Abstract<font lang="zh-CN"><font> </font><font><font>抽象的</font></font></font>
<div>Agamben is perhaps best known for his analysis of the “logic of sovereignty” drawn from Carl Schmitt. This article examines the critique of sovereignty that Agamben develops through his reading of Walter Benjamin’s messianism. For Agamben, Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty claims that the state of exception is a juridical condition, in that the law survives its suspension in the form of the “force-of-<span>law</span>.” Drawing on Benjamin, Agamben argues that sovereignty is a fiction that covers over the originary inoperativity of the law and the illegitimacy of authority. The purpose of Agamben’s analysis is to open space for a new understanding of the relationship between law and political action that responds to the contemporary crisis of tradition.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>阿甘本或许最广为人知的是他对卡尔·施密特“主权逻辑”的分析。本文探讨了阿甘本通过解读瓦尔特·本雅明的弥赛亚主义而发展出的主权批判。在阿甘本看来，施密特对主权的分析认为，例外状态是一种法律条件，因为法律在失效后以“<span> 法律</span>效力”的形式得以延续。阿甘本借鉴本雅明的观点，认为主权是一种虚构，它掩盖了法律最初的无效性和权威的非法性。阿甘本的分析旨在为理解法律与政治行动之间的关系开辟新的空间，以应对当代传统的危机。</font></font></font></div></section></div></div><section id="bodymatter"><div><div>The relationship between Carl Schmitt, the authoritarian public law theorist, and the Jewish literary critic Walter Benjamin, has long been problematic for the intellectual left. Sovereignty plays a central role in Benjamin’s habilitation thesis, The Origin of German Tragic Drama. The work contains a reference to Schmitt’s Political Theology, and in 1930 Benjamin sent a copy to Schmitt, along with a letter that expressed his admiration for the jurist’s thought. As Samuel Weber notes, the idea that Benjamin’s concept of sovereignty might have been adapted from Schmitt prompted the omission of this letter from the first edition of Benjamin’s collected writings.<sup>1</sup> In State of Exception, however, Giorgio Agamben turns the received wisdom about the relationship between Schmitt and Benjamin on its head. He does this by reconstructing a debate which, he argues, the two thinkers were implicitly engaged in through a number of their most important political works: these include Schmitt’s Dictatorship and Political Theology, and Benjamin’s “Critique of Violence,” The Origin of German Tragic Drama, and the eighth of his “Theses on the Philosophy of History.”<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>卡尔·施密特（Carl Schmitt）这位威权主义公法理论家与瓦尔特·本雅明（Walter Benjamin）这位犹太文学评论家之间的关系，长期以来一直是左翼知识分子关注的焦点。主权在本雅明的博士论文 《德国悲剧的起源》 中扮演着核心角色。该论文引用了施密特的 《政治神学》 ，1930 年，本雅明将该书副本寄给了施密特，并附上一封信，表达了他对这位法学家思想的钦佩之情。正如塞缪尔·韦伯（Samuel Weber）所指出的，正是由于人们认为本雅明的主权概念可能借鉴了施密特的思想，这封信才被从本雅明文集的第一版中删去。然而，在 《例外状态》（State of Exception）一书中 ，乔治·阿甘本（Giorgio Agamben）彻底颠覆了关于施密特和本雅明之间关系的既有观点。他通过重构一场辩论来论证这一点，他认为，这两位思想家通过他们一些最重要的政治著作隐含地参与了这场辩论：这些著作包括施密特的 《独裁与政治神学 》，以及本雅明的《暴力批判》、 《德国悲剧的起源 》和《历史哲学论纲》的第八篇。</font></font></font></div><div>Agamben terms this debate a “gigantomachy concerning a void,” as its fundamental concern is the relationship between law and the state of exception (a zone of non-law that he often describes as anomie). He argues that the fundamental move of Benjamin’s political thought (which is shaped by an idiosyncratic engagement with messianism and Marxism) is the idea of a “pure violence” that “deposes,” “destroys,” or “suspends” the law.<sup>2</sup> This is a “pure” form of violence because it is purified of an instrumental relationship to legal ends and political domination. In Benjamin’s words, the manifestation of this violence outside the law furnishes “the proof that revolutionary violence, the highest manifestation of unalloyed violence by man, is possible, and by what means.”<sup>3</sup> Schmitt, by contrast, was a believer in the state who was profoundly hostile to the revolutionary politics of the left, and Agamben argues that Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty attempts to neutralize the revolutionary implications of the idea of pure violence. Schmitt achieves this, according to Agamben, through an argument that the suspension of the law can be used for legal ends, and that there is, as a result, a relationship between anomic violence and legal order.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>阿甘本将这场辩论称为“一场关于虚空的巨型战争”，因为其根本关注点在于法律与例外状态（他常称之为“失范”的非法律领域）之间的关系。他认为，本雅明政治思想（其思想深受弥赛亚主义和马克思主义的独特影响）的根本动力在于一种“纯粹暴力”的理念，这种暴力“废黜”、“摧毁”或“中止”了法律。 <sup>2</sup> 这是一种“纯粹”的暴力形式，因为它摒弃了与法律目的和政治统治相关的工具性关系。用本雅明的话来说，这种法律之外的暴力表现形式“证明了革命暴力——人类纯粹暴力的最高表现形式——是可能的，以及它通过何种方式实现”。 <sup>3</sup> 与此相反，施密特信奉国家，他对左翼的革命政治抱有根深蒂固的敌意。阿甘本认为，施密特的主权理论试图消除纯粹暴力思想的革命含义。阿甘本指出，施密特之所以能够做到这一点，是因为他论证了法律的中止可以用于实现合法目的，因此，失范暴力与法律秩序之间存在着某种联系。</font></font></font></div><div>Agamben’s political thought is deeply indebted to Benjamin and the idea of pure violence: in Means Without Ends he argues that we need to develop a “nonstatal and nonjuridical politics and human life”<sup>4</sup> that would involve a politics of “pure means”<sup>5</sup>; similarly, the closing comments of State of Exception assert that pure violence (an act that “severs the nexus between violence and the law”) is “the only truly political action.”<sup>6</sup> Schmitt’s theory of sovereignty thus poses a fundamental problem for Agamben’s political project, as it closes down the conceptual possibility of this non-statist form of political action. By reconstructing the “gigantomachy,” however, Agamben develops a Benjaminian counter to Schmitt. According to Agamben, Benjamin’s “Theses” puts the theory of sovereignty in check with its assertion that “the tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the state of emergency in which we live is not the exception but the rule.”<sup>7</sup> While it has become a commonplace to cite the claim that the state of emergency is the rule as a description of contemporary security politics,<sup>8</sup> the key to Agamben’s critique of sovereignty derives from the passage in the eighth thesis that immediately follows: “We must attain to a conception of history that is in keeping with this insight. Then we shall clearly realize that it is our task to introduce a real state of emergency; and our position in the struggle against Fascism will thereby improve.”<sup>9</sup> Agamben consistently juxtaposes Benjamin’s thought to that of Schmitt, and invokes the distinction between real and fictional states of emergency when analyzing the prospect of a response to the political crises of the present. This raises three crucial questions: what, for Agamben, is the “fiction” involved in the fictional state of exception? What would it mean, in his terms, to bring about a real state of exception? And how might this help in the struggle against contemporary authoritarianism?