We can no longer speak of a state of war in any traditional sense, yet there is currently no viable theory to account for the manifold internal conflicts, or civil wars, that increasingly afflict the world's populations. Meant as a first step toward such a theory, Giorgio Agamben's latest book looks at how civil war was conceived of at two crucial moments in the history of Western thought: in ancient Athens (from which the political concept of stasis emerges) and later, in the work of Thomas Hobbes. It identifies civil war as the fundamental threshold of politicization in the West, an apparatus that over the course of history has alternately allowed for the de-politicization of citizenship and the mobilization of the unpolitical. The arguments herein, first conceived of in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, have become ever more relevant now that we have entered the age of planetary civil war.

We can no longer speak of a state of war in any traditional sense, yet there is currently no viable theory to account for the manifold internal conflicts, or civil wars, that increasingly afflict the world's populations. Meant as a first step toward such a theory, Giorgio Agamben's latest book looks at how civil war was conceived of at two crucial moments in the history of Western thought: in ancient Athens (from which the political concept of stasis emerges) and later, in the work of Thomas Hobbes. It identifies civil war as the fundamental threshold of politicization in the West, an apparatus that over the course of history has alternately allowed for the de-politicization of citizenship and the mobilization of the unpolitical. The arguments herein, first conceived of in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, have become ever more relevant now that we have entered the age of planetary civil war.

Offers Agamben's genealogy of power in terms of political, philosophical and legal thought. This book investigates the genealogy of the strife between the Polis and its population with particular regard to the Greek concept of stasis and the strife with the commonwealth of Hobbes' Leviathan. It re opens the questioning of the answers offered from the pre history of the power of the State all the way to the time after the end of its power and towards the renewed questioning of the state of power today. This is an interdisciplinary exploration of the relations that form historically and theoretically between law and philosophy. It is a unique simultaneous investigation into the laws of philosophy and the philosophies of law. It focusses on the creativity of the legal and philosophical imagination in the face of the present social situation. It explores legal and philosophical concepts and modalities in relation to the formation and intersection of institutional traditions, histories and ideas.

Is Christianity exclusively a religious phenomenon, which must separate itself from all things political, or do its concepts actually underpin secular politics? To this question, which animated the twentieth-century debate on political theology, Liturgical Power advances a third alternative. Christian anti-politics, Heron contends, entails its own distinct conception of politics. Yet this politics, he argues, assumes the form of what today we call “administration,” but which the ancients termed “economics.” The book’s principal aim is thus genealogical: it seeks to understand our current conception of government in light of an important but rarely acknowledged transformation in the idea of politics brought about by Christianity. This transformation in the idea of politics precipitates in turn a concurrent shift in the organization of power; an organization whose determining principle, Heron contends, is liturgy—understood in the broad sense as “public service.” Whereas until now only liturgy’s acclamatory dimension has made the concept available for political theory, Heron positions it more broadly as a technique of governance. What Christianity has bequeathed to political thought and forms, he argues, is thus a paradoxical technology of power that is grounded uniquely in service.

In this inaugural volume of the Edinburgh Encounters in Law and Philosophy series, Giorgio Agamben focuses upon the on-going warfare European state power has waged against its most malignant enemy: civil war itself. The survival of the State is seen to depend on its ability to preserve the political community from factional enmity. Agamben first investigates the Athenian theme of 'Stasis' - the city's struggle against internal revolt - before turning to a new reading of Hobbes's Leviathan and its approach to the peril of the commonwealth's exposure to civil strife, division and revolution. At the heart of this book is the issue of state powers in their continuous decline - an issue that is key to the renewal of political, philosophical and legal thought.

More than any other thinker, Giorgio Agamben shows us that philosophy is also a matter of style and politics a matter of poetics. This book explores the unexpected and illuminating paths that his work traces across the territories of law and literature, linguistics, dance or cinema, in search of a new idea and practice of the community. It offers an irreplaceable introduction to one of the most fascinating thinkers of our time.'Jacques RanciereGathering some of the most important established and emerging scholars to examine his body of work, this collection of essays seeks to explore Agamben's thought from these broader philosophical and literary concerns, underpinning its place within larger debates in continental philosophy. Including a contribution by Agamben himself, it is essential reading for anyone interested in his work.In the past five years, Giorgio Agamben has emerged as one of the most important continental philosophers. This burgeoning popularity of his work has largely been confined to a study of the homo sacer series. Yet these later 'political' works have their foundation in Agamben's earlier works on the philosophy of language, aesthetics and literature. From a philosophy of language and linguistics that leads to a broader theory of representation, Agamben develops a critical theory that attempts to explore the hiatuses and paradoxes that govern discursive practice across a broad range of disciplines."