Agamben, Aristoteles, Kant, Hegel

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Agamben on Aristotle, Hegel, Kant,and National Socialism

Johannes Fritsche

1. Introduction: Heidegger, L owith, and Agamben

To regard a part of human history as an epoch seems to imply some sort of essentialism.

Doing so requires identifying something – be it only an absence (e.g., of God) – that allows

the span of time in question to be identified as a single period, as something different from

the period before and after it. The philosopher and historian will refer to such an epochal

essence to articulate similarities between seemingly unrelated phenomena and account for

changes better than other theories do. Before 1933, both Heidegger and his student, the self-proclaimed “active nihilist” Karl Lowith had seen in modern Enlightenment, democracy, and

society a downward plunge and hoped, though in different ways, for a return of community.1

After Hitler’s “seizure of power,” they both – Lowith apparently earlier than Heidegger – rec-

ognized that National Socialism did not constitute such return of community. However, they

held on to their model of history and maintained the existence of the epoch of metaphysics,

which begins with Plato and Aristotle and whose downward movement is said to lead to

the end point (logical, not chronological) of National Socialism. This hypothesis implies a

specific continuity between liberalism, or modern Western democracy, and National Social-

ism. Agamben, too, finds Aristotle to inaugurate, metaphysically, the history of the West.

Not only that, he interprets both the political achievements of modern Enlightenment 2 andHeidegger’s Being and Time3 much like Lowith does. Indeed, he credits Lowith for being

the first “to note the curious contiguity between democracy and totalitarianism.”4 In this

article, I will review Agamben’s theory of the essence of the West and the structure of Homo

Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and discuss his interpretation of Aristotle and Kant

and his usage of Hegel to suggest that Agamben’s theory is built on sand and to address the

political aspect of the issue. In the section on Kant, I sketch an alternative interpretation of

Kant, which I develop in the final section, along with an alternative interpretation of Hegel,

with regard to the issue of society and community.

2. The Essence of the West – Agamben and Hegel

Central to Agamben’s interpretation of the history of the West is the notion of a specific

relation, a relation that includes by excluding or excludes by including. To try the impossible

and summarize Hegel’s Science of Logic in one sentence, the concept in its self-negativity

presupposes something – posits something as independent of the concept – and determines

it.5 In other words, the concept excludes something from itself in order, by determining it,

to include it. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that Agamben identifies Hegel to have been

the first to recognize “the presuppositional structure thanks to which language is at once

outside and inside itself”6 and “the bond of inclusive exclusion”7 that language is. This short

passage, less than a page, might be Agamben’s homage to Heidegger regarding the “house

of Being.” In any case, the switch of emphasis – from, as in my formula, inclusion through

exclusion to exclusion through inclusion – indicates that the relation at stake does in Agamben

Constellations Volume 19, No 3, 2012.C 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford

OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.



436 Constellations, Volume 19, Number 3, 2012

precisely the opposite of its work in Hegel. In Hegel, inclusion through exclusion proceeds

by negating the immediacy of the concept. The concept negates its immediacy inasmuch

as it excludes something from itself, i.e., it presupposes something as being independent

of the concept. At the same time, the concept includes its presupposition, i.e., it negates

the independence of what it presupposes, inasmuch as the concept determines that which

it presupposes. This determination is the reconstitution of the immediacy of the concept on

a higher level of determination, on which the process of the negation of immediacy begins

again. In other words, inclusion through exclusion in Hegel is the mechanism through which

the concept determines itself and everything in which it manifests itself. Nothing remains

outside the sphere of the concept, and everything becomes concrete by becoming the site of

the manifestation of the concept. The route here leads from indeterminacy to determination,

from the abstract to the concrete, from abstract life to concrete life. 8 In Agamben, it is

precisely the opposite. Exclusion through inclusion causes the ultimate abstraction of life,

the bare life, life that has been stripped of all determinations and reduced to naked life, as it

happened in its most atrocious form in Auschwitz. He argues that this operation of exclusion

through inclusion has become more and more pervasive over the course of Western history.In Rome, only few became homines sacres; today, virtually everyone is a homo sacer , a

human being that cannot be sacrificed but can be killed without punishment – the exception

has become the rule.9

Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life consists of three parts. In the first part,

Agamben develops, mainly with reference to Carl Schmitt, the notions of sovereignty, the

state of exception, and the ban. Standing both within and outside the legal order, the sovereign

decides the state of exception. This state precedes the state of law and order in the way that

negative theology precedes and makes positive theology possible, erasing the difference be-

tween opposites – order and chaos, inner and outer, example and exception, etc. In the state of

exception, the law withdraws its protection and turns away from humans; it abandons them,and everything becomes possible. Agamben calls this the ban and claims that the “originary

relation of law to life is not application but Abandonment . The matchless potentiality of the

nomos, its originary ‘force of law,’ is that it holds life in its ban by abandoning it.”10 His-

torically, Agamben finds that Aristotle “bequeathed the paradigm of sovereignty to Western

philosophy”11 and that since the time of Kant, there has been no difference between the

law and life, that the state of exception has become the rule. In the second part, Agamben

analyzes the emergence of the sovereign and the homo sacer as a pair and as the genuine

political relation different from the two spheres of the sacred and the profane, and follows

its footsteps in Western history. In the third part, finally, Agamben claims with reference

to Foucault, Arendt, and the history of human rights that bare life has come to occupy thecenter of politics in modernity and argues that Auschwitz and other forms of reduction to

naked life have become the paradigm that in principle applies to all.

Hegel has been much ridiculed for his language of “the life of the concept.” Critics claim

that individuals, not concepts, have life in that it is they who discover, or produce, facts that

allow concepts to be redefined or rendered more concrete. Agamben, like Hegel, endows

the concept with a peculiar kind of life that makes possible, and determines, the activities

of individuals, including those who produce naked life. Exclusion through inclusion is

practiced by individuals – by the Romans, the sovereigns, those who ran Auschwitz and the

other concentration camps, the physicians and lawyers who deal with the neomorts, etc. – but

they do so because they instantiate the concept, the relation of exclusion through inclusion. In

my view, it is in no way necessarily unreasonable to hypothesize that universals are at work

in human history and to conceptualize them with the help of Hegel’s dialectics or a different

C 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.



Agamben on Aristotle, Hegel, Kant, and National Socialism: Johannes Fritsche 437

logic. However, Agamben’s understanding of the concept that guides his interpretation of

Aristotle and Kant – key figures in his narrative – lead him to misread them or even turn

them upside down, as is the case with his usage of Hegel.

3. Potentiality and Actuality in Aristotle; Presupposition in Hegel

Agamben speaks from the beginning on of the “paradox of sovereignty”12 and maintains thatnowhere does this paradox show itself “so fully as in the problem of constituting power and its

relation to constituted power.”13 He contrasts the prevailing tendency to reduce constituting

power to the power of revision stipulated in the constitution to the view Walter Benjamin

advances in “Critique of Violence” that the parliaments of his day engage in compromise

precisely because they have lost the awareness of the latent presence of violence in them.

For Agamben, constituting power does not reside in safe transcendence vis-a-vis constituted

power. Rather, the famous thesis of Emmanuel Joseph Sieyes has to be understood in the

sense that

the constitution presupposes itself as constituting power and, in this form, expresses theparadox of sovereignty in the most telling way. Just as sovereign power presupposes itself as the state of nature, which is thus maintained in a relation of ban with the state of law,so the sovereign power divides itself into constituting power and constituted power andmaintains itself in relation to both, positioning itself as the point of indistinction.14

To corroborate this thesis, Agamben adduces the thinking of Hannah Arendt and Carl

Schmitt, the dual structure of totalitarian states, and Antonio Negri’s effort – unsuccessful,

in Agamben’s view – to think of constituting power free from the sovereign ban. Agamben

restores what he believes to be the ontological status of politics and turns to the founder of

first philosophy, Aristotle, and the discussion of potentiality and actuality in Metaphysics IXto show that Aristotle established the paradigm of sovereignty.

Agamben’s characterization of the tie between constituting and constituted power uses

the concepts from Hegel’s Science of Logic that I presented in the second section, the logic

of reflection and presupposition: the concept has always already divided itself into opposites

that relate to each other. Hegel uses these notions in the Science of Logic in his reconstruction

of many concepts, including the ones of matter and form and of potentiality and actuality. 15

Agamben reconfigures the heart of this logic – negativity, repulsion of itself from itself,

negation of its immediacy – in terms of his notion of abandonment and discovers it at the

core of Aristotle’s concept of potentiality and actuality. Aristotle, he argues, treats potentiality

in Metaphysics IX not merely as a logical possibility, but considers rather

the effective modes of potentiality’s existence. This is why, if potentiality is to have itsown consistency and not always disappear immediately into actuality, it is necessary thatpotentiality be able not to pass over into actuality, that potentiality constitutively be the

potentiality not to (do or be), or as Aristotle says, that potentiality be also im-potentiality[adunamia]. Aristotle decisively states this principle – which, in a certain sense, is thecardinal point on which his entire theory of dunamis turns – in a lapidary formula: “Everypotentiality is im-potentiality of the same and with respect to the same [ tou autou kai katato auto pasa dunamis adunamia]” ( Metaphysics IX, 1, 1046 a 30f.).16

A potentiality has two modes of existence; it can exist with or without its actuality. The

potentiality to build can be active or inactive, i.e., an architect sometimes works as an architect

and sometimes not.17 Agamben evidently assumes that the difference between the two modes





of a potentiality implies its ability to stay inactive – not to become active. For him, adunamia

in 1046 a 31 means precisely this ability. He is, however, wrong for two reasons. First, most

probably Aristotle uses adunamia never in the sense of an ability of a potentiality to stay

inactive. In 1046 a 31, it means, as it most often does in Aristotle, the absence of a potentiality

or, as I also say terminologically, of a capacity in a subject. Second, no capacity, according

to Aristotle, has the ability to turn itself on or off. Rather, natural capacities are activated

or deactivated by changes in their surroundings. Regarding rational capacities, it is not the

capacity but rather the soul of the respective human being that decides whether and, if so,

how the human being applies the capacity. In other words, it is the human being that is active.

Editors normally regard the (subordinated) clause 1046 a 30f. to be corrupt and either

add an iota subscript in “adunamia” or the conjunction “and” between “potentiality” and

“im-potentiality.”18 Be this as it may, the context shows that adunamia cannot here mean

ability in Agamben’s sense. Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of dunameis in the first chapter

of Metaphysics IX – the so-called active versus passive capacities, which are both said to be

in something. For example, the active capacity to build is in an architect, the one to heat in

fire; likewise, something oily has the passive capacity to be set on fire (by something that hasthe corresponding active capacity, e.g., by fire).19 He continues: “And incapacity [adunamia]

and that which is incapable [to adunaton] are the privation [ster esis], which is the opposite

of such a capacity.”20 This is followed by the subordinated clause that Agamben quotes.