<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>阿甘本的政治思想深受本雅明及其纯粹暴力理念的影响：在 《无目的的手段》 中，他认为我们需要发展一种“ 非国家和非法律的政治与人类生活” <sup>4</sup> ，这种政治将包含一种“纯粹手段” <sup>5</sup> ；同样， 《例外状态》 的结尾也断言，纯粹暴力（一种“切断暴力与法律之间联系”的行为）是“唯一真正意义上的政治行动” <sup>6</sup> 。因此，施密特的主权理论对阿甘本的政治计划构成了一个根本性的难题，因为它否定了这种非国家主义政治行动形式在概念上的可能性。然而，通过重构“巨人之战”，阿甘本发展出了一种本雅明式的对施密特的反驳。阿甘本认为，本雅明的《论纲》以其“被压迫者的传统告诉我们，我们所处的紧急状态并非例外，而是常态”这一论断，对主权理论提出了质疑。 <sup>7</sup> 尽管“紧急状态是常态”这一说法已成为描述当代安全政治的惯用语， <sup>8</sup> 但阿甘本对主权批判的关键在于紧随其后的第八条论纲中的一段话：“我们必须获得一种与此洞见相符的历史观。如此，我们才能清楚地认识到，我们的任务是引入一种真正的紧急状态；而我们在反法西斯斗争中的地位也将因此得到提升。” <sup>9</sup> 阿甘本始终将本雅明的思想与施密特的思想并置，并在分析应对当前政治危机的前景时，援引了真实紧急状态与虚构紧急状态之间的区别。 这就引出了三个关键问题：在阿甘本看来，虚构的例外状态中蕴含的“虚构”是什么？用他的话说，实现真正的例外状态意味着什么？而这又将如何有助于对抗当代的威权主义？</font></font></font></div><div>In this article, I develop a response to these questions by analyzing Agamben’s account of the fiction of sovereignty and the real state of exception. I do so through a close reading of his account of the “gigantomachy,” and by analyzing this in light of the theme of messianism, which has long provided one of the most important frames for Agamben’s analysis of law.<sup>10</sup> I argue that, for Agamben, the essence of Schmitt’s thought is to keep “the law working beyond its formal suspension.”<sup>11</sup> Schmitt’s claim that the law continues to exist in the state of exception as the force-of-<span>law</span>, is analogous to the “thwarted messianism” found in Gerschem Scholem’s reading of Kafka. Agamben counters this with a “completed nihilism” that he develops by drawing on Benjamin’s “Theses” and essay on Kafka, along with the Letters of St Paul. I argue that, for Agamben, the originary form of law is its absolute inoperativity and that sovereignty is a fiction that covers this over. The lawlessness of contemporary politics undermines the sovereign claims of the state, as the idea that the state of emergency is different from chaos is only plausible as long as the state of emergency remains a temporary condition. The effect of the eighth thesis is thus to expose sovereignty as a fiction and thereby to depose the relationship between law and violence that was maintained by the idea of the force-of-<span>law</span>. In this way, Agamben re-introduces the conceptual space for the idea of a non-statist politics: what he describes as the “use” or “study” of the law.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>本文旨在通过分析阿甘本关于主权虚构和例外状态的论述，来回应这些问题。我将通过细读他对“巨人之战”的描述，并结合弥赛亚主义这一主题进行分析。弥赛亚主义长期以来一直是阿甘本法律分析的重要框架之一。 <sup>10</sup> 我认为，对阿甘本而言，施密特思想的精髓在于使“法律在其形式上的中止之外继续发挥作用”。 <sup>11</sup> 施密特认为，法律在例外状态下仍然以<span>法律</span>的力量存在，这与格尔舍姆·肖勒姆对卡夫卡作品的解读中所体现的“受挫的弥赛亚主义”类似。阿甘本则以“完备的虚无主义”来反驳这一观点，他借鉴了本雅明的《论题》、关于卡夫卡的文章以及圣保罗的书信，发展出一种“完备的虚无主义”。我认为，对阿甘本而言，法律的本源形式是其绝对无效性，而主权则是一种掩盖这一本质的虚构。当代政治的无法无天削弱了国家主权的主张，因为只有当紧急状态仍是一种暂时状态时，紧急状态与混乱状态有所区别的观点才具有说服力。因此，第八条论点的作用在于揭示主权的虚构本质，从而瓦解了法律与暴力之间由“<span> 法律</span>强制力”观念所维系的关系。由此，阿甘本重新引入了非国家政治的概念空间：他称之为对法律的“运用”或“研究”。</font></font></font></div><div>I begin by tracing Agamben’s account of the moves and countermoves in the debate between Schmitt and Benjamin (which he sets up as a ‘‘chess game’’ in which “the two players facing each other across the chessboard of history always seem to be moving a single pawn”):<sup>12</sup> Part I examines the difference between Benjamin’s radical vision of “pure violence” and Schmitt’s attempt to deploy anomie for legal ends; Part II looks at Agamben’s account of Benjamin’s attempts to undermine Political Theology through the theme of sovereign indecision. I then turn to the theoretical and political stakes of Agamben’s critique of sovereignty: Part III develops an analysis of the fiction of sovereignty by drawing on Agamben’s engagement with messianism; Part IV concludes by offering some reflections on the relationship between this critique of sovereignty and the radical politics that he advocates.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>我首先追溯阿甘本对施密特和本雅明辩论中双方攻防转换的论述（他将这场辩论比作一场“棋局”，其中“历史棋盘上对峙的两位棋手似乎始终只移动一个棋子”）： <sup>12</sup> 第一部分考察了本雅明关于“纯粹暴力”的激进愿景与施密特试图利用失范来实现合法目的之间的差异；第二部分考察了阿甘本对本雅明如何通过主权犹豫不决这一主题来削弱政治神学的论述。然后，我转向阿甘本对主权批判的理论和政治意义：第三部分借鉴阿甘本对弥赛亚主义的探讨，分析了主权的虚构性；第四部分最后反思了这种对主权的批判与他所倡导的激进政治之间的关系。</font></font></font></div><section id="sec-1">I. Outside the Law: Pure and Sovereign Violence<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>一、法外之徒：纯粹的、主权式的暴力</font></font></font>
<div>The fundamental issue at stake in the “gigantomachy” between Schmitt and Benjamin is the nature of anomie (action or violence outside the law) and its relationship to the legal order. Agamben argues that the central innovation of the “Critique” is the idea of radically anomic “pure violence,” which Benjamin develops by juxtaposition with legal violence. Benjamin characterizes the history of politics as a “dialectical oscillation” between two forms of violence that are means directed at the end of legal order. Law is founded in violence exercised outside the norms of law (such as in war or revolution).<sup>13</sup> Because the law is born of violence, any legal order is threatened by the possibility that it might be overthrown by counter-violence. As such, law “sees violence in the hands of individuals as a danger undermining the legal system.”<sup>14</sup> Immediately upon the act of positing, then, law abandons law-making violence and tries “to erect, in all areas where individual ends could be usefully pursued by violence, legal ends that can only be realised by a legal power.”<sup>15</sup> This system of constituted violence seeks to preserve the existing legal order by preventing anyone other than the state from using violence. Yet the legal suppression of “hostile counter-violence” only lasts “until either new forces or those earlier suppressed triumph over the hitherto lawmaking violence and thus found a new law, destined in its turn to decay.”<sup>16</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>施密特和本雅明之间这场“巨战”的核心问题在于失范（即法律之外的行动或暴力）的本质及其与法律秩序的关系。阿甘本认为，《批判》的核心创新在于彻底失范的“纯粹暴力”这一概念，本雅明通过将其与合法暴力并置而发展出这一概念。本雅明将政治史描述为两种暴力形式之间的“辩证摇摆”，这两种暴力形式都是旨在实现法律秩序的手段。法律建立在超越法律规范的暴力之上（例如战争或革命）。由于法律源于暴力，任何法律秩序都面临着被反暴力推翻的威胁。因此，法律“将个人手中的暴力视为破坏法律体系的危险”。 <sup>14</sup> 因此，法律一旦确立，便立即放弃了立法暴力，并试图“在所有个人目标可能通过暴力有效实现的领域，建立起只能由法律权力实现的法律目标”。 <sup>15</sup> 这种既定的暴力体系试图通过阻止国家以外的任何人使用暴力来维护现有的法律秩序。然而，对“敌对反暴力”的法律压制只能持续到“新的力量或先前被压制的力量战胜了以往的立法暴力，从而建立了新的法律，而新的法律最终也注定会衰落”。 <sup>16</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>Towards the end of the “Critique,” Benjamin explores the idea of a violence that could rupture this cycle and create a “new historical epoch.”