Giorgio Agamben

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

Career

Giorgio Agamben studied law at the University La Sapienza in Rome. His studies he finished with a thesis on the French philosopher Simone Weil. During his studies used Agamben friendly relations with Elsa Morante, Alberto Moravia, Giorgio Manganelli, Sandro Penna and Ingeborg Bachmann and the director Pier Paolo Pasolini. In its produced in 1964 film Il secondo Matteo vangelo ( The first Gospel - Matthew) Agamben played the role of the apostle Philip.

In the years 1966 and 1968 Agamben participated through the mediation of his fellow poet Dominique Fourcade at the seminars organized in Le Thor Martin Heidegger on the initiative of René Char. In the two seminars it was thematically to the philosopher Heraclitus and Hegel. Your Precipitation is the encounter with Heidegger in Agamben 1970 erschienenem L' uomo senza first work contenuto. In the same year he entered into contact with Hannah Arendt, who quotes him in " power and authority ".

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

From 1986 to 1992, Agamben was the Directeur de Programme at the Collège international de philosophie in Paris. In 1988 he was appointed professor of aesthetics at the University of Macerata. Since 1993, he taught philosophy at the University of Verona. Since 2003 he is Professor of Aesthetics at the Facoltà di Design e Arti della IUAV in Venice.

Since 1994, Agamben participated regularly visiting professor in the United States. In the winter semester 2005/2006 he was a visiting professor at the Heinrich- Heine University in Dusseldorf and in 2007 held the Albertus -Magnus Professor at the University of Cologne. Agamben 2008 was a Fellow of the College Friedrich Nietzsche.

Central motifs

Agamben has become one of the most discussed contemporary philosophers. He has achieved international attention only since the mid-1990s. Characteristic of his self- understanding seems to be that he can not be set on the role as an academic philosopher or literary scholars. Rather, he takes on the topics of time job. Again and again provocative is primarily its direct access to current legal and political issues, particularly in the context of bioethical and biotechnological aspects ( " biopolitics ").

In the reception of Agamben's texts, the material wealth and perceived inconsistency of his reference points is frequently addressed. In fact, he thinks and writes out of the debate. Nevertheless, central intentions are clearly revealed: such as the revival of aesthetic experience, the culture-critical juxtaposition of " consumer " and " use ", which - initially primarily - the philosophy of language analysis of the negativity, the formulation of a " form of life " concept or the ( by Benjamin inspired ) Record the category of Messiah. Also noteworthy is the intellectual history horizon of his argument, which ranges from ancient philosophical and legal concept stamping up to a sophisticated Roman Neo - Marxism.

Marx and Heidegger

In his first work L' uomo senza contenuto (1970 ) Agamben comes from Hegel's aesthetics and observes a separation between work of art and aesthetic perception: By reflecting on art arises an almost unbridgeable separation between the artist on the one hand and the recipient on the other. A reception is in fact dependent on the criteria of art criticism and philosophy. Agamben been here combines the different terminologies of dialectical materialism and Heidegger in Being and Time. An attempt at synthesis takes Agamben in his work Infanzia a storia (1978 ) again.

The movement of thought is reminiscent of Heidegger's complaint about the alleged alienation between Being and beings. Style and method are trained to Heidegger, especially the etymological turning back of concepts of modern aesthetics to the concepts of Greek philosophy.

Warburg's Picture Atlas

In the years 1974 and 1975 Agamben worked at London's Warburg Institute. From the time dated his book punch, La parola e il fantasma nella cultura occidentale (1977 ):

Agamben attempted in this study to preserve the imagination and the original experiences of people using the montage of images - similar to Aby Warburg's Picture Atlas Mnemosyne ( A Picture Series Examining the Function of Preconditioned Antiquity- Related Expressive Values ​​for the Presentation of Eventful Life in the Art of the European Renaissance ). For Agamben as Warburg is assumed that the use of the senses is increasingly disciplined pragmatic.

In his essay notes at the gesture from the book Mezzi senza fine (1996, German. Means without end notes for policy), which is discussed in the international film critics and dance theater, Agamben draws on Warburg. The gesture is considered since Warburg law as embodied archive. Your implementation shows the participation in a collective symbol stock. Just as Agamben reveals himself with his performative style as a partner in the form of sentiments classical modernism. However, he interprets the gesture as a liberation of the image from his assignment to a sense that it has to represent otherwise.

In aesthetic difference, the not yet or no longer bound by convention expression, Agamben examines the trace of itself various historical subjects. In this experience he finds a potential of what is possible in real life feigned that can rid the reading and interpretation and defend against renewed oblivion.

Major work Homo Sacer

1995 ( in German translation in 2002 ), the book Homo Sacer. This marked the beginning of an applied to a total of four volumes of the work. Published volumes are now the

Agamben is based on a legally written cleavage of identity in a socialized beings ( bίos politikos ) and bare life ( nuda vita ). This split it leads to Aristotle's momentous distinction between bios and zoé back in the Nicomachean Ethics; it characterizes the political thought of the West today ( Homo Sacer, p 11f. ).