Aristotle then points out the different ways in which the term “privation” is used. 21 None

of them refers to an ability of a capacity to abstain from its activation. Rather, “privation”

means, as it most often does in Aristotle, the absence of a capacity (or of a quality) either in

things that don’t have that capacity by their nature or in things that normally have it. Given

that Aristotle explains the notion of privation precisely in this way in the sentence that follows

the one quoted by Agamben, adunamia in 1046 a 31 cannot but mean – independently of

the meaning of the sentence 1046 a 30f. and whether or not this sentence is corrupt – theabsence of a capacity in a substance (e.g., the absence of sight in a mole or in a blind human

being) and not, as Agamben has it, the ability of a capacity to abstain from its activation.22

Adducing another formulation of the cardinal point, Agamben continues: “Or, even more

explicitly: ‘What is potential [to dunaton einai] can both be and not be. For the same is

potential [dunaton] as much with respect to being as to not being’ ( Metaphysics IX, 8, 1050

b 11–12).”23 Since the beginning of the chapter, however, Aristotle has also been talking

about things – things that are potentially something (a quantity, quality, or substance) or

somewhere (1050b, 15f.) – and says, for instance: “for that which is in the primary sense

potential [to pr ot os dunaton] is potential . . . e.g., . . . visible is that which is able to be seen

[to dunaton horasthai].”24 What is visible is the thing or its color, not its passive capacity tobe seen. Hence, to dunaton einai (1050 b 11) most probably refers – as in 1049 b 13f. and

15 – to things25 and not to capacities (or activities) of things. Even if it does mean the latter,

however, the two sentences 1050 b 11–12 mean that a capacity (or an activity) can belong or

not belong to a thing, and not that a capacity has the ability to abstain from its activation.

Furthermore, not only the first, but the second and fifth chapters of Metaphysics IX evince

that the phrase does not mean the latter. Aristotle develops that regarding active capacities

with reason, the soul decides when and, if so, how to use such a capacity (e.g., whether a

physician uses his capacity and, if so, whether he uses it in order to heal or to kill) while

agents with natural active capacities can neither produce opposites (e.g., fire can only heat

and not cool) nor help but act once they have come in contact with something with the

corresponding passive capacity.26 Thus neither capacities with reason nor natural capacities

have an adunamia in Agamben’s sense. Additionally, the issue of the capacity of the human





soul to apply capacities with reason is not discussed in terms of an adunamia in Agamben’s

sense either. For Aristotle, a capacity, a soul, or something that has a capacity does not, as

Agamben says, “set[] aside its own potential not to be (its adunamia). To set im-potentiality

aside is not to destroy it but, on the contrary, to fulfill it; potentiality turns back upon itself

in order to give itself to itself.”27

This last statement of Agamben is part of the final step of his interpretation of Aristotle. If

a potentiality to be or do is always also the potentiality not to be or do, how can a potentiality

or an act be realized?28 According to Agamben, philosophers have misinterpreted the famous

lines of Metaphysics IX, 3, 1047 a 24–26: Aristotle does not say here, as most interpreters

maintain, that possible is that whose actuality does not include anything impossible. Rather,

Aristotle affirms, according to Agamben, the condition under which a potentiality can realize

itself, and this condition is the setting aside of im-potentiality.29 This setting aside is a

turning back upon itself of potentiality in order to give itself to itself. Agamben argues that

Aristotle expresses “the nature of perfect potentiality perhaps most fully [in On Soul], and he

describes the passage to actuality . . . not as an alteration or destruction but as a preservation

of potentiality and its ‘giving of itself to itself’.”30

Agamben quotes the famous lines 417 b 2–7 in Aristotle’s On Soul II, 2:

To suffer is not a simple term, but is in one sense a certain destruction through the oppositeprinciple and, in another sense, the preservation [s¯ ot eria, salvation] of what is in potentialityby what is in actuality and what is similar to it . . . . For he who possesses science [inpotentiality] becomes someone who contemplates in actuality, and either this is not analteration – since here there is the gift to itself [epidosis eis heauto] and to actuality – orthis is an alteration of a different kind ( De anima, 417 b 2–7).

Thereafter, he concludes:

In thus describing the most authentic nature of potentiality, Aristotle actually bequeathedthe paradigm of sovereignty to Western philosophy. For the sovereign ban, which appliesto the exception in no longer applying, corresponds to the structure of potentiality, whichmaintains itself in relation to actuality precisely through its ability not to be. Potentiality(in its double appearance as potentiality to and as potentiality not to) is that through whichBeing founds itself sovereignly, which is to say, without anything preceding or determiningit [superiorem non recognoscens (not recognizing someone superior, J.F.)] other than itsown ability not to be. And an act is sovereign when it realizes itself by simply taking awayits own potentiality not to be, letting itself be, giving itself.32

In every activity of giving, three factors are involved: the giver, the gift, and the recipient

of the gift. Through his translation of lines 417 b 2–7, Agamben rules out as the recipient of

the gift the scientist (in Agamben’s translation, “he who possesses science [in potentiality]”

or “that which has the science” when translated literally), or, more generally, something

that has a capacity.33 In his comments before and after his citation of lines 417 b 2–7,

Agamben maintains that the receiver of the gift is a potentiality (and not something that

has a potentiality), and that this potentiality is also the giver as well as the gift. When a

potentiality is activated, it sets aside its adunamia; and this setting aside is a fulfillment

in which the potentiality gives itself to itself. The giver, the gift, and the recipient of the

gift are identical. However, Agamben misrepresents lines 417 b 2–7 in the same way as hemisrepresents Metaphysics IX. In 417 b 2–7, the giver, the gift, and the recipient of the gift

are different from each other. Lines 417 b 5–7 run, literally translated, thus: “For that which

has the science comes to be contemplating/contemplates, which is either not a being altered





(for the [feminine, J.F.] epidosis [is] to it/[that which has the science] itself and [its] actuality)

or a different type of alteration.” As this translation shows, the recipient of the gift is not a

capacity, but rather the scientist. The giver is the scientist or his soul, and (the actuality of) a

capacity is only the gift and not also the giver and the recipient of the gift. 34

Furthermore, in Greek, the noun epidosis could mean, in addition to “gift, donation,”

“increase, advance, progress.”35 In fact, Aristotle always seems to use it in the sense of an

increase or development (of size, speed, knowledge etc.).36 He employs the phrase epidosin

lambanei37 (lambanein can mean both “to take” and “to receive”) and says that growing

animals “lambanei the growth from the physical nourishment,”38 one kind of nourishment

being “that which makes the epidosin toward the size [to eis megethos poioun t en epidosin].”39

This last phrase can most naturally be translated as “that which makes/causes the increase

toward the size (that the body will have reached at the end of the increase).” Still, from

Agamben’s viewpoint – and, as a matter of fact, also from the viewpoint of Aristotle’s notion

of efficient causality40 – it might not be wholly impossible to translate it as “that which

makes/causes the gift toward the size” or to regard it as an abbreviation of the phrase, “that

through which the body gives to itself the gift toward the size.”41

However, even in thesecases, it would still not be the gift that a capacity gives to itself. It would, rather, be the gift

that one body (the nourishment) gives to a different body (the one that nourishes itself) or the

gift the latter gives to itself. Furthermore, in the other occurrences of epidosis in Aristotle,

the word should certainly be translated as “increase” or “development,” and it would make

no sense to claim that it carries implications that would be exclusive to Aristotle’s theory of

efficient causality and sanction its translation as “gift.”42 Thus, epidosis in 417 b 7 is usually

translated (rightly) not as a “gift,” but as “increase” or “development,” not of a capacity, but

of something that has a capacity, a development into its full actuality.43

Agamben’s claim regarding the correspondence between what he means by a ban and the

meaning of potentiality in Aristotle is a mirage, one that rests on a projection of (perverted)notions of Hegel onto Aristotle. As to the issue of the “life of the concept,” Agamben

enthrones potentiality as the giver and reinforces this position by interpreting it also as

the gift as well as the recipient of the gift. Potentiality thus becomes the main agent, and

Agamben virtually makes Aristotle say that a body can act only because a potentiality in

the body gives itself to itself. In Aristotle, by contrast, the giver is the body or its soul, the

recipient of the gift the body, and the potentiality or its activation the gift and nothing more.

Souls of bodies and bodies act, by means of capacities. Furthermore, there most probably is

no giving involved.

Still, one might apply Agamben’s notions to instances of efficient causality, to the relation

between an agent (e.g., an architect) – a substance that possesses an active capacity as a form –and the matter (the wood, the bricks), numerically different from the agent, that the agent

works upon. In addition, one might also think of the notorious prime matter – the matter,

in itself not characterized by any form, of the four elements (earth, water, air, and fire) and

their transformations into each other – as the analogue in physics of what naked life is in

politics. In contrast to homo sacer, however, prime matter cannot exist by itself without any

form; also, it is never abandoned by agents. In general, efficient causality in Aristotle is –

like reflection and presupposition in Hegel – an inclusion through exclusion and not, as in

Agamben, an exclusion through inclusion. Whether via presupposition in Hegel’s sense or

through some other activity, an agent with an active capacity relates to an instance of matter in

order to determine it, not to abandon it. According to Aristotle, a male parent works (through

the male seed as his instrument) on the menses, not to abandon and expose it to annihilation,

but to transform it into a further animal that can coexist with others. Similarly, a physician





teaches students not in order to abandon them, but to transform them into physicians, just as

an architect works (through the workers on the construction site as his instruments) on bricks

and lumber not in order to abandon them, but to shape and transform them into a further

substance amidst other existing ones.44

As the climax of the three books in which Aristotle applies his concepts and mode of

thinking to the old question of being, Metaphysics IX is often regarded as the culmination of

Aristotle’s entire philosophy. As such, one cannot say that my criticism of Agamben concerns

only some philological misunderstandings that one can easily rectify. Like many postmodern

thinkers, Agamben succumbs to the seduction of isolating quotes from their context; only in

this way can he claim Aristotle for his variant of the essence and history of metaphysics. His

intention is clearly political and not purely philosophical. I shall turn to this issue in the last

two sections of my paper.

4. The Categorical Imperative in Kant

In Hegel, inclusion through exclusion realizes itself in history as the progressive realizationof freedom. In Agamben, progress consists in more and more individuals virtually becoming

homines sacres: the relation of exclusion through inclusion has been operative since the

beginning of Western history, but it is only today that we witness “the coming to light of this

relation as such.”45

A law prescribes or forbids something specific. In doing so, it posits two spheres, one for

those who obey the law and enjoy its protection, and another for those who break it and are

hence abandoned and exposed to punishment. The sphere of abandonment is proportional

to the quantity of prescriptions or prohibitions. One would therefore expect law that neither

prescribes nor forbids anything to no longer be law and for it not to abandon anyone since

there is no possibility of breaking it. However, in Agamben’s view, this is the perspectivefrom within the law, the perspective of legal positivism. From the vantage point of Schmitt

and Agamben, law that does not prescribe anything belongs to the sphere of indifference to

the state of exception and to the state of the rule of law. In this sphere, the force of the ban is

the strongest, and everything is possible.

