other is not sufficient to halt their functioning. Anarchy can never be in the position of a principle: it can only be liberated as a contact, where both archè as origin and archè as command are exposed in their non-relation and neutralized.
13. In the potential/act apparatus, Aristotle holds together two irreconcilable
elements: the contingent—what can be or not be—and the necessary—what
cannot not be. According to the mechanism of relation that we have defined, he
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1277
thinks potential as existing in itself, in the form of a potential-not-to or impoten-
tial ( adynamia), and act as ontologically superior and prior to potential. The paradox—and at the same time, the strength—of the apparatus is that, if one takes it
literally, potential can never pass over into the act and the act always already antic-
ipates its own possibility. For this reason Aristotle must think potential as a hexis, a “habit,” something that one “has,” and the passage to the act as an act of will.
All the more complex is the deactivation of the apparatus. What deactivates
operativity is certainly an experience of potential, but of a potential that, inso-
far as it holds its own impotential or potential-not-to firm, exposes itself in its
non-relation to the act. A poet is not someone who possesses a potential to make
and, at a certain point, decides to put it into action. Having a potential in reality
means: being at the mercy of one’s own impotential. In this poetic experience,
potential and act are no longer in relation but immediately in contact. Dante
expresses this special proximity of potential and act when in the De monarchia
he writes that the whole potential of the multitude stands sub actu; “otherwise
there would be a separate potential, which is impossible.” Sub actu here means,
according to one of the possible meanings of the preposition sub, immediate
coincidence in time and space (as in sub manu, immediately held in the hand, or
sub die, immediately, in the same day).
At the point where the apparatus is thus deactivated, potential becomes a
form-of-life and a form-of-life is constitutively destituent.
א Latin grammarians called those verbs deponent ( depositiva or also absolutiva or supina) that, similarly to middle-voice verbs (which, in the footsteps of Benveniste, we have analyzed in order to seek in them the paradigm of a different ontology), cannot be
said to be properly active or passive: sedeo (to sit), sudo (to sweat), dormio (to sleep), iaceo (to lie), algeo (to be cold), sitio (to be thirsty), esurio (to be hungry), gaudeo (to be glad).
What do middle-voice or deponent verbs “depose”? They do not express an operation
but depose it, neutralize it, and render it inoperative, and in this way, they expose it.
The subject is not simply, in Benveniste’s words, internal to the process, but in having
deposed its action, he has exposed himself with it. In form-of-life, activity and passivity coincide. Thus, in the iconographic theme of the deposition—for example, in Titian’s
deposition at the Louvre—Christ has entirely deposed the glory and regality that, in some
way, still belong to him on the cross, and yet precisely and solely in this way, when he is still beyond passion and action, the complete destitution of his regality inaugurates the
new age of the redeemed humanity.
14. All living beings are in a form of life, but not all are (or not all are al-
ways) a form-of-life. At the point where form-of-life is constituted, it renders
destitute and inoperative all singular forms of life. It is only in living a life that
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HOMO SACER IV, 2
it constitutes itself as a form-of-life, as the inoperativity immanent in every life.
The constitution of a form-of-life fully coincides, that is to say, with the destitu-
tion of the social and biological conditions into which it finds itself thrown. In
this sense, form-of-life is the revocation of all factical vocations, which deposes
them and brings them into an internal tension in the same gesture in which it
maintains itself and dwells in them. It is not a question of thinking a better or
more authentic form of life, a superior principle, or an elsewhere that suddenly
arrives at forms of life and factical vocations to revoke them and render them
inoperative. Inoperativity is not another work that suddenly arrives and works
to deactivate and depose them: it coincides completely and constitutively with
their destitution, with living a life.
One can therefore understand the essential function that the tradition of
Western philosophy has assigned to the contemplative life and to inoperativity:
form-of-life, the properly human life is the one that, by rendering inoperative
the specific works and functions of the living being, causes them to idle [It.,
girare a vuoto], so to speak, and in this way opens them into possibility. Con-
templation and inoperativity are in this sense the metaphysical operators of an-
thropogenesis, which, in liberating living human beings from every biological
and social destiny and every predetermined task, render them available for that
peculiar absence of work that we are accustomed to calling “politics” and “art.”
Politics and art are not tasks nor simply “works”: rather, they name the dimen-
sion in which works—linguistic and bodily, material and immaterial, biological
and social—are deactivated and contemplated as such in order to liberate the
inoperativity that has remained imprisoned in them. And in this consists the
greatest good that, according to the philosopher, the human being can hope for:
“a joy born from this, that human beings contemplate themselves and their own
potential for acting” (Spinoza 2, III, prop. 53).
