To believe and not to believe
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, December 15, 2025
In 1973, writing Tools for Conviviality, Illich foresaw that the industrial system’s catastrophe would become a crisis that would usher in a new era. “The total collapse of the industrial monopoly on production will be the result of synergy in the failure of the multiple systems that fed its expansion... Almost overnight people will lose confidence not only in the major institutions but also in the miracle prescriptions of the would-be crisis managers. The ability of present institutions to define values such as education, health, welfare, transportation, or news will suddenly be extinguished because it will be recognised as an illusion. This crisis may be triggered by an unforeseen event, as the Great Depression was touched off by the Wall Street Crash... Large institutions can quite suddenly lose their respectability, their legitimacy, and their reputation for serving the public good”.
It is well to reflect on the reasons and ways in which these basically correct prophecies, after almost half a century, have not come true (even though many symptoms seem to confirm its topicality). The mode of industrial production and the power that accompanies it continue to exist despite having lost any respectability and credibility. Illich could not imagine that a system could maintain itself just through the loss of any credibility — i.e., that mankind would continue to act according models and principles in which they no longer believed, that the lack of faith, the being oligopistos (Matthew 14:31), become the normal condition of humanity (and certainly it was first and foremost the Church that made the loss of faith acceptable, by transforming into a pack of dogmas the closeness between heart and word that was in question in Paul, Romans 10:6-10).
A system — like the one we face — that takes for granted that one no longer believes in it; that founds itself, i.e., just on apistisme and a lack of trust, is an adversary both fragile and particularly difficult to combat. Indeed, it incessantly collects a credit it doesn’t owe, just as the credits on which bank fund their power are ultimately uncollettable. Money works not because one believes in it, but precisely because it is the very form of a lack of faith (as Marx foresaw, just this absence of faith constitutes the theological character of the commodity: one cannot have faith in what can be bought and sold). By replacing the Church, banks skillfully and irresponsibly administer the absence of faith that defines our world; they are the Levites and priests of humanity’s new irreligion.
How can we devise a strategy in the face of such an adversary? It is certainly vain to denounce its incredibility and illegitimacy, since — as was clearly seen during the so-called pandemic — it is the first to exhibit and claim them. Its weak point lies not so much in a lack of faith, but rather in the lie by which it believes itself compelled. Indeed, only a power founded on incredulity, which decides not to speak and vows silence, would be invincible. The powers that now claim to govern us, instead, do nothing but speak and pronounce judgments and, thus contradicting their most intimate nature, they somehow seem to believe and demand faith.
Something more complicated and subtle is actually taking place here. For the unbeliever, every discourse is false, since lack of faith corresponds only to silence. Like that character in Demons, he neither believes to believe nor believes not to believe. If instead he believes in his own incredulity — as now seems to be happening everywhere — he destroys the very foundation on which he stood. To believe not to believe is the worst of lies, in which whoever utters it cannot help but get imprisoned. And it is this lie — and not, as Illich suggested, the fact that mankind no longer believe it — that will lead the system to ruin.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, December 15, 2025
In 1973, writing Tools for Conviviality, Illich foresaw that the industrial system’s catastrophe would become a crisis that would usher in a new era. “The total collapse of the industrial monopoly on production will be the result of synergy in the failure of the multiple systems that fed its expansion... Almost overnight people will lose confidence not only in the major institutions but also in the miracle prescriptions of the would-be crisis managers. The ability of present institutions to define values such as education, health, welfare, transportation, or news will suddenly be extinguished because it will be recognised as an illusion. This crisis may be triggered by an unforeseen event, as the Great Depression was touched off by the Wall Street Crash... Large institutions can quite suddenly lose their respectability, their legitimacy, and their reputation for serving the public good”.
It is well to reflect on the reasons and ways in which these basically correct prophecies, after almost half a century, have not come true (even though many symptoms seem to confirm its topicality). The mode of industrial production and the power that accompanies it continue to exist despite having lost any respectability and credibility. Illich could not imagine that a system could maintain itself just through the loss of any credibility — i.e., that mankind would continue to act according models and principles in which they no longer believed, that the lack of faith, the being oligopistos (Matthew 14:31), become the normal condition of humanity (and certainly it was first and foremost the Church that made the loss of faith acceptable, by transforming into a pack of dogmas the closeness between heart and word that was in question in Paul, Romans 10:6-10).
A system — like the one we face — that takes for granted that one no longer believes in it; that founds itself, i.e., just on apistisme and a lack of trust, is an adversary both fragile and particularly difficult to combat. Indeed, it incessantly collects a credit it doesn’t owe, just as the credits on which bank fund their power are ultimately uncollettable. Money works not because one believes in it, but precisely because it is the very form of a lack of faith (as Marx foresaw, just this absence of faith constitutes the theological character of the commodity: one cannot have faith in what can be bought and sold). By replacing the Church, banks skillfully and irresponsibly administer the absence of faith that defines our world; they are the Levites and priests of humanity’s new irreligion.
How can we devise a strategy in the face of such an adversary? It is certainly vain to denounce its incredibility and illegitimacy, since — as was clearly seen during the so-called pandemic — it is the first to exhibit and claim them. Its weak point lies not so much in a lack of faith, but rather in the lie by which it believes itself compelled. Indeed, only a power founded on incredulity, which decides not to speak and vows silence, would be invincible. The powers that now claim to govern us, instead, do nothing but speak and pronounce judgments and, thus contradicting their most intimate nature, they somehow seem to believe and demand faith.
Something more complicated and subtle is actually taking place here. For the unbeliever, every discourse is false, since lack of faith corresponds only to silence. Like that character in Demons, he neither believes to believe nor believes not to believe. If instead he believes in his own incredulity — as now seems to be happening everywhere — he destroys the very foundation on which he stood. To believe not to believe is the worst of lies, in which whoever utters it cannot help but get imprisoned. And it is this lie — and not, as Illich suggested, the fact that mankind no longer believe it — that will lead the system to ruin.
(English translation by I, Robot)
王广义 (Wáng Guǎngyì), Face of the Believer, 2003. Courtesy of WikiArt. |
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