The mistery of power
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, January 7, 2025
Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians can be read as a prophecy about the current situation in the West. The apostle evokes here “a mistery of anomie”, of “lawlessness”, which is underway, but which will not be fulfilled with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ unless there first appears “the man of lawlessness (ho anthropos tes anomias), the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God”. There is, however, a power which restrains this revelation (Paul simply calls it, without further defining it, “a restrainer — katechon”). This power must therefore be wiped off, for only then “will the impius (anomos, lit. “the lawless”) be revelead, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his coming appearance”.
The theological-political tradition has identified this “power which restrains” with the Roman Empire (as in Jerome and, later, in Carl Schmitt) or with the Church itself (in Ticonius and Augustine). It is evident, in any case, that the power which restrains identifies itself with the institutions which sustain and govern human societies. For this reason, their elimination coincides with the advent of the anomos, a “lawless man” who takes the place of God and “with signs and false wonders” leads to perdition “those who rejected the love of the truth”.
It is possible to see in the mystery of anomie not so much a supratemporal enigma, whose sole sense is that of putting an end to the history, but rather a historical drama (mysterion in Greek means “dramatic action”), which corresponds perfectly to what we are living out today.
Dominant institutions seem to have lost their sense and are literally disappearing, giving way to an anomie, a lawlessness that claims to be legal, so to speak, but that in fact has abdicated all legitimacy. The State (the principle which restrains) and the “lawless” are actually two sides of the same mystery: the mystery of power. As the United States are now unscrupulously showing, the “man of anomie”, the “lawless” designates the figure of state power which, dropping the constitutional and ethical principles that traditionally limited it and, with them, “the love of the truth”, relies on the “signs and false wonders” of weapons and technology. It is this confusion of anarchy and legality in a now-permanent state of exception that we must unmask and make inoperative in any areas.
Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, January 7, 2025
Paul’s Second Epistle to the Thessalonians can be read as a prophecy about the current situation in the West. The apostle evokes here “a mistery of anomie”, of “lawlessness”, which is underway, but which will not be fulfilled with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ unless there first appears “the man of lawlessness (ho anthropos tes anomias), the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God”. There is, however, a power which restrains this revelation (Paul simply calls it, without further defining it, “a restrainer — katechon”). This power must therefore be wiped off, for only then “will the impius (anomos, lit. “the lawless”) be revelead, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his coming appearance”.
The theological-political tradition has identified this “power which restrains” with the Roman Empire (as in Jerome and, later, in Carl Schmitt) or with the Church itself (in Ticonius and Augustine). It is evident, in any case, that the power which restrains identifies itself with the institutions which sustain and govern human societies. For this reason, their elimination coincides with the advent of the anomos, a “lawless man” who takes the place of God and “with signs and false wonders” leads to perdition “those who rejected the love of the truth”.
It is possible to see in the mystery of anomie not so much a supratemporal enigma, whose sole sense is that of putting an end to the history, but rather a historical drama (mysterion in Greek means “dramatic action”), which corresponds perfectly to what we are living out today.
Dominant institutions seem to have lost their sense and are literally disappearing, giving way to an anomie, a lawlessness that claims to be legal, so to speak, but that in fact has abdicated all legitimacy. The State (the principle which restrains) and the “lawless” are actually two sides of the same mystery: the mystery of power. As the United States are now unscrupulously showing, the “man of anomie”, the “lawless” designates the figure of state power which, dropping the constitutional and ethical principles that traditionally limited it and, with them, “the love of the truth”, relies on the “signs and false wonders” of weapons and technology. It is this confusion of anarchy and legality in a now-permanent state of exception that we must unmask and make inoperative in any areas.
(English translation by I, Robot)
Konstantin Fyodorovich Yuon, New Planet (New Planet’s Birth), 1921. Courtesy of WikiArt. |
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