Good and evil
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, January 21, 2024
The ancient doctrine according to which evil is nothing but the privation of good and hence in itself non-existing, must be corrected and integrated in the sense that it is not so much the privation, but rather the perversion of good (with the codicil, formulated da Ivan Illich, corruptio optimi pexima, “the corruption of the best is the worst”). The ontological nexus with good thus remains, but still one has to think about how, and in what sense, a good can corrupt and pervert itself. If evil is a perverted good, if we still recognise in it a flawed and distorted figure of good, how can we fight it when now we find it in front of us in all spheres of human living?
A corruption of good was familiar to classical thought in the political doctrine according to which each of the three upright forms of ruling — monarchy, aristocracy and democracy (the rule of one, the few or the many) — inevitably degenerated into tyranny, oligarchy and ochlocracy. Aristotle (who regards democracy itself as a corruption of the rule of the many) adopts the term parékbasis, digression (da parabaino, go aside, parà). If we now ask towards where they went aside, we discover that they, so to say, went aside towards themselves. The corrupt forms of constitution resemble, indeed, the sound ones, but the good that was present in them (the common interest, koinon) has now turned to its own annd particular (idion). Evil is, i.e., a certain use of the good and the possibility of this perverted use is inscribed in the very same good, which, in this way, comes out of itself; it goes, so to say, aside itself.
It is in such a perspective that we must read the theorem corruptio optimi pexima which defines modernity. The gesture of the Samaritan, who immediately rescues his suffering neighbour, comes out of itself and turns itself into the organisation of hospitals and assistance services, which, although aimed at what is deemed to be good, eventually end up turning into an evil. The evil we face results, that is, from the attempt to raise the good into an objective social system. Hospitality, which each one can, and must, give to his neighbour, thus turns itself into hospitalisation managed by state bureaucracy.
Evil is, i.e., a sort of parody (here, too, there is a parà, a going aside) of good, a hypertrophic objectification that moves it out of us forever. And is it not just such a deadly parody that progressivisms of any kind impose on us now and everywhere as the only possible mode of human living together? The “administrative state” and the “security state”, as political scientists call them, claim to rule the good, taking it out of our hands and objectifying it in a separate sphere. And is the so-called artificial intelligence perhaps nothing more than a moving out of us of the “good of the intellect”, almost as if, in a sort of exasperated Averroism, thought might exist without a relation with a thinking subject?
Faced with these perversions, one has every time to recognise the tiny good which has been torn from our hands in order to free it from the lethal machine in which, “for a good reason”, it gets captured.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, January 21, 2024
The ancient doctrine according to which evil is nothing but the privation of good and hence in itself non-existing, must be corrected and integrated in the sense that it is not so much the privation, but rather the perversion of good (with the codicil, formulated da Ivan Illich, corruptio optimi pexima, “the corruption of the best is the worst”). The ontological nexus with good thus remains, but still one has to think about how, and in what sense, a good can corrupt and pervert itself. If evil is a perverted good, if we still recognise in it a flawed and distorted figure of good, how can we fight it when now we find it in front of us in all spheres of human living?
A corruption of good was familiar to classical thought in the political doctrine according to which each of the three upright forms of ruling — monarchy, aristocracy and democracy (the rule of one, the few or the many) — inevitably degenerated into tyranny, oligarchy and ochlocracy. Aristotle (who regards democracy itself as a corruption of the rule of the many) adopts the term parékbasis, digression (da parabaino, go aside, parà). If we now ask towards where they went aside, we discover that they, so to say, went aside towards themselves. The corrupt forms of constitution resemble, indeed, the sound ones, but the good that was present in them (the common interest, koinon) has now turned to its own annd particular (idion). Evil is, i.e., a certain use of the good and the possibility of this perverted use is inscribed in the very same good, which, in this way, comes out of itself; it goes, so to say, aside itself.
It is in such a perspective that we must read the theorem corruptio optimi pexima which defines modernity. The gesture of the Samaritan, who immediately rescues his suffering neighbour, comes out of itself and turns itself into the organisation of hospitals and assistance services, which, although aimed at what is deemed to be good, eventually end up turning into an evil. The evil we face results, that is, from the attempt to raise the good into an objective social system. Hospitality, which each one can, and must, give to his neighbour, thus turns itself into hospitalisation managed by state bureaucracy.
Evil is, i.e., a sort of parody (here, too, there is a parà, a going aside) of good, a hypertrophic objectification that moves it out of us forever. And is it not just such a deadly parody that progressivisms of any kind impose on us now and everywhere as the only possible mode of human living together? The “administrative state” and the “security state”, as political scientists call them, claim to rule the good, taking it out of our hands and objectifying it in a separate sphere. And is the so-called artificial intelligence perhaps nothing more than a moving out of us of the “good of the intellect”, almost as if, in a sort of exasperated Averroism, thought might exist without a relation with a thinking subject?
Faced with these perversions, one has every time to recognise the tiny good which has been torn from our hands in order to free it from the lethal machine in which, “for a good reason”, it gets captured.
(English translation by I, Robot)
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Hilma af Klint, The Swan (No. 1), 1914–1915. Courtesy of WikiArt.
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