Оставшееся время. Комментарий к Посланию к Римлянам

by Giorgio Agamben, С. Ермаков (Translator)

Книга известного итальянского философа Джорджо Агамбена представляет собой оригинальное прочтение Послания к Римлянам апостола Павла. Используя широкий спектр аналитических средств, от современной библеистики до философской деконструкции, автору удается по-новому представить мессианизм Павла, особые отношения этого мессианизма со временем и соответствующую ему субъективность. Автор протягивает нити от новозаветного текста ко многим известным текстам и мыслителям современности, предстающим в нетрадиционном свете - как наследникам или противникам этого мессианизма.

Genres: Philosophy, Religion, Theology, Theory, Nonfiction, Italian Literature, History

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Giorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian and contemporary continental philosophy. He is the author of Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive; Profanations; The Signature of All Things: On Method, and other books. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s he treated a wide range of topics, including aesthetics, literature, language, ontology, nihilism, and radical political thought.

In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.

He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s hard to get to the end of this book without feeling that one has been tricked in some way. The avowed goal is straightforward enough: to “restore (Saint) Paul’s letters to the status of the fundamental messianic text for the Western tradition”. The method, even more so: to read and comment on the first ten words(!) of the first verse(!) of the Letter to the Romans as the means of such a restoration. One would think this would entail a simple exercise in exegesis, especially since the book's format is set up so as to go through the verse almost word by word - chapter two is on "calling" (Kletos), three on "separated" (Aphorismenos) and so on. Ten words in all, over six chapters. Easy, right? Not in the slightest! As it turns out, Agamben's commentaries are probably better thought of as 'opportunities' - one wants to say 'excuses' - for him to pursue his far-flung interests, exploring and adventuring in territory both near and, at times, maximally remote from what is given at face value.

Who would have thought, for instance, that the chapter on "calling" would lead into a rabbit hole that begins with Weber's book on the Protestant Ethic, winds its way toward a reflection on Marx's understanding of 'class', before engaging both Adorno and Kant, using the Pauline text as a basis for criticizing both? And that's just one chapter! This is then, a book of extreme density, with almost every second page developing points in unexpected directions, dipping in and out, not only of biblical hermeneutics, but also into the history of philosophy, along with a constellation of concepts all geared towards clarifying - or better, elaborating on - the nature of Pauline messianism. Indeed, for Agamben, Paul's letters are the book-end of an entire tradition of messianic meditations, on the other side of which lies Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History, to which Paul's texts are strictly contemporary, despite the 2000 year gap between their composition. 

It is just this contemporaneity which allows Agamben to skip between so much vast material in such a small span of space - the body of the text itself is no more than 140 or so pages, with the last 40 or so given over to Agamben's own translation of the Greek text, placed interlinearly as a point of reference. So what then, is the nature of the messianism at stake? Perhaps the best way to explain it is by means of Agamben's own distinction between the messianic and the eschatological (or, what is the same, between the messianic and the apocalyptic): where the apocalypse or the eschaton deals with the 'end of time' (what comes 'after' time, as it were), the messianic deals with, precisely, 'the time that remains'. The time 'in between' ordinary time, and the time's end. However, more than just a chronological marker (a 'when'), messianic time also marks a kind of quality of time: a temporality in which time achieves a kind of relation to its own end (thus not the 'end of time', but a 'time of the end'), transforming itself from within (Agamben calls it a 'time within time').

Exactly how to parse this is complex - clearly! - and at best here I can gesture toward, at least, the specificity of what the messianic 'is' for Agamben. If anything, what The Time That Remains excels at is precisely in developing the sprawling ramifications and implications of thinking time in this way. More than messianism, one will find in here Agamben's reflections on the Pauline origin of Hegel's concept of 'aufhebung' (sublation), the Christian origins of rhyme (like... rhyme as a literary device as such), a critique of deconstruction as a 'thwarted messanism', and as ever, Agamben ongoing critique of the law - among other things. The ambition and erudition on display here is (typically) awe-inducing, and as usual with Agamben, The Time That Remains fits as a fractal piece of his larger philosophical project, with call-backs and forwards to his other works. Most notably, I think, his The Sacrament of Language (whose stakes TTTR clarifies in a way not found in that book!), and Remnants of Auschwitz, insofar as there is more here about the concept of the 'remnant' than there is in that book (v. annoyed about this!).

