On things that there are-not
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, June 3, 2024
Cristina Campo once wrote: “what else truly exists in this world if not what is not of this world?”. This is probably a citation from John 18.36, where Jesus declares to Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world”. It is therefore crucial to question the meaning and mode of existence of what is not of this world. Thhat is what Pilate does, who, almost as if he wanted to understand the status of this special kingship, immediately asks him: “So you are a king?”. Jesus’ answer, for those who can understand, provides a first indication on the meaning of a kingdom that exists, but is not from here: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth”. And at this point, Pilate utters the infamous question, which Nietzsche called “the most subtle sally of all times”: “What is truth?”. The kingdom that is not of this world demands that we testify to its truth, and what Pilate fails to understand is that something can be true without existing in the world. That is, that there are things that somehow exist, but cannot be object of a juridical judgment of factual truth or untruth, like the one that is in question in the trial that Pilate is conducting.
Furio Jesi, questioning the reality of myth, suggested a formula that may be useful to take up again here: if the things that are in question in what he calls the mythological machine “there are, but they are in ‘another world’: there are-not”. And he immediately adds: “there is no more exact faith towards ‘another world’ that there is-not than the declaration that such ‘other world’ is not”. We understand, then, what Jesus means by asserting that his kingdom is not of this world. His kingdom there is-not, but nevertheless it is not devoid of meaning. On the contrary, he came into this world to testify to what is not of this world, to the things that there are-not. And this is precisely what Cristina Campo must have had in mind: only the things that do not exist in this world, or, rather, there are-not, are truly urgent and important for her life in this world.
It is well to reflect with special care, especially today when the need for truth seems to have been canceled from the world, on the particular status of things which, although not of this world, are truly dear to us and guide our thoughts and actions in this world. As Jesi suggests, it would in fact be an unforgivable mistake to confound the things that there are-not with those that there are, to pretend they simply there are. Their difference emerges clear in the distinction between revolt and revolution, which Jesi duly tries to define. Revolution is the goal set by those who believe only in the things of this world and therefore deal with the circumstances and times of their possible realisation in historic time according to the relations of cause and effect. Instead, revolt implies a suspension of historic time, the uncompromising commitment to an action whose consequences are neither known nor foreseeable, but which, for this reason, does not come to terms and compromises with the enemy. While those who do not see beyond this world only mind the power relations in which they find themselves and are ready to put aside their beliefs without scruples, the men of revolt are men of there is-not, who have suspended historic time once and for all and can therefore act in it unconditionally. Just because the things that there are-not do not represent for them a future to be achieved, but a present need to which they are obliged to testify at every instant, the more inexorably their action will act on the historic future, breaking it and annihilating it.
To those who today try by all means to bind us to a claimed factual reality that does not allow alternatives, it must first be opposed the thought, that is, the clear and peremptory vision of things that there are-not. Only he who knows without illusions that his kingdom is not of this world, but nevertheless is irrevocably present here and now in its own way, is given hope, which is nothing else than the ability to deny, every time, the brutal lie of facts that men build to enslave their fellows.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, June 3, 2024
Cristina Campo once wrote: “what else truly exists in this world if not what is not of this world?”. This is probably a citation from John 18.36, where Jesus declares to Pilate: “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world”. It is therefore crucial to question the meaning and mode of existence of what is not of this world. Thhat is what Pilate does, who, almost as if he wanted to understand the status of this special kingship, immediately asks him: “So you are a king?”. Jesus’ answer, for those who can understand, provides a first indication on the meaning of a kingdom that exists, but is not from here: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth”. And at this point, Pilate utters the infamous question, which Nietzsche called “the most subtle sally of all times”: “What is truth?”. The kingdom that is not of this world demands that we testify to its truth, and what Pilate fails to understand is that something can be true without existing in the world. That is, that there are things that somehow exist, but cannot be object of a juridical judgment of factual truth or untruth, like the one that is in question in the trial that Pilate is conducting.
Furio Jesi, questioning the reality of myth, suggested a formula that may be useful to take up again here: if the things that are in question in what he calls the mythological machine “there are, but they are in ‘another world’: there are-not”. And he immediately adds: “there is no more exact faith towards ‘another world’ that there is-not than the declaration that such ‘other world’ is not”. We understand, then, what Jesus means by asserting that his kingdom is not of this world. His kingdom there is-not, but nevertheless it is not devoid of meaning. On the contrary, he came into this world to testify to what is not of this world, to the things that there are-not. And this is precisely what Cristina Campo must have had in mind: only the things that do not exist in this world, or, rather, there are-not, are truly urgent and important for her life in this world.
It is well to reflect with special care, especially today when the need for truth seems to have been canceled from the world, on the particular status of things which, although not of this world, are truly dear to us and guide our thoughts and actions in this world. As Jesi suggests, it would in fact be an unforgivable mistake to confound the things that there are-not with those that there are, to pretend they simply there are. Their difference emerges clear in the distinction between revolt and revolution, which Jesi duly tries to define. Revolution is the goal set by those who believe only in the things of this world and therefore deal with the circumstances and times of their possible realisation in historic time according to the relations of cause and effect. Instead, revolt implies a suspension of historic time, the uncompromising commitment to an action whose consequences are neither known nor foreseeable, but which, for this reason, does not come to terms and compromises with the enemy. While those who do not see beyond this world only mind the power relations in which they find themselves and are ready to put aside their beliefs without scruples, the men of revolt are men of there is-not, who have suspended historic time once and for all and can therefore act in it unconditionally. Just because the things that there are-not do not represent for them a future to be achieved, but a present need to which they are obliged to testify at every instant, the more inexorably their action will act on the historic future, breaking it and annihilating it.
To those who today try by all means to bind us to a claimed factual reality that does not allow alternatives, it must first be opposed the thought, that is, the clear and peremptory vision of things that there are-not. Only he who knows without illusions that his kingdom is not of this world, but nevertheless is irrevocably present here and now in its own way, is given hope, which is nothing else than the ability to deny, every time, the brutal lie of facts that men build to enslave their fellows.
(English translation by I, Robot)
M. C. Escher, Other World, 1947. Courtesy of WikiArt.
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