never theless be understood only as a perpetual oikonomia, as a continuous activ-
ity of government of the world, one that implies a fracture between being and
praxis and, at the same time, tries to heal it.
Augustine clearly claims this in the paragraphs that immediately follow, in
which he interprets the verse of Genesis, “He rested on the seventh day from all
His work which He had done” (2, 2). According to Augustine, this verse should
not be understood in the sense that, at a certain point, God ceased to operate.
It is not, you see, like a mason building houses; when he has finished he goes
away, and his work goes on standing when he has stopped working on it and
gone away. No, the world will not be able to go on standing for a single moment,
if God withdraws from it his government [ si ei Deus regimen sui subtraxerit].
(Augustine, The Literal Meaning of Genesis, 4, 12, 22, p. 253)
On the contrary, all creatures are not in God as part of his being, but only as the
result of his incessant operation:
We are not in him, I mean to say, like his substance [ tamquam substantia eius]
[ . . . ] but evidently, since we are something different from him, we are only in
him because he is working at this, and this is his work by which his Wisdom
reaches end to end mightily and governs [ disponit] all things sweetly, and it is by this arrangement that “in him we live and move and are.” From this the conclusion
follows that if he withdraws this work from things, we will neither live nor move
nor be. It is clear therefore that not for one single day did God cease from the
work of government [ ab opera regendi]. (Ibid., 4, 12, 23, p. 254)
The transformation of classical ontology that is implicit in Christian theology
is perhaps nowhere clearer than in these passages from Augustine. Not only is
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the substance of creatures nothing other than the activity of the divine dispositio, such that the being of creatures utterly depends on a praxis of government— it
is, in its essence, praxis and government—but the very being of God—insofar
as it is, in a special sense, measure, number, and weight, that is, order—is no
longer only substance or thought, but also and in the same measure dispositio,
praxis. Ordo names the incessant activity of government that presupposes and,
at the same time, continually heals the fracture between transcendence and im-
manence, God and the world.
The promiscuity, if not the short-circuit, between being and dispositio, sub-
stance and oikonomia that Augustine introduces in God is explicitly theorized
by Scholasticism, in particular by Albert and Thomas, especially with regard to
the problem of order in God ( ordo in divinis). These authors distinguish to this
end between local and temporal orders, which cannot take place in God, and
ordo originis or ordo naturae, which correspond to the Trinitarian procession of the divine persons (see Krings 1941, pp. 65–67). The continuity between the
problem of the ordo and that of the oikonomia is here apparent. God is not order just insofar as he arranges [ dispone] and orders the created world, but also and
especially insofar as this dispositio has its archetype in the procession of the Son from the Father, and of the Spirit from both. Divine oikonomia and government
of the world perfectly correspond to one another. “The order of nature in the
reciprocal flux of the divine persons,” Albert writes, “is the cause of the flux of
creatures from the first and universal acting intellect” ( Summa Theologiae, I, 46).
For his part, Thomas writes,
The order of nature is that through which someone is from other [ quo aliquis est
ex alio]; and in this way a difference of origins is posed, and not one of temporal priority, and the difference of kind is excluded. For this reason we cannot admit
that there is in God a simple order, but only an order of nature. (Thomas Aquinas,
Commentary on Sentences, Book 1, d. 20, q. 1, a. 3, qc. 1)
Trinitarian oikonomia, ordo, and gubernatio constitute an inseparable triad, whose terms interpenetrate, insofar as they name the new figure of ontology that
Christian theology bequeaths to modernity.
א When Marx, starting with the 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, thinks the being of man as praxis, and praxis as the self-production of man, he is after all secularizing the theological idea of the being of creatures as divine operation. After having conceived of being as praxis, if we take God away and put man in his place, we will
consequently obtain the result that the essence of man is nothing other than the praxis
through which he incessantly produces himself.
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א In De ordine, I, 5, 14, Augustine expounds this all-pervasive character of the concept of order, including in it even the most negligible and contingent events. The fact that the noise of a mouse woke up Licentius, one of the protagonists of the dialogue, during
the night, and that in this way Augustine came to talk to him, belongs to the same order
as the letters that will constitute the book that will follow one day from their conversation (the book Augustine is actually writing). Both orders are in turn contained in the very
order of the divine government of the world:
Who will deny, great God, that you administer all things with order? [ . . . ]
The little mouse has come out in order for me to wake up [ . . . ] And if one
day what we told each other were transcribed into letters and became known to
people [ . . . ] certainly the fluttering of leaves in the fields and the movement of
the unworthy little animals in the houses would be as necessary as those letters
in the order of things.