For Agamben, Kafka’s legend “Before the Law” is about this state of the law, “the pure

form in which law affirms itself with the greatest force precisely at the point in which it no

longer prescribes anything – which is to say, as pure ban.”46 Referring to Scholem, Agamben

characterizes this state as “[b]eing in force without significance [Geltung ohne Bedeutung]”47

and continues,

What, after all, is the structure of the sovereign ban if not that of a law that is in force butdoes not signify? Everywhere on earth men live today in the ban of a law and a traditionthat are maintained solely as the “zero point” of their own content, and that include menwithin them in the pure relation of abandonment. All societies and all cultures today (itdoes not matter whether they are democratic or totalitarian, conservative or progressive)have entered into a legitimation crisis in which law (we mean by this term the entire text of tradition in its regulative form, whether the Jewish Torah or the Islamic Shariah, Christiandogma, or the profane nomos) is in force as the pure “Nothing of Revelation.” But this isprecisely the structure of the sovereign relation, and the nihilism in which we are living is,

from this perspective, nothing other than the coming to light of this relation as such.

48

If, say, Christianity is withering away in a given lifeworld, its members would still

continue to know the tenets of the Christian religion for some time. Thus, one would probably





characterize the current legitimation crisis (in parts of Europe, at least) of the traditional reli-

gions spontaneously not as Geltung ohne Bedeutung but rather as Bedeutung ohne Geltung,

signification without being in force. Agamben likes to make very general statements. On

such a high level of abstraction, it might be easy to switch from “signification without being

in force” to “being in force without significance” or from “inclusion through exclusion”

to “exclusion through inclusion,” despite the fact that doing so entails setting up the train

in the opposite direction. In addition, the passage shows that Agamben assesses modernity

much like Lowith: the things that came after traditional religions – Enlightenment, human

rights and democracy – count for nothing. Finally, the passage also sets the stage for Kant.

Agamben continues that “the pure form of law as ‘being in force without significance’

appears for the first time in modernity” in Kant49 and that Kant has “left the form of law

in force as an empty principle.”50 Stating that the categorical imperative is a law “that is in

force without signifying, and that thus neither prescribes nor forbids any determinate end,”51

Agamben quotes a passage from Kant and then makes another sweeping statement:

It is truly astounding how Kant, almost two centuries ago and under the heading of a sublime“moral feeling,” was able to describe the very condition that was to become familiar tothe mass societies and great totalitarian states of our time. For life under a law that isin force without signifying resembles life in the state of exception, in which the mostinnocent gesture or the smallest forgetfulness can have most extreme consequences. Andit is exactly this kind of life that Kafka describes, in which law is all the more pervasivefor its total lack of content, and in which a distracted knock on the door can mark the startof uncontrollable trials. So in Kafka’s village the empty potentiality of law is so much inforce as to become indistinguishable from life. The existence and the very body of JosephK. ultimately coincide with the Trial; they become the Trial.52

As Agamben summarizes, the essential character of the state of exception is “the im-possibility of distinguishing law from life.”53 In the state of exception and in totalitarian

states (in Nazi Germany in the first place), there is law without significance. Individuals are

not protected by any boundaries, and the totalitarian power can intrude on, arrest, and kill

them anytime. Agamben says that Kant’s categorical imperative “describe[s]” this condition.

Kant’s ethics has often been misunderstood, and Agamben is in no way the first to align it

alongside National Socialism. At the latest after recent scholarship,54 however, one should

not make such claims, even if one maintains that Kant’s ethics is not acceptable. In what

follows, I provide my own account of the important steps in Kant’s Groundwork of the

Metaphysics of Morals to show that Agamben’s claim is utterly unreasonable.

In the preface to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant points, on a veryabstract level, to analogies between a metaphysics of nature and a metaphysics of morals

and, thus, to analogies between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Groundwork of the

Metaphysics of Morals.55 In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant reconstructs the conditions

of the possibility of everyday experience where one finds oneself amidst different things in

a world and perceives, for instance, a “ship driven downstream.” 56 By analogy, one could

expect him to reconstruct the conditions of the possibility of action in his ethics. Since, in the

Critique of Pure Reason, he hypothesizes that the conditions of the possibility of experience

are the same for all human beings, one would expect him to also develop a universalist

ethics. More specifically, since, in the Critique of Pure Reason, he hypothesizes that all

human beings apply the same rules of synthesis, the same categories, to the data given inintuition, one would expect him in his ethics to hypothesize that, in their actions, all human

beings apply the same rule or rules. Kant argues in the Critique of Pure Reason that the





forms of intuition, the categories, and the transcendental unity of apperception achieve in

the first place the distinction between a subject and the objects that the subject experiences

as outside of it. The conditions of the possibility of experience make it possible for a human

being to be the unified center of experience, a subject, that, rather than being amidst a

chaotic manifoldness of events without any order, can relate itself to objects outside of it

and experience these objects within a unified horizon of one world. Regarding the rules

that govern action, one would, by analogy, expect Kant to focus on two aspects. In place

of the so-called state of nature – a state of chaos where no actor can achieve anything due

to the absence of any reliability – rules allow for a unified context for all subjects within

which they can act. Rules also make it possible for each subject to be fully active as an

agent within that context. Without rules, there would neither be agents capable of acting

nor a stable intersubjective context necessary for each individual agent to act. Finally, since

everyday perception does not require human beings to be aware of the categories at work

in their experience, and since human beings generally need not think in everyday activities

but can rely on routine ethical know-how, reconstructing the conditions of the possibility of

action means making explicit the ethical principle that, by hypothesis, ordinary people follow(or violate) in their everyday life, which they more or less explicitly use only in ethically

problematic situations.

This analogical “deduction” of the content of Kant’s ethics is borne out by the text.

At the end of the first section of the Groundwork , Kant claims that he has just made

common reason attentive to its own principle.57 In the first of his three formulations of the

categorical imperative, Kant focuses on the unified context for all individuals. He states the

first formulation twice, in the first section after an interpretation of the notions of the good

will and duty (“ I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my

maxim should become a universal law”58), and in the second after presenting the distinction

between hypothetical and categorical imperatives (“act only in accordance with that maximthrough which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”59). After each

of the two formulations, he gives examples of the universalizability test, according to which

a maxim would be ethically impermissible if its universalization results in a contradiction or

a contradiction in volition.60

Allen Wood maintains that Kant is not yet entitled to the first formulation and the uni-

versalizability test at these points in his argument.61 However, Kant probably has a much

better case – or is simply right – if one takes seriously his claim that he is reconstructing

everyday moral self-understanding. According to my experience, it is in no way only in East

Prussia that mothers sometimes reprimand their children with the admonition, “If everyone

else did this!” This sentence is meant to unmistakably convey that the action is morallywrong (and that the child must therefore not make a habit of it, transform it into a maxim),

and, in a way, it is the most severe means to do so. At the same time, the sentence provides

a reason, none other than the fact that the action or maxim fails Kant’s universalizability

test: if everyone else acted on that maxim, a practically impossible situation would result.

Mothers self-evidently acknowledge the relevant laws of logic. They declare a maxim to be

forbidden or impossible, which implies a contradiction. They hence argue that the maxim is

wrong because its universalization would yield a contradiction: “if everyone else acted that

way, x would happen and a contradiction would result.”

This interpretation of Kant and of the reasoning of mothers is confirmed by the following

observation. Wood assumes that the decisive formulation of the categorical imperative is

the second one (“So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the

person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means”62), his





main reason for this claim being the so-called false negatives, all those maxims that one

intuitively regards as morally innocent but actually fail the universalizability test.63 Still,

mothers normally use only the first formulation, and Kant, too, obviously assumes it to be

rather powerful. As indicated by my analogical “deduction” and by Kant’s examples of the

maxims regarding false promises and not helping others,64 an important aspect of Kant’s

ethics concerns the intersubjective conditions of the possibility of action and cooperation,

one aspect of which is the need for reliable expectations about the future behavior of other

human actors. Mothers have these intersubjective conditions in mind, for they maintain that

a maxim is not permissible if its universalization would erode the institutions and norms

that make society and reliable expectations possible; if everyone made false promises, the

institution of promise would be fractured to the effect that the respective maxim would

contain the contradiction to be pursued for an end whose realization has become impossible:

“For, the universality of a law that everyone, when he believes himself to be in need, could

promise whatever he pleases with the intention of not keeping it would make the promise

and the end one might have in it itself impossible, since no one would believe what was

promised him but would laugh at all such expression as vain pretenses.”65

If ethics is (alsoor in the first place) about the preservation of the intersubjective conditions of the possibility

of society, many examples of false negatives do not fall under its purview. The maxim, “In

order to avoid crowded tennis courts, I will play on Sunday mornings (when my neighbors

are in church and the courts are free),” is, under normal circumstances, ethically permissible,

but many interpreters argue that it fails the universalizability test.66 However, it fails the test

not because it would, as in the case of false promises, destroy the intersubjective conditions

of the possibility of society; it fails because its universalization would run against one of the

basic laws of physics – the law that a place can be occupied only by one body at a time.

Likewise, the maxim, “When the Dow-Jones average reaches the next thousand, I will sell

all my stocks,” is ethically permissible but fails the universalizability test67 – not becauseit would violate the intersubjective conditions of the possibility of society, but because its

universalization would run against the basic functional and strategic laws of the stock market,

which make it impossible for one to sell one’s stocks when everyone else is doing so as well.

Normally, one has an implicit understanding of this difference and knows intuitively whether

a maxim or one of its aspects cannot be universalized because of its ethical implications or

because of the physical, strategic, or functional laws or rules involved in them.68 One laughs

at the thought of more than one party playing at the same time on the same tennis court, but

one does not do so regarding serious fraud or murder.

The second formulation of the categorical imperative focuses on the second aspect that

I mentioned, the notion that each subject can fully be active as an agent on her own. Thefirst formulation of the categorical imperative already contains the feature that leads to the

second formulation, the capacity of human beings to set ends (e.g., watching a movie, doing

volunteer work for the homeless, etc.) and realize them. Kant calls such ends subjective

ends.69 Normally, in realizing a subjective end, one self-evidently presupposes many things

about the world at large, other human beings, and oneself – for instance, that neighborhood

A is still adjacent to neighborhood B, that passersby will not prevent one from walking to

the movie theatre, etc. As for oneself, one presupposes that one will be in the same basic

condition at the end of an action as at the beginning (namely, as someone capable of setting

ends and realizing them), and normally acts in a way that does not jeopardize this status. One

is, as Kant puts it, for oneself an objective end,70 an end that – as in contrast to a subjective

end – is already realized even before the action takes place and whose continued realization

and existence must not be put at risk. At the same time, one recognizes that every other





rational being relates to herself in the same way as an objective end, and this recognition

leads to the second formulation of the categorical imperative71 and, finally, to the second

(wide) duty, the promotion of the happiness of the other human beings. 72

There is yet another analogical similarity between the Critique of Pure Reason and Kant’s

ethics. Whenever one perceives objects, one is not simply enmeshed in a chaos of impressions;

the universal categories and forms of intuition are necessarily at work. However, this does

not mean that the objects of experience are perceived by every human being. An inhabitant of

a rain forest one thousand years ago and a city-dweller in the twenty-first century experience

different objects, as do even the inhabitants of the same city. Still, according to Kant, each of

these objects possesses the universality of the forms of intuition and of the categories; that

is, each of them is experienced as a substance of a certain size at a particular place, etc. In

order for something to be an object of experience and have the universality of the forms of

intuition and of the categories, it is sufficient that it be perceived by a single subject; it is in

no way necessary for it to be perceived by several, let alone all, human beings. Furthermore,

while the production of objects would be the privilege, or burden, of a divine (intuitive)

understanding, it would be bizarre to claim that, according to Kant, the universal formsof intuition and categories of the finite human understanding produce the same objects of

experience for all human beings. Something analogous holds for the laws of nature. The

laws of, say, chemistry cannot but exhibit the most universal laws of nature that hold due

the working of the categories and the forms of intuition. However, the laws of chemistry

are not the laws of mechanics, and the most universal laws do not force the same regional

laws onto all different regions of nature. By analogy, Kant will self-evidently assume that

the universality of the categorical imperative does not force the same maxims on all human

beings and that in order for a maxim to be ethically permissible, it is in no way necessary

that several or all human beings adopt it.