[Chungsoo Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

A revolutionary and phenomenological reading/interpretation of Paul's letters in view of the whole 2000 years of the Western thinking. Is it that only one man by the name of Paul gave rise to the western thought and imagination? The hope and optimism of Resurrection, salvation held firmly in one's subjectivity, the Kingdom of God being realized from within, the ultimate reality in a-historic Christ-event (which has happened already but also is not yet)--in short, the ultimate triumph of idealism in the face of harsh reality--all this stems from one man named Paul. The entire western idealism, including the thought of Messiahnism of Walter Benjamin, is traced back to Paul, as if in writing the few letters Paul has determined the course of the entire western civilization, as if the sending of Being that determined the West, according to Heidegger, had already happened in Paul's letters.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is simply an incredible book. It remains suggestive rather than fully developed at several points, but nonetheless A. puts his finger on key issues, and if one can tolerate his brevity and compactness then almost each section calls out for further reflection.

His take on Paul's as not (hōs mē) fits in elegantly with A.'s arguments on the pitfalls of identity in The Coming Community 10 years earlier (A. advocating there his sense of the singular in opposition to the individual-vs.-universal trap). A. gets criticized for essentializing his political categories -- and it's true, he does (he elsewhere thinks of "sovereignty" and "bare life," for example, as relational essences rather than always differentiated phenomena) -- yet thinking through his categories and themes has a certain inspiring value of its own, whether or not they are "actionable" in any immediately utilitarian sense. Criticisms of A. that revolve around the futility or uselessness of his riffs on passivity and not-being are also valid, yet I'm not convinced A. is necessarily advocating those concepts in the same way one would or should advocate a particular political agenda, for example. (The whole point of concepts like "whatever being" or the logic of "not-not-[x]," after all, is that they attempt to allow for the uniqueness of any and every situation; one can and should always take the lived individual or group implications from there, where one will...) I don't agree with A. about metaphysics (he's still always too Heideggerian, which to me is just a cop-out), but he gets the logic of messianism dead-on. So, don't just fall for the Paul-via-Badiou-and-Zizek revival; get the messianism right from A. (Also, where else will one find an analytic comparison between the limitations of vanguard political parties and the challenges of early Christian identity formation, in regard to the non-coincidence of organization and community? Or incisive reflection on the spiritual Franciscans' sense of usus vs. property in relation to Paul and the legal doctrine of their day?)

Some nice passages:

-- "The messianic vocation is not a right, nor does it furnish an identity; rather, it is a generic potentiality that can be used without ever being owned" (p. 26).

-- "The Messiah has already arrived, the messianic event has already happened, but its presence contains within itself another time, which stretches its parousia, not in order to defer it, but, on the contrary, to make it graspable" (p. 71).

-- "...2 Thess. 2 may not be used to found a 'Christian doctrine' of power in any manner whatsoever" (p. 111).

To me the only disappointment with this book is that, considering the whole last section on W. Benjamin, B.'s "theologico-political fragment" is only handled in a dismissive way, in passing, rather than in-depth. Also, concluding the section on messianic time via the history of poetic rhyme schemes (!) is a strange reminder that A. started out as an aesthete (cf. 1970's The Man Without Content)....

[Kim Matheson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The amount of sheer *insight* found between the pages of a philosophy book never ceases to amaze me.