4.10. The theological paradigm of the distinction between Kingdom and Gov-
ernment is present in the double articulation of divine action as creation ( creatio) and conservation ( conservatio). In his commentary on the Liber de causis, Thomas writes that “we should keep in mind that the action of the first cause is twofold:
one inasmuch as it establishes things, which is called creation; another inasmuch
as it governs things already established [ res iam institutas regit]” (Thomas Aqui-
nas, Commentary on the Book of Causes, p. 137). The two operations of the first
cause are correlated, in the sense that, through creation, God is the cause of the
being of creatures and not only of their becoming, and, for this reason, they need
the divine government in order to preserve themselves in being. Resuming the
Augustinian theme of the incessant government of the world, Thomas writes
that “the esse of all creaturely beings so depends upon God that they could not
continue to exist even for a moment, but would fall away into nothingness unless
they were sustained in existence by the operation of the divine virtue” (Thomas
Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 1, q. 104, a. 1). This twofold structure of the divine
works constitutes the model for the activity of secular regality:
Looking at the world as a whole, there are two works of God to be considered: the
first is creation; the second, God’s government of the things created. These two
works are, in like manner, performed by the soul in the body since, first, by the
virtue of the soul the body is formed, and then the latter is governed and moved
by the soul. Of these works, the second more properly pertains to the office of
kingship. Therefore government [ gubernatio] belongs to all kings (the very name
king is derived from the fact that they direct the government) [ a gubernationis
regimine regis nomen accipitur], while the first work does not fall to all kings,
for not all kings establish the kingdom or city in which they rule but bestow
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their regal care upon a kingdom or city already established. We must remember,
however, that if there were no one to establish the city or kingdom, there would
be no question of governing the kingdom [ gubernatio regni]. The very notion
of kingly office, then, comprises the establishment of a city and kingdom, and
some kings have indeed established cities in which to rule; for example, Ninus
founded Nineveh, and Romulus, Rome. It pertains also to the governing office
to preserve the things governed, and to use them for the purpose for which they
were established. If, therefore, one does not know how a kingdom is established,
one cannot fully understand the task of its government. Now, from the example
of the creation of the world one may learn how a kingdom is established. In
creation we may consider, first, the production of things; secondly, the orderly
distinction of the parts of the world. (Thomas Aquinas, On Kingship, Book Two,
Chapter II, pp. 55–56)
Kingdom and government, creation and conservation, ordo ad deum and ordo
ad invicem are functionally correlated, in the sense that the first operation im-
plies and determines the second, which, on the other hand, distinguishes itself
from the former and, at least in the case of secular government, can be sepa-
rated from it.
א In Nomos of the Earth (p. 82), Schmitt refers the distinction between constituent and constituted power, which in the 1928 Verfassungslehre he juxtaposed with the Spinozan distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata, to the distinction between ordo ordinans and ordo ordinatus. As a matter of fact, Thomas, who rather speaks of ordinatio and ordinis executio, understands creation as a process of “ordering” (“sic patet quod Deus res in esse produxit eas ordinando”: Contra Gentiles, Book 2, Chapter 24, n. 4), in which the two figures of order are articulated together (“ordo enim aliquorum ad invicem est propter ordinem eorum ad finem”: ibid.). It would be interesting to investigate
from this perspective the possible theological sources of the distinction between pouvoir constituent and pouvoir constitué in Sieyès, for whom the people take the place of God as a constituent subject.
4.11 The Latin treatise known as Liber de causis or Liber Aristotelis de expositione bonitatis purae had a strategic function in the construction of the Kingdom-Government paradigm. We cannot understand the rank and decisive
importance that this obscure Arabic summary of Proclus, translated into Latin
in the twelfth century, had for theology between the twelfth and fourteenth
centuries, if we do not understand at the same time that it contains something
like the ontological model for the providential machine of the divine govern-
ment of the world. The first epistemological obstacle that this machine met with
concerned the way in which a transcendent principle could exercise its influence
on the created world and make its “regime” effective—which was precisely the
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problem that Chapter X of Book L of the Metaphysics had bequeathed to me-
dieval culture. It is precisely this question that the pseudo-epigraphic treatise
tackles in the guise of a Neoplatonic hierarchy of the causes. That is, the Aristo-
telian problem of the relation between the transcendent good and the immanent
order—which was decisive for medieval theology—was solved by means of a
doctrine of the causes: the Liber Aristotelis de expositione bonitatis purae is actually a Liber de causis.