Alasdair MacIntyre writes that Kantian morality will “lay down principles which bothcan and ought to be held by all men, independent of circumstances and conditions, and

which could consistently be obeyed by every rational agent on every occasion. The test

for a proposed maxim is then easily framed: can we or can we not consistently will that

everyone should always act on it?”73 If MacIntyre means that a maxim that passes the

universalizability test must be adopted by everyone, he is certainly wrong. When Kant says

in the first formulation that one can will that one’s maxim become a universal law (“act only

in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a

universal law”74), he does not say that the maxim in question must become a universal law.

If a maxim passes the universalizability test, it is “ permitted .”75 This means that everyone

else can adopt that maxim but not that everyone else shall do so. One can adopt the maximsto help students in the local high school with their homework twice a month, to go to a

movie about once a week etc. Under normal circumstances, such maxims certainly pass

the universalizabilty test, and everyone can adopt them, since society would not fall apart

if, for instance, many or all adults helped students twice a month. However, one can also

be the only one to adopt them. It would be absurd to assume that Kant maintains that in

order for someone to adopt such maxims, everyone else has to do so as well. Kant’s ethics

does not homogenize the world – different societies with different sets of maxims can pass

the test. Nonetheless, it is entirely reasonable to assume that there are some maxims that

have been in place in all “functioning” societies – past and present – and which preserve

the intersubjective conditions of the possibility of society without which any society would

sooner or later fall apart. These maxims are not simply permitted. They are, rather, duties –

maxims that ought to be adopted by everyone, since their violation would lead to a destruction





of the conditions of the possibility of society, while the negation of a permissible maxim

would not do so. These duties are probably in the first place negative duties, prohibitions

(e.g., “Thou shall not kill”). To sum up the two formulations of the categorical imperative,

the first formulation’s criterion of contradiction likely protects the transhistorical conditions

of the possibility of society and its criterion of contradiction in volition more specific

conditions, while the second formulation discriminates between premodern and modern

societies.

It is already obvious at this point – even prior to the third formulation of the categorical

imperative – that individuals or groups that treat others in a totalitarian manner violate the

second formulation as well as the criterion of fruitful cooperation stipulated in the first

formulation. They probably also violate (through lies and the production of uncertainty,

fear, etc.) the absence of contradiction criterion of the first formulation.76 The categorical

imperative is neither empty nor meant to produce out of itself – like a Neo-Platonic One, so

to speak – universal rules and norms that impose themselves on all lifeworlds and suppress

individual differences. Rather, it is a tool of reflection that functions as “the supreme limiting

condition”77

of all maxims, a test that can be used whenever conflicts arise in any givenlifeworld. The categorical imperative leaves as valid all those maxims that pass the univer-

salizability test and treat other humans (also) as ends in themselves; by contrast, it rules

out all those maxims that either destroy the intersubjective conditions of the possibility of

society or entail treating other humans as mere means. Pace Agamben, ends do occur in the

categorical imperative. The application of the first formulation has as its end the preservation

of the intersubjective conditions of the possibility of society, and the notion of objective ends

figures centrally in the second formulation as those conditions that society and individual

agents must honor in order for the latter to act freely. Ends do occur in the categorical imper-

ative because, regarding the matter of any maxim (the subjective end, the end to be achieved

by following a maxim), the categorical imperative demands “that a rational being, as an endby its nature and hence an end in itself, must in every maxim serve as the limiting condition

of all merely relative and arbitrary ends.”78 To put it differently, humanity in oneself and in

any other person

must here be thought not as an end to be effected but as an independently existing end, andhence thought only negatively, that is, as that which must never be acted against and whichmust therefore in every volition be estimated never merely as a means but always at thesame time as an end.79

The categorical imperative protects individuals against oppressive, violent, or totalitarianaspirations in three ways: It prevents, as is also clear from Kant’s critique of happiness as the

principle of morality,80 individuals from forcing their own subjective ends and preferences

on other individuals; it prevents them from destroying the intersubjective conditions of the

possibility of society; and it protects them against being treated as mere means, as things.

Inasmuch as a duty is a duty only because it preserves an objective end, the language of self-

referentiality (“duty for the sake of duty”) often used in secondary literature is misguided.

As a matter of fact, Kant never uses the language of duty for its own sake.81

5. Summary

Agamben identifies a specific relation at the center of the West and claims to find it in many

of its authors and problems. The three cases discussed above, however, do not corroborate





his claim. In Aristotle’s philosophy, the relation is simply not where Agamben claims to find

it, namely, in the concept of potentiality. It, in fact, occurs nowhere in Aristotle. Although

this relation may be said to be present in Aristotle’s concept of efficient causality, what

one finds is actually its very opposite, inclusion through exclusion rather than exclusion

through inclusion. It is the same with Hegel, from whom Agamben borrows his basic

vocabulary without explaining either Hegel’s usage or the specificities of his own. At the

beginning of the last phase of metaphysics, in Kant, the relation at stake is indeed an exclusion

through inclusion. However, this exclusion is the very opposite of ban and abandonment. The

categorical imperative regards every human being as a (potentially or actually) reasonable

being that has the right to possess the necessary preconditions of acting according to this

status (e.g., physical existence, health, education, etc.), and protects her against the invasion

of society and other human beings. The categorical imperative sets the individuals off limits.

By contrast, the ban excludes human beings to set them up for annihilation.

Historically, Agamben’s notion of biopolitics82 belongs to the traditional conservative

or right wing narratives that modernity is nothing but a downward plunge in which the

order of values is perverted or wherein all values disappear. Like other postmodernists,Agamben “simply” embeds this notion into his own variant of the Heideggerian framework

of metaphysics and its beginning with Plato and Aristotle. This type of thinking ignores

the universalism of modern Enlightenment or claims that it just cloaks modern egoism or

foreshadows totalitarianism. In the “grand narratives” of many postmodern Heideggerians,

everything is thought to occupy a clear position within the sequence of phases through which

a single universal – Being, oppression, abandonment – unfolds in history; every theory that

belongs to an epoch is seen as contributing necessarily to the end of that epoch or at least

as having, as Norris puts it, a “deep affinity”83 with it. This attitude certainly is a massive

hangover from the worst kind of philosophy of history as progress normally opposed by

postmodernists or is an inverted reincarnation of “textbook” Marxism.According to Norris, Agamben does not argue that Aristotle or Locke “caused” the

Holocaust, but that there is a

deep affinity between such contemporaneous horrors and the tradition of political philoso-phy to which we might turn in an effort to understand and combat such phenomena. Thepractical implication would be not that there is no difference between Aristotle or Hitler,but that Aristotle will not provide a stable point from which to critique those who followafter him, or from which to construct an alternative. 84

In Agamben’s own words, there is “no return from the camps to classical politics.”

85

Instead,the “nonmetaphysical alternative toward which [Agamben] gestures in response”86 is Jean-

Luc Nancy’s attempt to conceive of community without unity. Whatever one thinks of such

politics, wholesale abandonment of possible allies is certainly never good. In the final section,

I reconsider the three philosophers at stake in my paper – Aristotle, Hegel, and Kant – with

regard to the problem of community.

6. Aristotle, Hegel, and Kant on Community and Society

The discussion on community and society that followed the publication of Rawl’s A Theory

of Justice was not the first on the topic. Rather, there had been in Germany between the

publication of Ferdinand Tonnies’ Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft in 1887 until the rule

of National Socialism a very fierce debate on these very questions. In Being and Time,





Heidegger opted for the most radical of the then communitarians, the National Socialists,

and the return of the community of the people.87 As this example also shows, there is in

advanced modernity quite obviously a more or less strong desire for communities, for – in

Wellman’s very “cool” definition – “networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability,

support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity.”88 The twentieth century has

witnessed National Socialism as well as totalitarian extremism of the left. Political and social

philosophy has since been left with the task of reconstructing the possibility of communities

and demarcating the boundaries that separate any possible community and society from

totalitarianism and extremism, left wing or right.

In my view, one does not get much help here from Aristotle, not because his political

theory would be totalitarian, but because it is just too thoroughly informed by the concepts

and modes of thinking of his natural philosophy and metaphysics to accommodate the basic

features of modern societies. While Neo-Aristotelians often argue that one must free Aristotle

from his metaphysical assumptions, the results would, it seems to me, no longer be specific

to Aristotle. The idea of a practice, for instance – “any coherent and complex form of socially

established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activityare realized”89 – can easily be gathered from many sports, games, crafts, arts, sciences, and

technologies, in modernity and earlier. In any case, Kantian ethics certainly does not forbid

anyone to develop stable character, habits, and practices, provided that they don’t violate the

categorical imperative. If the intergenerational character of a practice in MacIntyre’s sense

cannot be realized in modernity, it is not Kant’s ethics that is to blame.

While Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right has not enjoyed a high reputation

among liberals and leftists,90 Hegel certainly recognized the task of social and political

philosophy mentioned earlier and was probably the first to do so in Germany. From this point

of view, the Elements is built around three basic ideas: The first is the idea that the modern

person – the person of abstract right, the right of contracts, and the actor in the moderncapitalist economy (or, as Hegel says, in civil society) who treats everyone and everything as

a means or entertains, as Hegel also puts it, negative relations to the other – is the legitimate

manifestation of subjectivity and must not be abandoned. The second idea is that the individ-

ual as a person is in no way all of what the ethical life is about. There must be, rather, social

spheres and institutions in which individuals entertain, as Hegel puts it, positive relations to

others, relations in which the other is not treated as a means but rather as an end. The third

idea, finally, is that these institutions and civil society must not be destroyed, either by the

Romantics (the then communitarians), who want to revitalize ancient Greece or a medieval

society, or, as Marx will put it twenty-five years later, by the proletariat and its vanguard.