[Jason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Agamben writes on a dizzying array of topics, and my interest was piqued when I learned that he had written a Scripture commentary. This book is a word by word commentary on the first ten words (in Greek) of St. Paul's Letter to the Romans. Agamben argues, in this book, that the whole of Pauline theology can be found in these words. It's a wild ride, including an analysis of Roman social customs and slavery, political theory, theology, linguistics, and a history of the Franciscan order. But, anyone really wanting a non-traditional but orthodox examination of Pauline theology should definitely read this book.

[Cody Bivins-Starr · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much is packed in this 145 page book. History of philosophy, philosophy of history, theology, political theory. I’m not sure I can even summarize Agamben’s thoughts here, but he beautifully and convincingly draws out the way in which Jesus as messiah divides time and law to create a freedom within and not against law and time, such that law is made inoperative but still law.

Much of the work here is not easy on this first read, but this is a text which is key to my theological wresting right now, and perhaps even transformative of my understanding of political theory.

[Radu-andrei Oarcea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Agamben and Conceptual Necromancy:
A Quaestio on Political Theology



Giorgio Agamben’s reconstruction of political theology proceeds through a striking genealogical method, concepts drawn from distant theological traditions are reassembled within a new theoretical architecture of power. The result is brilliant and provocative. Yet the procedure raises a question about the ontological status of the concepts it conjures. The argument unfolds in a structure not unlike a medieval quaestio, confronting Agamben’s genealogy with the theological ontology it implicitly presupposes.

Agamben summons concepts across centuries, exhuming patristic terms, stripping them of life into a mechanical grotesquerie. Glory, once the radiance of God, becomes a functional device, a bureaucratic administering of life. The spectacle is dazzling, but it is a hollow brilliance, devoid of ontological reason. In theological terms, it resembles something darker, a clearly thought displacement, an operation in which living concepts are reanimated after their substance has been drained. What remains is the choreography of transcendence without transcendence itself.

To transform the economy of salvation into a bureaucratic matrix, one must first empty the economy of its ontological content. The genealogy presupposes what it claims merely to describe: the ontological absence of the divine. Here, theology survives only as a symbolic residue circulating within the mechanisms of power. In this framework, God becomes less a living reality than a “disused object”, a ghost hovering above the apparatus. Some readers therefore describe Agamben’s project as a form of “profane theology” or a curious “non-non-Christianity”, religious concepts remain, yet belief in their referent is suspended. The vocabulary of messianism survives, but only as conceptual equipment. Theology is inert, repurposed. From a Christian perspective, however, this operation is not subtle. It is necromantic; the divine is emptied of life while the conceptual machinery continues to hum with eerie coherence.

The genealogy often presents hidden continuity as explanation, allowing distant epochs to appear as if they converged upon a single mechanism of government. Parallelism becomes the guise of insight, with sovereignty, administration, exception, and rule arranged into a bipolar structure repeating across centuries. Agamben treats oikonomia as if it were structurally continuous with forms of bureaucratic management; the administrative paradigm develops genealogically from that theological model. But Trinitarian economy ≠ bureaucratic administration. In the patristic tradition, especially among the Cappadocians, for Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great - oikonomia signifies the dispensatio salutis, the economy of salvation, which is the historical manifestation of the life of the Trinity. The term describes how the divine life communicates itself in history through incarnation, redemption, and sanctification. Administration, by contrast, is a procedural human function. The two share a metaphor but not an ontology. Confusing them produces a conceptual category mistake, where the drama of salvation is reduced to the diagram of an office.

