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What Might Agamben Learn from Augustine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 March 2024

Peter Iver Kaufman Open the ORCID record for Peter Iver Kaufman [Opens in a new window]
Peter Iver Kaufman*
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University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, USA
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Email: pkaufman@richmond.edu
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Abstract

Giorgio Agamben’s references to a ‘coming community’ keep readers hunting for its characteristics, specifically for prescriptions that would signal how its political culture might be developed and maintained. His ambivalence toward Augustine prevents him, as well as readers, from discovering contributions the prelate’s preferences for compassionate collectives – which especially mark his polemical treatises, correspondence, and sermons – might make to giving a shape to the coming community that comports with many of Agamben’s other politically significant remarks.

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AgambenAugustinecommunitycompassionliturgy
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Article
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New Blackfriars , First View , pp. 1 - 17
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© The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers.

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References

1 See Karl Jaspers, Nietzsche: Einführung in das Verständnis seines Philosophierens (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1947), pp. 257–58.

2 Giorgio Agamben, Mezzi senza fine: Note sulla politica (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1996), p. 89.

3 For example, see John Grumley, ‘The Messianic Sovereignty and the Camps: Arendt and Agamben’, Critical Horizons, 16 (2015), 243.

4 See, for example, Giorgio Agamben, Nudità (Rome: Nottetempo, 2009), pp. 98 and 141.

5 Roberto Esposito, Due: La macchina della teologia politica e il posto del pensiero (Turin: Einaudi, 2013), pp. 211–12. Compare Agamben, Homo sacer: Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Turin: Einaudi, 1995), pp.45–46, on insurgents-turned-statists. Also consult Agamben, Che cos’è un dispositivo (Rome: Nottetempo, 2006), pp. 5–7, discussing the term ‘apparatus’. In this paper, the plurals, (‘apparatuses’ and ‘protocols’) refer to the cluster of practices and discourses usually associated with Foucault’s disclosures about ‘governmentality’, networks reinforcing discipline and authority.

6 Rüdiger Voigt, Staatliche Souveränität: zu einem Schlüsselbegriff der Staatsdiskussion (Wiesbaden: Springer, 2016), p. 31; Roberto Esposito, Categorie dell’impolitico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1988), pp. 96–98 (‘a vicious circle routinely swallows up every revolution [creating] a downward or degenerative spiral’.)

7 Agamben, Homo Sacer, p. 177. Also see Giorgio Agamben, Potenza del pensiero: Saggi e conferenza (Rome: Neri Pozza, 2005), pp. 327–28 and Andrea Russo, ‘Giorgio Agamben: Il fascismo che viene, o la democrazia a pugni chiusi’, in L’Uniforme e l’anima: Indagine sul vecchio e nuovo fascismo, ed. by Russo, et al. (Bari: Action 30, 2009), pp. 169–72 and pp. 178–79.

8 Giorgio Agamben, Quel che resta di Auschwitz: L’archivio e il testimone (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998), p. 16.

9 Giorgio Agamben, Stasis: La guerra civile come paradigma politico (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2015), pp. 76–77.

10 Agamben, Stato di eccezione (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003), pp. 110–12.

11 Leland de la Durantaye, Giogio Agamben: A Critical Introduction (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), pp. 372–76.

12 Agamben, Il fuoco e il racconto (Rome: Nottetempo, 2014), p. 141.

13 William Rasch, ‘A Completely New Politics or Excluding the Political? Agamben’s Critique of Sovereignty’, Soziale Systeme, 8 (2002), p. 44.

14 Giorgio Agamben, La communitá che viene (Turin: Einaudi, 1990), p. 59. For Agamben’s alleged ‘incapability’, consult Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Commonwealth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), pp. 57–58, and, for Agamben’s ‘empty utopianism’, see Dominick LaCapra, ‘Approaching Limit Events: Siting Agamben’, in Witnessing the Disaster, ed. by Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard Glejzer (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003), pp. 286–87.

15 Giorgio Agamben, Altissimá povertà: Regole monastische e forma di vita (Milan: Neri Pozza, 2011), pp. 41–42.

16 Giorgio Agamben, Opus Dei: Archaeologia dell’ufficio (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2012), pp. 102–03.