<sup>17</sup> Doing so requires that he formulate a form of violence that does not have an instrumental relation to a legal end and which is, as such, radically external to the law. To pursue this possibility, he juxtaposes the “mythic” violence of the Greek gods with the “divine” violence of the Hebraic tradition. The mythic violence of Greek tragedy is “not a means to their ends, scarcely a manifestation of their will, but first of all a manifestation of their existence.”<sup>18</sup> Nonetheless, he argues, mythic violence has a law-making function and hence retains a link to legal ends.<sup>19</sup> In support of this he cites the legend of Niobe, who was stripped of the power of speech and turned to stone by Artemis and Apollo for an insult to their mother Latona. Niobe’s punishment creates a law because it sets an example for those who would think to wrong the Gods: she is “an eternally mute bearer of guilt and … a boundary stone on the frontier between men and gods.”<sup>20</sup> Divine violence, by contrast, is the antithesis of legal violence “in all respects. If mythical violence is lawmaking divine violence is law-destroying; if the former sets boundaries, then the latter boundlessly destroys them; if mythical violence brings at once guilt and retribution, divine power only expiates; if the former threatens, the latter strikes; if the former is bloody, the latter is lethal without spilling blood.”<sup>21</sup> By suspending or destroying the law, divine violence breaks the cycle of positing and preserving that characterizes the history of law and political domination.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>在《批判》的结尾，本雅明探讨了一种能够打破这一循环并创造“新的历史纪元”的暴力理念。 <sup>17</sup> 为此，他需要构建一种与法律目的无关的暴力形式，这种暴力形式因此从根本上独立于法律之外。为了探究这种可能性，他将希腊诸神的“神话”暴力与希伯来传统的“神圣”暴力并置。希腊悲剧中的神话暴力“并非实现其目的的手段，甚至几乎不能算是其意志的体现，而首先是其存在的体现。” <sup>18</sup> 然而，他认为，神话暴力具有立法功能，因此仍然与法律目的存在联系。 <sup>19</sup> 为了佐证这一点，他引用了尼俄柏的传说：尼俄柏因侮辱了阿尔忒弥斯和阿波罗的母亲拉托娜而被剥夺了说话的能力，并被变成了石头。尼俄柏的惩罚创造了一种法则，因为它为那些胆敢冒犯神明的人树立了榜样：她是“永远沉默的罪孽承载者……也是人与神之间边界的一块界石”。 <sup>20</sup> 与之相反，神圣的暴力在各方面都与法律的暴力截然相反。“如果神话中的暴力是立法，那么神圣的暴力就是摧毁法律；如果前者设定界限，那么后者则无限制地摧毁它们；如果神话中的暴力同时带来罪责和惩罚，那么神力只带来赎罪；如果前者是威胁，那么后者是打击；如果前者是血腥的，那么后者是无需流血即可致命的。” <sup>21</sup> 通过中止或摧毁法律，神圣的暴力打破了法律和政治统治历史上那种设定与维护的循环。</font></font></font></div><div>Benjamin asserts that pure violence is manifest in a range of instances, including the “educative power,” a “just war,” and the “divine judgment of the multitude on a criminal.”<sup>22</sup> Benjamin’s most important example of divine violence is, however, the proletarian general strike, a “deep, moral, and genuinely revolutionary” conception of the strike, which he contrasts with the instrumental violence of the partial and political general strikes.<sup>26</sup> The partial strike is a form of law preserving violence, which seeks to extract particular concessions from the existing state. The political general strike is a form of law creating violence that tries to seize the state: as Benjamin argues, however, this does nothing to escape the problem of political domination, for the “mass of producers” simply “change their masters,”<sup>25</sup> with power being “transferred from the privileged to the privileged.” Where partial and political general strikes withdraw labor “in readiness to resume working following external concessions and this or that modification to working conditions,”<sup>24</sup> in the proletarian general strike, the proletariat withdraws in toto from the system of capitalist exploitation backed by state violence, determined “to resume only a wholly transformed work, no longer enforced by the state.”<sup>23</sup> This “unconditional refusal to act” is, as Werner Hamacher writes, “tantamount to a ‘severing of relations’ – that is, of exploitative relations – and is thus ‘an entirely non-violent, pure means.’”<sup>27</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>本雅明断言，纯粹的暴力体现在诸多方面，包括“教育的力量”、“正义的战争”以及“民众对罪犯的神圣审判”。 <sup>22</sup> 然而，本雅明最重要的神圣暴力例证是无产阶级总罢工，他将其视为一种“深刻的、道德的、真正革命性的”罢工理念，并将其与局部罢工和政治总罢工的工具性暴力进行了对比。 <sup>26</sup> 局部罢工是一种维护法律的暴力形式，旨在从现有国家获取特定的让步。政治总罢工则是一种创造法律的暴力形式，试图夺取国家政权：然而，正如本雅明所论证的，这并不能摆脱政治统治的问题，因为“生产者群众”只不过是“更换了他们的主人”， <sup>25</sup> 权力“从特权阶层转移到了特权阶层”。局部罢工和政治性总罢工是指工人“准备在外部做出让步并对工作条件进行某种修改后复工” <sup>24</sup> ，而在无产阶级总罢工中，无产阶级则彻底脱离了由国家暴力支持的资本主义剥削体系，决心“只恢复一种完全改造后的工作，不再受国家强制执行” <sup>23</sup> 。正如维尔纳·哈马赫所写，这种“无条件拒绝行动”“等同于‘切断关系’——即切断剥削关系——因此是一种‘完全非暴力的纯粹手段’” <sup>27</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>With the idea of divine violence, Benjamin’s “Critique” sketches a form of action or violence that is anomic (outside the law) and without any relationship to legal ends. According to Agamben, Schmitt develops his theory of sovereignty to counter Benjamin and re-assert the state’s monopoly on violence. To close down the possibility of a political action that is without relation to law, Schmitt needs to justify the use of anomie for the purposes of law and order. The conceptual move that allows him to “legalise lawlessness”<sup>28</sup> is that of dividing the law into two distinct elements: constitutional norms (which Agamben terms the “normative element of the law” or sometimes simply and confusingly “the law”) and a supplement that is necessary for their application (the “anomic” element of the law, “force of law without law,” or “force-of-<span>law</span>”). Agamben argues that for Schmitt, these two elements normally work together, but when the normative element of the law is suspended, political actions such as “decrees, provisions and measures that are not formally laws nevertheless acquire their ‘force.’”<sup>29</sup> As such, despite the suspension of the constitution, the law continues to exist in an attenuated and anomic form.<sup>30</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>本雅明的《批判》以神圣暴力为概念，勾勒出一种失范（游离于法律之外）且与法律目的毫无关联的行动或暴力形式。阿甘本认为，施密特发展其主权理论是为了反驳本雅明，并重申国家对暴力的垄断。为了排除与法律无关的政治行动的可能性，施密特需要为利用失范来维护法律和秩序辩护。他得以“将无法无天合法化”的理论基础在于将法律分为两个截然不同的要素：宪法规范（阿甘本称之为“法律的规范性要素”，有时也简称为“法律”，但容易引起混淆）以及为适用这些规范所必需的补充（即法律的“失范性”要素、“无法律的法律效力”或“<span> 法律</span>效力”）。阿甘本认为，对施密特而言，这两个要素通常是协同运作的，但当法律的规范性要素被中止时，诸如“法令、规定和措施等并非正式法律的”政治行为却获得了“效力”。 <sup>29</sup> 因此，尽管宪法被中止，法律仍然以一种减弱且失范的形式继续存在。 <sup>30</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>According to Agamben, this move first appears in Schmitt’s 1921 work Dictatorship, which provides a history of the institution of dictatorship from the Ancient Roman Republic through to the Marxist-Leninist notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and whose “fundamental finding” is a distinction between commissarial and sovereign dictatorships. In a commissarial dictatorship, the constitution is suspended and a dictator is given extraordinary powers to save the state from threat. Schmitt argues that, although the commissarial dictator acts outside the law, their actions retain a connection to the legal order in two ways: the existing constitution is not abolished but temporarily suspended; and the terms of its suspension are regulated by “norms of the realisation of law.” Perhaps the best example of this is the office of dictatorship in Republican Rome: while the dictator was given extraordinary powers, the commission from the senate that delegated these powers often limited them according to purpose and duration. For Schmitt, then, the commissarial dictator acts outside the law, yet their actions retain a link to a law that has been suspended, but which remains in force.