Agamben’s entire theological-political reconstruction depends on this displacement of ideas. Early Christian theology distinguished between theologia - the eternal being of God - and oikonomia - God’s action in history. For the Fathers, the distinction preserved transcendence while allowing divine action in the world. Agamben reverses the logic. The economy becomes primary, while ontology quietly evaporates. Divine life recedes, administration remains. Angels, in his reading, become an administrative hierarchy transmitting commands, and liturgical glory becomes the acclamation that stabilizes authority. What was once metaphysical participation becomes functional mediation. The Trinity becomes, not the revelation of divine communion, but the archetype of distributed governance. Here the comparison with Carl Schmitt becomes illuminating. Schmitt famously argued that modern political concepts are secularized theological concepts. Sovereignty mirrors divine omnipotence, the state of exception mirrors the miracle. Yet Schmitt preserves the lineage precisely because he does not dissolve its metaphysical ground. Theology still possesses ontological weight and the possibility of divine interruption remains. Unlike Schmitt, Agamben inverts the order, he views the state of exception not as a juridical anomaly but as the existential structure of the world. The miracle disappears into administration; the economy of salvation becomes its managerial residue. Where Schmitt sees secularization, Agamben sees functional transformation. The divine ground vanishes, leaving only the apparatus.

The result is a world that appears theoretically coherent yet is predicated on the absence of what gave life to the concepts in the first place - the ontos. Under the guise of historical analysis, Agamben quietly decides that transcendence is merely an effect of discourse. The device becomes total. The machine becomes universal. Everything is administration.

In Agamben’s view, the genealogy decrees truth, reducing politics and theology alike to functional choreography. For Agamben, the state of exception is no longer a temporary suspension of order, as Carl Schmitt thought, but the hidden paradigm of modern governance itself. The exception becomes the historical process as genealogy, the rule merely confirms the exception. In theory, this yields a powerful diagnosis of modernity. In practice, it renders Agamben’s thought strangely gratuitous, socially disengaged, formally ingenious, but incapable of intervention or ethical stake. His apparatus dazzles with affirmation, yet leaves the world unchanged. While some may point to Agamben’s notion of “pure means” as evidence of potential political or ethical intervention, the framework demonstrates that these possibilities remain largely speculative, contained within the apparatus rather than enacted in the world.

What ultimately emerges is an implicit ontology of the apparatus, a vision in which reality itself is gradually replaced by the operations that claim to govern it. Yet, the consequences are social and ironic, human reality stubbornly intrudes. In tribunals, in the judgment of a magistrate, in the suffering of a particular individual, in the quiet acts of human care that escape every administrative category, the machine falters. The logical edifice cracks. Concepts remain animated in the text, but in the world they begin to fail. This is conceptual necromancy at work; life reappears on paper, while the living reality has already withdrawn.

In Agamben’s analysis, a concept is interpreted not by reference to its truth but by reference to its function within historical configurations of power. If theology can be fully explained by its role within an economy of government, then its ontological claims appear superfluous. The argument avoids confronting theology directly, it simply circumvents it. Yet if the ontological dimension cannot be absorbed into the functional, the reduction collapses. The claim to methodological neutrality evaporates. Theology is suspended, but politics and metaphysics quietly return through the back door as philosophical decisions. The reduction of ontology to function is itself a metaphysical choice.

Theology cannot be confidently affirmed as historical truth, yet modern political power still appears unintelligible without its vocabulary. Agamben appears to offer a way to retain the language while emptying it of metaphysical commitment. In this sense he stands in a strange constellation with figures such as William James and Karl Barth, though the similarities are deceptive. James approached religious language pragmatically, evaluating it by its existential consequences rather than by metaphysical certainty. Barth, by contrast, insisted that theology begins not with human categories but with divine revelation. Agamben shares neither position fully, he preserves the vocabulary without affirming the revelation that gave it birth. Unlike Schmitt, he does not juggle with ontological distinctions, yet pretends to transcend them. Benjamin preserves the messianic tension; Agamben offers the apparatus without its pulse. Heidegger, similarly, is a silent interlocutor, though he does not perform conceptual necromancy.

To read him as a political theorist making empirical claims, is to misunderstand the project entirely. This is what makes Agamben's stance a fortuitous and dishonest historical conflation. His concepts - bare life, the state of exception - belong to what he calls political ontology. They are not sociological descriptions but philosophical diagnoses of the metaphysical structure of modernity. In this interpretation, his work attempts to chart a third path between technological nihilism and religious restoration, a radical disenchantment of the world. If one challenges the empirical claims, Agamben answers that the argument is ontological; if one challenges the ontology, he answers that it is merely genealogical, that he is only undertaking a phenomenological operation, describing how concepts appear within history.

