Giorgio Agamben

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Giorgio Agamben (born April 22, 1942 in Rome ) is an Italian philosopher , essayist and book author . He teaches at the University of Venice and at the Collège international de philosophie in Paris . He is one of the most famous contemporary philosophers.

Career

Giorgio Agamben, whose surname comes from Armenian , studied law at La Sapienza University in Rome. He finished his studies with a thesis on the French philosopher Simone Weil . During his student days, Agamben maintained friendly relations with Elsa Morante , Alberto Moravia , Giorgio Manganelli , Sandro Penna and Ingeborg Bachmann, as well as with the director Pier Paolo Pasolini . In his 1964 film Il vangelo secondo Matteo ( The 1st Gospel - Matthew ), Agamben played the role of the apostle Philip .

In 1966 and 1968, through the mediation of his poet colleague Dominique Fourcade, Agamben took part in the seminars that Martin Heidegger organized in Le Thor on the basis of an initiative by René Char . The two seminars dealt with the philosophers Heraklit and Hegel . The encounter with Heidegger is reflected in Agamben's first work L'uomo senza contenuto , published in 1970 . In the same year he came into contact with Hannah Arendt , who quoted him in power and violence .

From 1978 to 1986 Agamben was - on behalf of the publisher Giulio Einaudi (1912-1999) - editor of the Italian editions of the writings of Walter Benjamin , where he rediscovered Benjamin's manuscripts believed lost at the time.

From 1986 to 1992 Agamben was the Directeur de Program at the Collège international de philosophie in Paris . In 1988 he received a professorship in aesthetics at the University of Macerata . From 1993 he taught philosophy at the University of Verona . Since 2003 he has been Professor of Aesthetics at the Facoltà di Design e Arti della IUAV in Venice .

From 1994 Agamben regularly took on visiting professorships in the USA. In the winter semester 2005/2006 he held a visiting professorship at Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf and in 2007/08 the Albertus Magnus professorship at the University of Cologne . In 2008 Agamben was a fellow of the Friedrich Nietzsche College.

plant

Agamben, who received international attention from the mid-1990s, is now one of the most talked about philosophers today. He cannot be tied to the role of an academic philosopher or literary scholar, but rather takes a position on contemporary issues. His direct access to current legal and political issues, especially bioethical and biotechnological aspects (“ biopolitics ”), is provocative again and again .

In the reception of Agamben's texts, the abundance of material and the supposed inconsistency of his reference points are often addressed. In fact, he thinks and writes out of the argument. Nevertheless, central intentions are clearly evident: for example the revival of aesthetic experience, the culturally critical juxtaposition of “consumption” and “use”, the initially still primarily linguistic-philosophical analysis of negativity, the formulation of a “way of life” concept or the ( inspired by Walter Benjamin ) New addition of the Messianic category . The intellectual historical horizon of his argument is also remarkable, which ranges from ancient philosophical and legal concepts to a sophisticated romantic neo-Marxism .

Marx and Heidegger

In his first work L'uomo senza contenuto (1970), Agamben starts from Hegel's aesthetics and establishes a separation between artwork and aesthetic perception : reflecting on art creates a barely bridgeable separation between the artist on the one hand and the recipient on the other. A reception is also dependent on the criteria of art philosophy and criticism . Agamben already connects the different terminologies of dialectical materialism and the Heideggers in being and time . Agamben takes up the attempt at synthesis again in his work Infanzia a storia (1978).

The movement of thought is reminiscent of Heidegger's complaint about the alienation he noted between being and being. Heidegger trained style and method, especially the etymological return of concepts from modern aesthetics to the concepts of Greek philosophy.

Warburg's picture atlas

In 1974 and 1975 Agamben worked at the London Warburg Institute . His book Stanze dates from this time . La parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale (1977). In this study, Agamben tries to preserve the imagination and the primal experiences of humans with the help of the montage of pictures - analogous to Aby Warburg's picture atlas Mnemosyne (series of pictures to investigate the function of pre-formed ancient expressive values ​​in the representation of moving life in the art of the European Renaissance ). Both Agamben and Warburg assume that the use of the senses is increasingly disciplined in a pragmatic way.