17 Giorgio Agamben, Karman: Breve trattato sull’azione, la colpa e il gesto (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2017), pp. 82–86.

18 Agamben, Opus Dei, pp. 21–22, 33, 90.

19 For which, consult Timothy Barnes, ‘The Beginnings of Donatism’, The Journal of Theological Studies, 26 (1975), 13–22 and Bernhard Kriegbaum, Kirche der Traditoren oder Kirche der Martyrer: Die Vorgeschichte des Donatismus (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1986), pp. 118–27 and pp. 152–54. I use the lower case ‘c’ in the term ‘catholic’ to denote a distinction between what became the universal Catholic Church and the African churches Augustine defended, although their similarity to Christian churches elsewhere became a critical element in his defense.

20 Agamben, Opus Dei, pp. 40–41, 72, and 78–79.

21 Ibid., 87.

22 Ibid., 102.

23 See Giorgio Agamben, Signatura rerum: Sul metodo (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2008), p. 43 and Agamben, Stato di eccezione, pp. 151–52.

24 Agamben, Signatura rerum, 62.

25 For the most often cited example, see Augustine, civ. 19.6. Abbreviations of Augustine’s titles conform to those in Augustinus-Lexikon, edited by Cornelius Petrus Mayer, Erich Feldman, and others (Basel: Schwabe, 1986). The texts cited here may be accessed online at http://www.augustinus.it/latino/index/htm, which refers to various volumes in Patrologiae, series Latina, edited by J.-P. Migne. My translations draw from the critical edition, in various volumes of the Corpus scriptorium ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (Vienna: Akademie der Wissenshchaft, 1864).

26 Augustine, Cresc. 2.22.27.

27 Augustine, en. Ps. 93.18.

28 Augustine, civ. 18.54.

29 Augustine, bapt. 4.12.18 and s. 266.7.

30 For example, Augustine, un. bapt. 14.23 and 16.27 and Cresc. 4.45.53.

31 Augustine, ep. 128.2.

32 Augustine, c. ep. Parm. 3.3.18 and c. litt. Pet. 2.102.235.

33 Compare the discussions of Augustine’s exaggerations and ‘fictions’ in Brent Shaw, Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 668–81 and 694–95 with those in Peter Iver Kaufman, ‘Donatism Revisited: Militants and Moderates in Late Antique North Africa’, Journal of Late Antiquity, 2 (2009), 131–42.

34 Augustine, c. litt. Pet. 2.68.154.

35 Augustine, en. Ps. 100.8.

36 Augustine, f. et op. 4.6-5.7.

37 Augustine, en. Ps. 100.12.

38 Augustine, s. 259.2.

39 Augustine, pat. 22.

40 Augustine, s. 259.6; civ. 18.49, 19.6.

41 Augustine, cat. rud. 16.24-25.

42 Augustine, c. litt. Pet. 2.104.239, citing Ps. 133.

43 Augustine, s. 162A.7.

44 Augustine, s. 137.1.

45 Augustine, s. 357.4-5.

46 Agamben, Mezzi senza fine, p. 105.

47 Agamben, Communità che viene, pp. 72–73.

48 Daniel M. Bell, Jr., Divinations: Theopolitics in an Age of Terror (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017), pp. 164, 178.

49 Agamben, Communità che viene, p. 44.

50 See Estelle Ferrarese, ‘Le projet politique d’une vie qui ne peut être séparée de sa forme: La politique de la soustracion de Giorgio Agamben’, Raisons politiques, 57 (2015), 49–63.

51 Augustine, bapt. 1.9.12.

52 See the exposition of Galatians 6:2 in Augustine, div. qu. 71.1-5 and Giueseppe Carrabetta, Agostino d’Ippona: La chiesa mistero e presenza del Cristo totale (Assisi: Cittadella, 2015), pp. 337–39.

53 See, for example, Augustine, ep. 48.1; s. 137.14; s. 311.13; en. Ps. 25(2).13; and en. Ps. 80.21. Also consult Peter Iver Kaufman, ‘Augustine, Macedonius, and the Courts’, Augustinian Studies, 34 (2003), 78–82.

