community. The slave, for example,
1206
HOMO SACER IV, 2
lives in community of life ( koinonos zoes; 1260a 40) with the master but not in
political community, and the same can be said for the woman. The family is the
place that is inhabited by that life, which while being a constitutive part of
the city and theoretically capable of autarchy (“the family,” writes Aristotle, “is
more autarchic than a single individual”; 1261b 11), is constitutively excluded
from political life (or, if you like, included through its exclusion).
From this point of view, Goldschmidt’s thesis should be specified in the
sense that there is a life that, while able to reach biological autarchy, is incapable
of acceding to political community and whose existence is nevertheless necessary
to the existence of the city. His thesis remains pertinent, however, insofar as it
shows that, through the concept of autarchy, the Aristotelian political commu-
nity preserves a biological character. Autarchy is, in this sense, a signature that
betra
ys the presence in the Greek polis of a genuinely biopolitical element.
1.5. A more thorough examination of the meaning of the syntagma “ autarchic
life” shows, however, that it implies something more than simply the most ap-
propriate numerical size. A passage of the Nicomachean Ethics, in which Aristotle
inquires about happiness as the supreme good of the human being, in this sense
furnishes a decisive indication:
The perfect good seems to be autarchic. Now by the term autarchic we do not
mean that which is sufficient for a man by himself, for one who lives a solitary
life, but also for parents, children, wife, and in general for his friends and fellow
citizens, since man is by nature a political being. But some limit must be set to
this; for if we extend our requirement to ancestors and descendants and friends’
friends we are in for an infinite series. Let us examine this question, however,
on another occasion; the autarchic we now define as that which when isolated
makes life desirable and lacking in nothing; and such we think happiness to be;
and further we think it most desirable of all things, without anything needing
to be added to it. . . . Happiness, then, is something perfect and autarchic, being
the end of all actions. (1097b 7–20)
An autarchic life, such as that of the human being as political animal, is thus a life
capable of happiness. But this implies that the concept of autarchy moves beyond
the strictly biological sphere to acquire an immediately political meaning. And
the sense in which one should understand this constitutive connection between
autarchic life, happiness, and politics is stated in the passage immediately following,
in which Aristotle seeks to define the work ( ergon) proper to the human being. It
cannot be a matter of simple living ( zen), “because this seems to be common even
to plants, but we are seeking what is proper [ idion] to the human being. Let us ex-
THE USE OF BODIES
1207
clude, therefore, the life of nutrition and growth. Next there would be sensitive life,
but it also seems to be common even to the horse, the ox, and every animal. There
remains, then, a life of action [ praktikè] of a being bestowed with logos. . . . [W]e state that what is proper to the human being is a certain life [ zoen tina], and this is being in act of the soul and actions accompanied by logos” (1097b 34–1098a 15).
The caesura that excludes—and at the same time includes— zoè from—and
within—the political community thus pierces within human life itself, and this
division of life has been so determinate for the history of Western humanity that
it still decides on the way in which we think not only the political and the social
sciences but also the natural sciences and medicine.
א Autarchic means both “what has reached the just measure” and “politically qual-
ified.” In this latter sense, it functions as a signature and not as a concept. That autarchy refers not only to a certain proportion of population but has in itself a political meaning is evident in medieval treatises. In both Marsilius of Padua’s Defensor pacis and Giles of Viterbo’s De regimine christiano, the end of political society is precisely autarchic life ( sufficiens vita or sufficientia vitae):
Perfecta communitas, omnem habens terminum per se sufficiente, ut conse-
quens est dicere, facta quidem igitur vivendi gracia, existens autem gracia bene
vivendi . . . ; homines . . . naturaliter sufficientem vitam appetere . . . quod
eciam nec solum de homine confessum est, verum de omni animalium genere [A
perfect community possessing every limit of self-sufficiency, as it is consequence
to say, having thus come about for the sake of living, but existing for the sake of
living well . . . ; all men . . . naturally desire a sufficient life . . . this principle is not only granted for man but also for every kind of animal]. (Marsilius, 1, 1–5)
Understanding what politics is therefore entails understanding what a “self-sufficient life”
is, with all the ambiguities that such a concept, which is at once biological and political, seems to imply.