In his essay Notes on the Gesture from the book Mezzi senza fine (1996, German: means without end. Notes on politics ), which is discussed in international film criticism and in dance theater, Agamben draws on Warburg. The gesture is considered since Warburg rightly regarded as embodied archive. Their execution indicates participation in a collective stock of symbols. Just like Agamben, with his performative style, reveals himself as a participant in the classical modernism. However, he interprets the gesture as the liberation of the image from its assignment to a meaning that it otherwise has to represent.

In the aesthetic difference , the expression not yet or no longer bound by convention, Agamben looks for the trace of the historical subjects themselves, which are different. In this experience he finds a potential of the possible, disguised in real life, which reading and interpretation can free and defend against being forgotten again.

Main work Homo sacer

In 1995 (in German translation 2002) the book Homo sacer was published . It was the prelude to a four-volume work. The following are published in German:

I: Homo sacer ,
II / 1: State of emergency ,
II / 2: rulership and glory ,
II / 3: The sacrament of language ,
II / 5: Opus Dei. Archeology of the Office ,
III: Remnants of Auschwitz ,
IV / 1: Extreme poverty. Order rules and way of life .

Agamben assumes a legally constituted division of identity into a socialized being ( bίos politikós ) and bare life ( nuda vita ). He traces this split back to Aristotle 's momentous distinction between bios and zoé in the Nicomachean ethics ; it characterizes the political thinking of the West to this day (Homo sacer, p. 11f.).

In the "Homo sacer" project, Agamben takes up political and constitutional questions. Constant reference points are the theories of Walter Benjamin , Carl Schmitt , Martin Heidegger , Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault . Agamben paints a picture of today's people and their ways of life in a globalized world. At the center of the more recent writings is a cultural history of political imprisonment in the sense of inclusion and exclusion as social exclusion. The central theme of the “Homo sacer” project is the criticism of a tendency which, in a permanent increase in intensity, creates spaces free from the law and reduces people to their “bare life”.

The Nazi concentration camps serve as evidence for the development of his theses : According to this, the rulers have not only sought to control individuals as social beings since ancient times , but also to take control of their biological life. The result is a latent, for constantly growing parts of the world population also open, legally enforced division of existence into people and belonging. Like Benjamin, Jacob Taubes and Jacques Derrida before him , Agamben recognizes the consistent development in Carl Schmitt's friend-foe thinking.

The figure of Homo sacer from Roman law serves to distinguish between bios and zoé . Agamben is based on the double meaning of the word sacer : holy and outcast ("banned"), namely outlawed . So he sees in this concept a space beyond law and cult, which does not begin with the expulsion or banishment of the bare , the strange and the other life, but is inscribed in the history of Western self-awareness.

Based on Foucault, Agamben describes this development as biopolitics (Homo sacer, p. 127f.): There is a totalitarian approach to each individual, from which democracies are not immune. On the contrary: in response to global refugee movements and terrorism, fundamental rights and freedoms are being suspended. Agamben sees the refugee camps in the European Union and the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as examples . The state of emergency becomes the new paradigm of governance . In this horror scenario, it becomes the fourth element of the political order alongside the state, territory and nation.

Another volume of the Homo sacer episode will be published in 2016 in German translation Stasis, The Civil War as a Political Paradigm , in which he sees modern man involved in a world civil war. In two seminars at Princeton University in 2001, Agamben turned to the civil war against the background of terrorism and sees it as a global civil war.

Seek witnesses, be a witness

Agamben regards “bare life” first and foremost from its formal - and thus also aesthetic - side: not as underdeveloped in terms of civilization, not as released for destruction, but as an essential prerequisite for cultural self-determination. Against the totalitarianism of bio-politics, Agamben is looking for witnesses that he finds in the arts, but also in the poetic itself: It is his claim to find witnesses and, as a writer, to be a witness to “bare life”.

With its highly individualized spelling Agamben accuses the right of "bare life" in self-assertion one. The form of the essay allows Agamben in the Horizon of the Arts to boldly interweave historical visualization and images of political horrors, prognoses and specific wishes. In addition, there is a networking of philosophy with the development of the sciences and the arts.

