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Giorgio Agamben Quotes

Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of

Modern totalitarianism can be defined as the establishment, by means of the state of exception, of a legal civil war that allows for the physical elimination not only of political adversaries but of entire categories of citizens who for some reason cannot be integrated into the political system

Giorgio Agamben
War, Mean, Political
Giorgio Agamben (2008). “State of Exception”, p.2, University of Chicago Press

God did not die; he was transformed into money

Giorgio Agamben
Transformed, Dies

One day humanity will play with law just as children play with disused objects, not in order to restore them to their canonical use but to free them from it for good.

Giorgio Agamben
Children, Order, Law
Giorgio Agamben (2008). “State of Exception”, p.64, University of Chicago Press

In the eyes of authority - and maybe rightly so - nothing looks more like a terrorist than the ordinary man.

Giorgio Agamben
Eye, Men, Ordinary
Giorgio Agamben (2009). “What is an Apparatus?: And Other Essays”, p.35, Stanford University Press

Those who are truly contemporary are those who neither perfectly coincide with their time nor adapt to its demands...Contemporariness, then, is that relationship with time that adheres to it through a disconnection.

Giorgio Agamben
Demand, Contemporary, Disconnection

The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule.

Giorgio Agamben
Space, States, Camps
Giorgio Agamben (2017). “The Omnibus Homo Sacer”, p.139, Stanford University Press

Life and death are not properly scientific concepts but rather political concepts, which as such acquire a political meaning precisely only through a decision.

Giorgio Agamben
Life And Death, Decision, Political
Giorgio Agamben (2017). “The Omnibus Homo Sacer”, p.135, Stanford University Press

To believe that will has power over potentiality, that the passage to actuality is the result of a decision that puts an end to the ambiguity of potentiality (which is always potentiality to do and not to do) — this is the perpetual illusion of morality.

Giorgio Agamben
Believe, Decision, Morality

Remembrance restores possibility to the past, making what happened incomplete and completing what never was. Remembrance is neither what happened nor what did not happen but, rather, their potentialization, their becoming possible once again.

Giorgio Agamben
Past, Remembrance, Becoming

The coming being is whatever being.

Giorgio Agamben

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