If something irreducible remains, an ontological element that escapes Agamben’s functional reduction, the genealogy is incomplete. Then the critique becomes the work of a charlatan sifting through the sands of the desert, extracting patterns where evidence does not sustain them. If, however, the system truly absorbs everything within its explanatory mechanism, the argument turns circular; it explains the world because it was constructed to absorb everything. Agamben appears less as a liberator of thought from theological illusion than as the most visible exponent of a philosophically defective tradition. The conceptual machine becomes suffocatingly coherent - Agamben, the Necromancer Supreme.

The ambiguity of the system is captured in the image with which his reconstruction of political theology concludes. If the throne is full, glory answers the presence it celebrates. If the throne is empty, glory nevertheless sustains it through acclamation. The apparatus functions in both cases. The difference lies only in whether the acclamation corresponds to reality or merely perpetuates an illusion.

But the price of this disenchantment is high. If the divine is reduced to symbolic residue, the language of transcendence becomes merely another instrument within the machinery of power. Acts committed “in the name of God” reveal no divine justice; they testify only to the persistence of historical illusion. The mechanism thus acquires a strange moral clarity. The world remains beautiful in its operability, yet the human being appears increasingly reduced to a creature trapped within the apparatus it has inherited. In Agamben’s horizon, the anticipation of death becomes the messianic condition that suspends the creative vocation of the human being. At that threshold, action no longer unfolds within a triumphant or providential logic, nor according to the beautiful, the good, or the divine. What remains is a humanity inhabiting the final remnants of historical time, dwelling among the exhausted inheritances of a past whose conceptual promises have already been spent.

A cautionary reminder that even the most brilliant Necromancer, Nietzsche, with his genealogy of morals, cannot resurrect life from what is already dead. If the patristic vision is correct, if oikonomia is not administration but the historical self-communication of the Triune life, then the machine is not the last word. The world is not merely governed, it is redeemed. The throne is not empty. And glory, in its true sense, is not the acclamation that sustains power, but the radiance of a presence that no apparatus can manufacture.

[SimoneAl]

1. The Division of Members by Law / The Law Divides itself

Agamben argues that the meaning of nomos derives from Nemo as ‘’to divide, to attribute parts’’ and the law of division which divides man into foreskin and circumcised which can be considered as a division between Jews and non-Jews. After locating the division of members by law, he asserts law is also dividing itself. The Messiah conflicts with the law in two terms he specifically reminds ‘’Torah of Beriah – the law of creation, the law of world as not redeemed and the Torah of Atzilut, the law that precedes creation which Messiah must restore’’. Therefore, the two types of belief have been defined by him with the aid of Buber that Jewish ennuah with respect to objective faith of Jesus, Greek Pistis with regard to subjective faith in Jesus, they conceded the faith as the first with belonging to the community and as the second with recognition of faith.

Sarx and pneuma, flesh and breath against the law were enunciated by him within the scope of separation of Paul as Pharisee, the community which separates themselves from pagans and from am-ha’aretz that laypeople, ignorant farmers unable to follow the law. The community’s monopoly of law did not only live within the border of Torah but also they declared oral Toral which they own as ‘dividing wall’ that prevents contact with any impurities and the wall has been demolished by messianic proclamation when he used flesh and breath pointing new division.
This division between slave and free by law draws attention to the stance of Paul, as a slave of Messiah/doulos. Agamben’s translation of doulos can be read in a dualistic way either/or he becomes a slave of Messiah, he was not worthy of being called apostle and becomes separated as such. Those readings have their support by name of Paul when he becomes a slave of Messiah he has changed his name which was common to the tradition of the communities to give a new name for a slave when an owner of a slave changes. Thus, Agamben underlines Paul means ‘little’ and he does not address him with a surname or any affiliation except Paul. Doulos implies super-slave that neutralization of division of law and transformation of this division in relation to the messianic event.

