The licit, the obligatory and the forbidden
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, November 28, 2022
According to Arab jurists, human actions are classified into five categories, which they list as follows: obligatory, commendable, licit, reprehensible, forbidden. The obligatory is opposed to the forbidden, praiseworthy to worthy of reproach. But the most important category is the one standing in the centre and which constitutes, so to say, the axis of the balance that weighs human actions and measures their responsibility (responsibility is called “weight” in Arabic legal language). If commendable is that whose accomplishment is rewarded and whose omission is not prohibited, and reprehensible is that whose omission is rewarded and whose accomplishment is not prohibited, the licit is that on which the law can just keep silent and is therefore not neither obligatory nor forbidden, neither commendable nor reprehensible. It corresponds to the paradisiacal state, in which human actions do not produce any responsibility, are in no way “weighed” by law. But — and this is the decisive point — according to Arab jurists it is good that this zone which the law cannot deal with in any way, is as large as possible, because the justice of a city is just measured by the space left free from rules and sanctions, rewards and censures.
Exactly the opposite is happening in the society we live in. The zone of the licit is getting smaller every day, and an unprecedented normative hypertrophy tends not to leave any sphere of human life unsubjected to obligation and prohibition. Gestures and habits which had always been regarded as indifferent to law are now meticulously regulated and punctually sanctioned — to the point that there is hardly any sphere of human behavior that can be considered simply licit. Unidentified safety reasons first, and then, increasingly, health reasons made an authorisation compulsory in order to perform the most usual and innocent actions, such as walking down the street, entering a public space or going to the workplace.
A society that restricts the paradisiacal realm of behaviors non-weighed by law to such an extent is not only, as Arab jurists deemed, an unjust society, but it is an unlivable society indeed, in which every action must be bureaucratically authorised and juridically sanctioned, and the ease and freedom of habits, the sweetness of relationships and forms of life shrink until they disappear. Furthermore the number of laws, decrees and regulations is such that not only does it become necessary to resort to experts to ascertain whether a certain action is permissible or prohibited, but even the officials in charge of applying the norms get confused and contradict themselves.
In such a society, the art of life can only consist in reducing to a minimum the part of the obligatory and forbidden, and conversely in widening, as much as possible, the zone of the licit, the only one in which at least a joy, if not a happiness, becomes possible. But this is just what the wretches who govern us strive in every way to prevent and make it difficult, by multiplying rules and regulations, checks and verifications. Until the dark machine they built will ruinously fall over itself, hampered by the same rules and devices that were supposed to allow it to work.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, November 28, 2022
According to Arab jurists, human actions are classified into five categories, which they list as follows: obligatory, commendable, licit, reprehensible, forbidden. The obligatory is opposed to the forbidden, praiseworthy to worthy of reproach. But the most important category is the one standing in the centre and which constitutes, so to say, the axis of the balance that weighs human actions and measures their responsibility (responsibility is called “weight” in Arabic legal language). If commendable is that whose accomplishment is rewarded and whose omission is not prohibited, and reprehensible is that whose omission is rewarded and whose accomplishment is not prohibited, the licit is that on which the law can just keep silent and is therefore not neither obligatory nor forbidden, neither commendable nor reprehensible. It corresponds to the paradisiacal state, in which human actions do not produce any responsibility, are in no way “weighed” by law. But — and this is the decisive point — according to Arab jurists it is good that this zone which the law cannot deal with in any way, is as large as possible, because the justice of a city is just measured by the space left free from rules and sanctions, rewards and censures.
Exactly the opposite is happening in the society we live in. The zone of the licit is getting smaller every day, and an unprecedented normative hypertrophy tends not to leave any sphere of human life unsubjected to obligation and prohibition. Gestures and habits which had always been regarded as indifferent to law are now meticulously regulated and punctually sanctioned — to the point that there is hardly any sphere of human behavior that can be considered simply licit. Unidentified safety reasons first, and then, increasingly, health reasons made an authorisation compulsory in order to perform the most usual and innocent actions, such as walking down the street, entering a public space or going to the workplace.
A society that restricts the paradisiacal realm of behaviors non-weighed by law to such an extent is not only, as Arab jurists deemed, an unjust society, but it is an unlivable society indeed, in which every action must be bureaucratically authorised and juridically sanctioned, and the ease and freedom of habits, the sweetness of relationships and forms of life shrink until they disappear. Furthermore the number of laws, decrees and regulations is such that not only does it become necessary to resort to experts to ascertain whether a certain action is permissible or prohibited, but even the officials in charge of applying the norms get confused and contradict themselves.
In such a society, the art of life can only consist in reducing to a minimum the part of the obligatory and forbidden, and conversely in widening, as much as possible, the zone of the licit, the only one in which at least a joy, if not a happiness, becomes possible. But this is just what the wretches who govern us strive in every way to prevent and make it difficult, by multiplying rules and regulations, checks and verifications. Until the dark machine they built will ruinously fall over itself, hampered by the same rules and devices that were supposed to allow it to work.
(English translation by I, Robot)
M. C. Escher, Emblemata — Balance, 1931. Courtesy of WikiArt.
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