Reception in Germany

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Agamben's German reception, previously little known, began in 2002 with a sudden abundance of translations.

Agamben's thought poetry and his method of genealogy gave rise to misunderstandings, which he can explain in discussions and interviews: For him, it is not about equating events with the place names Auschwitz or Guantánamo, but rather tracing the events and circumstances of the present back to their historical genesis. With his criticism of the western constitutional state, Agamben does not intend to destabilize it itself. Rather, in his view, the West has not yet recognized the trap that terrorism has set for it if it wants to abolish the current legal order in order to secure this order.

In the spring of 2013, Agamben caused a sensation with an essay on the creation of a Latin empire as a union of France with Spain and Italy. Wolf Lepenies described the advance against “Germanic” dominance in Europe, which was translated into several languages, as the dream of the French left.

In May 2013 he said in an interview:

“When we speak of Europe today, we are dealing with the gigantic suppression of an embarrassing yet obvious truth: the so-called European constitution is illegitimate. The people never voted on the text that would go through under this name. Or if he was up for election, as in France or Holland in 2005, then he was rejected head-on. From a legal point of view, this is not about a constitution, but on the contrary a treaty between governments: international law, not constitutional law. Only recently, the highly respected German lawyer Dieter Grimm reminded us that a European constitution lacks the fundamental, democratic element because European citizens were not allowed to decide on it. And now the whole project of ratification by the peoples has been tacitly put on hold. "

Awards

In 2006, Agamben received the Prix ​​Européen de l'Essai Charles Veillon for his life's work . In 2012 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Theological Faculty of the University of Friborg / Switzerland, and in 2013 the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize .

Fonts

Italian publications

  • L'uomo senza contenuto. Rizzoli, Milano 1970 (Quodlibet, Macerata 1994).
  • Punch. La parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale. Giulio Einaudi, Torino 1977 (2nd, expanded edition 1993; English: Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture. 1992).
  • Infanzia e storia. Distruzione dell´esperienza e origine della storia. Giulio Einaudi, Torino 1979.
  • Il linguaggio e la morte. Giulio Einaudi, Torino 1982 (3rd, expanded edition 1989).
  • Idea della prosa. Feltrinelli, Milano 1985 (2nd edition, Quodlibet, Macerata 2002).
  • La comunità che viene. Giulio Einaudi, Torino 1990 (2nd, extended edition, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2001; English: The Coming Community. 1993).
  • Bartleby o della contingenza. In: Giorgio Agamben, Gilles Deleuze : Bartleby; La formula della creazione. Quodlibet, Macerata 1993.
  • Homo Sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita. Giulio Einaudi, Torino 1995 (English: Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life (= Homo sacer. Vol. 1). 1998).
  • Mezzi senza fine. Note sulla politica. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1996.
  • Italian category. Studi di poetica. Marsilio, Venezia 1996 (Laterza, Roma / Bari 2010).
  • Quel che resta di Auschwitz. L'archivio e il testimone (= Homo sacer. Vol. 3). Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1998.
  • Il tempo che resta. Un commento alla Lettera ai romani. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2000.
  • L'aperto. L'uomo e l'animale. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2002.
  • Stato di eccezione (= Homo sacer. Vol. 2.1). Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2003.
  • Profanazioni. Nottetempo, Roma 2005.
  • La potenza del pensiero. Saggi e conferenze. Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2005.
  • Che cos'è un dispositivo? Nottetempo, Roma 2006.
  • Ninfe. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2007.
  • Il Regno e la Gloria. Per una genealogia teologica dell'economia e del governo (= Homo sacer. Vol. 2.2). Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2007.
  • L'amico. Nottetempo, Roma 2007.
  • Che cos'è il contemporaneo? Nottetempo, Roma 2008.
  • Signatura rerum. Sul metodo. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2008.
  • Il sacramento del linguaggio. Archeologia del giuramento (= Homo sacer. Vol. 2.3). Laterza, Roma, Bari 2008.
  • Nudità. Nottetempo, Roma 2009.
  • Agrimensor. In: Aris Fioretos (ed.): Babel. For Werner Hamacher. Urs Engeler, Basel 2009, ISBN 3-938767-55-3 , pp. 15-21.
  • Edited with Emanuele Coccia : Angeli. Ebraismo Cristianesimo Islam. Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2009.
  • Altissima povertà. Regole monastiche e forma di vita (= Homo sacer. Vol. 4.1). Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2011.
  • Opus Dei. Archeologia dell'ufficio (= Homo sacer. Vol. 2.5). Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2012.
  • To Whom is Poetry Addressed? In: New Observations. Vol. 130, 2014, p. 11.
  • Pulcinella ovvero Divertimento per li regazzi, Nottetempo, Roma 2015.