2. Division of the Subject - Sarx/Pneuma

Starting with ‘separated as such’ Agamben indicates a division between sarx/pneuma – flesh/breath as the division of division itself which meant the division of division of Jews and non-Jews in themselves as a subject. This division meant that intension rather than extension which cannot be debunked by appearances, consequently, if a true Jew is not true in regard to apparent circumcision is not on the flesh. Thence, exhaustive division of law is blurred by ‘’as not’’ in stark contrast with ‘’as if’’ since Jews may not Jews and non-Jews may not non-Jews. It purports a Nicholas de Cusa’a A – not-A and non non- A by demonstrating non non-Jew concept – as nothing but a remnant.

Agamben states Blanchot ‘’ man is indestructible that can be infinitely destroyed’’. Aristotle dislocates infinite’s cemented place from something beyond that there can be nothing to something which has always something beyond, potential infinity. The essence of a man as Blanchot shows remain something after that destruction which cannot be possible for a numerical proportion because of it against the unity/further division. Thus, the remnant, by being not numerical proportion as Agamben addressed, it cannot coincide with itself by being one-in-number. It uproots number (one) status without further division but adding with parts(a further division of magnitude is still infinite) notwithstanding they do not coincide with themselves by per accidents to an infinitely generated division of division of the whole. In a keen sense, what is partial is the secular world before God will be ‘’all in all’’ the remnant in the time of the now, Agamben states, ‘’the real-time, (time of subject) is nothing other than remnant.’’

3. Division of Chronos and Kairos

When Paul declared his time in the present time, he declared messianic time at the same time. Agamben defines messianic time by using a phrase of Garchia ‘’the messianic time is not the end of the time, but the time of the end’’. Then, he introduces two terms namely ‘alam hazzeh: the direction of the world from creation to its end(chronological time) and ‘alam hobba: the world to come atemporal eternity that comes after the end of the world(eschatological time). As Agamben propounds Paul concerns neither the chronological time nor apocalyptical eschaton but that time he lives, then the remnant between two times. He opposed representable/unthinkable time as spatialized time with thinkable/unrepresentable time which is messianic time is familiar from Bergson’s durée that exceeds Kant’s spatial time by making an intuited time.

Agamben compares representation of chronological time when we are in and separates the time from ourselves and it transforms us the impotent spectators toward the life we live with messianic time in which we are able to hold our representation of time as operational time, when we are in time and representing the time within us, it is operational time. By the same token, Kairos is not separated from Chronos, but abridged Chronos and the essence of the subject has been delayed without being conscious of kairos. Yet, one should keep Paul’s intention of usage of par-ousia, according to Agamben heterogenous kairos and chronos, cannot be added together. This par-ousia ‘’being is beside itself in the present’’ is nothing but fort-da play of a child, par-ousia emerges and impossible to coincide with it. In coextensive case of kairos and chronos, messianic time cannot be taken as supplementary since it tears chronological time in itself. It contracts past to presents and present to past.

Agamben employs two concepts to elucidate the matter that typo-relation and recapitulation. This usage touches upon the relation between past and present most likely making past alive in the present in order to open toward its fulfillment in the messianic present, as Douglas Harink stated. He gives a typological example of ‘Adam through whom sin entered the world’ and ‘Messiah through whom grace will abound for men’. This typological relation exemplifies transformation of past and future. Harink refers to typological relation between two types of notions; ‘’Isaac and Jakob become types of notions who in the now-time are receiving mercy while Pharoah becomes a type of Israel which is in the now time hardened with a message of Messiah.’’ As for Paul, Isaac, Jakob, and Pharoah as chronoi were brought to the present of kairos of the Messiah and fulfilled. For recapitulation, he epitomized ‘’love your neighbor as yourself’ pleroma of law, it underlines simultaneity, not an identity and it relates past and present with Messiah.

