Original scientific paper

EPOCHAL DESTRUCTION OF SUBJECTIVITY

Goran Gretić ; Faculty of Political Science, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

In his Homo sacer trilogy G. Agamben engages with a series of important issues
related to contemporary political philosophy and ethics. Agamben shows
that the period of National Socialism and Fascism confronts us with an epochal
project of subject destruction. The core and uniqueness of this project
are derived from an ideologically and biologically founded naturalism. Thus
perceived naturalism uses, i.e. misuses, the technical possibilities and means
of the politics of power of modernity, creating a system of perfect organisation
with the purpose of destroying the Other. Such a naturalistic policy can
be termed historically unique, since its goal is no longer the destruction of individuals,
groups, classes or peoples, or even of mankind as a whole. Its aim
is to destroy the humanity of man, precisely in the sense ascribed to this concept
by Kant – namely, man’s subjectivity. In other words, a fundamental idea
is revoked here: the idea of mankind as such, which encompasses the idea of
common mankind, and, in this way, the very idea of subjectivity is negated.

Keywords

Homo sacer; bare life; camp as nomos of modernity; idea of a good life; feeling of shame; destruction of subject-subjectivity; political naturalism

Hrčak ID:

55098

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/55098

Publication date:

12.4.2010.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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