The two faces of power
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 8, 2023
Any investigations into politics is tainted by a preliminary terminological ambiguity, that condemns those who undertake it to misunderstanding. Either be it the passage of the third book of Aristotle’s Politics in which he, at the time of “investigating the politeiai, in order to establish their number and quality”, declares peremptorily: “since politeia and politeuma mean the same, and politeuma is the supreme power (kyrion) of cities, it is necessary that the supreme power be in the hands of one, of the few, or of the many” (1279a 25–26). Current translations read: “since constitution and government mean the same, and a government is the sovereign in a city [...]”. Whether this translation is more or less correct, in any case it brings to light what could be defined as the amphiboly of the perhaps fundamental concept of our political tradition, which presents itself at one time as “constitution” and at another time as “government”. In a sort of vertiginous contraction, the two concepts are identified and at the same time distinct, and, according to Aristotle, this equivocalness just defines the kyrion (sovereignty).
That the amphiboly is not episodic, is what a reading of Athēnaiōn politeia, which we translate as Constitution of the Athenians, punctually confirms. In describing Pericles’s “demagogy” (27,1), Aristotle writes that in it demotikoteran eti synebe genesthai ten politeian, which translators render as “the constitution became still more democratic”; immediately thereafter we read that the many apasan ten politeian mallon agein eis hautous, “brought all the government more into their hands” (obviously, it did not appear possible to translate by “brought all the constitution”, as terminological consistency would have demanded). The ambiguity is confirmed by dictionaries, where politeia is rendered both as “constitution of the state” and “government, administration”.
Whether it is designated by the hendiadys “constitution/government” or by that “state/administration”, the fundamental concept of Western politics is a double concept, a sort of two-faced Janus, which shows at one time the austere and solemn face of the insitution and at another time the more shady and informal one of the administrative praxis, without it being possible to identify or separate them.
In his 1932 essay on Legality and Legitimacy, Carl Schmitt distinguishes four types of State. Leaving aside the two intermediate figures of the jurisdictional state, in which the last word belongs to the judge who decides a given case, and of the governmental one, which Schmitt identifies with the dictatorship, we are here interested in the two extreme types, the legislative state and the administrative state. In the first, the legislative state or law state, “the highest and decisive expression of the community will” consists of norms having the character of law. “In the general legality of all state exercise of power lies the justification of one such state type”. The one who exercises power does act here on the basis of a law or “in the name of law” and legislative power and executive power, the law and its application, are consequently separate. Modern parliamentary democracies — with less and less reason — identified themselves with this type of State.
The type that — perhaps not by chance — occupies the last place in the list, almost if the other state forms tended in the last resort to converge towards it, is the administrative State. Here “command and will do not appear authoritarian and personal, but neither can they be reduced to mere application of higher norms”; rather they have the form of concrete dispositions, made from time to time on the basis of the state of things with reference to practical purposes or needs. That can also be expressed by saying that in the administrative state “men do not rule, nor are norms valid as something higher. Instead, the famous formula, ‘things govern themselves’, holds true”.
As is fully evident today, but as Schmitt could already deduce in those years from the rise of totalitarian states in Europe, the legislative state tends to gradually transform itself into an administrative state. “Our state form is undergoing a transformation, and the ‘turn towards the total state’ characteristic of the moment [...] seems typical today of the turn towards the administrative state”. While political scientists today seem to have forgotten it, Schmitt states without reservations as “a fact generally recognised” that an “economic state” cannot work in the form of a parliamentary legislative state and must necessarily transform itself into an administrative state, in which the law gives way to decrees and ordinances.
For us who have witnessed the full completion of this process, it is the meaning of this transformation — if it is actually a transformation — that is worth questioning. The idea of transformation implies, indeed, that the two models are formally and temporally distinct. Schmitt perfectly knows that “in historical reality, mixtures and combinations are continually showing up” and that legislation as well as administration and government belong to every state. It is possible, however — and this is our hypothesis — that the admixture is even more intimate and that legislative state and administrative state, legislation and administration, constitution and government are essential and inseparable parts of an only system, which is the modern state that we know. If it is, therefore, tactically possible to play one of the two elements against the other, it would be completely misleading to believe that we can permanently isolate what is an integrating part of a same bipolar system.
