scholarly journals The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form‑of‑Life by Giorgio Agamben

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-192
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Tymofieiev
Keyword(s):  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Form Of Life

Book review: Высочайшая бедность. Монашеские правила и форма жизни. Джорджо Агамбен. Пер. с ит. и лат. С. Ермакова. Москва; Санкт-Петербург: Издательство Института Гайдара; Факультет свободных искусств и наук СПбГУ, 2020. 216 с. ISBN 978-5-93255-571-2 (hbk.). 420.00 RUB. ISBN 978-5-93255-571-2 (hbk.). 420.00 RUB.

Editors' Introduction: Form-of-Life: Giorgio Agamben, Ontology and Politics

2010 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bailey ◽  
Daniel McLoughlin ◽  
Jessica Whyte
Keyword(s):  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Form Of Life

Plato and the Invention of Life Itself

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Naas
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
The Body ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Life Itself

The final chapter takes many of the insights from the previous chapters in order to show, through a more general reading of Plato’s dialogues, how Plato attempts always to move from what is commonly called life, that is, from a more biological conception of life, a life of the body or of the animal, to a spiritual life or a life of the soul, that is, from something like bare life to real life, from particular life-forms to an essence or form of life itself, the only life, in end, worthy of the name for Plato. This chapter thus concentrates on several later dialogues in which Plato begins to distinguish two different valences of life, human life in the polis (bios) as opposed to what Giorgio Agamben calls “bare life” (zōē), but also, and more importantly, human life as opposed to something like real life. It is the initial distinction between human life and bare life that allows for this reinscription or transformation of bare life into something like real life or life itself, a transformation, it is argued, that is decisive not just for Plato but for the entire neo-Platonic and Christian tradition that takes its inspiration from him.

Lived Ontologies

Symposium ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-123
Author(s):  
Nicolai Von Eggers ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Hellenistic Philosophy ◽  
Article Analyse

In this article, I analyze the relation between ontology and practical philosophy in Cicero’s work and the role Hellenistic philosophy plays within the work of Giorgio Agamben. I discuss the relation between life and ontology, between philosophy as a guide to living and philosophy as the study of being. Unlike philosophers who treat Hellenistic philosophy as a form of therapy (Nussbaum, Foucault, Hadot), I show how Agamben interprets Hellenistic philosophy as oppressive by turning the theory of being into an injunction of having-to-be. For Agamben, every philosophy implies a certain form of life, and it is thus impossible to distinguish between ontology and living. The aim of philosophy, therefore, is not to be therapeutic but rather to develop an ontology that will allow for humanity to live without oppression. Through a detailed reading of Cicero’s concept of “nature,” I develop the reading and critique of Cicero suggested by Agamben.Cet article analyse la relation entre l’ontologie et la philosophie pratique dans l’oeuvre de Cicéron et le rôle joué par la philosophie hellénistique dans l’oeuvre de Giorgio Agamben. Il discute la relation entre la vie et l’ontologie, entre la philosophie comme guide de savoir-vivre et la philosophie comme étude de l’être. Contrairement aux philosophes qui traitent la philosophie hellénistique comme une forme de thérapie (Nussbaum, Foucault, Hadot), je montre que Agamben interprète la philosophie hellénistique comme essentielle-ment oppressive en transformant la théorie de l'être en une injonction normative de devoir-être. Pour Agamben, toute philosophie implique une certaine forme de vie, rendant alors la distinction entre l’ontologie et la vie impossible. Ainsi, le but de la philosophie n'est pas d’être thérapeutique mais plutôt de développer une ontologie qui permettra à l’humanité de vivre sans oppression. Par une lecture du concept de la « nature » de Cicéron, je développe l’interprétation et la critique de Cicéron proposé par Agamben.

scholarly journals Form-of-Life: From Politics to Aesthetics (and Back)

2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (44-45) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason E. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Short Text ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
Classical Space ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Early Formulation ◽  
The Way

