By Giorgio Agamben
Why has energy within the West assumed the shape of an "economy," that's, of a central authority of guys and issues? If energy is largely executive, why does it desire glory, that's, the ceremonial and liturgical equipment that has constantly followed it?In the early centuries of the Church, for you to reconcile monotheism with God's threefold nature, the doctrine of Trinity used to be brought within the guise of an economic climate of divine lifestyles. It was once as though the Trinity amounted to not anything greater than an issue of handling and governing the heavenly condo and the realm. Agamben indicates that, whilst mixed with the belief of windfall, this theological-economic paradigm unexpectedly lies on the starting place of a few of the most vital different types of contemporary politics, from the democratic thought of the department of powers to the strategic doctrine of collateral harm, from the invisible hand of Smith's liberalism to principles of order and security.But the best novelty to emerge from the dominion and the honour is that smooth strength is not just govt but in addition glory, and that the ceremonial, liturgical, and acclamatory points that we have got considered as vestiges of the earlier really represent the root of Western strength. via a desirable research of liturgical acclamations and ceremonial symbols of power—the throne, the crown, crimson textile, the Fasces, and more—Agamben develops an unique family tree that illuminates the startling functionality of consent and of the media in sleek democracies. With this booklet, the paintings all started with Homo Sacer reaches a decisive element, profoundly difficult and renewing our imaginative and prescient of politics.
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Additional info for The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government
Sample text
Oikonomia means "administration of the house. " In the Aristote lian (or pseudo-Aristotelian) treatise on economy, we can thus read that the techne oikonomike differs from politics just as the house ( oikia) differs from the city (polis) . This distinction is restated in the Politics, in which the politician and the king---who belong to the sphere of the polis- are qualitatively opposed to the oikonomos and the despotes--who are referred to the sphere of the house and the family. Even in Xenophon (in whose works the opposition between house and city is certainly less pronounced than in Aristotle's) , the ergon of the economy is said to be the "good ad ministration of the household [ eu oikein ton ( .
470) . But nothing in the text authorizes us to relate oiko nomia to a meaning that could perhaps belong only to mysterion. Once again, the construction with dido mi is perspicuous: Paul has received the task to announce the good news of the coming of the Messiah, and this announcernent fulfills God's word, whose promise of salvation had re mained hidden and has now been revealed. There is no reason to link oikonomia to mysterion: the latter term is grammatically an apposition of logon tou theou, and not of oikonomian.
Tatian, Address ofTatian to the Greeks, 5, p. ro) An analogous acceptation can be found in Chapter 21: Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course say are introduced merely for the sake of the disposition of discourse [charin oikonomias] , not one of these personages having really existed. (Ibid . , p. 28) In the remaining part of the Address, the term oikonomia refers to the ordered organization of the hum an body: The constitution [ s)tStasis] of the body is under one management [ mias estin oikonomias] [ .