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>阿甘本认为，这一论断最早出现在施密特 1921 年的著作 《独裁》 中。该书追溯了独裁制度的历史，从古罗马共和国一直到马克思列宁主义的无产阶级专政理论，其“根本发现”在于区分了委任独裁和主权独裁。在委任独裁中，宪法被中止，独裁者被赋予特殊权力以拯救国家于危难之中。施密特指出，尽管委任独裁者的行为凌驾于法律之上，但其行为仍以两种方式与法律秩序保持联系：现行宪法并未被废除，而是暂时中止；而且，宪法中止的条件受到“法律实施规范”的约束。或许罗马共和国的独裁官制度就是最好的例证：虽然独裁官被赋予了非凡的权力，但元老院授予这些权力的委员会往往会根据目的和期限对其进行限制。因此，在施密特看来，专员独裁官的行为凌驾于法律之上，但他们的行为仍然与一项已被暂停但仍然有效的法律存在联系。</font></font></font></div><div>A sovereign dictatorship is a revolutionary organization that aims to overthrow the existing legal order and produce the conditions in which a new constitution can be created. A sovereign dictatorship thus acts “outside” the norms of the law because, by definition, it cannot be regulated by an existing constitution. Schmitt is nonetheless able to argue that this “lawless” action has a legal meaning (and hence has a relation to the law) by drawing on a distinction between constituted and constituent power. Where a commissarial dictatorship suspends the application of a constitution that nonetheless remains in force, in a sovereign dictatorship the law exists in the ‘‘minimal form’’ of an actually existent constituent power, which has not yet achieved a formal existence as a constituted legal system.<sup>31</sup> As Agamben glosses Schmitt’s analysis: “though it is juridically formless (formlos), it represents a ‘minimum of constitution’ inscribed within every politically decisive action and is therefore capable of ensuring the relation between the state of exception and the juridical order.”<sup>32</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>主权独裁政权是一种旨在推翻现有法律秩序并创造条件以制定新宪法的革命组织。因此，主权独裁政权的行为“游离于”法律规范之外，因为根据定义，它不受现有宪法的约束。然而，施密特通过区分既定权力和制宪权力，论证了这种“无法无天”的行为具有法律意义（因此与法律相关）。在委任独裁政权中，宪法虽然仍然有效，但其适用却被中止；而在主权独裁政权中，法律以实际存在的制宪权力的“最低限度形式”存在，这种制宪权力尚未正式成为既定的法律体系。 <sup>31</sup> 正如阿甘本对施密特分析的阐释：“尽管它在法律上是无形式的（ formlos ），但它代表着一种‘最低限度的宪法’，这种宪法体现在每一个具有政治决定性的行动中，因此能够确保例外状态与法律秩序之间的关系。” <sup>32</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>The task of Dictatorship was to theorize how two particular forms of violence that took place outside the norms of law could still be instrumentally related to the law: a commissarial dictatorship preserves a law that remains in force and is regulated by “techno-practical rules” that derive from that legal order; a sovereign dictatorship posits a new legal order, but nonetheless has a minimal legal form even though it does not yet have force as a legal system. According to Agamben, Benjamin’s distinction between law-preserving and law-positing violence is borrowed from that between constituent and constituted power in Dictatorship.<sup>33</sup> With the idea of divine violence, however, the “Critique” formulates a form of violence that is genuinely revolutionary because it is outside the law and it also deposes the relationship between violence on the one hand, and law and political domination on the other. According to Agamben, then, it is “to neutralize this new figure of pure violence removed from the dialectic between constituent power and constituted power that Schmitt develops his theory of sovereignty.”<sup>34</sup> In doing so, Political Theology explicitly formulates the common presupposition of both commissarial and sovereign forms of dictatorship: the idea that actions outside the law (anomie) are still related to the law. This idea of the “inclusive exclusion” of anomie is, Agamben argues, the “limit concept of the doctrine of law and the State.”<sup>35</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>《独裁》 的任务在于阐述两种发生在法律规范之外的特殊暴力形式如何仍能与法律建立工具性联系：一种是委任独裁，它维护着一部仍然有效并受制于源自该法律秩序的“技术实践规则”的法律；另一种是主权独裁，它提出了一种新的法律秩序，但即便它尚未作为一个法律体系拥有效力，也仍然具有最低限度的法律形式。阿甘本认为，本雅明对维护法律的暴力和提出法律的暴力的区分，借鉴了 《独裁》 中对构成权力和既定权力的区分。 <sup>33</sup> 然而，通过神圣暴力的概念，《批判》提出了一种真正具有革命性的暴力形式，因为它游离于法律之外， 并且它还颠覆了暴力与法律和政治统治之间的关系。因此，根据阿甘本的说法，施密特发展其主权理论的目的正是为了“消除这种脱离制约权力与既定权力辩证关系的纯粹暴力的新形象”。 <sup>34</sup> 在此过程中， 《政治神学》 明确阐述了专制政体和主权独裁政体的共同预设：即法外行为（失范）仍然与法律相关。阿甘本认为，这种对失范的“包容性排斥”是“法律与国家学说的极限概念”。 <sup>35</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>As with his earlier work on emergency powers, Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty is driven by a distinction between normative and anomic elements of the law. The legal form is unique, he argues, because it is comprised of both legal norms and the decisions of the state. Authority is an essential part of the law because legal norms are abstractions, and only produce political order when they are applied or given force: as such, “what matters for the reality of legal life is who decides.”<sup>36</sup> In the normal situation, the norms of law and the decisions of state co-exist as constitutionally regulated authorities apply the norms of law to particular cases. In a situation of extreme emergency, however, the state may decide that it faces an exceptional situation, and that the constitution needs to be suspended so that a political struggle can occur that will restore order. While the normative element of the law may be suspended, the state of exception nevertheless remains “accessible to jurisprudence,”<sup>37</sup> because the decisions of authority are themselves a part of the law. The distinction between norm and decision thus allows Schmitt to formulate the paradox that Agamben places at the center of the analysis of sovereignty in Homo Sacer: that “the sovereign is, at the same time, inside and outside the juridical order.”<sup>38</sup> The sovereign is necessarily outside the law because it is defined by the suspension of the law. At the same time, however, the sovereign belongs to the legal order because the decisions of authority are themselves an aspect of the law: the state of exception simply reveals this “specifically juridical formal element” in “absolute purity.”<sup>39</sup> The theory of sovereignty thus produces a relationship of inclusive exclusion between the anomic element of the law (the state of exception) and the normative legal order.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>与他早期关于紧急权力的研究一样，施密特对主权的分析也基于对法律规范性要素和非规范性要素的区分。他认为，法律形式的独特之处在于它既包含法律规范，也包含国家决策。权威是法律的重要组成部分，因为法律规范是抽象概念，只有在被应用或赋予效力时才能产生政治秩序：因此，“对法律生活的现实而言，关键在于谁来做决定。” <sup>36</sup> 在正常情况下，法律规范和国家决策并存，受宪法约束的权力机构将法律规范应用于具体案件。然而，在极端紧急情况下，国家可能会认定自身面临特殊情况，需要暂停宪法，以便开展政治斗争来恢复秩序。