German-language editions

  • Bartleby or contingency followed by: The absolute immanence. Translated from Italian by Andreas Hiepko and Maria Zinfert. Merve, Berlin 1998.
  • Means without an end. Political notes. Diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2001.
  • Homo Sacer. The sovereign power and the bare life. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt Main 2002.
  • What remains of Auschwitz. The archive and the witness. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003.
  • The open. Man and the animal. Translated from Italian by Davide Giuriato . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003.
  • The idea of ​​prose. Carl Hanser, Munich, Vienna 1987 and Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003.
  • The coming community. Translated from the Italian by Andreas Hiepko. Merve, Berlin 2003.
  • State of emergency. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004.
  • Childhood and history. Destruction of experience and origin of history. Translated from Italian by Davide Giuriato. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2004.
  • Profanations. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005.
  • Nymphae. Translated from the Italian by Andreas Hiepko. Merve, Berlin 2005.
  • The time that remains. A comment on Romans. Translated from Italian by Davide Giuriato. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006.
  • Punching. The Word and the Phantasm in Western Culture. Translated from the Italian by Eva Zwischenbrugger. Diaphanes, Zurich, Berlin 2005 (3rd edition 2010).
  • The language and death. A seminar on the place of negativity . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-12468-0 .
  • The officials of heaven. About angels. World Religions Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 2007.
  • What is a dispositive? Diaphanes, Zurich-Berlin 2008.
  • Signatura rerum. To the method. Translated from the Italian by Anton Schütz. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-518-12585-4 .
  • Introductory remark on the concept of democracy. Translated from the French by Tilman Vogt. In: Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou , Daniel Bensaïd et al. (Eds.): Democracy? A debate. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-518-12611-0 .
  • The sacrament of language. An archeology of the oath. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2010.
  • Rulership and glory. On the theological genealogy of economy and government (= Homo sacer. Vol. 2.2). Translated from the Italian by Andreas Hiepko. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-12520-5 .
  • Nudities (Original: Nudità). Translated from the Italian by Andreas Hiepko. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-10-000530-4 .
  • Man without content. Translated from the Italian by Anton Schütz. Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-12625-7 .
  • The unspeakable girl. Myth and Mystery of the Kore. Translated from Italian by Michael Hack, drawings by Monica Ferrando. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 3100005325 .
  • Extreme poverty. Order rules and way of life (= Homo Sacer. Vol. 4.1). Translated from the Italian by Andreas Hiepko. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2012.
  • Church and Empire (Original: La Chiesa e il regno). Translated from the Italian by Andreas Hiepko. Merve, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-88396-288-7 .
  • Opus Dei. Archeology of the Office. Translated by Michael Hack. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013. 215 pp. ISBN 978-3-10-000535-9
  • The power of thinking. Collected essays. Translated by Francesca Raimondi. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2013, ISBN 978-3-10-000534-2 .
  • Leviathan's riddle. Lucas Prize 2013. Edited by Friedrich Hermanni. Translated from the Italian by Paul S. Peterson. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-16-153195-8 .
  • The secret of evil. Benedict XVI. and the end of times. Matthes & Seitz, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-95757-097-0 .
  • Stasis. The civil war as a political paradigm. Translated from the Italian by Michael Hack. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2016, ISBN 978-3-10-002452-7 .
  • When the cruel religion of money devours the future. Translated from the Italian by Toni Hildebrandt. In: Profanierungen , ed. v. Toni Hildebrandt, kunst und kirche 1, 2017, p. 6 (Original in: la Repubblica on February 16, 2012), ISSN 0023-5431.
  • The use of the body. Translated from the Italian by Andreas Hiepko u. Michael von Killisch-Horn. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2020, ISBN 978-3-10-002451-0 .

