Let us consider the following list, gathered in large part from examples men-
tioned by Redard:
chresthai theoi, lit. “to make use of the god” = to consult an oracle
chresthai nostou, lit. “to use return” = to feel nostalgia
chresthai logoi, lit. “to use language” = to speak
chresthai symphorai, lit. “to use misfortune” = to be unhappy
chresthai gynaikì, lit. “to use a woman” = to have sexual relations with a
woman
chresthai te polei, lit. “to make use of the city” = to participate in
political life
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HOMO SACER IV, 2
chresthai keiri, lit. “to use one’s hands” = to punch someone
chresthai niphetoi, lit. “to use snow” = to be caught in a snowstorm
chresthai alethei logoi, lit. “to use a true discourse” = to tell the truth
chresthai lotoi, lit. “to use the lotus” = to eat lotus
chresthai orgei, lit. “to use anger” = to be angry
chresthai eugeneiai, lit. “to use good birth” = to be of noble stock
chresthai Platoni, lit. “to use Plato” = to be friends with Plato
The situation is completely analogous for the corresponding Latin verb uti:
uti honore, lit. “to use an office” = to hold a position
uti lingua, lit. “to use the tongue” = to speak
uti stultitia, lit. “to use foolishness” = to be foolish (or give proof of
foolishness)
uti arrogantia, lit. “to use arrogance” = to be arrogant (or give proof of
arrogance)
uti misericordia, lit. “to use mercy” = to be merciful (or give proof of
mercy)
uti aura, lit. “to use the breeze” = to have a favorable wind
uti aliquo, lit. “to make use of someone” = to be on familiar terms with
someone
uti patre diligente, lit. “to use a hardworking father” = to have a hard-
working father
2.2. What these examples render immediately evident is that the verb in
question cannot mean, according to the modern meaning of the verb to use,
“to make use of, to utilize something.” Each time it is a matter of a relationship
with something, but the nature of this relationship is, at least in appearance, so
indeterminate that it seems impossible to define a unitary sense of the term. This
is so much the case that Redard, in his attempt to identify this meaning, must
content himself with a generic and, in the last analysis, tautological definition,
because it is limited to displacing the problem onto the French term utilisation:
chresthai would mean rechercher l’utilisation de quelque chose (even if one cannot see how “to be caught in a snowstorm” could mean “to seek the utilization of
snow” or in what way “to be unhappy” could be equivalent to “to seek the utili-
zation of misfortune”).
It is likely that a more or less conscious projection of the modern meaning
of the verb to use onto that of chresthai has kept the scholar from grasping the
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1051
meaning of the Greek term. This is evident in the way in which he characterizes
the relation between the subject and object of the process expressed by the verb.
If we now seek to define the process expressed by the verb, we can state that it is
carried out within the sphere of the subject. . . . The construction of chresthai is intransitive: the object is in the dative or the genitive. . . . Whether we are dealing with a person or a thing, the object each time affirms its independence with
respect to the subject. . . . The god who is consulted, the jewel with which one
adorns oneself, the lotus that one eats, the javelin that one utilizes, the name of
which one makes use, the language that one speaks, the clothes that one wears, the
eulogy to which one makes recourse, the activity that one carries out, the opinion
that one follows, the customs that one observes, the cold of which one is a victim,
the chance to which one is submitted, the anger that seizes one, the author with
whom one associates, the return to which one aspires, the nobility from which one
descends, all these notions are realities independent of the one who makes recourse
to them: the object exists outside the subject and never modifies it. (Redard, p. 42)
It is truly striking that Redard can speak of “exteriority,” of intransitivity and
absence of modification between subject and object, precisely when he has just
evoked the “return to which one aspires,” the “anger that seizes one,” the “cold
of which one is a victim,” and the “nobility from which one descends,” examples
among many others of a relation so close between subject and object that not
only is the subject intimately modified, but the boundaries between the two
terms of the relationship even seem to be indeterminated.
It is perhaps because of his awareness of this intimacy between subject and
object of use that Redard seems at a certain point to nuance his definition of the
meaning of the verb chresthai, adding that it expresses an attempt at accommo-
dation and appropriation on the part of the subject:
The appropriation can be actualized as in arpagei iemasi chresthai (to be greedy)
or virtual, as in the case of nostou chresthai. . . . In any case, the appropriation is always occasional, and this is its specificity. Whether one consults an oracle,
whether one feels a need, rents out a plow, or catches rabies, it is always as a
function of an event. An expression like symphorai chresthai (to be unhappy) is
not an exception to the rule: “to be unhappy” means more precisely “to attract
misfortune upon oneself.” . . . The subject-object relationship is defined as a re-
lationship of occasional appropriation, of the lightning-lightning rod type, to
take up Mr. Benveniste’s lovely image. (Ibid., p. 44)
Once again, the examples belie the thesis point by point: “to be unhappy” cannot
mean to occasionally appropriate misfortune to oneself, nor “to feel nostalgic” to
appropriate return to oneself.