Agamben intervenes in the " homo sacer " project on decidedly political and constitutional issues. Permanent reference points are the theories of Walter Benjamin, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger, Hannah Arendt and Michel Foucault. Agamben draws a picture of today's people and their ways of life in a globalized world. In the center of the recent writings there is a cultural history of political imprisonment in the sense of enclosure and exclusion as social exclusion. The critique of a trend that creates lawless areas in permanent increase in intensity and the person at the reduced " bare life ", is the central theme of " homo sacer " project.

As evidence of the development of his theories serve Agamben especially the Nazi concentration camps: So strive the rulers since ancient times, not only the control of individuals as social beings, but also the collection of their biological life. The result is a latent, for ever growing parts of the world population and open, constitutionally enforced cleavage of the existence in man and belonging. As before him Benjamin, Jacob Taubes Jacques Derrida and Agamben recognizes the consistent formation in the friend - enemy thinking of Carl Schmitt.

The figure of the homo sacer from Roman law is the distinction between bios and zoé. Agamben goes sacer from the double meaning of the word: holy and discharged ( " banned " ), namely "outlaws ". So he sees this concept a space beyond law and worship, which is not only of the mere, the foreign and the other life begins with the expulsion or banishment, but is inscribed in the history of Western self-awareness.

This development is in line with Foucault, Agamben refers to as biopolitics ( Homo Sacer, p 127f. ): . Arises a totalitarian access to each individual, before which even democracies are not immune. On the contrary: In response to global refugee movements and terrorist fundamental rights and freedoms are repealed. As an example, Agamben sees the refugee camps in the European Union and the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The state of emergency is the new paradigm of governance. It is in this doomsday scenario in addition to state, territory and nation for the fourth element of the political order.

Search witnesses, witness

Agamben sees the " bare life " first and foremost by its formal - and thus aesthetic - side: ie not as a civilization under-developed, not as released for destruction, but as essential to cultural self-determination against the totalitarianism of bio- politics seeks Agamben witnesses. which he finds in the arts, but in the poetic self: his intention is to find witnesses and to be a writer himself witness to the " bare life ".

With its highly individualized spelling Agamben laments a the right of the " bare life " in self-assertion. The form of the essay allows Agamben in the horizon of the arts a bold interweaving of historical and political mindfulness Scare images, forecasts and dedicated expectations. In addition, crosslinking of the philosophy with the development of the sciences and the arts.

The reception in Germany

The German reception Agamben, who was little known before, continued in 2002 with a sudden abundance of translations a.

Agamben's thought poetry and his method of genealogy gave rise to misunderstandings, but he can explain in discussions and interviews: There is not going to him about it, equate events with the place name Auschwitz and Guantanamo, but due to events and circumstances of the present on their historical genesis. Agamben does not intend with his critique of Western law, these destabilizing itself. Rather, in his view, the West has the case that it has made the terrorism, not yet recognized, if he wants to cancel the valid legal order to secure this very order.

In the German print media was published in March 2013, among others, in the newspaper Die Welt Lepenies ' article on Agamben push of a Latin Empire, entitled Time for a Latin empire - France's left dreaming of a union with Spain and Italy against Germany. Agamben describes, a "Latin Empire " against the Germanic dominance in Europe. His essay was ' tremendous response ' ( FAZ) and was translated into several languages.

In May 2013, said in an interview, among other things: When we speak today of Europe, we have to deal with the gigantic displacement of an embarrassing and yet reveal truth: the so-called European Constitution is illegitimate. About the text that should go under this name, was never voted on by the people. Or if he stood for election as in France or Holland in 2005, he was frontally rejected. Legal point of view, it is a question here not a constitution, but on the contrary to an agreement between governments. international law, not constitutional law. Just recently, the highly respected German jurist by Dieter Grimm reminded that a European Constitution, the fundamental, the democratic element is missing because the Europeans were not allowed to decide. And now they have put the entire project be ratified by the nations tacitly on ice.