It is the great beauty as well as a severe confinement of the Elements of the Philosophy of Right that Hegel develops these three points as a Bildungsroman, an educational novel in the

style of the nineteenth century, written from the perspective of a male being. In fact, it is an

intergenerational Bildungsroman, starting with a male who just reached adulthood, the most

abstract state of an adult individual in the ethical life for Hegel. To recall just the major steps,

the adult male is his own master and makes contracts with other individuals as means.91

Already in this realm, he encounters the demand of universal morality.92 He recognizes

that morality can be real, and his own needs realized, only within social institutions; he

also recognizes that he does not need to create these institutions, but that they are already

in place.93 He thus enters into positive relations to others, for he marries and, together

with his wife, raises children.94 The grown-up male children do what the father did and

enter civil society with its negative relations.95 Here they discover that the market subjects

many to impoverishment and that it does not fulfill the universalist promise of civil society,





or liberalism, to benefit all.96 They therefore draw on an old institution, the corporations,

and refurbish them as employers’ associations, unions, and social welfare organizations. In

these corporations, individuals work for the well-being of other members and of the whole

corporation, through which the needy are taken care of. Thus, the threat of a revolution from

the left is avoided.97 In the corporations, civil society fulfills its concept inasmuch as in

them the universalist promise of civil society, the well-being of everyone, is realized. At the

same time, civil society transcends itself inasmuch as individuals entertain positive relations

to the other in corporations.98 This is the transition into the state in whose institutions the

father sees himself, others of his generation, and his children entertain positive relations to

others.99 Having already encountered the Romantics in the section on morality,100 the father

finally looks back to the genesis of the modern state and realizes that there is no need for

a communitarian revolution: one cannot revitalize a past, and one does not need to do so,

for the modern state has regained – in a higher form, such that it includes the individual as

person – the substantiality for which communitarians long.101

History and the Elements of the Philosophy of Right are about the freedom of all individuals

and the realization of this freedom.102

For Kant, freedom is the capacity to realize ethicallypermissible determinations of the will, which implies recognizing the equal right of others to

befreeasIam.Inthe Phenomenology of Spirit , Hegel reconstructs the historical development

of the relation to the other. In modernity, in a free relation to the other, the individual has

to be able to determine itself in such a way that it finds its determinations to be a proper

manifestation of whom it regards itself to be. In order to do so, the individual has to be

recognized in its manifestation and in its freedom of determining itself by the other, and in

turn must recognize the other in her determinations and freedom as well. Freedom is a matter

of mutual recognition.103 The grown-up male starts as a sheer person, an abstract individual,

and over the course of his life becomes a concrete individual, one that entertains positive and

negative relations to many others in various contexts. All can become concrete individuals bybecoming universal, by establishing relations with others within the framework of different

social spheres and institutions. Thus, the question is whether, and to what degree, the spheres

and institutions of a society can provide individuals with stages for free self-determination

and mutual recognition. Axel Honneth interprets Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right

as “a normative theory of social justice; a theory that reconstructs the necessary conditions of

individual autonomy and, in this way, develops and justifies the social spheres that a modern

society has to comprise or provide in order to enable each of its members to realize individual

self-determination.”104 Hegel develops and uses five such conditions.105 He was, with regard

to their application, overly cautious of institutional leeway and of the capacity of individuals

to develop relations to others without violating the five criteria when the individuals involved

are not determined by existing institutions.106 In addition, he was too optimistic about the

stability of the specific state institutions that he regarded to be the manifestation of the

absolute spirit.

Philosophers qua philosophers are certainly not in a position to prescribe specific com-

munities or ways to happiness. However, they can reflect on the conditions of the possibility

of factual or possible states and norms. According to the postmodern thinker John Caputo,

deconstruction is

respect, respect for the other, a respectful, responsible affirmation of the other, a way if notto efface at least to delimit the narcissism of the self (which is, quite literally, a tautology)and to make some space to let the other be. That is a good way to start out thinking aboutinstitutions, traditions, communities, justice, and religion.107





In my view, such an ethics of respect is a universalist ethics in the tradition of Kant and

implies Kantian ethics. Its advocates propose a universal imperative, an imperative that holds

for each and every individual in all societies, according to which all individuals have to be

treated equally. In addition, the content of the deconstructionist categorical imperative is

included in Kant’s categorical imperative. The categorical imperative forbids one to force

one’s own ideas of happiness onto the other and is a procedure to identify maxims that would

destroy the conditions of the possibility of society or treat other individuals not (also) as ends

in themselves. In other words, it calls upon one to decenter oneself and make space to let

all others be, provided that they do so as well. The categorical imperative presents the least

restrictive ethics, inasmuch as it only forbids what destroys the conditions of the possibility

of society (or treats others as means). It embodies the most demanding ethics, inasmuch as

to treat the others (also) as ends not only means not to infringe on their freedom but also to

do the best one can to put society and others in a position such that they can exercise their

freedom. As to human rights, regardless of whether Arendt’s formula of “the right to have

rights”108 was meant as a critique of the notion of human rights, Kant’s categorical imperative

can certainly be regarded as a formulation of the basic right from which one can deducethe human rights that have been proclaimed in 1948 by the U.N. General Assembly, all the

conditions that have to be fulfilled in order for individuals to be in a position of acting freely.

In brief, Kant’s categorical imperative can serve as the “supreme limiting condition”109 of

any possible community and society and of any possible politics and ethics today – which

does not mean that only Kantian ethics leads to human rights.

NOTES

I thank Silvia Cresti for comments and two anonymous referees for Constellations for the suggestionto expand the first draft of the paper. All of Aristotle’s extant books are lecture notes and often writtenin a rather abbreviated way. Unless noted otherwise, phrases in square brackets (e.g., “[such capacity]”)in Aristotle quotes indicate the words that, in my view, have to be supplied. My comments in quotes areenclosed in parentheses and are accompanied by “J.F.”.

1. For Heidegger before and after 1933, see Johannes Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National So-cialism in Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999) andJohannes Fritsche, “With Plato into the Kairos before the Kehre: On Heidegger’s different Interpretationsof Plato,” in Heidegger and Plato: Toward Dialogue, eds. C. Partenie and T. Rockmore, (Evanston: North-western University Press, 2005), 140–77; for Lowith, see Johannes Fritsche, “From National Socialism toPostmodernism: Lowith on Heidegger,” Constellations 16, no. 1 (2009): 84–105. For a synopsis of thesetexts and my other papers on Heidegger see Johannes Fritsche, “Heidegger’s Being and Time and NationalSocialism,” Philosophy Today 56, no. 3 (2012): 255–284.

2. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans.D. Heller-Roazen (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1998), 119ff. For Lowith, see Fritsche, “From National Socialism,” esp. 86ff.The Italian original is Giorgio Agamben, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita (Torino: Einaudi,1995). I refer to the English translation as “ Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.)” and to the original as “ Homo sacer (Ital. orig.).”

3. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 150ff. For Lowith, see Fritsche, “From National Socialism.”Lowith’s Heidegger was originally an active nihilist, after 1935 a National Socialist, and since 1948 the firstpostmodernist.

4. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 121. On Agamben and Heidegger see Andrew Norris,“Introduction,” in Politics, Metaphysics, and Death: Essays on Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer, ed. AndrewNorris (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 1–30, Andrew Norris, “Philosophical and Political Decisionsin Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer,” in Norris, Politics, Metaphysics, and Death, 262–83, Antonio Negri,“The Discret Taste of the Dialectic,” in Giorgio Agamben: Sovereignty & Life, eds. M. Calarco and S.

Decaroli (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 203–18.5. Georg W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic, trans. A.V. Miller (Amherst: Humanity Books, 1999).

For the notion of presupposition (Voraussetzen, Voraussetzung), see 400ff.6. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 21.





7. Ibid.8. As has already become obvious, I use in this paper the Hegelian formula, “inclusion through

exclusion” in the sense of “inclusion into the concept, society, the totality of the biological life, the totalityof the ethical life etc. via exclusion (through presupposition).” In other words, “inclusion through exclusion”is just another formula for “becoming and being active and alive” or “life” in Hegel. By contrast, Agamben’sformula, “exclusion through inclusion” means “annihilation through imprisonment in a death camp.” InHegel, the concrete forms of inclusion through presupposition differ according to the different realms of

the absolute concept. In the ethical life of Hegel’s Elements of the Philosophy of Right , the most abstractpresupposition is the one in which each individual acts as a person, uses everyone and everything else asmeans, and presupposes that everyone else does so as well. For the career of the will from this state toconcrete life, see section six of this article.

9. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 9, 20, 38, 52f., and passim.10. Ibid., 29. (Emphasis in the original.)11. Ibid., 46.12. Ibid., 15.13. Ibid., 39.14. Ibid., 40f. (Emphasis in the original.)15. Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic, 447ff., 529ff.16. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 45. (Emphasis in the original.)

17. Ibid.18. See e.g., Aristotle, Aristotelis Metaphysica, ed. W. Jaeger (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1973), 177. The iota subscript changes the nominative into the dative. Note that the clause 1046 a 30f. doesnot contain a verb, which happens not rarely in Aristotle (see n. 31).

19. Aristotle, Metaphysics, IX, 1, 1046 a 9–29.20. Ibid. , 1046 a 29f.; the opposite of the one discussed in 1046 a 9–29. See also Metaphysics V, 12,

1019 b 15ff.21. “[T]hat which has not [a certain capacity] and that which has not got [such capacity] even though

by its nature it should have [it] [are said to have a privation], either in general or at the time when, by itsnature, it should have [that capacity], and either in a particular way, e.g., [when something fails to have thecapacity] completely, or to a certain degree. And in some cases we say that something is deprived of [acapacity] if by its nature it is supposed to have it but does not have it due to violence” ( Metaphysics IX, 1,

1046 a 31–35).22. The alpha-privative in adunamia quite naturally indicates the absence of a capacity or an inca-pacity of something (e.g., to operate beyond its limits), but cannot indicate a special capacity of a capacity(to abstain from activation, or so). See H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1985), 25 and the other words with the alpha-privative. Since the phrase “every capacity”(1046 a 31) can refer both to active and passive capacities, already the mere fact that Aristotle also talks inthis context about passive capacities rules out Agamben’s interpretation.

23. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 45. Replacement of the Greek transcriptions in the Italianoriginal and in the English translation with transcriptions of other Greek words mine. As will become clear,it is helpful to translate both sentences more literally, i.e., as “What is able to be [ x ] can both be [ x ] and notbe [ x ]; the same [entity] is able both to be [ x ] and not to be [ x ].”

24. Aristotle, Metaphysics, IX, 8, 1049 b 13–15.

25. Socrates is able to be/potentially a musician; thus he will or will not be a musician depending onwhether or not he will study music. The oily thing will or will not be inflamed depending on whether or notit comes into contact with something with the corresponding active capacity.

26. Ibid., 2 and 5, 1046 a 36-b 28, 1047 b 31–1048 a 24.27. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 46. Replacement of “to turn potentiality back upon

itself” with “potentiality turns back upon itself” (or “the turning back of potentiality upon itself”) is mine(“il rivolgersi della potenza su se stessa per donarsi a se stessa,” Agamben, Homo sacer [Ital. orig.],53).

28. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 45.29. Ibid., 45f. Aristotle adduces as an example someone who is standing but has the opportunity

to take a seat and sit ( Metaphysics, IX, 3, 1047 a 26–29). While it is easy to duplicate the traditionalinterpretation of 1047 a 24–26 (one can say that a is potentially b only if b and its belonging to a are neitherlogically nor physically impossible), it is difficult or impossible to see how the examples can exemplify themeaning that Agamben sees in 1047 a 24–26 (a is potentially b if, upon the realization of b, there will beno longer anything that is capable of not being). For Heidegger’s (non-traditional) interpretation of 1047 a24–26 in 1931 (in which he adduces as an example a sprinter sitting “in full readiness” in the starting-block and waiting for the gun), see Fritsche, Historical Destiny, 344ff.





30. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 46. Replacement of “a preservation and ‘giving of theself to itself’ of potentiality” with “a preservation of potentiality and its ‘giving of itself to itself’” (“its”= “potentiality’s”) mine (“un conservarsi e un ‘donarsi a se stessa’ della potenza,” Agamben, Homo sacer [Ital. orig.], 53).

31. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 46. The replacement of “the gift of the self to itself” with“the gift to itself” mine. The phrase “of the self” has no correspondence in Agamben’s Italian translation of lines 417 b 2–7, which runs thus: “partire non e un termine semplice, ma, in un senso, e una certa distruzione

attraverso il principio contrario, in un altro e piuttosto la conservazione (s¯ ot er ıa, la salvazione) di cio che e inpotenza [tou dunamei ontos] da parte di cio che e in atto [tou entelecheiai ontos] e simile ad esso . . . Poichecolui che possiede la scienza (in potenza) [to echon t en epist em¯ en] diventa contemplante in atto [the¯ oroun],e questo non e un’alterazione – poiche si ha qui dono a se stesso e all’atto (ep´ ıdosis eis heaut o) – ovveroe un’alterazione di altra specie” ( Homo sacer [Ital. orig.], 53; addition of “(in potenza),” omission, andinsertions of Greek transcriptions in parentheses are Agamben’s; insertions of Greek transcriptions insquare brackets mine). The part that Agamben has omitted reads: “in the way in which potentiality is relatedto actuality [hout os h¯ os dunamis echei pros entelecheian]” (417 b 4f.). While there seems to be in this linea problem with the words or the word order (see Aristotle, De anima, ed. Sir David Ross [Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1961], n. p. [at 417 b 4]), what matters to me is that, through his omission, Agamben hasleft out the feminine noun dunamis.

The phrases “to echon t en epist em¯ en” and “the¯ oroun” (417 b 5f.) are neuter and thus should be translated

as “that which has the science” and “that which contemplates.” All the nouns in the context – “potentiality”(417 b 4f.), “actuality” (417 b 5), “science” (417 b 6), “epidosis” (417 b 6f.) and “alteration” (417 b 7) – arein Greek feminine. Therefore, the neuter reflexive pronoun “heauto” (417 b 6) can refer neither to any of these nouns nor to an occurrence of “potentiality” to be added after “epidosis,” but only to the neuter phrase“that which has the science” (417 b 5f.). Thus, the gift cannot be given to a capacity, but only to somethingthat has a capacity (e.g., to an educated scientist), as is conveyed by the following literal translation: “Forthat which has the science comes to be contemplating/contemplates, which is either not a being altered (forthe [feminine, J.F.] epidosis [is] to it and [an/its] actuality/to [that which has the science] itself and [an/its]actuality [eis auto/heauto/hauto gar h¯ e epidosis kai eis entelecheian]) or a different type of alteration”;note that the Greek phrase in brackets has no verb; different manuscripts, paraphrases and editors have thedifferent pronouns (see Aristotle, De anima, n. p. [at 417 b 6]) which, however, differ only in the first letteror the breathing but agree in the etymon and the ending, the letter o indicating the neuter.

Introducing the quote, Agamben says that Aristotle talks of a giving of potentiality to itself (see n. 27,30) and repeats this comment right after the quote. For Agamben, the gift is given to a potentiality andnot to something that has a potentiality. It is obvious that Agamben can only use his own rendering of thequote and not its literal translation to substantiate his claim. This rendering has four peculiarities: 1) Eventhough the phrases tou dunamei ontos and tou entelecheiai ontos are neuter or masculine and to echon t enepist em¯ en and the¯ oroun unambiguously only neuter, Agamben renders the first two phrases with the genderneutral “cio che” but “to echon t en epist em¯ en” and “the¯ oroun” as masculine (“colui che”). 2) He adds atranscription of the Greek neuter pronoun heauto. 3) He supplies in the sentence in brackets not – as I haveand is generally done – a simple “is” but a longer “si ha qui (there is here)” (which could be esti entautha,but which probably would have made Aristotle place “eis heauto” – as Agamben does in his rendering –after “h¯ e epidosis” and also repeat the feminine article h¯ e before “eis heauto”). 4) Agamben leaves out thepart with the feminine word “dunamis” (417 b 4f.).

In Aristotle, the pronoun heauto refers to “that which has the science,” and the entire subordinated clauseon the gift explains why the type of process he has in mind here is not a regular alteration. It is rather afull actualization of the subject of the process, one in which the subject gains something without losinganything (e.g., when, after a break or so, a trained scientist conducts research or teaches students, he, farfrom losing anything, acquires something and fully actualizes his capacity; see 417 a 21ff., 417 b 8ff.).Now, had Agamben translated “to echon t en epist em¯ en” as “cio che possiede la scienza,” any reader withknowledge of Greek would have thought that Agamben’s insertion of “heauto” is meant to indicate that “ase stesso” refers to the scientist (and not to a potentiality). Likewise, even readers without knowledge of Greek would have probably thought that it is meant to stress that “a se stesso” refers neither to a phrasein its immediate context nor to something that is very far away, and that it therefore refers to the scientist.As matters stand, however, Agamben’s mistranslation of the genders and his insertion of the Greek neuterpronoun make readers who know Greek assume that the masculine phrase “a se stesso” cannot refer to“colui que possiede la scienza (in potenza),” and readers without knowledge of Greek will probably assumethat the insertion is meant to indicate that, despite the appearance, “a se stesso” does not refer to “colui chepossiede la scienza.” Having cut for all readers the tie between “a se stesso” and “colui que possiede lascienza (in potenza)” Agamben, through measure 3), further deepens for all readers the gap between “coluique possiede la scienza (in potenza)” and the subordinated clause on the gift. His insertion of the phrase





“there is here” makes all readers assume that, in the subordinated clause, Aristotle might not just simplycomment on the type of process but also introduce a new aspect, namely the cause of the process. Everyreader probably cannot but identify as that cause the potentiality that gives itself to itself of which Agambenspeaks right before as well as right after the Aristotle quote.

In brief, steps 1) – 3) make all readers expect the phrase “a se stesso” to refer neither to a word in itsimmediate context nor to the phrase “colui che possiede la scienza (in potenza).” Now, if Agamben hadalso translated the part he has omitted, he would have had to render the Greek feminine noun dunamis with

the feminine Italian word potenza. Thus, all readers would have thought that “a se stesso” cannot refer to apotentiality either. In other words, through steps 1) – 3) Agamben has driven a wedge between the phrases“colui que possiede la scienza” and “a se stesso,” and through step 4) he has opened up the possibility that “ase stesso” might refer to a potentiality. Therefore, when saying right before and after the quote that Aristotletalks of a giving of potentiality to itself, Agamben makes (readers with knowledge of Greek forget for amoment the discrepancy between “heaut o” and the feminine noun dunamis and) all readers read the phrase“dono a se stesso” as a gift of a potentiality to itself.

The English translation reinforces the changes Agamben makes in his translation of Aristotle. Translatingcorrectly the Italian gender of “colui que” and the Greek gender of “eis heaut o,” (“he who possessesscience . . . – since here there is the gift . . . to itself”) the translator adds the phrase “of the self” (“the gift of the self to itself”). This addition widens the gap between the phrases “he who possesses science” and “toitself,” so to speak, even more than it already is in Agamben’s translation. Thus, when the English translator

inserts the phrase “of the self” already in his translation of Agamben’s introductory sentence (“‘giving of the self to itself’ of potentiality,” see n. 30), every reader will understand the “self” in “gift of the self toitself” in the Aristotle quote as placeholder for potentialities.

According to Agamben, the giver, the gift, and the recipient of the gift are identical, since the potentialityis all three of them. However, in Aristotle giver, gift, and recipient of the gift are all different from eachother, and the potentiality is only the gift. In the context of lines 417 b 2–7, Aristotle distinguishes betweena human being that has not yet acquired a science but is learning it, a human being that has acquired ascience but is actually not practicing it, and a scientist actually working as a scientist (417 a 21ff., 417 b8ff.). While Aristotle does not talk much about the giver (the mover, the efficient cause, of the alteration)in 417 b 2–7, this is because the giver is obvious – throughout On Soul II (e.g., 415 b 10) and elsewhere(e.g., Metaphysics IX, 2), the soul is characterized as mover of the motions of an animated body. In the caseof a student learning a science, the recipient of the gift is the student, the gift is the science she will have

acquired at the end of her studies, and the giver – the mover of the student’s alteration from someone withoutthe science to someone who possesses it – is the teacher (someone who already has the science) or her soul.In the case of a scientist actually working as a scientist, the recipient of the gift is the entire scientist, thegift is the actualization of the capacity of science, and the giver is the entire scientist or her soul. Note that“epidosis” (417 b 6) should most probably not be translated as “gift” (see above, what follows).

32. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 46. (Emphasis in the original.)33. See n. 31.34. See ibid.35. Liddell and Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, 631.36. See Hermann Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1955),

271.37. E.g., Categories 8, 10 b 28f.

38. Aristotle, On Generation of Animals, II, 6, 744 b 30.39. Ibid., (744 b 35f.).40. See n. 44.41. The body works as efficient cause on the nourishment (say, plants) and assimilates it to the body

itself (to its blood, flesh, bones etc.). One can also say that the body gives to the nourishment the forms thatthe body already has (see n. 44). Thus, one might say the body gives to itself the bones etc. as a gift.

42. For instance, “growth is an epidosis of the existing magnitude and decrease its diminution” (OnGeneration and Corruption, I, 5, 320 b 30f.).

43. See, for instance, Aristotle, The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation,Vol. I, ed. J. Barnes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 664.

44. For this notion of motion and causality, see Aristotle, Physics, III, 1–3, especially 202 a 6–12(“Hence motion is the fulfillment of the movable qua movable, and this happens through contact with thatwhich can move [the movable] so that [the mover] is at the same time also acted upon. Still, the mover willalways carry along with it a certain form—either a this, or a such, or a so-much—which will be the principle,in the sense of cause, of the motion when it moves [the movable] as, for instance, when an actual humanbeing produces out of something that is potentially a human being a human being”). For Aristotelians, only





this notion of causality makes possible sciences of natural beings. Inasmuch as an efficient cause givessomething that it already has (the architect, for instance, already has [in his mind] the form of house thathe gives to the bricks, the male human parent already has the essential form of human being that he givesto the menses, which lacks that form), lines 202 a 6–12 are – along with Plato’s Phaedo, 96 a-107 a – theorigin of the notion of causality according to which an efficient cause already has to have, formally (as inthe case of the male parent) or eminently, that which it gives to the effect. This notion of efficient causalityhas dominated mainstream Western philosophy until Descartes (see Johannes Fritsche, “Efficient Causality

as Donation, from Aristotle to Descartes and Gassendi,” manuscript). Especially if Aristotle is a realist andthus claims that there are universal species forms each of which is, as one and the same entity, in manydifferent individuals (as e.g., the species form human-being-ness would be in all the different individualhuman beings), Agamben’s language might have a point regarding Aristotle’s notion of efficient causality: amale human being duplicates his essential form in the menses to the effect that there is a new individual withthe same essential form as the one of the male parent. Thus, it might not be wrong to say that in efficientcausality “a form gives itself to itself” in the following sense: Say, the species form human-being-ness gives(via the male parent as the efficient cause, which acts in virtue of the species form, and via the male semen asan instrumental efficient cause) to the menses (i.e., to the matter on which the male semen acts) the essentialform of the offspring as a reduplication of itself ; in addition, the species form gives the essential form of theoffspring to itself , inasmuch as the species form now exists also in the menses, the offspring, as the latter’sessential form (for Aristotle’s theory of sexual reproduction, see Generation of Animals, esp. I, 17ff., 721 a

31ff., IV, 1ff., 763 b 20ff.); finally, in this process of successive generations, the species form is the primaryefficient cause and principle of motion (see Physics II, 3, 195 a 3–8, 32–35, 195 b 21–25; III, 202 a 10f.),inasmuch as the individuals act in virtue of it, inasmuch as reproduction of the species form is the purposeof the life of the individuals, and inasmuch as it is only the species form that is sempiternal. However, aswas said, this would be a case of inclusion through exclusion and not of abandonment. It is thanks to thespecies form that the instances of matter and the individuals enjoy a life even if it is ephemeral vis- a-vis thelife of the species form.