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HOMO SACER IV, 2
2.3. It is probable that precisely the subject/object relationship—so marked in
the modern conception of the utilization of something on the part of someone—
emerges as inadequate to grasp the meaning of the Greek verb. And yet an indi-
cation of this inadequacy is present precisely in the very form of the verb, which
is neither active nor passive but in the diathesis that ancient grammarians called
“middle” ( mesotes). Redard, noting this fact, refers to an article of Benveniste’s that appeared the same year in which his mémoire was discussed (“Actif et moyen
dans le verbe,” 1950). Benveniste’s thesis is clear: whereas in the active, verbs de-
note a process that is realized starting from the subject and beyond him, “in the
middle . . . the verb indicates a process that takes place in the subject: the subject
is internal to the process” (Benveniste, p. 172/148). The examples of verbs that have
a middle diathesis ( media tantum) illustrate well this peculiar situation of the subject inside the process of which he is an agent: gignomai, Latin nascor, “to be born”; morior, “to die”; penomai, Latin patior, “to suffer”; keimai, “to lie”; phato, Latin loquor, “to speak”; fungor, fruor, “to enjoy,” etc. In all these cases, �
�here the subject is the seat of the process, even if this process, as is the case for the Latin fruor or Sanskrit manyate, demands an object; the subject is the center as well as the agent of the process; he achieves something that is being achieved in him” (p. 172/149).
The opposition with the active is obvious in those middle-voice verbs that
also allow an active diathesis: koimatai, “he sleeps,” in which the subject is in-
ternal to the process, thus becomes koima, “he causes to sleep, puts to sleep,”
in which the process, no longer having its place in the subject, is transitively
transferred into another term that becomes its object. Here the subject, “placed
outside the process, governs it thenceforth as an agent,” and the action must
consequently take as its end an external object. Almost immediately after, Ben-
veniste further specifies with respect to the active the peculiar relation that the
middle voice presupposes between the subject and the process of which he is
both the agent and the place: “they always finally come down to situating po-
sitions of the subject with respect to the process, according to whether it is
exterior or interior to it, and to qualifying it as an agent, depending on whether
it effects, in the active, or whether it effects while being affected [ il effectue en
s’affectant], in the middle” (ibid., p. 173/149–50).
2.4. Let us reflect on the striking formula by which Benveniste seeks to ex-
press the meaning of the middle diathesis: il effectue en s’affectant. On the one
hand, the subject who achieves the action, by the very fact of achieving it, does
not act transitively on an object but first of all implies and affects himself in the
process; on the other hand, precisely for this reason, the process presupposes
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a singular topology, in which the subject does not stand over the action but is
himself the place of its occurring. As is implicit in the name mesotes, the middle voice is situated in a zone of indetermination between subject and object (the
agent is in some way also object and place of action) and between active and pas-
sive (the agent receives an affection from his own action). One can understand,
then, why Redard, in insisting on the subject/object relation and on the modern
meaning of “utilization,” does not manage to lead the unaccountable polysemy
of the verb chresthai back to a unity. Thus, it is all the more urgent to investigate, in the case that interests us here, the singular threshold that the middle voice
establishes between subject and object and between agent and patient.
It also becomes clear, from this “middle-voice” perspective, why the object
of the verb chresthai cannot be in the accusative but is always in the dative or
genitive. The process does not pass from an active subject toward the object sep-
arated from his action but involves in itself the subject, to the same degree that
this latter is implied in the object and “gives himself” to it.
We can therefore attempt to define the meaning of chresthai: it expresses the
relation that one has with oneself, the affection that one receives insofar as one is in relation with a determinate being. The one who synphorai chretai has an experience of himself as unhappy, constitutes and shows himself as unhappy; the one
who utitur honore puts himself to the test and defines himself insofar as he holds an office; the one who nosthoi chretai has an experience of himself insofar as he is affected by the desire for a return. Somatos chresthai, “to use the body,” will then mean the affection that one receives insofar as one is in relation with one or more
bodies. Ethical—and political—is the subject who is constituted in this use, the
subject who testifies of the affection that he receives insofar as he is in relation
with a body.