54 Compare Augustine, div. qu. 71.7 with Giorgio Agamben, Il tempo che resta: Un commento alla lettura ai Romani (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2000), p. 32.

55 Augustine, civ. 15.20-21.

56 But review the remarks on Augustine’s ‘inaugurated eschatology’ in Michael Lamb, A Commonwealth of Hope (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022), pp. 170–78.

57 For the disjunction, see Augustine, civ. 18.54. For one reply to colleagues – notably Robert Markus, Robert Dodaro, Eric Gregory, Charles Mathewes, and Joseph Clair – whose Augustines more or less favor renovation, consult Peter Iver Kaufman, ‘Augustine’s Dystopia’, in Augustine’s City of God: A Critical Guide, ed. by James Wetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 55–74.

58 Compare Augustine, ep. 153.18 with Agamben, Homo Sacer, pp. 48–52.

59 Agamben, Altissima povertà, pp. 41–42.

60 Agamben, L’amico (Rome: Nottetempo, 2007), p. 16, but also consult Agamben’s Communità che viene, p. 31 and L’uso dei corpi (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2017), p. 313.

61 Compare Augustine, en. Ps. 136.17 and en. Ps. 149.1-2 with Agamben, L’uso dei corpi, pp. 86–87 and with his discussion of ‘anthropometrics’, in Nudità, pp. 73–79.

62 Augustine, s. 178.11.

63 Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 28.9.

64 Agamben, L’amico, p. 19.

65 Nomi Claire Lazar, Out of Joint: Power, Crisis, and the Rhetoric of Time (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), p. 205.

66 Augustine, en. Ps. 129.3.

67 Augustine, Io. ev. tr. 10.9; en. Ps. 93.20.

68 For example, compare Augustine, s. 90.6 and en. Ps. 53.10 with Agamben, Mezzi senza fine, pp. 69–70.

69 Augustine, s. 9.10 and s. 21.10.

70 Augustine, en. Ps. 103(2).11.

71 See Augustine, en. Ps. 43.22, for ‘divine spectacles’; also consult s. 366.2, citing Heb. 7:19-20 and, for the charitable or compassionate collectives as new creations, en. Ps. 103(3).26.

72 Agamben, ‘Bartleby o della contingenza’, in Bartleby: La formula della creazione, ed. by Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben (Macerata: Quodlibet, 1993), p. 71 (‘He is not simply indifferent but experiences a possibility – a power – a luminous flash of what is possible’). Gerard Delanty Community (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 142–43 defines ‘liminal communities’ as aggregates created by crisis, dysphoria, or euphoria, aggregates that disperse as swells or surges of emotion subside.

73 Agamben, Altissima povertà, pp. 137–40, 173–74.

74 Agamben, Il tempo che resta, pp. 90-94, 114-15. For Agamben’s Augustine and the culture of accusation, see Agamben, Nudità, pp. 39–40.

75 See Agamben, Il Regno e la Gloria: Per una genealogia teologica dell’economia e del governo (Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2009), p. 272. Also see Il tempo che resta, p. 75 and L’uso dei corpi, pp. 60–62.

76 For governance, described as ‘a loving patriarchy’, (Liebespatriarchalismus), see Gerd Theissen, ‘Soziale Schichtung in der korinthischen Gemeinde: Ein Beitrag zur Soziologie des hellenistischen Urchristentums’, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde des Urchristentums, 65 (1974), 266–67, 272. For ‘luxuriant growth’, see Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 77–79.

77 Eva Guelen, Agamben zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 2005), p. 103.

78 Alain Badiou, Saint Paul: La fondation de l’universalisme (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1997), pp. 51–52. For the apostle’s ‘cells’ and ‘Lenin’, see John M. G. Barclay, ‘Paul and the Philosophers: Alain badiou and the event’, New Blackfriars, 91 (2010), pp. 173 and 179.

79 Agamben, Il tempo che resta, pp. 37–38 and 77, citing Philippians 3:12.

80 Agamben, L’uso dei corpi, p. 130.

81 Agamben, Mezzi senza fine, p. 68.