尽管法律的规范性要素可能被暂停，但这种例外状态仍然“可供法理学解读”， <sup>37</sup> 因为权力机构的决策本身就是法律的一部分。因此，规范与决策之间的区别使得施密特能够阐述阿甘本在 《神圣人》 中置于主权分析核心的悖论：“主权者同时处于法律秩序之内和之外。” <sup>38</sup> 主权者必然处于法律之外，因为它是由法律的暂停所定义的。然而，与此同时，主权者又属于法律秩序，因为权威的决策本身就是法律的一个方面：例外状态只是以“绝对纯粹”的方式揭示了这种“特殊的法律形式要素”。” <sup>39</sup> 因此，主权理论在法律的失范要素（例外状态）和规范的法律秩序之间产生了一种包容性排斥关系。</font></font></font></div><div>In Agamben’s reading, then, the core of Schmitt’s work on emergency powers is the idea that legal authority survives the suspension of the law as the “force-of-<span>law</span>.” This means that actions taken outside the law have a juridical character, so long as they create the conditions of order in which law can be applied once more. To put this in more concrete terms, let us turn to the problem of revolution and the general strike. As Agamben makes clear in the opening pages of State of Exception, there is an intimate relationship between civil war and the state of exception “which is state power’s immediate response to the most extreme internal conflicts.”<sup>40</sup> When the State is faced by an internal conflict that threatens its existence, it responds by suspending the law, which dissolves the political entity and allows a legally unrestricted and violent struggle to take place. If, for example, the proletariat withdraws from the state in determination to overcome capitalist labor relations, they will most likely be met by the declaration of state of exception: emergency rule and state violence. While the result of this struggle will depend on the balance of forces in the particular historical conjuncture, the crucial point, for Schmitt, is that the negation of law eventually leads back to a new state and a new law. If the state is successful in repressing the revolution, then the old order will be restored and the state will have acted as a commissarial dictatorship. If the proletariat is successful in overthrowing the bourgeoisie, however, they will then be confronted with the problem of the state. From the perspective of the theory of sovereignty, a revolution can only ever act as constituent power, a moment of upheaval that replaces the existing juridical order. As long as the civil war does not last indefinitely, political struggle will eventually lead back to a new constitutional order or the restoration of the old one.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>因此，在阿甘本的解读中，施密特关于紧急权力的核心思想是，即使法律被中止，法律权威仍然以“<span> 法律</span>效力”的形式存在。这意味着，只要能够创造法律得以再次适用的秩序条件，那么任何在法律之外采取的行动都具有法律性质。为了更具体地说明这一点，让我们转向革命和总罢工的问题。正如阿甘本在 《例外状态》 的开篇所阐明的那样，内战与“国家权力对最极端内部冲突的直接反应”——例外状态——之间存在着密切的联系。当国家面临威胁其生存的内部冲突时，它会通过中止法律来应对，这会瓦解政治实体，并允许一场不受法律限制的暴力斗争发生。例如，如果无产阶级决心推翻资本主义劳动关系而脱离国家，他们很可能面临宣布进入例外状态：紧急状态和国家暴力。尽管这场斗争的结果取决于特定历史时期各方力量的平衡，但对施密特而言，关键在于对法律的否定最终会导致一个新的国家和一部新的法律的出现。如果国家成功镇压了革命，那么旧秩序将会恢复，国家也将沦为专制政体。然而，如果无产阶级成功推翻了资产阶级，他们接下来将面临的将是国家问题。 从主权理论的角度来看，革命只能发挥制宪作用，成为取代现有法律秩序的变革时刻。只要内战不无限期地持续下去，政治斗争最终必将导向新的宪政秩序或旧秩序的恢复。</font></font></font></div></section><section id="sec-2">II. Benjamin and the Impossibility of Decision<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>二、本雅明与决策的不可能性</font></font></font>
<div>Benjamin’s “Critique” introduces the idea of a radically anomic violence that suspends the law and thereby deposes the relationship between violence and law. According to Agamben, however, Political Theology neutralises this move by suggesting that the suspension of the law is the motor of the historical dialectic of legal violence: “from Schmitt’s perspective, the functioning of the juridical order ultimately rests on an apparatus – the state of exception – whose purpose is to make the norm applicable by temporarily suspending its efficacy.”<sup>41</sup> Sovereign violence may suspend the law: yet it remains instrumentally related to legal ends, and hence does not depose the relationship between law and violence. Agamben’s own politics are profoundly influenced by Benjamin: in order, then, to re-open the conceptual space for a politics of pure violence, he must undermine Schmitt’s attempt to instrumentalize the suspension of the law for legal ends. State of Exception sets out to achieve this through a reading of two of Benjamin’s works: The Origin of German Tragic Drama and the eighth of the Theses on the Philosophy of History.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>本雅明的《批判》引入了一种彻底的失范暴力概念，这种暴力中止了法律，从而瓦解了暴力与法律之间的关系。然而，阿甘本认为， 政治神学通过指出法律的中止是法律暴力历史辩证法的动力，从而抵消了这一观点：“从施密特的视角来看，司法秩序的运作最终依赖于一种机制——例外状态——其目的是通过暂时中止规范的效力来使其适用。” <sup>41</sup> 主权暴力或许可以中止法律，但它仍然与法律目的存在工具性关联，因此并不能瓦解法律与暴力之间的关系。阿甘本的政治思想深受本雅明的影响：因此，为了重新开启纯粹暴力政治的概念空间，他必须削弱施密特将法律中止工具化以实现法律目的的企图。 《例外状态》试图通过解读本雅明的两部作品来实现这一目标： 《德国悲剧的起源》 和 《历史哲学论纲》 第八条。</font></font></font></div><div>Agamben argues that Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty takes up and exploits Benjamin’s assertion, in the “Critique,” of the ‘‘ultimate insolubility’’ of all legal problems.<sup>42</sup> According to Benjamin, the correctness of a judgment is unknowable with any certainty as human knowledge is partial and contingent: even the commandment “thou shalt not kill” is only a “guideline for the actions of persons or communities who have to wrestle with it in solitude and, in exceptional cases, to take on themselves the responsibility of ignoring it.”<sup>43</sup>Political Theology uses the problem of legal indeterminacy highlighted by Benjamin as the justification for sovereign power: it is precisely because legal problems are ‘‘ultimately insoluble’’ that the sovereign decision is needed. The declaration of a state of exception cannot be grounded in a norm, because there is always the possibility of a situation of danger that would exceed normative codification. But neither can the declaration be immediately grounded in the fact situation that ostensibly poses a threat to the state, because it is never self-evident whether a situation of danger actually exists. The sovereign is necessary because neither law nor fact can ultimately determine the exception: their role is to decide when a situation of danger exists and suspend the law in response.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>阿甘本认为，施密特对主权的分析承袭并利用了本雅明在《批判》中提出的“所有法律问题最终都无法解决”的论断。 <sup>42</sup> 根据本雅明的观点，判断的正确性无法被确切地知晓，因为人类的知识是片面的、偶然的：即使是“不可杀人”这条诫命，也仅仅是“指导个人或群体行为的准则，他们必须独自面对它，并在特殊情况下承担起无视它的责任。” <sup>43</sup> 政治神学利用本雅明强调的法律不确定性问题作为主权权力的正当性依据：正因为法律问题“最终都无法解决”，才需要主权者的裁决。例外状态的宣告不能基于任何规范，因为总有可能出现超出规范性规定范围的危险情况。但这项声明也不能立即基于表面上对国家构成威胁的事实情况，因为危险情况是否真的存在从来都不是显而易见的。主权者是必要的，因为法律和事实都无法最终决定例外情况：主权者的职责是判断危险情况何时存在，并据此暂停法律的适用。</font></font></font></div><div>In The Origin of German Tragic Drama, Benjamin responds to Schmitt by extending on his earlier critique of human finitude and articulating “a proper theory of sovereign indecision.”