א At least up to modernity, the political tradition of the West has always sought to
keep operating in every constituted system two heterogeneous powers, which in some
way mutually limited each other. Examples of this are the duality of auctoritas and potestas in Rome, that of spiritual power and temporal power in the Middle Ages, and that of
natural law and positive law up to the eighteenth century. These two powers could act as
a reciprocal limit because they were entirely heterogeneous: the senate, to which auctoritas belonged in Rome, was lacking in the imperium to which the people and their supreme magistrates were entitled; the pope did not have the temporal sword, which remained the
exclusive privilege of the sovereign; the unwritten natural law came from a different source than the written laws of the city. If already in Rome beginning with Augustus, who had
caused the two powers to coincide in his person, and in the course of the Middle Ages,
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1279
with the struggles between pope and emperor, one of the powers had sought to eliminate
the others, the modern democracies and totalitarian states had introduced in various ways
one sole principle of political power, which in this way became unlimited. Whether it is
founded, in the last analysis, on popular sovereignty, on ethnic and racial principles, or on personal charisma, positive right no longer knows any limits. Democracies maintain
constituent power in the form of the power of revision and the control of the constitu-
tionality of laws on the part of a special court, but these are in fact internal to the system and, in the last analysis, of a procedural nature.
Let us now im
agine—something that is not within the scope of this book—in some
way translating into act the action of a destituent potential in a constituted political
system. It would be necessary to think an element that, while remaining heterogeneous
to the system, had the capacity to render decisions destitute, suspend them, and render
them inoperative. Plato had in mind something of the kind when at the end of the Laws
(968c), he mentions as “protector” ( phylake) of the city a “Nocturnal Council” ( nykterinos syllogos), which, however, is not an institution in a technical sense because, as Socrates specifies, “it is impossible to lay down the council’s activities until it has been established
[ prin a kosmethe] . . . through a long standing together [ metà synousia pollen].” While the modern State pretends through the state of exception to include within itself the anarchic and anomic element it cannot do without, it is rather a question of displaying its radical heterogeneity in order to let it act as a purely destituent potential.
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Bibliography
Where English translations are available, works are cited according to the page number of the original text, followed by the page number of the translation, or else by a standard textual division that is consistent across translations and editions. Translations have frequently been altered for greater conformity with Agamben’s usage. Where no English translation is listed, the translations are my own.
All biblical quotations are based on the New Revised Standard Version. All quotations from the works of Aristotle are based on The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). All quotations from the works of Plato are based on Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997). Quotations from these and other ancient texts, however, have been thoroughly revised in light of Agamben’s own translations. Transliterations from Greek and Hebrew texts follow those provided by the author in the original Italian edition.
Adorno and Sohn-Rethel: Theodor W. Adorno and Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Briefwechsel 1936–1969, ed. Christoph Gödde (Munich: edition text + kritik, 1991).
Agamben 1: Giorgio Agamben, L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2002).
English translation: The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004).
Agamben 2: Giorgio Agamben, Il Regno e la Gloria. Per una genealogia dell’economia e del governo (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2007). English translation: The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government, trans. Lorenzo Chiesa and Matteo Mandarini (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
Agamben 3: Giorgio Agamben, Nudità (Rome: Nottetempo, 2009). English translation: Nudities, trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).
Agamben 4: Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Turin: Einaudi, 2009).
English translation: Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).
Alexander: Alexandri Aphrodisiensis praeter commentaria scripta minora. De anima liber cum mantissa, ed. Ivo Bruns (Berolini: Reimer, 1887). English translation: Supplement to On the Soul, trans. R. W. Sharples (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014).
Altman: Irwin Altman, “Privacy: A Conceptual Analysis,” Environment and Behavior 8.1 (1976): 7–29.
Aquinas 1: Thomas Aquinas, Questiones disputatae de veritate, Questions 10–20, trans. James V.
McGlynn (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1953).
Aquinas 2: Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, 2nd rev. ed., trans.
Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920). Online edition, 2008: http://www.newad
vent.org/summa.
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HOMO SACER IV, 2
Aquinas 3: Thomas Aquinas, Questiones disputatae de veritate, Questions 21–29, trans. Robert W.
Schmidt (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1954).
Aquinas 4: Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Richard Regan (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2007).
Aquinas 5: Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, Book Four: Salvation, trans. Charles J. O’Neill (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).
Aquinas 6: Thomas Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii “De hebdomadibus,” trans. Peter King.
Online edition, 2004: individual.utoronto.ca/pking/translations/AQUINAS.Exposition_of_
Hebdomads.pdf.
Arendt: Hannah Arendt, Vita activa, oder von tätigen Leben, new ed. (Munich: Piper, 1981).
Arpe: Curt Arpe, Das Ti en einai bei Aristoteles (Hamburg: Friederichsen, 1938).