Agamben might argue that abandonment results if and when in the history of the West, presupposi-tion/exclusion is practiced without being followed by determination/inclusion. However, the indeterminate-ness of matter is relative to the form to be realized, and means, as Aristotle says for instance in the famouslines 1047 a 24–26, that something can serve as matter of a composite with a specific form only if it itself does not have that form but is capable of having it. It is capable of having the form only because it itself

already has, prior to the process of information, one or several other forms, forms that enable it to receivethe form at stake. In other words, every form presupposes specific forms in its prospective matter; or, matteris always presupposed as having specific forms, all those determinations without which the form could notbe realized (Physics, II, 9, 199 b 34–200 b 8). E.g., one can produce a saw only out of iron (200 b 4–8) anda male human being can produce offspring only out of menses, menses from a human being and not fromany other animal. The absence of any determination in prime matter is just a special case of the necessarydetermination of matter, the starting point of the production of an element is not prime matter but anotherelement (or a higher organized body, such as wood), and prime matter never exists by itself, without anyform (On Generation and Corruption, II, 1, 329 a 24ff.).

Similarly, proponents of a state of nature assume that the humans in that state are not stripped of any deter-minations, but rather have determinations, precisely those that make it possible, worthwhile, and necessaryto leave this state (see e.g., Georg W.F. Hegel, “On the Scientific Ways of Treating Natural Law, on its Place

in Practical Philosophy, and its Relation to the Positive Sciences of Right,” Political Writings, trans. H.B.Nisbet [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999], 107ff.). The state of nature is indeed abandoned,but precisely in order for humans to include each other in society, not to be abandoned. Again, it is the samecontrast. In Hegel and modern theories of natural law, the minimal characteristics lead the humans out of the state of nature into concrete life, society, while in Agamben, humans are lead out of society to deathcamps, to abandonment.

Efficient causality as giving something that the efficient cause already has implies what Heidegger labeledin the 1920s Dasein’s “productive comportment toward beings” (Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problemsof Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988], 110), which hetreated in Being and Time under the heading of the existential of handiness (Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. A Translation of Sein und Zeit, trans. J. Stambaugh [Albany: SUNY Press, 1996], 62ff.) and which,along with a change regarding the experience of logos, became for him in the 1930s the beginning of meta-physics in Plato and Aristotle, whose last phase is the Gestell (enframing), modern technology. In addition,the later Heidegger speaks of Being in terms of “giving” and “gift.” As already the notorious remark onthe gas chambers in the manuscript of The Question Concerning Technology (see e.g., Johannes Fritsche,“On Brinks and Bridges in Heidegger,” The Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 18, no. 1 [1995]: 125)





indicates, Heidegger’s theory of modern technology in The Question Concerning Technology – in whichhe tried “to silence Auschwitz silently” (ibid., 155) – is a theory of abandonment. In this sense, Agambenprojects Heidegger’s concept of modern technology onto Aristotle and Hegel (and Kant).

45. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 51.46. Ibid., 49f.47. Ibid., 51. (Emphasis in the original.)48. Ibid. (Emphasis in the original.)

49. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 51.50. Ibid., 52.51. Ibid.52. Ibid., 52f. (Emphasis in the original.)53. Ibid., 53.54. Henry Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990),

Paul Guyer, Kant and the Experience of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), JurgenHabermas, Moralbewußtsein und kommunikatives Handeln (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983), Barbara Hermann,The Practice of Moral Judgment (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), Onara O’Neill,Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1989), John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), Lectureson the History of Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), Ernst Tugendhat,

Vorlesungen ¨ uber Ethik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1993), Allen W. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999) and Kantian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

55. Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, in Practical Philosophy, trans. anded. M.J. Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 43ff.

56. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and ed. P. Guyer and A.W. Wood (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1998), 307 (B 237).

57. “Thus, then, we have arrived, within the moral cognition of common human reason, at its principle,which it admittedly does not think so abstractly in a universal form but which it actually has always beforeits eyes and uses as the norm for its appraisals. Here it would be easy to show how common reason, withthis compass in hand, knows very well how to distinguish in every case that comes up what is good andwhat is evil, what is in conformity with duty or contrary to duty, if, without in the least teaching it anythingnew, we only, as did Socrates, make it attentive to its own principle; and that there is, accordingly, no need

of science and philosophy to know what one has to do in order to be honest and good, and even wise andvirtuous” (Kant, Groundwork , 58; see ibid., 45).58. Ibid., 57. (Emphasis in the original.) “Should [solle]” does not mean here that my maxim has to

become a universal law; it is used with the force of a declarative speech act in Searle’s sense (“You shallbe married” = “Herewith I declare you to be married,” which does not imply that the couple had to getmarried).

59. Ibid., 73. (Emphasis in the original.)60. Ibid., 57f., 73ff. If the universalization of a maxim leads to a contradiction, the maxim would

destroy the conditions of the possibility of coordination, or the conditions of the possibility of society, andthus make action impossible. If the universalization of a maxim leads, not to a contradiction, but only toa contradiction in volition, the maxim would make impossible, not society in general, but only fruitfulcooperation. In what follows, I generally just speak of the “intersubjective conditions of the possibility of

society.”61. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Theory, 81f. and passim; see Wood, Kantian Ethics, 72ff.62. Kant, Groundwork , 80. (Emphasis in the original.)63. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought , 106f, 111ff.; see Wood, Kantian Ethics, 71ff.64. Kant, Groundwork , 74f., 80f.65. Kant, Groundwork , 74.66. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought , 105f.; see Wood, Kantian Ethics, 72f.67. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought , 105f.68. The fact that the mentioned maxim regarding stocks does not fall under the purview of ethics

does not imply that stock markets in general don’t do so either.69. Kant, Groundwork , 79, 81 and passim.70. Ibid., 79, 81 and passim.71. Ibid., 79f.72. Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 517ff.73. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre

Dame Press, 1984), 45. (Emphasis in the original.)





74. Kant, Groundwork , 73. (Emphasis in the original.)75. Ibid., 88. (Emphasis in the original.)76. Many interpreters assume that by the notion of contradiction in the universalizability test Kant

means the logical consistency of an actor in the application of his maxims. To reject the categoricalimperative Gordon Graham, for instance, just adduces one example of the so-called false positives (see n.81), the so-called consistent Nazi ( Eight Theories of Ethics [London: Routledge, 2006], 118ff.). He doesnot consider the possibility that, in the first formulation of the categorical imperative, Kant focuses on the

internal consistency of the actor and, in the second formulation, on the individuals affected by his maximsand actions. In my view, Kant has a type of performative contradiction in mind: a maxim of action is notpermissible if its universalization destroys the conditions of the possibility of action.

According to Hannah Arendt, the difference between a normal society and Nazi Germany is that in anormal society, one is punished for what one has done, for something for which one is responsible. InNazi Germany, one was punished for what one was, for something for which one cannot be in any wayresponsible. To punish people for what they are destroys the minimal condition of society, namely a ratiobetween one’s deeds and the reactions of others.

77. Kant, Groundwork , 87.78. Ibid., 85f.79. Ibid., 86f. (Emphasis in the original.) Humanity in oneself and anyone else is not an abstraction

in whose name one can abandon anyone. To the contrary, it is the presupposition that obliges me to include

even those who, through their empirical behavior, have made themselves unworthy of any respect. I mustrespect as a human being even the most vicious person and must not be contemptuous of him, for the latterwould mean to suppose that “he could never be improved, and this is not consistent with the idea of a humanbeing, who as such (as a moral being) can never lose entirely his predisposition to the good” (Kant, The

Metaphysics of Morals, 580. [Emphasis in the original.]).80. Kant, Groundwork , 70ff.81. In Kant, the “good will’s only motive is to do its duty for the sake of doing its duty. Whatever it

intends to do, it intends because it is its duty” (Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century, 2nd ed. [London: Routledge, 2000], 192;compare e.g., Kant’s “unwavering focus on duty for duty’s sake, with total disregard for any consequences,foreseen or unforeseen,” Ben Dupre, 50 Philosophy Ideas You Really Need to Know [London: Quercus,2007], 73).

Sentences like these have been used to claim that Kant’s ethics lends itself to National Socialism. Infact, MacIntyre himself writes that an education “into the Kantian notion of duty” and “the consequencesof his doctrines, in German history at least,” render one “a mere conformist servant of the social order”(MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics, 198). However, the sentences on duty for the sake of duty cloudthe fact that there are the indefinitely many permissible maxims according to which one acts for the sakeof (subjective) ends that are not duties. In addition, these sentences are unclear or simply false, becauseKant precisely forbids any simple recourse to the concept of duty to justify one’s maxims or actions. Whenpresenting, right at the beginning of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the notions of the goodwill (Kant, Groundwork , 49–52) and duty (ibid., 52–56) Kant claims just to be articulating common senseunderstanding of these notions (ibid., 52). In the next step, he develops the categorical imperative. Kantemphasizes several times in this context that the notions of good will and duty are empty concepts unlessone interprets them in terms of the categorical imperative (ibid., 50, 57, 73, 76, 82, 93). After developing the

latter, he returns to good will and duty to interpret them in terms of the distinction between subjective andobjective ends and develop the categorical imperative as the limiting condition, on behalf of the objectiveends, of all subjective ends (ibid., 86ff.). Thus, if Kant claims that common sense understands duties asexisting for the sake of duties, his entire point is precisely to replace such talk of duty’s self-referentialitywith the notion that duties refer to something other than duties, to objective ends, and are legitimized asduties only because they preserve these objective ends. By the same token, the formalism of Kant’s ethics isnot an empty formalism but rather serves the preservation of the objective ends (ibid., 85f., 92f. and passim):a human being’s duty to himself as a moral being “consists in what is formal, i.e., in the consistency of the maxims of his will with the dignity of humanity in his person” (Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 545[transl. changed, J.F.]).