<sup>44</sup> Where Schmitt’s sovereign is a secularized God, the sovereign of the baroque mourning play is “confined to the world of creation: he is the lord of creatures, but he remains a creature.”<sup>45</sup> Faced with the gap between norm and application, and given the responsibility to decide upon the exception, the baroque sovereign is overwhelmed by the undecidable. As a literary confrontation with secularization, the baroque mourning play is thus plagued by indecision, and in it, the exception becomes “a zone of absolute indeterminacy between anomie and law, in which the sphere of creatures and the juridical order are caught up in a single catastrophe.”<sup>46</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>在 《德国悲剧的起源》 中，本雅明回应了施密特，进一步阐述了他早先对人类有限性的批判，并提出了“一种恰当的主权不确定性理论”。 <sup>44</sup> 施密特的主权者是一位世俗化的上帝，而巴洛克哀悼剧中的主权者则“被限制在创造的世界中：他是万物之主，但他仍然是受造物”。 <sup>45</sup> 面对规范与应用之间的鸿沟，并被赋予决定例外情况的责任，巴洛克的主权者被不可判定性所淹没。作为对世俗化的文学挑战，巴洛克哀悼剧因此饱受不确定性的困扰，其中，例外情况成为“介于失范与法律之间的绝对不确定地带，在这个地带中，受造物领域和法律秩序都被卷入了一场单一的灾难”。 <sup>46</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>While the portrayal of the baroque sovereign highlights the undecidability that haunts all judgment, it does not foreclose the theoretical or practical possibility of such a decision. For Agamben, then, the decisive countermove in the gigantomachy is Benjamin’s assertion, in the eighth of the Theses on the Philosophy of History, that “the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is not the exception but the rule.”<sup>47</sup> Agamben’s paradigmatic example of the emergency as rule is the Nazi’s indefinite suspension of the law through the 1933 “Decree for the Protection of the State and People.” While the Nazi decree was politically justified as a response to the burning of the Reichstag and the threat to the state posed by communism, Nazi jurists openly characterized it as bringing “into being a state of willed exception for the sake of the establishment of the National Socialist State.”<sup>48</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>尽管对巴洛克式君主的刻画凸显了所有判断都存在的不可判定性，但这并未排除做出此类决定的理论或实践可能性。因此，对阿甘本而言，这场“巨人之战”中决定性的反击是本雅明在 《历史哲学论纲》第八条中的论断 ，即“我们所处的‘紧急状态’并非例外，而是常态。” <sup>47</sup> 阿甘本将紧急状态视为常态的典型例证是纳粹通过 1933 年的《保护国家和人民法令》无限期地中止了法律。尽管纳粹法令在政治上被辩解为对国会纵火案和共产主义对国家构成的威胁的回应，但纳粹法学家公开将其描述为“为了建立国家社会主义国家而人为地制造了一种例外状态。” <sup>48</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>For Agamben, the normalization of the exception that Benjamin identifies simultaneously brings to light the structure of sovereignty and makes it constitutively impossible for the sovereign to decide. The Nazis were able to indefinitely suspend the law because there is no necessary relation between the decision on the state of exception and the fact situation that ostensibly gives rise to it. As Agamben puts it, “the sovereign no longer limits himself, as he did in the spirit of the Weimar constitution, to deciding on the exception on the basis of recognising a given factual situation (danger to public safety): laying bare the inner structure of the ban that characterises his power, he now de facto produces the situation as a consequence of his decision on the exception.”<sup>49</sup> By indefinitely suspending the law, the Nazi party produced a “normal” constitutional structure characterized by the profound legal indeterminacy of the emergency situation. This is, Agamben argues, deeply problematic for Schmitt’s account of sovereignty, which depends upon a relatively clear temporal and categorical distinction between the juridical practices of the normal situation (in which the constitution applies) and the emergency situation (in which it is suspended). Once emergency and normality, exception and law, are rendered absolutely undecidable, the sovereign is “no longer capable of performing the task that Political Theology assigned to it”:<sup>50</sup> that of distinguishing between exception and law on the basis of a distinction between emergency and normality.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>在阿甘本看来，本雅明所指出的例外状态的常态化，既揭示了主权的结构，又从根本上使主权者无法做出决定。纳粹之所以能够无限期地中止法律，是因为关于例外状态的决定与表面上引发例外状态的事实情况之间并无必然联系。正如阿甘本所言，“主权者不再像魏玛宪法精神所规定的那样，仅仅基于对特定事实情况（公共安全受到威胁）的认知来决定例外状态：他现在通过揭示构成其权力特征的禁令的内在结构，实际上制造了这种状况，而这正是他关于例外状态的决定所带来的结果。” <sup>49</sup> 通过无限期地中止法律，纳粹党构建了一种“正常”的宪政结构，其特征是紧急情况下法律的深刻不确定性。阿甘本认为，这对于施密特的主权理论而言是一个极其棘手的问题，因为该理论依赖于在正常状态（宪法适用）和紧急状态（宪法中止）的法律实践之间相对清晰的时间和范畴区分。一旦紧急状态与正常状态、例外与法律变得完全无法判定，主权者就“不再能够履行政治神学赋予它的任务”： <sup>50</sup> 即基于紧急状态与正常状态的区分来区分例外与法律。</font></font></font></div></section><section id="sec-3">III. The Days of the Messiah and the Fiction of Sovereignty<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>三、弥赛亚时代与主权的虚构</font></font></font>
<div>What, then, are the political and theoretical implications of this “gigantomachy” and the “decisive countermove” that we have witnessed in Benjamin’s “Theses”? In order to explore this question, we need to turn to the idea of messianism. This theme is fundamental to Agamben’s legal thought due to the structural parallel that he identifies between the days of the messiah and the state of exception. In Jewish tradition, the arrival of the Messiah fulfills and consummates the law. This does not mean that the existing law is replaced by a new legal code: rather, the messianic event “signifies a crisis and radical transformation of the entire order of the law.”<sup>51</sup> Similarly, Agamben asserts, the condition of contemporary politics, in which the state of exception is the rule, produces a crisis for the juridico-political tradition: “In the days of the Messiah, which are also the “state of exception” in which we live, the hidden foundation of the law comes to light, and the law itself enters into a state of perpetual suspension.”<sup>52</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>那么，本雅明《论题》中所描述的这场“大战”和“决定性的反击”在政治和理论层面上究竟有何意义？为了探讨这个问题，我们需要转向弥赛亚主义的概念。这一主题是阿甘本法律思想的基石，因为他指出弥赛亚时代与例外状态之间存在结构上的相似性。在犹太传统中，弥赛亚的到来成全并完善了律法。这并非意味着现有的律法被新的法典所取代：相反，弥赛亚事件“标志着整个律法秩序的危机和根本性转变”。 <sup>51</sup> 同样，阿甘本断言，当代政治的现状——例外状态成为常态——也给法治政治传统带来了危机：“在弥赛亚时代，也就是我们所处的‘例外状态’中，律法的隐秘根基显露出来，而律法本身则进入了一种永恒的悬置状态。” <sup>52</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>Agamben consistently juxtaposes two different ways of thinking about what it means to live in the “days of the messiah” (and, by extension, the state of exception in which we live). The first and most common way of thinking about life beyond the law is what he describes as an “imperfect nihilism.”<sup>53</sup> In Homo Sacer, the exemplary case of this nihilism is the thought of Gerschom Scholem who argues (in correspondence with his friend Walter Benjamin) that law appears, in Kafka’s universe of infinite trials and impenetrable authority, “in the form of its unrealiseability.”