Political Life: Giorgio Agamben and the Idea of Authority
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Abstract
This article explores the relation between biological life and political life, placing it in the context of the ancient Greek distinction between the life of the home (the oikos) and the realm of politics (the polis). In contrast with the oikos, the life of the polis was characterized by attempts to exclude from its sphere both the constraints of necessity that oblige human action to conform to the exigencies of survival as well as the violence that accompanies this pursuit. Although this exclusion has never been successful, the question of how to achieve it lies at the heart of the oldest philosophical reflections on politics and, in a more concealed fashion, remains central to our political concerns today. Invoking the work of Giorgio Agamben, this article explores the earliest discussions concerning the question “what is political life?” to show why so much depends upon how we answer this question.
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4)
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 31.
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5)
Arendt, The Human Condition, 129. “It is for this reason that the Greeks derived their word for torture from necessity, calling it anagkai, and not from bia, used for violence as exerted by man over man.”
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8)
Alcaeus, “Fragment 364,” in Greek Lyric: Sappho and Alcaeus, trans. David A. Campbell (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
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10)
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (New York: Viking Press, 1977), 50.
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29)
Giorgini, “The Place of the Tyrant in Machiavelli’s Political Thought,” 7.
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32)
Giorgio Balladore-Pallieri, Diritto costituzionale (Milan: Giuffrè, 1970), 168, quoted in Agamben, State of Exception, 30.
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36)
Dio Cassius, Roman History, 55.12.5, quoted in Agamben, State of Exception, 82.
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37)
Theodor Mommsen, Römisches Staatsrecht, p. 1034, quoted in Hannah Arendt, “What is Authority?,” in Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 123.
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39)
Richard Heinze, “Auctoritas,” Hermes 60 (1925): 356. Quoted in Agamben, State of Exception, 82.
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42)
Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 273.
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43)
Augusto Fraschetti, Roma e il principe (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1990), 57, quoted in Agamben, State of Exception, 68.
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46)
Louis Delatte, Les traités de la royauté d’Ecphante, Diotgène et Sthénidas (Paris: Droz, 1942), 39, quoted in Agamben, State of Exception, 69.
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57)
Jacques Derrida, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005), 75.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
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| Abstract Views | 362 | 109 | 8 |
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Political Life: Giorgio Agamben and the Idea of Authority
In: Research in PhenomenologySearch for other papers by Steven DeCaroli in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
This article explores the relation between biological life and political life, placing it in the context of the ancient Greek distinction between the life of the home (the oikos) and the realm of politics (the polis). In contrast with the oikos, the life of the polis was characterized by attempts to exclude from its sphere both the constraints of necessity that oblige human action to conform to the exigencies of survival as well as the violence that accompanies this pursuit. Although this exclusion has never been successful, the question of how to achieve it lies at the heart of the oldest philosophical reflections on politics and, in a more concealed fashion, remains central to our political concerns today. Invoking the work of Giorgio Agamben, this article explores the earliest discussions concerning the question “what is political life?” to show why so much depends upon how we answer this question.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 362 | 109 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 110 | 3 | 2 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 52 | 5 | 0 |
