Why has power in the West assumed the form of an "economy," that is, of a government of men and things? If power is essentially government, why does it need glory, that is, the ceremonial and liturgical apparatus that has always accompanied it? In the early centuries of the Church, in order to reconcile monotheism with God's threefold nature, the doctrine of Trinity was introduced in the guise of an economy of divine life. It was as if the Trinity amounted to nothing more than a problem of managing and governing the heavenly house and the world. Agamben shows that, when combined with the idea of providence, this theological-economic paradigm unexpectedly lies at the origin of many of the most important categories of modern politics, from the democratic theory of the division of powers to the strategic doctrine of collateral damage, from the invisible hand of Smith's liberalism to ideas of order and security. But the greatest novelty to emerge from The Kingdom and the Glory is that modern power is not only government but also glory, and that the ceremonial, liturgical, and acclamatory aspects that we have regarded as vestiges of the past actually constitute the basis of Western power. Through a fascinating analysis of liturgical acclamations and ceremonial symbols of power―the throne, the crown, purple cloth, the Fasces, and more―Agamben develops an original genealogy that illuminates the startling function of consent and of the media in modern democracies. With this book, the work begun with Homo Sacer reaches a decisive point, profoundly challenging and renewing our vision of politics. "Agamben's argument is complex, multifaceted, and comprehensive, and, indeed, it offers a useful model His method is a philosophical archaeology that joins philosophy and philology in seeking those moments in history in which concepts are formulated or significantly altered and then order subsequent modes of discourse and thought with long term ramifications for human society."―Kelly C. MacPhail, Topia Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher and political theorist, teaches at the IUAV University in Venice and holds the Baruch Spinoza Chair at the European Graduate School. His most recent works available in English translation from Stanford University Press include "What is an Apparatus?" and Other Essays (2009), Nudities (2010), and The Sacrament of Language (2011). THE KINGDOM AND THE GLORY For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government (Homo Sacer II, 2) By Giorgio Agamben Stanford University Press Copyright © 2011 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8047-6016-4 Contents Translator's Note...........................................ixPreface.....................................................xi§ 1 The Two Paradigms..................................1Threshold...................................................15§ 2 The Mystery of the Economy.........................17Threshold...................................................50§ 3 Being and Acting...................................53Threshold...................................................65§ 4 The Kingdom and the Government.....................68Threshold...................................................106§ 5 The Providential Machine...........................109Threshold...................................................139§ 6 Angelology and Bureaucracy.........................144Threshold...................................................165§ 7 The Power and the Glory............................167Threshold...................................................194§ 8 The Archaeology of Glory...........................197Threshold...................................................253Appendix: The Economy of the Moderns........................2611 The Law and the Miracle...................................2612 The Invisible Hand........................................277Notes.......................................................289References..................................................291 Chapter One § 1 The Two Paradigms 1.1. Let us begin this investigation with an attempt to reconstruct the genealogy of a paradigm that has exercised a decisive influence on the development and the global arrangement of Western society, although it has rarely been thematized as such outside a strictly theological field. One of the theses that we shall try to demonstrate is that two broadly speaking political paradigms, antinomical but functionally related to one another, derive from Christian theology: political theology, which founds the transcendence of sovereign power on the single God, and economic theology, which replaces this transcendence with the idea of an oikonomia , conceived as an immanent ordering—domestic and not political in a strict sense—of both divine and human life. Political philosophy and the modern theory of sovereignty derive from the first paradigm; modern