Let us follow, through Thomas’s commentary, the strategy that is implicit in
the theological reception of this book. From the beginning, it is a matter of con-
structing a hierarchy, as the anonymous compiler had done on a Neo platonic
basis, and, at the same time, an articulation of the first and second causes. The
treatise opens with the following words: “Every primary cause infuses its effect
more powerfully [ plus est influens super suum causatum] than does a universal
second cause” (1, 1). But while in the division of the causes operated by the text
the emphasis is placed at each turn on the sublimity and separateness of the
first cause, which not only precedes and dominates the second causes, but also
carries out all that they operate “per modum alium et altiorem et sublimiorem,”
the constant preoccupation of Thomas’s commentary is to stress the coordina-
tion and articulation between the two levels. He interprets the claim according
to which “the first cause aids the second cause in its activity, because the first
cause also effects every activity that the second cause effects” (Thomas Aquinas,
Commentary on the Book of Causes, p. 6) in a purely functional sense, which
shows that the two causes integrate with each other in order to make their action
effective:
The activity by which the second cause causes an effect is caused by the first cause,
for the first cause aids the second cause, making it act. Therefore, the first cause is
more a cause than the second cause of that activity in virtue of which an effect is
produced by the second cause [ . . . ] The second cause is the cause of the effect
through its potency, or power. Therefore, that the second cause is the cause of
its effect is due to the first cause. To be the cause of the effect, therefore, lies pri-
marily in the first cause and only secondarily in the second cause. (Ibid., pp. 8–9)
What is also new in Thomas’s commentary is the specification of second causes
as particular causes, which contains an implicit strategic reference to the distinc-
tion between general providence and special providence (which, as we shall see,
defines the structure of the divine government of the world):
For it is clear that the extent to which some efficient cause is prior, to that extent
does its power extend itself to more things [ . . . ] But the proper effect of the
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second cause is found in fewer things. So it is more particular [ unde et particularior est]. (Ibid., p. 10) Thomas’s interest in the functional articulation between the two orders of causes
is evident in the attention with which he describes the linking together of the
causes in the production of a (substantial or accidental) effect:
The order is per se when the intention of the first cause respects the ultimate effect through all the mediating causes, as when a craftsman’s art moves the hand, and
the hand the hammer that pounds out the iron, to which the intention of the
art reaches. The order is per accidens, however, when the intention of the cause
proceeds only to the proximate effect. But that something else is in turn brought
about by that effect lies outside the intention [ praeter intentionem] of the first agent, as, when someone lights a candle, it is outside its intention that the lighted
candle in turn light another, and that one another. (Ibid., p. 11)
But it is in the commentary on the Propositions 20–24 that the strategic nexus
between the hierarchy of causes in the treatise
and the paradigm of the providen-
tial government of the world becomes more evident. What is in question here
is the way in which the first cause governs ( regit) created things while remain-
ing transcendent with regard to them (“praeter quod commisceatur cum eis”).
Proposition 20 thus specifies that the fact that the first cause governs the world
does not jeopardize its unity or transcendence (“regimen non debilitat unitatem
eius exaltatam super omnem rem”), and does not even hinder the efficacy of its
government (“neque prohibet eam essentia unitatis seiuncta a rebus quin regat
eas”). That is, we are presented with a kind of Neoplatonic solution to the Aris-
totelian aporia concerning the transcendent good. On the other hand, the fact
that Thomas’s commentary orients the reading of the text toward a theory of
providence is proved by the immediate connection that he establishes between
the formulations of the text and the economic-providential paradigm of the di-
vine government of the world. Not only does a quotation from Proclus explicitly
introduce this theme (“every divine thing [ . . . ] provides for secondary things”:
ibid., p. 122), but the passage from the anonymous author is used against the
traditional arguments of those who deny providence:
We should note that in human government we see it happen that the one who
has a charge of ruling a number of things must be drawn from his own govern-
ment to many things. But he who is free from the charge of governing others is
more able to preserve uniformity in himself. Hence the Epicurean philosophers
asserted that in order to conserve divine quiet and uniformity the gods could
have charge of no government. Instead, they are entirely at leisure, caring about
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nothing, so that in this way they are seen to be happy. And so, against this [the
author] begins in this proposition by saying that these two things are not contrary
in the first cause and that the universal government of things and the supreme
unity [ . . . ] do not impede one another. (Ibid., pp. 121–122)
In the same sense, Proposition 23, which distinguishes and coordinates science
and government, is interpreted as a thesis “de regimine secundae causae,” that
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