2.5. Perhaps nowhere has this singular status of the agent been described
with greater precision than in Spinoza. In the twentieth chapter of the Compen-
dium grammatices linguae hebraeae, he introduced an ontological meditation in
the form of an analysis of the meaning of a Hebrew verbal form, the reflexive
active verb, which is formed by adding a prefix to the intensive form. This ver-
bal form expresses an action in which agent and patient, active and passive are
identified. To clarify its meaning, the first Latin equivalent that comes to his
mind is se visitare, “to visit-oneself,” but this seems to him so insufficient that he later specifies it in the form: se visitantem constituere, “to constitute-oneself as visiting.” A second example, se ambulationi dare, “to give oneself over to a
walk,” also inadequate, is clarified with an equivalent drawn from the mother
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HOMO SACER IV, 2
tongue of his people. “To walk” is said in Ladino (that is, in the Spanish that
the Sephardic Jews spoke at the time of their expulsion from Spain) as pasearse,
to “walk-oneself.” As an expression of an action of the self on the self, in which
agent and patient enter into a threshold of absolute indistinction, the Ladino
term is particularly appropriate.
A few pages earlier, in speaking of the corresponding form of the infinitive
noun, Spinoza defines its semantic sphere by means of the idea of an immanent
cause: “It was therefore necessary to invent another kind of infinitive, which
expressed an action referred to the agent as immanent cause . . . , which means
to visit-oneself, or to constitute-oneself as visiting or, finally, to manifest-oneself
as visiting” (Spinoza 1, p. 342). Here the sphere of the action of the self on the
self corresponds to the ontology of immanence, to the movement of autoconsti-
tution and of autopresentation of being, in which not only is it not possible to
distinguish between agent and patient but also subject and object, constituent
and constituted are indeterminated.
It is according to this paradigm that one must understand the singular na-
ture of the process that we call “use.” Just as, in the experience of making a visit
expressed by the Hebrew verb, the subject constitutes himself as visiting and, in
the experience of walking, the subject first of all walks himself, has an experience
of himself as walking, in the same way every use is first of all use of self: to enter
into a relation of use with something, I must be affected by it, constitute myself
as one who makes use of it. Human being and world are, in use, in a relationship
of absolute and reciprocal immanence; in the using of something, it is the very
being of the one using that is first of all at stake.
It may be helpful to reflect on the peculiar conception of the subject and of
action implicit in use. While in the act of visiting what is essential, according to
the meaning of the active diathesis, is the action of the agent outside himself,
in use (in constituting-oneself as visiting) what is in the foreground is not the
energeia of the visitor but the affection that the agent-user (who thus becomes
patient) receives from it. The same can be said of the term that, in the passive
diathesis, is object of the action: in use, it constitutes-itself as visited, is active in its being passive. To the affection that the agent receives from his action there
corresponds the affection that the patient receives from his passion. Subject and
object are thus deactivated and rende
red inoperative, and, in their place, there
follows use as a new figure of human praxis.
א It is from this perspective that one can understand the striking proximity between
use and love that Dante institutes in the Convivio (Dante 1, IV, 22). After having affirmed that the natural appetite (which he also calls, using a Greek word, hormen) first of all loves
THE USE OF BODIES
1055
itself and, through this love of self, also other things (“and thus, loving itself primarily and other things for its own sake, and loving the better part of itself better, it is clear that it loves the mind better than the body or aught else”), he writes: “wherefore if the
mind always delights in the use of the thing it loves (which is the fruition of love), use in that thing which it loves most is the most delightful.” Love is here, in some way, the
affection that is received by use (which is always also use of self ) and remains in some
way indiscernible from it. In the syntagma “use of the loved thing,” the genitive is at once subjective and objective. The subject-object of use is love.
3
Use and Care
3.1. In the course on L’herméneutique du sujet, Foucault had come up
against the problem of the meaning of the verb chresthai while inter-
preting the passage from Plato’s Alcibiades in which Socrates, in order to iden-
tify the “self” of which one must take care, seeks to demonstrate that “the one
who uses” ( ho chromenos) and “that which one uses” ( hoi chretai) are not the same thing. To this end, he has recourse to the example of the cobbler and the
lyre player, who make use of a cobbler’s knife and a plectrum as well as their
hands and eyes as instruments to cut leather or to play the cithara. If the one
who uses and that of which one makes use are not the same thing, this then
means that the human being (who “uses his whole body,” panti toi somati chretai
anthropos; 129e) does not coincide with his body and therefore, in taking care of it, he is taking care of “a thing that is his own” ( ta heautou) but “not of himself”
( ouk hauton). What uses the body and that of which one must take care, Socrates
concludes at this point, is the soul ( psychè).
It is in the course of commenting on this passage from Plato that Foucault
The Omnibus Homo Sacer Page 162