[Angela. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Without a doubt Agamben's style in this book, compared to that in "The Open", was drastically influenced by Derrida. His Deconstructive-style rants were both exciting and infuriating. He explicitly states the questions that he seemingly intends to answer and, regardless of what he may think, fails to do so. Agamben missed some key scriptures that would have undoubtedly helped shape some sort of an answer to (at least) the question of the state of the law in the Messianic time-frame. Nonetheless, the book brought up interesting points and noteworthy references (regardless of whether or not they actually supported said points).

[Andrew Marr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a difficult but stimulating book. The difficulty, I think, has to do with the book dealing with a line of thought that hasn't been dealt with much. The concept of "Messianic" time that Paul was operating from is subsumed into a flatter continuation of history that misses the quality of the Messianic time ushered in with the Resurrection of Christ. I'll have to keep thinking to get my head around some of this thought and maybe be able to explain it to myself & even others. Recommended to anyone who wants to take on this challenge.

[Andrei Johann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agamben does here an impressive commentary on the Letter To The Romans, more impressive in the variety of the concepts he is choosing to use in the commentary than of the hermeutical or biblical accuracy. An interest short read that motivates it's existence by showing an applicability - over a verse - that can be a good exercise for the future reading.

Agamben does not give a conclusion to the problem started here and tends to left a lot of concepts unresolved and not extended. A must have for the Italian philosophy and a good addition the a graduate library, as the language of the text is the most specialized it can be and needs a good amount of extra searching or knowledge to be fully analyzed.

[Javier Gómez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agamben recurre a Pablo para articular una política mesiánica que no busca instaurar un nuevo orden, sino desactivar el existente. El Mesías no trae una nueva ley, sino que “hace inoperante” (katárgesis) la ley vigente sustrayéndola de su función normativa. Agamben encuentra en la “vocación” (klesis) una condición existencial que redefine la relación con el mundo: vivir en él “como si no” (hôs mê) se perteneciera a él. En esta transformación de la “llamada”, descubre una nueva posibilidad política que ofrece los elementos para pensar en una vida no regulada por el poder ni por la ley, sino por una relación justa con los otros basada en la “forma del amor”: la “nueva criatura” de la que habla Pablo es la “vieja” pero vivida según el tiempo mesiánico.

[Jacob Mulliken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highlights: the klēsis chapter; the meditation on Schmitt’s compromised interpretation of Paul (which is really an expansion of Taubes’s point on this subject); Aufhebung as a secularized katargesis.

I lose Agamben in the last two chapters. The Benjamin chapter (which is, per the book’s summary, the book’s very own telos) in particular felt a bit ridiculous to me; but maybe I wasn’t born for philosophizing!

[Jodi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Information Density The book contains a significant amount of information that requires careful reading. Every chapter adds a new layer to the overall picture created by the author. It is the kind of material that might require a second reading to fully grasp all the nuances. Check out the link for a helpful summary of the key facts. >>> https://script.google.com/macros/s/AK...

[Dimitrii Ivanov · Rating 3 out of 5]

Многомудрый текст, отправляющийся от толкования буквально нескольких слов из Рим. 1 в довольно разнообразные экскурсы, главным образом (но не только) лингвистические, теологические и проч., дабы придти к "Тезисам о философии истории" Беньямина, следующему сопоставимому мессианистскому произведению. Впечатляет, но несколько и кружит голову.

[امیرمحمد حیدری · Rating 1 out of 5]

به‌دلم ننشست.

[Yalaxie Vanilam]

St Paul political theology, pauline works as messianic judaism ?! (not totally sure if thats right). Also draws parallels between pauline letters and walter benjamin

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one made a deep impression on me, but if you're looking for an orthodox exegetical commentary on Romans, this isn't it. Agamben is more interested in developing his own ideas than giving a precisely accurate interpretation of St. Paul, which, although an approach I can't really commend, produces some fun results.