As a matter of fact, Kant himself does not use at any point the formula of duty for the sake of duty. Rather,he uses the phrase “from duty (aus Pflicht )” (Kant, Groundwork , 52–56), which indicates the reason of anaction and allows, as such, to refer this reason to a prior reason. Thus, Kant does not assume that commonunderstanding thinks of duty in terms of a self-referentiality of duty. He summarizes the entire passage onduty at the beginning of the Groundwork by saying that “duty is the necessity of an action from respect for thelaw” (ibid., 55. [Emphasis in the original.]). Whenever there is a law in ethics, there is a lawgiver. The second





formulation of the categorical imperative leads to the third formulation of the categorical imperative, the“idea of the will of every rational being as a will giving universal law” (ibid., 81), according to which no lawshall be valid unless every member of the respective group agrees to it (ibid., 81ff.). The third formulation inturns leads to the long passages on the difference between autonomy and heteronomy (ibid., 81–89, 89–93)– the difference between human beings giving, through reason, their own laws and objects, God, etc. givingthe laws – in which Kant argues for autonomy. Kant separates the two questions of the law and the lawgiverbecause one must keep them apart analytically and because only their separation enables him to fully spell

out the difference between heteronomy and autonomy and argue for the latter. According to my experience,common sense assumes that everyone who claims to act “from duty” maintains, immediately or after somethought, that he is obliged to do so because the maxim is a command of God, nature, one’s nation, parents,reason, etc., and that therefore it is a duty only because it is a justified duty, justified by something differentfrom the duty itself. When Kant leads analytically from duty to the categorical imperative and from there tothe notion of autonomy to establish human reason as the lawgiver, he probably has this feature of commonsense in mind, his goal being the replacement of any heteronomous ground of duty and of permissiblemaxims with autonomy. If common sense or Kant encountered the formula of duty for the sake of duty, bothof them would probably regard it as equivalent to the phrase “from duty” in the reasoning just mentioned,or they would assume that the speaker in one way or another knows that it was not his duty.

One can make the same point also in a different way. Kant summarizes the entire passage on duty,as was mentioned, by saying that “duty is the necessity of an action from respect for the law” (ibid.,

55) and distinguishes between hypothetical and categorical imperatives (ibid., 67ff.). He does so becausehe assumes that moral imperatives or duties occur, phenomenologically, in the consciousness of actorsin the form of categorical imperatives (“Thou shall not kill!”). Kant emphasizes that there is somethingvery “strange” (ibid., 50) about the notion of a good will. He could have made the same comment aboutcategorical imperatives. Since inclinations or (subjective) ends that one pursues cannot play a role, how cancategorical imperatives be binding? Only because of the objective ends they protect. The misunderstanding,widespread in the secondary literature, of duty for the sake of duty also goes back to the fact that interpretersnormally ignore Kant’s procedure in the Groundwork , namely, to phenomenologically explicate commonunderstanding, explicate its possible grounds, and argue for one specific ground – reason and autonomy –rather than deducing something from a presupposed principle.

At the end of a renowned passage in The Metaphysics of Morals – where he expounds on the claim thatthe “greatest perfection of a human being is to do his duty from duty” (The Metaphysics of Morals, 523.

[Emphasis in the original.]) – Kant concludes that this means to strive so that “the thought of duty for its ownsake is the sufficient incentive of every action conforming to duty [daß zu allen pflichtm ¨ aßigen Handlungender Gedanke der Pflicht f ur sich selbst hinreichende Triebfeder sei]” (ibid., 523; note that Kant does notsay here, “of every action”). Since this formula occurs at the end of an explanation of the phrase, “to dohis duty from duty,” readers of this translation of the Cambridge Edition will probably relate the phrase“for its own sake” to “duty” and be inclined to assume that, whenever the expression “from duty” occurs,self-referentiality of duty is present as well. However, the translation is incorrect. The sentence should betranslated along the lines of, “that the thought of duty is, taken by itself (i.e., without any additional supportby something else, e.g., inclinations), the sufficient incentive”; or, as Jens Timmermann suggested in ane-mail, “that the thought of duty is by itself the sufficient incentive” (compare, “the law being by itself alonethe incentive,” ibid., 566). At the end of the Analytic of the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant says, not thata duty, but that an action is done “for the sake of duty alone [bloß um der Pflicht willen]” (Kant, Critique

of Practical Reason, 208). Kant gives here a time-lapse picture of Sections I and II of the Groundwork andmakes the usual two points, namely, that, when it comes to duties, inclinations must not matter (ibid., 208–9)and that the way leads from God and the Gospel to human reason (ibid., 207–9). He continues asking forthe “origin . . . worthy of” duty and “the root of [the] noble descent” (ibid., 209) of duty. One is not identicalwith one’s origin, and a visible tree is different from its roots and the soil in which tree and roots are rooted.Kant finds the origin of duty in human reason and the idea of “every rational creature” as “an end in itself”(ibid., 210).

MacIntyre substantiates his conformism thesis with the claim that “the Kantian notion of duty is so formalthat it can be given almost any content” (MacIntyre, A Short History, 198; “Suppose, however, that [Kant]had inquired whether I can consistently universalize the maxim ‘I may break my promises only when . . . .’The gap is filled by” [ibid., 198]; see After Virtue, 46). This is the issue of the so-called false positives, allthose maxims that one intuitively regards as morally impermissible but actually pass the universalizabilitytest. As Wood puts it, one can sufficiently restrict the conditions under which to apply a maxim so that onearrives at, say, “the maxim of making a false promise on Tuesday, August 21, to a person named HildrethMilton Flitcraft” (Kant’s Ethical Thought , 102). Common sense and Kant can certainly object that a sentencewith the kind of restrictions that MacIntyre, Wood, and others adduce is not a maxim but an application of a





maxim or the claim to be entitled to make an exception from a duty, or that it is a maxim that implies moregeneral maxims. In addition, individuals are not treated as ends in such cases. MacIntyre’s critique seemsto presuppose that Kantian ethics cannot but ignore or destroy phron¯ esis as the capacity of “how to exercise judgment in particular cases” (MacIntyre, After Virtue, 154) or judgment as the capacity to prudently specifyand apply general sentences, rules, or maxims. The young Hegel was probably the first to claim, presumablywithout imagining anything like National Socialism, that the categorical imperative allows one, as he stillwrote in 1820, “to justify any wrong or immoral mode of action” ( Elements of the Philosophy of Right ,

trans. H.B. Nisbet [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991], 162 [§ 135]). However, also in hisyouth, Hegel philosophized from a Neo-Platonic perspective and thus ignored the status of the categoricalimperative as a tool of reflection.

The image of Kant as the promoter of duty for duty’s sake has definitely been enforced by his treatiseOn a Supposed Right to Lie from Philanthropy. One could argue that, in this case, Kant has not applied hisown ethics properly. However, one does not need to do so, because, as Wood has shown, this treatise hasnormally been misunderstood (Wood, Kantian Ethics, 240ff.). In addition, in the Groundwork Kant doesnot say that duties don’t allow for exceptions but rather that “a perfect duty . . . admits no exception in favorof inclination” (Groundwork , 73 note; see 76), and he has on the list of categories a category for exceptions(Critique of Practical Reason, 194). Another reason for Kant’s supposed rigorism has been the so-callednatural-law formulation of the categorical imperative: “act as if the maxim of your action were to become by

your will a universal law of nature” (Groundwork , 73. [Emphasis in the original.]). However, at that point of

the argument, the issue of exceptions is not relevant. Furthermore, in Metaphysical Foundations of NaturalScience and already in his early writings Kant argues by analogy in the same way as in his ethics, for hedevelops the conditions of the possibility for natural bodies to move around and act without hampering ordestroying each other.

In the section on duty at the beginning of the Groundwork , Kant says, “[o]nly . . . what does not serve myinclination but outweighs it or at least excludes it altogether from calculations in making a choice – hencethe mere law for itself – can be an object of respect” (Groundwork , 55). Kant says here that what matters isnot the absence, or suppression, of inclinations but rather that they must not play a role in the assessmentof the moral character of a maxim. Even in actions in which I follow a duty I can act out my inclinationsprovided that I would follow the duty also if I did not have these inclinations. Furthermore, Kant says thatrespect for the law means to comply with it “even if it infringes upon all my inclinations” (ibid., 56). I must jump into the water to save the child even if I hate nothing more than water. As to the will that is “not good

because of what it effects. . .

but only because of its volition, that is, it is good in itself” (ibid., 50), I did myduty and my will is good even if I did not manage to save the child. According to my experience, this is acommon sense understanding of duties that is in no way confined to East Prussia at Kant’s time.

82. On the differences between Foucault and Agamben, see Paul Patton, “Agamben and Foucault onBiopower and Biopolitics,” in Giorgio Agamben: Sovereignty & Life, 203–18.

83. Norris, “Introduction,” 12.84. Ibid., 14.85. Agamben, Homo Sacer (Engl. transl.), 188.86. Norris, “Introduction,” 15.87. See Fritsche, Historical Destiny.88. Barry Wellman, “Physical Place and Cyberspace: The Rise of Personalized Networking,” Inter-

national Journal of Urban and Regional Research 25, no. 2 (2001): 228.

89. MacIntyre, After Virtue, 187.90. In 1931, Ferdinand Tonnies wrote that all three major political strands of the nineteenth century –the conservatives, the liberals, and the socialists – could use Hegel for their own agenda (“Hegels Naturrecht,”in Georg W.F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts [Frankfurt: Ullstein, 1772], 783). In 1934–35,Heidegger appropriated Hegel for National Socialism. See Emmanuel Faye, Heidegger: The Introductionof Nazism into Philosophy, trans. Michael B. Smith (New Haven: Yale University, 2009), 203ff.

91. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right , 67ff. (§§ 34–104).92. Ibid., 131ff. (§§ 104–141).93. Ibid., 185f. (§ 141).94. Ibid., 199ff. (§§ 158–181).95. Ibid., 220ff. (§§ 182–256).96. Ibid., 261ff. (§§ 236–249).97. Ibid., 270ff. (§§ 250–256).98. Ibid., 268ff. (§§ 248–340).99. Ibid., 275ff. (§§ 257–340).100. Ibid., 166ff. (§§ 138–140).





101. Ibid., 372ff. (§§ 341–360).102. Ibid., 35ff. (§§ 4ff.).103. See Axel Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit. Eine Reaktualisierung der Hegelschen Rechts-

philosophie (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2001), 17ff. and his earlier works on Hegel.104. Honneth, Leiden an Unbestimmtheit , 34.105. The possibilities of individual self-realization must, in principle, be open to everyone; the types

of action must have an intersubjective character; intersubjective action must be able to express forms of

reciprocal recognition; the types of action and the actions must incorporate human desires and inclinations,historically moldable as these inclinations are; finally, the types of action must be reproducible in the nextgeneration (ibid., 79ff.) Note that Honneth reconstructs here Hegel and not his own opinion.

106. Ibid., 102ff.107. John Caputo, Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (New York:

Fordham University Press, 1997), 44. Caputo quotes Derrida: “I don’t much like the word community, Iam not even sure I like the thing” (ibid., 107). According to Caputo, deconstruction aims at a “communitywithout community” (ibid., 124).

108. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1966), 296.

109. Kant, Groundwork , 87.

Johannes Fritsche is Professor of Philosophy at Bogazici University, Istanbul. He is theauthor of a book on Aristotle and of Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s

Being and Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

Agamben, Aristoteles, Kant, Hegel

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