Yarkeev A.V. The Birth of the State of Exception Out of the Spirit of Eternity of the Political Body
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/lp.jvolsu.2022.1.2
Aleksey V. Yarkeev
Doctor of Sciences (Philosophy), Senior Researcher, Institute of Philosophy and Law, Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences
S. Kovalevskoy St, 16, 620108 Yekaterinburg, Russian Federation
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https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-468X
Abstract. The philosophical project "Homo Sacer" by the modern Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben (born in 1942) is based on a consistent highlighting of the process of Western European history that leads to the establishment of the state of emergency as a common technology of public administration today. This article offers an outline of the genesis of the state of emergency (emergency state) from the point of view of the evolution of ideas about the state in the aspect of the metaphor of the human body. In view of the fact that the logic of the state of emergency is based on the concept of a necessity (necessitas), which allows to suspend the normal functioning of law and order, it is necessary to raise the question of the origin of this relationship. The author believes that the source of the idea of the relationship between the state of emergency and necessity is the needs of the human body, the absolute urgency of which is the starting point of political organization (Plato, Aristotle). The system of views on the state as a body that emerged in the Greco-Roman worldview was clearly developed in the medieval civilization of the West. From this point on, we can talk about the emergence of the concept of "political body", within which the understanding of key sociopolitical relations took place. The combination of the Aristotelian concept of the eternity of the world with the strengthening of the absolute power of the secular sovereign and practical needs led to the formation of the idea of the permanent state with its constant needs. The new state rationality, associated with the need to meet the needs of the state and thus ensure its self-preservation, has acquired the form of biopolitics, which actually blurs the border between the political and the biological. The state of emergency becomes a paradigm of public administration, motivated by the idea of the identity of natural processes and the existence of society. The constant and imperishable nature of these processes sets the basis for the production of state of emergency, which loses its connection to a certain point in time and becomes a potentially eternal and continuous state.
Key words: state, state of emergency, necessity, human body, biopolitics.
Citation. Yarkeev A.V. The Birth of the State of Exception Out of the Spirit of Eternity of the Political Body. Logos et Praxis, 2022, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 11-21. (in Russian). DOI: https://doi.org/10.15688/lp.jvolsu.2022.1.2
The Birth of the State of Exception Out of the Spirit of Eternity of the Political Body by Yarkeev A.V. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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