The Surreptitious Defiance of Giorgio Agamben
The Surreptitious Defiance of Giorgio Agamben

Summary/Abstract: Many critics accuse Giorgio Agamben of an ahistoricism inherent to his thought. Recently, such criticism was put forward by Alberto Toscano, who formulated it referring to Hans Blumenberg’s refusal of the secularisation thesis and his theory of epochal shifts. According to Toscano, due to the acceptance of the Schmittian notion of secularisation, based on a historical substantialism, Agamben is not only unfaithful to the Foucaultian methodology which he declaratively assumes, but he also tends to acknowledge the domination of theological notions as a source of the whole Western philosophical tradition and political institutions up until now. I am going to demonstrate that even somewhat superficial claims made by Agamben about secularisation find their compensation in his double effort. Firstly, even if he concedes the gravity of the theological legacy, at the same time he rebuts the primacy of religion as an indispensable grounding of ethics and politics. What is more, through his meticulous and condense studies on Christian theology he has already placed himself in the position of the most incisive contemporary critic of the Catholic church and any theological-political hybrids established on the abuse of power.

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