M e r i d i a n M e r i d i a n

C
r
o
s
s
i
n
g

A
e
s
t
h
e
t
i
c
s
C
r
o
s
s
i
n
g

A
e
s
t
h
e
t
i
c
s
Giorgio Agamben
Edited and translated, with an introduction, by daniel heller-roazen
potentialities
collected
essays
in
philosophy
Returning to the paradoxical implications of Aristotles distinction between
actuality and potentiality, now understood through the linguistic theories of
Benjamin, Heidegger, and Derrida, contemporary Italys most brilliant
thinker offers a glimpse of a philosophy and politics still to come.
Martin Jay
University of California at Berkeley
T
his book, which collects fteen essays in philosophy
written over a period of more than twenty years,
constitutes the largest and most signicant collec-
tion of writings by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agam-
ben to be published in any language.
The volume opens with an introduction in which the edi-
tor situates Agambens work with respect to both the his-
tory of philosophy and contemporary European thought.
The essays that follow articulate a series of theoretical con-
frontations with privileged gures in the history of philosophy, politics, and crit-
icism, from Plato to Spinoza, Aristotle to Deleuze, Carl Schmitt to Benjamin,
Hegel to Aby Warburg, and Heidegger to Derrida. Three fundamental concepts
organize the essays collected here: language, in the sense not of particular state-
ments but rather the very taking place of speech, the pure fact of the existence of
language; history, as it appears from a perspective in which tradition, transmis-
sion, and memory reach the point of their messianic fulllment; and potential-
ity, understood as a fundamental problem of metaphysics, ethics, and the philos-
ophy of language. All these topics converge in the nal part of the book, in
which Agamben offers an extensive reading of Melvilles short story Bartleby,
the Scrivener as a work in which the categories of potentiality and actuality,
possibility and reality, appear in an altogether new light.
ci oici o acaxnix teaches philosophy at the University of Verona. This is
the fourth of his books published by Stanford; previous titles are Homo Sacer:
Sovereign Power and Bare Life (:,,), The Man Without Content (:,,,), and The
End of the Poem (:,,,).
s t anf ord uni ve r s i t y pre s s
w w w . s u p . o r g
Cover illustration: Albrecht Drer, St. John Devouring the Book of Life.
Cover design by Rob Ehle, using the series borders of Cope Cumpston & Jean Evans.
Philosophy / Critical Theory / Literature
p
o
t
e
n
t
i
a
l
i
t
i
e
s
A
g
a
m
b
e
n
,!7IA8A4-hdchij!
i snx c-c;-,:;-;