Supplementary Reading II

Jacques Derrida: The Beast and the Sovereign I (455-463/343-349)

So, on that basis, I suggest two things for the twenty minutes or so we have left: first to have a quick look at logos in Aristotle's Politics, in the famous passage in which Aristotle defines man as zoon logon ekhon, and then, if we have time, a word about the Bible, with which I meant to start at the very beginning. As I was saying very quickly last time, it's the very beginning of book I of the Politics, that's where it starts, and Aristotle is defining the polis, the state as a sort of community (koinōnia), which, as a community, is constituted with a view to a certain good. The state is a community organized with a view to a good, agathon. One might say that this agathon is naturally sought, as a good, by every community, even an animal community, but what Aristotle announces from the start is that the state as human community, as human koinōnia, is organized with a view to the good as sovereign good; this is the standard translation, and of course the word translated as sovereign is, as you'll remember from when we were talking about Bodin, the word that is most often used in Greek to designate sovereignty, kurios: ... it is obvious that all aim at a certain good and that precisely the sovereign good [kuriōtatou, the sovereign good, the supreme good] among all goods is the end of the community that is sovereign [kuriōtate] among all [the community is basically sovereign over all, and so the notion of sovereignty is defined here, from the start, inscribed into the very concept of state, polis, and community] and includes all the others: the one called the City or the political community [e koinōnia e politikē]. [Aristotle, Politics, 1252 a 9]

Then, in the following paragraph, he will define, precisely, what is called a master or a king, a man of state: All those who imagine that a statesman (or magistrate), a king, a head of household, a master of slaves [despotikon] are identical, do not express themselves correctly [so he will distinguish between the statesman [politikon], the king, the head of household, the slave-master: those who imagine that these are the same thing, are identical, are wrong, are not expressing themselves correctly, do not choose their words well]; indeed they see in each of these only a difference of degree and not of kind: for example, if one exercises authority over a small number, one is a master; if over a greater number, a head of household; if a still greater number, a statesman or a king, as though there were no difference between a large family and a small City [in other words-and this is a tradition that will run up until Schmitt, you must not imagine that the state is simply an enlarged family; so there is a structural difference between a family community and a state community]; as for statesman and king: if a man exercises power alone, he is a king; if on the contrary he exercises it following the norms of political science, being in turn governor and governed, he is a statesman. But this is not true, and what I have to say about it will be obvious to anyone who examines the question following our normal method. [Aris. Pol 1252a 4-23] There follows a methodological expose which tries, which claims, to go back ex arkhēs, to the beginning (the word arkhē, I recall, is the commencement and the commandment): "so it is in examining things develop from their origin [ex arkhēs] that here as elsewhere we can come to the best view of them." So let's go back to the origin: In the first place there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other; namely, of male and female, that the race may continue (and this is a union which is formed, not of deliberate purpose, but because, in common with other animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leave behind them an image of themselves) [in other words, generation and reproduction is the proper of all living beings, be they plants, animals, or humans], and of natural ruler and subject, that both may be preserved [this is natural, by nature, phusei]. For that which can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature [still phusei] intended to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave; hence master and slave have the same interest. Now nature [always phusei] has distinguished between the female and the slave. For she is not niggardly, like the smith who fashions the Delphian knife for many uses; she makes each thing for a single use [...]. But among barbarians no distinction is made between women and slaves, because there is no natural ruler among them [i.e. neither woman nor slave has what naturally rules]: they are a community of slaves, male and female. Wherefore the poets say, "It is meet that Hellenes should rule over barbarians"; as if they thought that the barbarian and the slave were by nature one.

Out of these two relationships between man and woman, master and slave, the first thing to arise is the family [I'm reading rather fast to come on quicker to the zōon logon ekhon], and Hesiod is right when he says, "First house and wife and ox for the plough," for the ox is the poor man's slave. The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants, and the members of it are called by Charondas "companions of the cupboard," and by Epimenides the Cretan, "companions of the manger." But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village. And the most natural form of the village appears to be that of a colony from the family, composed of the children and grandchildren, who are said to be suckled "with the same milk." And this is the reason why Hellenic states were originally governed by kings; because the Hellenes were under royal rule before they came together, as the barbarians still are. Every family is ruled by the eldest, and therefore in the colonies of the family the kingly form of government prevailed because they were of the same blood. As Homer says [etc.]. [Aris. Pol. 1252a 27-1252b 22] And this is where we come to things that are decisive for us: The community born of several villages is the City, perfect, now reaching, as it were, the level of complete self-sufficiency [autarkeia, independence, then, the fact of commanding oneself, to have its own arkhe within itself]: being formed to permit life [here, it's zen, the verb for zoon. the fact of living], it exists in order to allow one to live well [eu zen]: so a political community, a city, has as its aim to live well (eu zen). And so it's from this truth, as it were, this essence of the polis that Aristotle will go on to the definition of man as he who, precisely, has the logos. This is why every city exists naturally [still phusei], just like the first communities; it is indeed, their end, and the nature of a thing is its end; because what we call the nature of each thing is what it is when its growth is complete, for example, a man, a horse, or a family. What is more, the final cause and the end is what is best; now to be self-sufficient (autarkeia) is both an end and what

is best. [Pol 1252 b 27-1253 a4] That's the ontological definition of sovereignty, namely that it's better since we're trying to live well (eu zen)--to live in autarchy, i.e. having in ourselves our principle. having in ourselves our commencement and our commandment, is better that the contrary: “the final cause and the end is what is best; now to be self- sufficient (autarkeia) is both an end and what is best.” From which will follow the definition, which is basically essential and necessary, of sovereignty: the sovereign is one who has his end in himself or is the end of everything.