<sup>54</sup> This is because, although the content of the law has been annulled, the Law nonetheless remains in force and hence continues to operate. This form of law corresponds, in theology, to the “Nothing of Revelation”: “a stage in which revelation does not signify, yet still affirms itself by the fact that it is in force.”<sup>55</sup> For Scholem then, the originary form of the Jewish Law is one that is “in force without significance.”<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>阿甘本始终并置两种不同的思考方式，来阐释生活在“弥赛亚时代”（以及由此延伸的，我们所处的例外状态）的意义。第一种也是最常见的思考方式，即超越律法的生活，被他描述为一种“不完美的虚无主义”。 <sup>53</sup> 在 《神圣之人》（Homo Sacer） 中，这种虚无主义的典型例子是格尔肖姆·肖勒姆的思想。肖勒姆（在与他的朋友瓦尔特·本雅明的通信中）认为，在卡夫卡笔下那个充满无限考验和不可逾越的权威的世界里，律法“以其不可实现性的形式”出现。 <sup>54</sup> 这是因为，尽管律法的内容已被废除，但律法本身仍然有效，因此仍在继续运作。这种形式的律法在神学上对应于“启示的虚无”：“启示不再具有意义，却仍然因其有效性而肯定自身。” <sup>55</sup> 因此，对于肖勒姆来说，犹太律法的原始形式是“没有意义的生效形式”。</font></font></font></div><div>As Agamben points out, Scholem’s account of the law in Kafka is structurally analogous to Schmitt’s analysis of sovereignty: for Scholem, the Torah continues to exist even though it is no longer decipherable; for Schmitt, the law continues to operate despite its suspension. One of the major paradoxes of this interpretation of the days of the messiah/state of exception, is that the law is indistinguishable from life (because in the absence of the norms of law, “the law” no longer has any meaning separate from facticity) and yet the law is still held to exist. This leads to the problem that Agamben places at the center of Homo Sacer: that those subject to the state of exception are stripped of the legal rights that would protect them, and yet are still subject to the violence of the law: “insofar as law is maintained as pure form in a state of virtual exception, it lets bare life (K.’s life, or the life lived in the village at the foot of the castle) subsist before it.”<sup>56</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>正如阿甘本所指出的，肖勒姆对卡夫卡作品中法律的解读在结构上与施密特对主权的分析类似：对肖勒姆而言，即使律法已无法解读，它依然存在；对施密特而言，即使法律被中止，它依然运作。这种对弥赛亚时代/例外状态的解读的一个主要悖论在于，法律与生活密不可分（因为在缺乏法律规范的情况下，“法律”不再具有任何独立于事实性的意义），然而法律仍然被认为存在。这就引出了阿甘本在 《神圣人》 一书中提出的核心问题：处于例外状态的人被剥夺了本应保护他们的法律权利，却仍然遭受法律的暴力：“只要法律在实际上的例外状态下以纯粹的形式存在，它就允许赤裸裸的生活（K.的生活，或者城堡脚下村庄里的生活）在其面前得以存在。” <sup>56</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>According to Agamben, however, Walter Benjamin provides us with a very different way of thinking about life beyond the law. In response to Scholem, Benjamin asserts that life lived in the absence of scripture no longer has any juridical meaning: it is simply life. “Without the key that belongs to it,” Benjamin writes, “Scripture is not Scripture, but life. Life as it is lived in the village at the foot of the hill on which the castle is built.”<sup>57</sup> For Agamben, Scholem’s imperfect nihilism understands life in Kafka’s world in terms of a nullified law that “subsists indefinitely”<sup>58</sup> while Benjamin’s “inversion” of Scholem provides a “messianic nihilism that nullifies even the Nothing, and lets no form of law remain in force beyond its own content.”<sup>59</sup> He detects a similar move to Benjamin’s inversion of Scholem’s theology in the eighth of the “Theses,” which responds to Political Theology with the idea of a “real state of emergency” which is “our task to bring about.”<sup>60</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>然而，阿甘本认为，瓦尔特·本雅明为我们提供了一种截然不同的关于超越法律的生活的思考方式。本雅明回应肖勒姆，断言在没有经文的情况下生活不再具有任何法律意义：它仅仅是生活。“没有了与之相符的钥匙，”本雅明写道，“经文不再是经文，而是生活。就像在城堡所在的山脚下的村庄里生活一样。” <sup>57</sup> 在阿甘本看来，肖勒姆不完美的虚无主义将卡夫卡世界中的生活理解为一种被废除的、“无限期存在”的律法 <sup>58</sup> ，而本雅明对肖勒姆的“颠覆”则提供了一种“弥赛亚式的虚无主义，它甚至废除了虚无本身，并且不允许任何形式的律法在其自身内容之外继续有效。” <sup>59</sup> 他在《论纲》第八条中发现了与本雅明对肖勒姆神学的颠覆类似的举动，该条以“真正的紧急状态”这一概念回应了政治神学， 而“我们的任务就是促成这种紧急状态的出现”。 <sup>60</sup> </font></font></font></div><div>Agamben’s reading of the “Theses” is thus decisive, not only for his critique of the continued viability of Schmitt’s theory, but also his response to the contemporary political situation. There is, however, an important transformation of Agamben’s approach to the eighth thesis between Homo Sacer and State of Exception. In Homo Sacer Agamben asserts that Benjamin’s thesis opposes “a ‘real’ state of exception, which it is our task to bring about, to the state of exception in which we live, which has become the rule.”<sup>61</sup> This passage suggests that what is fictitious is the political situation in which the state of exception has been generalized,<sup>62</sup> which seems to imply that a real state of exception would involve an opposition to the sovereign politics of the contemporary state (perhaps corresponding to the idea of “form-of-life” that appears in the closing pages of Homo Sacer).<sup>63</sup> However, Agamben’s position shifts (or at least becomes more complicated) when he returns to the messianic inversion of Schmitt in State of Exception. It is worth quoting him at length on this point:<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>因此，阿甘本对“论纲”的解读至关重要，不仅关乎他对施密特理论持续有效性的批判，也关乎他对当代政治局势的回应。然而，在《 神圣人》（Homo Sacer） 和 《例外状态》（State of Exception） 之间，阿甘本对第八条论纲的解读发生了重要的转变。在《神圣人》中，阿甘本断言本雅明的论纲将“我们应当努力实现的‘真正的’例外状态，与我们所处的、已成为常态的例外状态”对立起来。 <sup>61</sup> 这段话暗示，虚构的是例外状态普遍化的政治情境， <sup>62</sup> 这似乎意味着，真正的例外状态将包含对当代国家主权政治的反对（或许与 《神圣人》结尾处出现的“生活形式”概念相对应） 。 <sup>63</sup> 然而，当阿甘本在 《例外状态》 中重新审视施密特的弥赛亚式反转时，他的立场发生了转变（或者至少变得更加复杂）。关于这一点，值得详细引用他的论述：</font></font></font><div>Now that any possibility of a fictitious state of exception – in which exception and normal conditions are temporally and locally distinct – has collapsed, the state of exception “in which we live” is real and absolutely cannot be distinguished from the rule. Every fiction of a nexus between violence and law disappears here; there is nothing but a zone of anomie, in which a violence without juridical form acts. The attempt of state power to annex anomie through the state of exception is unmasked by Benjamin for what it is: a fictio iuris par excellence, which claims to maintain the law in its very suspension as force-of-<span>law</span>. What now takes its place are civil war and revolutionary violence, that is, a human action that has shed [desposto] every relation to law.<sup>64</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>既然任何虚构的例外状态——即例外与正常状态在时间和地域上截然不同的状态——的可能性都已瓦解，那么“我们所处的”例外状态便是真实的，并且绝对无法与规则区分开来。暴力与法律之间任何联系的虚构在此都消失了；存在的只是一片失范地带，其中暴力以无法律形式存在。本雅明揭露了国家权力试图通过例外状态来吞并失范状态的本质：一种卓越的虚构法律 ，它声称在<span>法律</span>本身悬置的状态下，仍能维持法律的效力。取而代之的是内战和革命暴力，即一种已经摆脱了与法律一切关系的人类行动。