Ideational Franciscanism: Form-of-life + Life-works

“Ideational Franciscanism: Form-of-life + Life-works” – MP4 (PPT2MP4) – 428.6 MB – 29:25

Until a new and coherent ontology of potentiality (beyond the steps that have been made in this direction by Spinoza, Schelling, Nietzsche, and Heidegger) has replaced the ontology founded on the primacy of actuality and its relation to potentiality, a political theory freed from the aporias of sovereignty remains unthinkable.

– Giorgio Agamben

Intellectual and artistic achievements are often a case of covering up an impoverished heart, though they need not be so. Perhaps this is also the reason why early Franciscanism discouraged bookish intentions and “scholarly disquisitions” in the manner of Medieval scholastics. Perhaps this is also the reason why the Franciscan Rule (form-of-life) went from fairly straightforward to florid and then to bare bones – ending with Francis more or less issuing a reduction, on his deathbed, very close to the (in)famous Augustinian proclamation, “Love and do what you will.”

Agamben’s “aporias of sovereignty” suggest the holes in ideological posturing, through which one might drive a cart full of wares destined not for the markets but for “else-where.” His hoped-for “ontology of potentiality” without measure (ends) suggests the otherwise suggestive devolution of this-worldly justifications for forms of knowledge that might, under the right conditions, lead to this proverbial else-where. Yet grounding it in the expectation of a “political theory” seems ill-advised. The remnant that he often refers to in his theological and a-theological musings has little to do with socio-political intrigue; and his own position in constructing a response to the “primacy of actuality” seems often based upon far too many actualities in the form of historically determined impositions upon subjects from the empty centers of ideological posturing.

Video presentation prepared for the colloquium, “Justice as Translation and Counter-storytelling,” UCILeR (Instituto Jurídico da Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de Coimbra, University of Coimbra Institute for Legal Research), ISSL (Italian Society for Law and Literature) and ATFD (Associação Portuguesa de Teoria do Direito, Filosofia do Direito e Filosofia Social, the Portuguese section of IVR), Coimbra, Portugal, May 26-28, 2022