The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics) 1st Edition by Giorgio Agamben (PDF)

Description

Why has power in the West assumed the form of an “economy,” that is, of a government of men and things? If power is essentially government, why does it need glory, that is, the ceremonial and liturgical apparatus that has always accompanied it?In the early centuries of the Church, in order to reconcile monotheism with God’s threefold nature, the doctrine of Trinity was introduced in the guise of an economy of divine life. It was as if the Trinity amounted to nothing more than a problem of managing and governing the heavenly house and the world. Agamben shows that, when combined with the idea of providence, this theological-economic paradigm unexpectedly lies at the origin of many of the most important categories of modern politics, from the democratic theory of the division of powers to the strategic doctrine of collateral damage, from the invisible hand of Smith’s liberalism to ideas of order and security.But the greatest novelty to emerge from The Kingdom and the Glory is that modern power is not only government but also glory, and that the ceremonial, liturgical, and acclamatory aspects that we have regarded as vestiges of the past actually constitute the basis of Western power. Through a fascinating analysis of liturgical acclamations and ceremonial symbols of power—the throne, the crown, purple cloth, the Fasces, and more—Agamben develops an original genealogy that illuminates the startling function of consent and of the media in modern democracies. With this book, the work begun with Homo Sacer reaches a decisive point, profoundly challenging and renewing our vision of politics.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Of the many things that can be said about the work of Giorgio Agamben, being lazy with his research isn’t one of them. In fact, I imagine that if by some freak accident, all our sources regarding ancient and medieval theology were somehow lost to fire, one could, with a bit of extrapolation, reconstruct it all again just using Agamben’s corpus of works. And if that really did come to pass, The Kingdom and the Glory – encyclopaedic as it is in its scope and its grasp – would be the go-to book from which to begin. Ostensibly a book about the theological roots of modern government, Agamben’s actual procedure takes place by way of a meticulous – almost pedantic – tracing of the way in which theologians from Polycarp to Aquinas attempted to answer the age old chestnut: just how does God – who is supposed to be transcendent and removed from the world – go about governing that very world? Or, to put it in Agamben’s preferred idiom, how does the Kingdom relate to the Government?Agamben’s answer – or at least the answer he finds in theology – is: by way of an economy. ‘Economy’ here understood not in the modern, narrow sense of ‘distribution of goods’, but in the wider sense of ‘organization’ and ‘administration’ (Agamben pretty much always uses the Greek spelling, ‘oikonomia’, to mark the difference). Central to the book’s narrative then, is that the Christian doctrine of the trinity, in which God is at once unified and triune, and whose relations are organized by a divine oikonomia, is – in its formal functioning at least – at the core of today’s apparatuses of modern government – including, perhaps especially so, democratic government. It’s a wonderfully provocative thesis which ought to be read to be believed, if only for all the incredible pit stops of erudition along the way (one does wonder though where the Holy Spirit is in all this, the third figure of the trinity which Agamben only pretty much mentions in passing).And of course there’s the ‘Glory’, the analysis of which takes up about the latter third of the book, devoted to some wonderful excavations of the role of liturgy in Christian worship. Agamben’s thesis here is that ‘glory’ serves to ‘cover-up’ the fact that the ‘providential machine’ – his catch phrase for the above articulation of Kingdom and Government – is fundamentally broken, ’empty’ at its core, such that insofar as (spoiler alert!): “Government glorifies the Kingdom, and the Kingdom glorifies Government… the center of the machine is empty, and glory is nothing but the splendor that emanates from this emptiness, the inexhaustible kabhod [Glory] that at once reveals and veils the central vacuity of the machine”.Harsh words! And for all the academic theological discussion within – which is to say, for all of about the 250 pages of the 290 page book – the political point that Agamben attempts to impart is that this holds true for modern governmental functioning as well. Now, as a thousand readers of the book have pointed about, Agamben’s ‘method’ here is somewhat suspect. OK, so theology ain’t quite up to snuff, but does this translate so easily over into modern politics as Agamben constantly and repeatedly alludes (and I really do mean alludes, rather than ‘argues’)? It’s an open question for me – and, in some sense, the rest of Agamben’s Homo Sacer series – but it’s a question that bristles with the promise of intellectual adventure.