One thing I really appreciate is Agamben's close attention to language, something that shows up on almost every page, and is perhaps most clearly shown in the fact that the book is not so much as a commentary on Romans as such as it is just the first ten words of Romans, each carefully broken apart and analyzed in the original Greek. But it's not just the Greek that Agamben discusses; numerous other terms and concepts get defined and put under his microscope. I found this style of writing both illuminating and engaging.

Look, I'm not a philosopher, so I'm not going to provide a lot of erudite commentary on the subjects discussed in the book. I do think his discussion of the messianic call, while suspect in some ways, is challenging in the way that it emphasizes the radical change that Jesus creates in the identity and worldly status of every Christian. However, I thought his reduction of the apostolic announcement to a non-propositional liver quiver enacted by the performative word (or whatever he was trying to say; I don't think I'm that far off the mark) was pretty weak and probably reflects Agamben's preference for non-dogmatic religion more than anything. I mean, one may well ask after reading Agamben's discussion on the content of the Christian faith, did St. Paul believe Jesus was the Son of God or didn't he? He would attempt to split the horns of the dilemma in the way I alluded to, but suffice it to say I'm not convinced.

But what compelled me about this book was the concise, dense, fascinating articulation of Agamben's philosophical questions and emphases, combined with his philological method. This was definitely the most difficult book to understand that I've ever read, but I found it intensely rewarding to tarry with the text and get a peak inside Agamben's very intelligent and sometimes quite charming mind.

[Yeast · Rating 4 out of 5]

Your average Sunday classes with style.

[Eitan]

Though it started slow, I was pretty engaged after a bit. I think I would’ve gotten more out of this if I knew Latin and especially Greek. The whole thing was waaay more philological/linguistic/etymological than I was expecting, which was at times hard to follow when more (bar Hebrew) of the words and phrases discussed were unfamiliar to me.

The number of authors and even texts mentioned in this that I read or will be reading for this course is actually boggling. Gotta be a high score. Nice to see him discuss Badiou’s thesis. His refutation was not all too convincing, but I may have not fully understood the premise established in the previous chapter. I only wish I would have read the Taubes first, might’ve helped at times.

[Brian Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Standing on the shoulders of thinkers like Weber and Benjamin, Agamben attempts to liberate not only the book of Romans but the very concept of christos from the Christian tradition. He makes a compelling case that "messiah" is the founding principle of the occidental political tradition. He also incorporates and elaborates on his well known idea "the state of exception." In particular, check out the interesting, and somewhat unusual chapter on "The Poem and Rhyme," which deals with messianic time and verse.

[Nathan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I remember reading stories of how the Dadaists would cut up snippets of newspaper and reassemble them, or how Surrealists would free associate poetry. Yeah, this book is just like that, but done by someone who should know better. I read this book twice, and what I did the first read with Agamben’s work, I feel confident in my projection that he did something very similar with Paul’s Letter: read himself into an obscure work and didn’t keep himself in check.

[Rodney · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are few books so stimulating and paradigmatic that I read over as soon as I've finished thie first go-through, but this is one of them. Agamben's take on Paul and the Epistle to the Romans is astoundingly deep and close and very fresh. Outstanding on the Jewish Christianity (the only true or actual Judeo-Christianity in history) of the New Testament period.

[Paul Rack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting look at Paul. Not really a commentary on Romans, but framed as a commentary on the first few words of Romans. Examines messianic time in the context of both Jewish Law and the works of Walter Benjamin (with whom I confess I am not familiar). This look at Paul's works from outside of a Christian framework is very helpful in opening up different perspectives on Paul's thought.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

2nd Conference for Lent at Notre Dame with Père Eric Morin. Very interesting on my second reading July 2016.

[Luke Echo · Rating 3 out of 5]

The connection between St Paul and Hegel 's Aufhebung is interesting but whats the conclusion? I think I missed something at the end....