Author: Hsi-Ping SCHIVE, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, School of Law, Soochow University
Abstract:
While the concept of the messianic has been crucial to Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy, asystematic investigation into the relationship between the Messiah and the Law is still lacking. This essay is an attempt to fill the gap by addressing the key question of the way in which the Messiah fulfills the law, and pointing out that the uniqueness of Agamben’s thought lies in his understanding of the law before and after this fulfillment both as a kind of “state of exception,” so that a messianic state of exception is anticipated to overcome the sovereign one in which we still live. This essay is divided into two parts. The first part illuminates the relationship between the original form of Torah and the state of exception conceived by Agamben, followed by a discussion of how Agamben’s reading of Kafka’s parable has demonstrated a messianic “inversion” that transforms human life under the Law into an emancipated form-of-life. The second part elaborates on how Agamben, through the “inner dialectics” between faith and law, construes the Pauline katargein (deactivation) of law not as its abroga-tion, but as its preservation and fulfillment. It further explicates how the announcement of the word of faith becomes a speech act beyond any judgement and decision, and how this “weak” potentiality of faith is also the potentiality “to love one’s neighbor,” the motif of law according to Paul’s preaching.
Keywords:
messianism; state of exception; sovereignty; law; faith; Giorgio Agamben; Walter Benjamin; Paul
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