⭐In his Metaphysics, R. G. Collingwood calls the Trinity the absolute presupposition of the West. In Capital, Karl Marx rails against the dark Trinity of land, labor and capital as a secular displacement of its theological source.Long out of philosophical fashion, Agamben blends these two insights. He returns to the key of the Trinity to unlock, in the vocabulary of Michel Foucault, current global economic governmentality. That Agamben evokes the Trinity as the origin of the problem is unsurprising but, unlike Foucault, who can see only oppression in the Christian tradition, Agamben opens a speculative window onto the radically liberationist side of the `economic’ Trinity. I highly recommend this book, not only as a masterpiece by one of Europe’s leading political thinkers, but as an overdue reconsideration of the potentialities of Trinitarian thought, tracing its lineage deep and long in the West.

⭐The earlier reviews are good. However, there is something additional here as well and it is the allusion to the uncovering of the genealogy of the power of government through the transfer of the glory of the ‘economy of salvation’ (via the Greeks and early Christian theology) to the modern secular economy that retains the majestic. Also, the absent seat of power in the space between power and subjects is given force through a secularization of ‘glory’. (The author does not give examples but like reading Foucault one is repeatedly amazed at how much is being said without being said.) It is the populaces witness and acts within the rituals of civil society (via the Media, voting, taxes, allowance of war…) that glorify and are efficacious in grounding the absent seat that retains the power of government today.

⭐This book is an essential complement to Homo Sacer which now, in retrospect, is clearly unfinished business. If Homo Sacer is about sovereign power, then Kingdom and the Glory represents a theory of the full articulation of power due to governance. Power indeed is revealed here as the economic articulation of Sovereignty (common auctoritas) and governance (proper potestas).The observation that power is split between absolute rule and governmental, popular complicity is not new. But the revelation that all politics is held in the inoperative economy between the two is THE political statement of our age. This is an explosive masterpiece of political philosophy masquerading as work of theological philology. It forms a major part of a trinity of recent works by Agamben which justify all the attention his work. Along with Signature of All Things and Sacrament of Language the Agambenian critique of the metaphysics of difference is complete: power, metaphysics, language. An immense achievement grounded in systematic philosophical deduction and faultless philological induction.

⭐This book is an essential complement to Homo Sacer which now, in retrospect, is clearly unfinished business. If Homo Sacer is about sovereign power, then Kingdom and the Glory represents a theory of the full articulation of power due to governance. Power indeed is revealed here as the economic articulation of Sovereignty (common auctoritas) and governance (proper potestas).The observation that power is split between absolute rule and governmental, popular complicity is not new. But the revelation that all politics is held in the inoperative economy between the two is THE political statement of our age. This is an explosive masterpiece of political philosophy masquerading as work of theological philology. It forms a major part of a trinity of recent works by Agamben which justify all the attention his work. Along with Signature of All Things and Sacrament of Language the Agambenian critique of the metaphysics of difference is complete: power, metaphysics, language. An immense achievement grounded in systematic philosophical deduction and faultless philological induction.

⭐The book is in good condition, despite small dents. As it was shipped internationally (from the UK to Australia), I don’t see it as a significant problem.Regarding the book’s content: it’s one of my favourite books written by Agamben, alongside with ‘Nudities’. If you really want to understand Agamben’s work, including ‘Homo Sacer’ and ‘State of Exception’, ‘The Kingdom and the Glory’ is essential reading – and quite a beautiful one too. I did have some difficulties, as I had never engaged with this level of theological thinking before. But it was worth it to do some extra research to understand what was being said.

⭐Uno di quei libri che non puoi non avere e non aver letto, forse in realtà mi sarebbe piaciuto l’hard copy ma sto spendendo così tanto in libri che non è sostenibile, i kindle aiutano molto.This book has a thumbnail for another book, therefore it does not display properly in my kindle or on your website!

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