So now, after these premises, here is the fundamental canonical text around which, you recall, the discussions and disagreement begin. You remember Agamben's interpretation that we discussed, Heidegger's interpretation that puts in question this very definition of man as zoon logon ekhon, which he says is unworthy of the humanity of man, not only in that it is a "zoological" definition, says Heidegger, not only because one attributes the logos to this zoon, but because one surreptitiously neglects an interpretation of the logos… the zoon logon ekhon, the animal rationale, concerns not only the definition of man in his relation to logos. But also the definition of the political: man as political animal is indissociab1e from the definition of man as having the logos, logon ekhon.

So here is Aristotle’s text:

From these considerations it is clear that the City is a natural reality and that man is naturally a being destined to live in a City [political animal, ton phusei e polis esti, kai oti anthrōpos phusei politikon zōon: is a political animal]; he who is cityless is, by nature and not by chance, a being either degraded or else superior to man [the one who is without a City. who is apolis, who is apolitical, is either below or else above man, either an animal or else god: the political is properly human: “He who is cityless is by nature and not by chance either below or else above man.”]: he is like the man Homer reproaches with having “no clan, no law, no hearth”; a man this way by nature is by the same token warlike; he is like an isolated pawn in chess. And so the reason is clear why man is a political being more than any others, bees or gregarious animals. As we maintain, indeed, nature does nothing in vain; now alone among the animals man has speech [logon dē monon anthrōpos ekhei ton zoon: so, there is an essential link between politicity and the disposition to the logos, they are indissociable.] No doubt the sounds of the voice [phone] express pain and pleasure, and so they are found in all animals: their nature allows them to feel pain and pleasure and to manifest them among themselves [so phone does not suffice to define logos]. [Aris. Pol. 1253a 2-14]

(When I distinguished—a very long time ago—between logocentrism and phonocentrism, it was precisely to mark the fact that logocentrism, by reference to this signifier, this vocable, logos, which is proper to the historico-cultural zone I was defining a moment ago (Abrahamic, evangelical religions and philosophy), this logocentrism appeared to me to determine this zone or this epoch in human history; but phonocentrism seemed to me, still seems to me, to be universal, in that it defines the authority or hegemony accorded to vocal speech and so to phonetic writing in all cultures: which is to say that there is a phonocentrism, the signs or symptoms of which can be identified well beyond Europe and even in cultures that practice writing of a non-phonetic type—apparently nonalphabetic, non-phonetic. You know that in Chinese culture, for example, writing is not of the phonetic type although there are phonetic elements in it; nevertheless, there are many signs of a recognized authority of the vocal, which means, in my opinion, that phonocentrism is universal, which logocentrism is not. In any case, the phonē named here by Aristotle only concerns the emission of sounds, and this can, indeed, appear in animals without reason, without logos: there is phonē without logos.)

No doubt the sounds of the voice [phonē] express pain and pleasure, and so they are found in all animals: their nature allows them only to feel pain and pleasure and to manifest them among themselves. But speech [logos], for its part, is made to express the useful and the harmful and consequently the just and the unjust, [in other words, there is an essential link between speech (logos) and the good (agathon), the just and the unjust (dikaion/adikon). Animals are incapable of this: they do indeed have phonē, but they have neither logos nor a relation to the good, to the sovereign good, to the just or the unjust]. This is, indeed. the distinctive character of mankind compared to all the other animals: [pros talla zōa tois anthrōpois idion: what is proper (idion) to man faced with (or in the eyes of) all the other living beings] he alone perceives good and evil, the just and the unjust [to monon agathou kai kakou kai dikaiou kai adikou] and other values [kai tēn allōn aisthēsin]; now it is the common possession of these values that makes family and city. [Aris. Pol. 1253a 10-18]

Which obviously leaves the question that we were raising last time, that of knowing whether, in saying this, Aristotle—how should we put it?—was already sensitive, accessible, open or not to what, in a certain French modality, is called "biopolitics." You remember the distinction Agamben was trying to make, which seemed to me untenable, between the definition of the zoon politikon as essential attribute or as specific difference. But precisely, what Aristotle says—and this is where this distinction between the two attributions docs not work—is that man is that living being who is taken by politics: he is a political living being, and essentially so. In other words, he is zoo-political, that's his essential definition, that's what is proper to him, idion; what is proper to man is politics; what is proper to this living being that man is, is politics, and therefore man is immediately zoo-political, in his very life, and the distinction between bio-politics and zoo-politics doesn't work at all here—moreover, neither Heidegger nor Foucault stays with this distinction, and it's obvious that already in Aristotle there's thinking of what is today called "zoopolitics" or " biopolitics." Which doesn't mean—as I suggested last time and I'm stressing today—which doesn't mean, of course, that Aristotle had already foreseen, thought and understood, analyzed all the figures of today's zoopolitics or biopolitics: it would be absurd to think so. But as for the biopolitical or zoopolitical structure, it's put forward by Aristotle, it's already there, and the debate opens there.