Something like another politics will only be possible starting from the awareness that state and administration, constitution and government are two faces of the same reality, which must be radically questioned. There is no power that can legitimise its own exercise with laws, without presupposing an extrajudicial order that founds it, nor can there be a pure administrative praxis that claims to remain legal on the basis of decrees issued in view of a necessity. As Schmitt himself suggests, it’s about two different ways to make obedience obligatory. As we see clearly today, the truth of both is, indeed, the state of exception. Whether one acts in the name of law or in the name of the administration, ultimately at issue will always be the sovereign exercise of a monopoly on violence. And this is the kyros, the hidden sovereign which, in Aristotle’s words, holds together in a system the two visible faces of state power.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, March 8, 2023
Any investigations into politics is tainted by a preliminary terminological ambiguity, that condemns those who undertake it to misunderstanding. Either be it the passage of the third book of Aristotle’s Politics in which he, at the time of “investigating the politeiai, in order to establish their number and quality”, declares peremptorily: “since politeia and politeuma mean the same, and politeuma is the supreme power (kyrion) of cities, it is necessary that the supreme power be in the hands of one, of the few, or of the many” (1279a 25–26). Current translations read: “since constitution and government mean the same, and a government is the sovereign in a city [...]”. Whether this translation is more or less correct, in any case it brings to light what could be defined as the amphiboly of the perhaps fundamental concept of our political tradition, which presents itself at one time as “constitution” and at another time as “government”. In a sort of vertiginous contraction, the two concepts are identified and at the same time distinct, and, according to Aristotle, this equivocalness just defines the kyrion (sovereignty).
That the amphiboly is not episodic, is what a reading of Athēnaiōn politeia, which we translate as Constitution of the Athenians, punctually confirms. In describing Pericles’s “demagogy” (27,1), Aristotle writes that in it demotikoteran eti synebe genesthai ten politeian, which translators render as “the constitution became still more democratic”; immediately thereafter we read that the many apasan ten politeian mallon agein eis hautous, “brought all the government more into their hands” (obviously, it did not appear possible to translate by “brought all the constitution”, as terminological consistency would have demanded). The ambiguity is confirmed by dictionaries, where politeia is rendered both as “constitution of the state” and “government, administration”.
Whether it is designated by the hendiadys “constitution/government” or by that “state/administration”, the fundamental concept of Western politics is a double concept, a sort of two-faced Janus, which shows at one time the austere and solemn face of the insitution and at another time the more shady and informal one of the administrative praxis, without it being possible to identify or separate them.
In his 1932 essay on Legality and Legitimacy, Carl Schmitt distinguishes four types of State. Leaving aside the two intermediate figures of the jurisdictional state, in which the last word belongs to the judge who decides a given case, and of the governmental one, which Schmitt identifies with the dictatorship, we are here interested in the two extreme types, the legislative state and the administrative state. In the first, the legislative state or law state, “the highest and decisive expression of the community will” consists of norms having the character of law. “In the general legality of all state exercise of power lies the justification of one such state type”. The one who exercises power does act here on the basis of a law or “in the name of law” and legislative power and executive power, the law and its application, are consequently separate. Modern parliamentary democracies — with less and less reason — identified themselves with this type of State.
The type that — perhaps not by chance — occupies the last place in the list, almost if the other state forms tended in the last resort to converge towards it, is the administrative State. Here “command and will do not appear authoritarian and personal, but neither can they be reduced to mere application of higher norms”; rather they have the form of concrete dispositions, made from time to time on the basis of the state of things with reference to practical purposes or needs. That can also be expressed by saying that in the administrative state “men do not rule, nor are norms valid as something higher. Instead, the famous formula, ‘things govern themselves’, holds true”.
As is fully evident today, but as Schmitt could already deduce in those years from the rise of totalitarian states in Europe, the legislative state tends to gradually transform itself into an administrative state. “Our state form is undergoing a transformation, and the ‘turn towards the total state’ characteristic of the moment [...] seems typical today of the turn towards the administrative state”. While political scientists today seem to have forgotten it, Schmitt states without reservations as “a fact generally recognised” that an “economic state” cannot work in the form of a parliamentary legislative state and must necessarily transform itself into an administrative state, in which the law gives way to decrees and ordinances.
For us who have witnessed the full completion of this process, it is the meaning of this transformation — if it is actually a transformation — that is worth questioning. The idea of transformation implies, indeed, that the two models are formally and temporally distinct. Schmitt perfectly knows that “in historical reality, mixtures and combinations are continually showing up” and that legislation as well as administration and government belong to every state. It is possible, however — and this is our hypothesis — that the admixture is even more intimate and that legislative state and administrative state, legislation and administration, constitution and government are essential and inseparable parts of an only system, which is the modern state that we know. If it is, therefore, tactically possible to play one of the two elements against the other, it would be completely misleading to believe that we can permanently isolate what is an integrating part of a same bipolar system.
Something like another politics will only be possible starting from the awareness that state and administration, constitution and government are two faces of the same reality, which must be radically questioned. There is no power that can legitimise its own exercise with laws, without presupposing an extrajudicial order that founds it, nor can there be a pure administrative praxis that claims to remain legal on the basis of decrees issued in view of a necessity. As Schmitt himself suggests, it’s about two different ways to make obedience obligatory. As we see clearly today, the truth of both is, indeed, the state of exception. Whether one acts in the name of law or in the name of the administration, ultimately at issue will always be the sovereign exercise of a monopoly on violence. And this is the kyros, the hidden sovereign which, in Aristotle’s words, holds together in a system the two visible faces of state power.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Fernand Léger, Les deux visages, 1951. Courtesy of WikiArt.