1.6. In a previous study (Agamben 1, pp. 21–22/13–14), we have tried to show
how the strategic articulation of the concept of life had its original place in Aris-
totle’s De anima. Here, among the various ways in which the term “life” is said,
Aristotle isolates the most general and separable one.
It is through living that the animal is distinguished from the inanimate. Liv-
ing is said in many ways [ pleonachos], and provided any one alone of these is
found in a thing, we say that thing is living—namely, thinking or perception
or local movement and rest, or movement in the sense of nutrition, decay, and
growth. Hence we think of plants also as living, for they are observed to possess
in themselves a principle through which they increase or decrease in all spatial
directions. . . . This principle can be separated from the others, but not they from
1208
HOMO SACER IV, 2
it—in mortal beings at least. The fact is obvious in plants; for it is the only psychic
power they possess. It is therefore through this principle that living belongs to
the living. . . . We call the nutritive [ threptikon] potential that part of the soul in which even plants participate. (413a 20ff.)
Following his customary strategy, Aristotle in no way defines what life is: he limits
himself to dividing it thanks to the isolation of the nutritive function, in order
then to rearticulate it into a series of distinct and correlative potentials or faculties
(nutrition, sensation, thought). One of the ways in which life is said is separated
from the others in order to constitute in this way the principle by means of which
life can be attributed to a certain being. What has been separated and divided off
(in this case, nutritive life) is precisely what permits one to construct the unity of
life as a hierarchical articulation of a series of faculties and functional oppositions,
whose ultimate meaning is not only psychological but immediately political.
א Aristotle calls “nutritive” ( threptikon) or “nutritive soul” ( threptikè psychè) “the most primary and common potential of the soul, through which all things have life”
( prote kai koinatote dynamis psyches, kath’ hen hyparchei to zen tois apasin; De anima, 415a 25). He makes use of the term phytikon (vegetative or vegetable) to designate this part of the soul only one time, in the Nicomachean Ethics, to distinguish it from the desiring ( epithymetikon) part and nail down its exclusion from logos: “The irrational part of the animal is twofold: the vegetative does not participate in reason in any way, but by contrast the desiring participates in it in some way, insofar as it obeys and complies with reason” (1102b 29–34). But since it is only in plants that the nutritive faculty is separated from the sensitive faculty (“the threptikon is separated from the sensitive [ aisthetikon] in plants [ en tois phytois]”; De anima, 415a 1), ancient commentators took up the habit of designating it with the term phytikon (or phytikè psychè or phytikè dynamis). Thus, in his commentary on the De anima, Themistius can write: “the soul has many faculties [ dynameis] . . . such as that which is called vegetative [ phytiken], whose operations are causing nourishment, causing growth, and finally generation” (Themistius, p. 44/62). “Vegetative soul” ( phytikè psychè), by contrast, is found in Alexander of Aphrodisias’s De anima.
It is significant that Alexander can ask whet
her the vegetative principle belongs to
the soul or simply to nature: the vegetative principle is, in fact, always in act in animals, even during sleep, while the other potentials of the soul are not always in act (Alexander, p. 74/59). “For if the vegetative part belonged to the soul, it would then be impossible to bring the other capacities into act at the same time; for the nutritive is always in act in living things, while none of the other faculties is. . . . [W]e will perform no other activity in respect of our soul, if the faculty of soul is single. . . .”
Through the Latin translations of Greek commentators, the expression “vegetative
life” passed into medieval and modern medicine as a technical term. Modern medicine
assumes at its foundation an articulation of life whose origin is metaphysical-political
and not biological-scientific.
THE USE OF BODIES
1209
א The De anima is probably the first text in which “life” ( zoè) takes on a generic sense, distinct from the life of the single living individual, from a life. Ivan Illich has defined the modern concept of “life” as a “spectral” concept and a fetish, and he has
traced its first appearance to the Gospel passage in which Jesus says: “‘I am the Life.’ He does not say, “I am a life,’ but ‘I am Life,’ tout court” (Illich 2, p. 225; cf. above, Prologue,
§7). “The notion of an entitative life,” he writes, “which can be professionally and legally protected has been tortuously constructed through a legal-medical-religious-scientific
discourse whose roots go far back into theology” (ibid., p. 226). Church and lay insti-
tutions are converging today in regarding this spectral notion, which can be applied in
the same way to everything and nothing, as the sacred and principal object of their care,
as something that can be manipulated and managed and, at the same time, defended
and protected.