This article examines an often-mentioned but largely undeveloped concept in the work of Giorgio Agamben and in particular his Homo Sacer project: form-of-life. What is at stake in this concept is, I attempt to show, a way of thinking “politics” outside of the space of sovereignty. By examining a short text on this notion published just before the opening installment of the Homo Sacer sequence, this article demonstrates the way this early formulation of the concept is indebted to certain strains of Italian workerist and post-workerist thought. The fundamental question this analysis poses, however, is whether the concept of form-of-life, being to some extent “beyond” the classical space of politics, should in fact be understood as fundamentally aesthetic in nature.

scholarly journals What Is a Form-of-Life?: Giorgio Agamben and the Practice of Poverty

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven DeCaroli
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Material Things ◽  
The One

This chapter, and the one following, focus on Agamben’s recent work on form-of-life and the Franciscan practice of poverty. DeCaroli argues that form-of-life should be understood as a particular form of life that is aware of the contingency of the rules that govern our existence, and does not attempt to replace them, but to patiently expose the machinery of their operation. Franciscanism was an incomplete attempt to develop such a form-of-life through a community of non-appropriative use that claimed no social or juridical foundation. The name for this way of living was poverty – which does not mean poverty in material things (although the Friars did live modestly) – but rather poverty in those less tangible things, such as possession and privilege, that profoundly shape our social reality, but whose operation we are often only faintly aware of.

scholarly journals Form(s)-of-life: agamben's reading of Wittgenstein and the potential uses of a notion

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matías Leandro Saidel
Keyword(s):  
Constitutive Relation ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Specific Trait ◽  
The Common

Giorgio Agamben and Ludwig Wittgenstein seem to have very little in common: the former is concerned with traditional ontological issues while the latter was interested in logics and ordinary language, avoiding metaphysical issues as something we cannot speak about. However, both share a crucial notion for their philosophical projects: form of life. In this paper, I try to show that, despite their different approaches and goals, form of life is for both a crucial notion for thinking ethics and life in-common. Addressing human existence in its constitutive relation to language, this notion deconstructs traditional dichotomies like bios and zoé, the cultural and the biological, enabling both authors to think of a life which cannot be separated from its forms, recognizing the commonality of logos as the specific trait of human existence. Through an analogical reading between both theoretical frameworks, I suggest that the notion of form-of-life, elaborated by Wittgenstein to address human production of meaning, becomes the key notion in Agamben's affirmative thinking since it enables us to consider the common ontologically in its relation to Human potentialities and to foresee a new, common use of the world and ourselves.

scholarly journals Impossible Dialogue on Bio-power: Agamben and Foucault

2005 ◽  
pp. 5-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mika Ojakangas
Keyword(s):  
Third Reich ◽  
Sovereign Power ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Giorgio Agamben ◽  
Social Democrat ◽  
Form Of Life ◽  
Homo Sacer ◽  
The Third ◽  
Political Rationality ◽  
The Third Reich

In Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben criticizes Michel Foucault's distinction between 'productive' bio-power and 'deductive' sovereign power, emphasizing that it is not possible to distinguish between these two. In his view, the production of what he calls 'bare life' is the original, although concealed, activity of sovereign power. In this article, Agamben's conclusions are called into question. (1) The notion of 'bare life', distinguished from the 'form of life', belongs exclusively to the order of sovereignty, being incompatible with the modern bio-political notion of life, that is univocal and immanent to itself. In the era of bio-politics, life is already a bios that is only its own zoe ('form-of-life'). (2) Violence is not hidden in the foundation of bio-politics; the 'hidden' foundation of bio-politics is love (agape) and care (cura), 'care for individual life'. (3) Bio-politics is not absolutised in the Third Reich; the only thing that the Third Reich absolutises is the sovereignty of power (Aryan race) and the nakedness of life (the Jews). (4) St Paul's 'messianic revolution' does not endow us with the means of breaking away from the closure of bio-political rationality; on the contrary, Paul's 'messianic revolution' is a historical precondition for the deployment of modern bio-politics. (5) Instead of homo sacer, who is permitted to kill without committing homicide, the paradigmatic figure of the bio-political society can be seen, for example, in the middle-class Swedish social-democrat.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document