Artemidorus: Artemidori Daldiani Onirocriticon Libri V, ed. Roger A. Pack (Lipsiae in aedibus B. G. Teunberi, 1963). English translation: Artemidorus, The Interpretation of Dreams: Oneirocritica, 2nd ed., trans. Robert J. White (Torrance, CA: Original Books, 1990).
Augustine 1: Augustine, On Nature and Grace, ed. Benjamin B. Warfield, trans. Peter Holmes and Robert Ernest Wallis, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 5, ed. Philip Schaff (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1887).
Augustine 2: Augustine, On the Trinity, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City Press, 1991).
Barker: Ernest Barker, The Political Thought of Plato and Aristotle (New York: Dover, 1918).
Baumstark: Anton Baumstark, Liturgia romana e liturgia dell’esarcato (Rome: Liberia pontificia di Federico Pustet, 1904).
Becker: Oskar Becker, Von der Hinfälligkeit des Schönen und der Abenteuerlichkeith der Künstlers (1929), in Dasein und Dawesen. Gesammelte philosophische Schriften (Pfüllingen: Neske, 1961).
Beckmann: Jan Peter Beckmann, Die Relation der Identität nach Johannes Duns Scotus (Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1967).
Bénatouïl: Thomas Bénatouïl, Faire usage: La pratique du stoïcisme (Paris: Vrin, 2006).
Benjamin 1: Rolf Tiedemann, ed., Frankfurter Adorno Blätter, vol. 4 (Munich: edition text + kritik, 1995). English translation: “Notes toward a Work on the Category of Justice,” trans. Peter Fenves, in The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time, by Peter Fenves (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011).
Benjamin 2: Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4.1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980). English translation: Selected Writings, vol. 2, pt. 1, ed. Michael William Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 2005).
Benjamin 3: Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 6 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1985).
Benjamin 4: Walter Benjamin, “Zur Kritik der Gewalt,” in Kairos: Schriften zur Philosophie, ed.
Ralf Konersmann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007). English translation: “Critique of
Violence,” in Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913–1926, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
Benveniste: Émile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1966).
English translation: Problems in General Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables, FL: University of Miami Press, 1971).
Black: Max Black, “Lebensform und Sprachspiel in Wittgenstein’s Later Work,” in Wittgenstein and His Impact on Contemporary Thought: Proceedings of the Second International Wittgenstein Symposium, ed. Elisabeth Leinfellner et al. (Vienna: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky, 1978).
Boehm, A.: Alfred Boehm, Le vinculum substantiale chez Leibniz: Ses origines historiques (Paris: Vrin, 1962).
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Boehm, R.: Rudolf Boehm, Das Grundlegende und das Wesentliche: zu Aristoteles’ Abhandlung über das Sein und das Seiende (Metaphysik Z) (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 19
65).
Casel: Odo Casel, “Actio in liturgischer Verwendung,” Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft 1 (1921): 34–39.
Cicero 1: Cicero, De officiis (Loeb Classical Library), trans. Walter Miller (New York: MacMillan, 1913).
Cicero 2: Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum (Loeb Classical Library), trans. Clinton Walter Keys (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994).
Clement: Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen, trans. William Wilson, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885).
Colli: Giorgio Colli, La ragione errabonda (Milan: Adelphi, 1982).
Corpus Hippocraticum: Hippocrates (Loeb Classical Library), 10 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1923–1931).
Courtine: Jean-François Courtine, Suárez et le système de la métaphysique (Paris: PUF, 1990).
Dante 1: The Convivio of Dante Alighieri, trans. Phillip Henry Wickstool (London: J. M. Dent, 1903). Online edition: https://archive.org/details/convivioofdantea00dantiala.
Dante 2: Dante, Monarchia, ed. and trans. Prue Shaw (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Debord 1: Guy Debord, Oeuvres cinématographiques complètes, 1952–1978 (Paris: Gallimard, 1994).
English translation: Complete Cinematic Works: Scripts, Stills, Documents, trans. Ken Knabb (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2005).
Debord 2: Guy Debord, Panégyrique, vol. 2, in Oeuvres, ed. Jean-Louis Rançon (Paris: Gallimard, 2006). English translation: Panegyric: Volumes 1 and 2, trans. James Brook and John McHale (New York: Verso, 2009).
Debord 3: Guy Debord, La société du spectacle (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1967). English translation:
Society of the Spectacle (Detroit, MI: Black & Red, 1997).
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari, What Is Philosophy? , trans. Hugh Thomlinson and Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
Deligny: Fernand Deligny, Les enfants et le silence (Paris: Galilée, 1980).
Digest: Justinian, Digest, in The Civil Law: Including The Twelve Tables, The Institutes of Gaius, The Rules of Ulpian, The Opinions of Paulus, The Enactments of Justinian, and The Constitutions of Leo, trans. S. P. Scott, 17 vols. (Cincinnati, OH: Central Trust, 1932).
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