Books by Giorgio Agamben

In this philosophical detective story, Giorgio Agamben reads the mysterious 1938 disappearance of atomic physicist Ettore Majorana as an intentional and decisive objection to how quantum physics had reduced the real to probability.

The three essays collected in this book offer a succinct introduction to Agamben's recent work through an investigation of Foucault's notion of apparatus, a meditation on the intimate link of philosophy to friendship, and a reflection on the singular relation with one's own time that we call contemporariness.

Giorgio Agamben er en af vor tids vigtigste og mest indflydelsesrige filosoffer. Hans arbejde er baseret på meget originale fortolkninger af klassiske traditioner inden for filosofi og retorik. Romerretten, senantikkens filosofi, kristen teologi og moderne filosofi fra Hannah Arendt og Martin Heidegger til Michel Foucault er afgørende for hans arbejde. Agamben går derfra videre og forbinder tænkning med konkrete etisk-politiske konklusioner om samfundets tilstand i dag.I Agambens hovedværk ‘Homo sacer – den suveræne magt og det nøgne liv’ sigter han mod at knytte spørgsmålene om potentialitet, udelukkelse og magt til politisk og social etik i en verden, hvor netop etik har mistet sin tidligere religiøse, metafysiske og kulturelle forankring.Med efterskrift af oversætteren Carsten Juhl.

"Originally published in Italian in 2017 under the title Creazione e anarchia: l'opera nell'etaa della religione capitalistica."

In this book, Agamben investigates monasticism from its beginnings up through the Franciscan movement in an attempt to find a new form-of-life that escapes from the logic of Western politics as put forth in his Homo Sacer series.

This book, by one of Italy's most important and original contemporary philosophers, represents a broad, general, and ambitious undertaking-nothing less than an attempt to rethink the nature of poetic language and to rearticulate relationships among theology, poetry, and philosophy in a tradition of literature initiated by Dante.

"Originally published in Italian in 2017 under the title Karman: breve trattato sull'azione, la colpa e il gesto."

At the heart of Pulcinella is Agamben's exploration of an album of 104 drawings, created by Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804) near the end of his life, that cover the life, adventures, death, and resurrection of the title character.

In this book, one of Italy's most important and original contemporary philosophers considers the status of art in the modern era. He probes the meaning and historical consequences of the indefinite continuation of art in what Hegel called a "self-annulling" mode, in the process offering an imaginative reinterpretation of the history of aesthetics from Kant to Heidegger.

A probing investigation of the trial of Jesus by noted Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben.

Originally published in Italian in 2016 under the title Che cos'ae la filosofia?

This latest collection of texts, which focus on the "mystery" of literature, as well as on language as a laboratory for conceiving an ethical-political perspective that places us beyond sovereign power, offer a window onto Giorgio Agamben's most current research.

The final volume in Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben's wide-ranging investigation of the foundations of Western politics and culture.

In this book, Agamben investigates the roots of the modern moral concept of duty in the theory and practice of Christian liturgy.

Explores the symbiosis of philosophy and literature in understanding negativity.

Arguing that Western power is both "government" and "glory," this book reveals the "theological-economic" paradigm at the origin of several of the most important components of modern politics and illuminates the function of consent and the media in today's democracies.

Agamben seeks to separate the Pauline texts from the history of the Church that canonized them, thus revealing them to be "the fundamental messianic texts of the West." He argues that Paul's Letters are concerned not with the foundation of a new religion but rather with the "messianic" abolition of Jewish law.

Kore, also called Persephone and referred to poetically by the Greeks as "the unspeakable girl," was the daughter of Demeter and Zeus who was abducted by Hades and made queen of the netherworld. This title presents three richly detailed treatments of the myth of Kore.

This single book brings together for the first time all nine volumes that make up Giorgio Agamben's groundbreaking magnum opus.

Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben is the rare writer whose ideas and works have a broad appeal across many fields. In March 2009, Agamben was invited to speak in Paris' Notre-Dame Cathedral in the presence of the bishop of Paris and a number of other high-ranking church officials. This title presents this speech.

"e;Is it meaningful to call oneself a democrat? And if so, how do you interpret the word?"e;In responding to this question, eight iconoclastic thinkers prove the rich potential of democracy, along with its critical weaknesses, and reconceive the practice to accommodate new political and cultural realities. Giorgio Agamben traces the tense history of constitutions and their coexistence with various governments. Alain Badiou contrasts current democratic practice with democratic communism. Daniel Bensaid ponders the institutionalization of democracy, while Wendy Brown discusses the democratization of society under neoliberalism. Jean-Luc Nancy measures the difference between democracy as a form of rule and as a human end, and Jacques Ranciere highlights its egalitarian nature. Kristin Ross identifies hierarchical relationships within democratic practice, and Slavoj Zizek complicates the distinction between those who desire to own the state and those who wish to do without it.Concentrating on the classical roots of democracy and its changing meaning over time and within different contexts, these essays uniquely defend what is left of the left-wing tradition after the fall of Soviet communism. They confront disincentives to active democratic participation that have caused voter turnout to decline in western countries, and they address electoral indifference by invoking and reviving the tradition of citizen involvement. Passionately written and theoretically rich, this collection speaks to all facets of modern political and democratic debate.

In his new collection of essays, Giorgio Agamben addresses the most urgent themes of his recent research.