Awards

• 2005: Albertus Magnus Chair
• 2006: Prix Européen de l' Essai Charles Veillon
• 2007: Appointed Professor Albertus Magnus (WS 2007/2008 SS 2008)
• 2012: Honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Theology of the University of Fribourg / Switzerland
• 2013: Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize

Works

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/ 2 ext. 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/ 3 ext. ed in 1989
• Idea della prose. Feltrinelli, Milano 1985 / 2nd ed Quodlibet, Macerata 2002
• La comunità che viene. Giulio Einaudi, Torino 1990/ 2 ext. Ed Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2001 ( English: . The Coming Community in 1993.
• Bartleby o della contingenza. In: G.A / Gilles Deleuze, Bartleby, . La formula della creazione. Quodlibet, Macerata 1993
• Homo Sacer. Il potere e la nuda vita sovrano. Giulio Einaudi, Torino 1995 ( English: . Homo Sacer Sovereign Power and Bare Life ( = Homo Sacer I) 1998.
• Mezzi senza fine. Note sulla politica. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 1996
• Categorie italiane. Studi di poetica. Marsilio, Venezia 1996 ( Laterza, Roma / Bari 2010)
• Quel che resta di Auschwitz. L' archivio e il testimone ( = Homo Sacer III) 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 II.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
• Nymphs. Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2007
• Il Regno e la Gloria. Per una genealogia Teológica dell'Economia e del governo ( = Homo sacer II 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. Archeological del giuramento ( Homo Sacer II = 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
• Angeli. Ebraismo Cristianesimo Islam (edited by Emanuele Coccia and Giorgio Agamben ). Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2009
• Altissima povertà. Regole di vita mona prints e -format ( = homo sacer IV 1) Neri Pozza, Vicenza 2011
• Opus Dei. Archeological dell'ufficio ( Homo Sacer II = 5) Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2012

German -language editions

• Bartleby or the contingency followed by: the absolute immanence. Merve, Berlin 1998.
• Means without purpose. Notes to politics. diaphanes, Zurich - Berlin 2001.
• Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 2002.
• Remnants of Auschwitz. The Witness and the Archive. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2003.
• The Open. The man and the animal. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2003.
• The idea of ​​prose. Carl Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1987, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2003.
• The Coming Community. Merve, Berlin, 2003.
• State of emergency. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2004.
• Childhood and history. Destruction of experience and origin of the story. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2004.
• Profanazioni. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2005.
• Nymphae. Merve, Berlin, 2005.
• The time that remains. A Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2006.
• Punching. The word and the phantasm in Western culture. diaphanes, Zurich - Berlin 2005 ( 3rd edition 2010).
• The language and death. A seminar on the place of negativity. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2007.
• The officials of the sky. About Engel, publisher of World Religions: Frankfurt am Main, 2007.
• What is a dispositif? diaphanes, Zurich - Berlin 2008.
• Signatura Rerum. On the Method. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2009.
• The sacrament of language. An Archaeology of the Oath, Berlin: Suhrkamp, ​​2010.
• Dominion and glory. For theological genealogy of economy and government, Homo Sacer II.2., Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-518-12520-5.
• Nudities. ( Orig: Nudità ). Translated by Andreas Hiepko. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 978-3-10-000530-4.
• The man without content. Berlin: Suhrkamp, ​​2010.
• The Untold girl. Myth and mystery of Kore Translated by Michael Hack, drawings by Monica Ferrando. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2012, ISBN 3,100,005,325th
• Highest poverty. Rules of the order and way of life. Homo Sacer IV, first from the Italian by Andreas Hiepko. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 2012.
• Church and Empire. ( Orig: La Chiesa e il regno ). Translated by Andreas Hiepko. Merve, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-88396-288-7.
• Opus Dei. Archaeology of the Office. Translated by Michael Hack. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2013. 215 pp. ISBN 978-3-10-000535-9
• The power of thought: collected essays. Translated by Francesca Raimondi. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2013. 463 pp. ISBN 978-3-10-000534-2

Secondary literature

• Janine Böckelmann, Frank Meier (ed. ): The governmental machine. On the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. Restlessness, Münster, 2007.
• Eva Geulen: Giorgio Agamben on the introduction. 2nd edition. Junius, Hamburg 2009 (EA 2005), ISBN 978-3-88506-670-5.
• Dominik Finkelde: Political eschatology, according to Paul. Badiou, Agamben, Zizek, Santner. Vienna: Turia & Kant, 2007.
• Gert Mattenklott: Art Religion. In: meaning and form 54.Jahr/2002/1. Issue, pp 97-108.
• Philipp Sarasin: Agamben - or is Foucault? In: German Journal of Philosophy, Volume 51 (2003) 2, pp. 348-353.
• John Scheu: Survival in the Void - Giorgio Agamben. In: Stephan Moebius and Dirk Quadflieg (ed.): Culture. Theories of the present. VS Verlag für Social Sciences, Wiesbaden, 2006.
• Ulrich Schödlbauer: Giorgio Agamben and his family. In: iablis, 5 born 2006, pp. 295-309.
• Fabian Steinhauer: Design justice. Giorgio Agamben. In: Sonja Buckel, Ralph Christensen, Andreas Fischer- Lescano (ed. ): 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 idea. In: Phenomenological Research, Vol 2003, pp. 269-293.
• Master thinkers Agamben? Comments from Petra Gehring, Gerald Hartung and Susanne Lettow. In: Information Philosophy, Issue 5 / December 2008, pp. 25 ff