Secondary literature

  • Janine Böckelmann, Frank Meier (Ed.): The governmental machine. On the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. Unrast, Münster 2007.
  • Michael Fisch: Cursed and holy: Giorgio Agamben . For him the angels are the "officials of heaven". In: Berlin literary criticism from November 12, 2007.
  • Eva Geulen : Giorgio Agamben for an introduction. 3rd supplemented edition. Junius, Hamburg 2016 (EA 2005), ISBN 978-3-88506-670-5 .
  • Dominik Finkelde : Political eschatology according to Paul. Badiou, Agamben, Zizek, Santner. Turia & Kant, Vienna 2007.
  • Gert Mattenklott : Art religion. In: Sense and Form . Vol. 54, 2002, 1st issue, pp. 97-108.
  • Philipp Sarasin : Agamben - or is it Foucault? In: German magazine for philosophy. Volume 51, 2003, Issue 2, pp. 348-353.
  • Johannes Scheu: Survival in the Void - Giorgio Agamben. In: Stephan Moebius , Dirk Quadflieg (Ed.): Culture. Present theories. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006.
  • Ulrich Schödlbauer : Giorgio Agamben and his family. In: iablis . Vol. 5, 2006, pp. 295-309.
  • Fabian Steinhauer: shaping the law. Giorgio Agamben. In: Sonja Buckel , Ralph Christensen, Andreas Fischer-Lescano (eds.): New theories of law. Lucius & Lucius, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-8282-0331-0 , pp. 187-211.
  • Martin G. Weiss: Biopolitics, sovereignty and the sanctity of bare life. Giorgio Agamben's basic idea. In: Phenomenological Research. Vol. 2003, pp. 269-293.
  • Master thinker Agamben? Statements by Petra Gehring , Gerald Hartung and Susanne Lettow. In: Information Philosophy. Issue 5, December 2008, p. 25 ff.
  • C. Crosato, Critica della sovranità. Foucault e Agamben. Tra il superamento della teoria moderna della sovranità e il suo ripensamento in chiave ontologica , Orthotes, 2019

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20120112124924/http://www.iuav.it/English-Ve/Internatio/phd/DOCTORATE-1/theory-and/index.htm
  2. ↑ “That it continues like this is the catastrophe”. Retrieved July 1, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Pagine corsare Saggistica. Giorgio Agamben tra Macerata e Ancona. Archived from the original on January 9, 2011 ; Retrieved January 20, 2011 (Italian).
  4. ↑ According to an authorized portrait by Giorgio Agamben: http://www.tagblatt.ch/tagblatt-alt/tagblattheute/hb/kultur/tb-ku/art855,420415
  5. ↑ http://www.tagblatt.ch/tagblatt-alt/tagblattheute/hb/kultur/tb-ku/art855,420415
  6. ^ Giorgio Agamben at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf , accessed on February 7, 2017 (Düsseldorf).
  7. ↑ Appointment to Albertus Magnus Professor ( Memento from May 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ); God cannot take care of everything. The new Albertus Magnus Professor Giorgio Agamben gave a lecture in Cologne from the last part of his "Homo sacer". In: Die Tageszeitung , November 2007.
  8. ^ Website of the Classic Foundation.
  9. ↑ Terrorism as a global civil war. By Michael Opitz in deutschlandradiokultur
  10. ↑ Time for a Latin Empire. France's left dream of a union with Spain and Italy against Germany. In: Die Welt , May 6, 2013.
  11. ↑ The Endless Crisis is an Instrument of Power Interview in the FAZ from May 24, 2013
  12. ^ Agamben at the Veillon Foundation.
  13. ^ Honorary doctorates from the Theological Faculty of the University of Friborg.
  14. ↑ Michael Opitz : Philosophy: The human being as a tool. Giorgio Agamben: “Opus Dei. Archeology of the Office ”. Review. In: Deutschlandradio Kultur , January 6, 2014.
personal data
SURNAME Agamben, Giorgio
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian philosopher and author
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Rome