</font></font></font></div></div><div>Homo Sacer appeared to establish an opposition between the catastrophic political state in which we live and a revolutionary yet ill-defined “real state of exception.” Although Homo Sacer defers an account of what this revolutionary politics might entail, it is clear that if and when Agamben does work through this problem, bringing about such a politics would be a task that could help in the contemporary struggle against authoritarianism. In State of Exception, however, it is the normalized state of exception “in which we live” that is real, and the fiction is the sovereign claim that there is a relationship between law and anomie. What produces the “real state of exception” is Benjamin’s thesis, which unmasks sovereignty as a fiction by highlighting a generalized violence that has “shed every relation to law.” This creates some difficulties in understanding the relationship between the idea of a “real state of exception” and the radical politics that Agamben advocates. On its face, it seems to suggest that the “real state of exception” is not a radically new condition or revolutionary form-of-life at all, but a political situation of lawlessness that already exists and which needs to be resisted. If we are already subject to this lawlessness, then it is not clear how bringing about a real state of exception can be a political task. It is also unclear how it can be a political task if Benjamin has already exposed the real state of exception as such in the eighth of the “Theses.” Finally, it is difficult to see how pointing out the existence of this political situation is meant to help in the “struggle against Fascism.”<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>《神圣人》（Homo Sacer） 似乎在我们所处的灾难性政治状态与一种革命性的、但定义模糊的“真实例外状态”之间建立了一种对立。尽管 《神圣人》 并未对这种革命政治的具体内涵做出阐述，但显而易见的是，如果阿甘本最终能够解决这个问题，那么构建这样一种政治将有助于当代反抗威权主义的斗争。然而，在 《例外状态》（State of Exception） 中，真实存在的是“我们所处的”这种常态化的例外状态，而虚构之处在于主权者声称法律与失范之间存在某种联系。产生“真实例外状态”的是本雅明的论点，该论点通过强调一种“与法律毫无关联”的普遍暴力，揭示了主权的虚构本质。这使得理解“真实例外状态”的概念与阿甘本所倡导的激进政治之间的关系变得有些困难。表面上看，这似乎表明“现实例外状态”根本不是一种全新的状况或革命性的生活方式，而是一种已经存在且需要抵制的政治上的无法无天的局面。如果我们已经受制于这种无法无天，那么，造成现实例外状态如何能成为一项政治任务就令人费解了。同样令人费解的是，如果本雅明已经在《论纲》第八条中揭露了现实例外状态的本质，那么它又如何能成为一项政治任务呢？最后，很难理解指出这种政治局面的存在如何有助于“反对法西斯主义的斗争”。</font></font></font></div><div>An important insight into what Agamben sees as being at stake in this reading of the “Theses” can, however, be gleaned from The Time That Remains. This work should be read as a companion piece to State of Exception, given its suggestion that Paul’s Letter to the Romans and Benjamin’s “Theses” are two of the “fundamental messianic texts of our tradition.”<sup>65</sup> Agamben asserts that Paul’s approach to messianism is unique in that it “decomposes the messianic event into two times: resurrection and parousia, the second coming of Jesus at the end of time.”<sup>66</sup> Paul viewed the time in which he was living as the “time of the now,” a time between the messianic deactivation of law that occurs with Jesus’ first coming, and the full presence of God that is to occur with the eschaton. Insofar as it fractures the messianic event in this way, the Pauline concept of salvation is characterized by a “paradoxical tension between an already and a not yet,”<sup>67</sup> in which the messiah is already at work, but has yet to be fully revealed. This messianic tension is observable in 2 Thessalonians 2, where Paul asserts that the second coming of the messiah will only occur when “the man of lawlessness, the son of destruction, is revealed.”<sup>68</sup> Paul writes:<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>然而，从《余时》 （The Time That Remains） 一书中，我们可以获得关于阿甘本在解读《罗马书》时所关注的关键所在的重要见解。鉴于本书认为保罗的《罗马书》和本雅明的《罗马书》是“我们传统中弥赛亚论的两部基本文本”，因此应将其视为《 例外状态 》（State of Exception）的姊妹篇。 <sup>65</sup> 阿甘本断言，保罗对弥赛亚论的独特之处在于，它将弥赛亚事件分解为两个时期：复活和再临（parousia） ，即耶稣在末世的第二次降临。 <sup>66</sup> 保罗将他所处的时代视为“当下”，即介于耶稣第一次降临时律法失效与末世（eschaton） 时上帝完全临在之间的时期。保罗的救赎观之所以具有这种对弥赛亚事件的割裂性，就在于它体现了一种“既已存在又尚未完全显现”的悖论性张力 <sup>67</sup> ：弥赛亚已经开始工作，但尚未完全显明。这种弥赛亚张力在帖撒罗尼迦后书 2 章中可见一斑，保罗在那里断言，弥赛亚的第二次降临只有在“那不法的人，那沉沦之子”显露出来时才会发生。 <sup>68</sup> 保罗写道：</font></font></font>
<div>You know what it is that is holding him back (ho katechon), so that he will be revealed when the time comes. For the mystery of lawlessness (anomia) is already at work (energeitai), but only until the person now holding (ho katechon) it back gets out of the way. Then the lawless one (anomos) will be revealed, whom the Lord will destroy with the breath of his mouth, rendering him inoperative (katargesi) by the manifestation of his presence (parousia).<sup>69</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>你知道是什么阻碍了他（ ho katechon ），使他到了时候显露出来。因为那不法的奥秘（ anomia ）已经运行（ energeitai ），只是现在阻碍它（ ho katechon ）的那个人要离开。那时，那不法的人（ anomos ）必显露出来，主必用口中的气灭绝他，藉着主的临在（ parousia ）使他失效（ katargesi ）。</font></font></font></div></div><div>For Paul, then, the first messianic event suspends the law, meaning that the “mystery of anomia” is already at work. This is, however, being “held back” or covered over by the katechon. The katechon is, Agamben asserts, “the force – the Roman empire as well as every constituted authority – that clashes with and hides katargesis, the state of tendential lawlessness that characterises the messianic, and in this sense delays unveiling the ‘mystery of lawlessness.”’<sup>70</sup> The modern vision of the state as a force preventing anarchy and civil war is a secularisation of this vision of the katechon as an “arresting force” that holds back the lawlessness of the end times.<sup>71</sup> The authoritarian version of this idea, found in thinkers such as Hobbes and Schmitt, is a modern manifestation of an “ancient tradition, already found in Tertullian,” which ascribes to the link between the state and the katechon a “positive historical function.”<sup>72</sup> However, Agamben’s reading of Paul inverts this positive evaluation of the state: the katechon is, he argues, “the semblance that covers up the substantial lawlessness of messianic time. In solving the ‘mystery,’ semblance is cast out, and power assumes the figure of anomos, of that which is the absolute outlaw.”<sup>73</sup> For Agamben, then, the state is precisely what must be held back to reveal the radical inoperativity that characterizes the messianic, a move that would reveal “the substantial illegitimacy of each and every power in messianic time.”<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>因此，对保罗而言，第一个弥赛亚事件暂停了律法，这意味着“无政府状态的奥秘”已经开始运作。然而，这被“ 卡特孔”（katechon） 所“阻止”或掩盖。阿甘本断言，“ 卡特孔 ”是“一种力量——罗马帝国以及所有既定的权威——它与 ‘卡塔格西斯’（katargesis ，弥赛亚的特征，一种倾向性的无法无天的状态）相冲突并掩盖它，从这个意义上说，它延缓了‘无法无天的奥秘’的揭示。” <sup>70</sup> 现代将国家视为防止无政府状态和内战的力量，是对 “卡特孔 ”作为一种“阻止力量”阻止末世无法无天状态这一观点的世俗化诠释。 <sup>71</sup> 这种观点的威权版本，见于霍布斯和施密特等思想家，是“古老传统（早在特土良时期就已出现）”的现代体现，该传统赋予国家与“ katechon ”（国家权力机构）之间的联系以“积极的历史功能”。 <sup>72</sup> 然而，阿甘本对保罗的解读颠覆了这种对国家的积极评价：他认为，“ katechon ”是“掩盖弥赛亚时代实质上无法无天的表象。在解开‘奥秘’的过程中，表象被抛弃，权力则呈现出 ‘anomos ’（绝对的法外之徒）的形象。” <sup>73</sup> 因此，在阿甘本看来，国家恰恰是必须被遏制的，以揭示弥赛亚时代所特有的根本性无能，这一举动将揭示“弥赛亚时代中每一种权力的实质上的非法性”。</font></font></font></div><div>This account of the “mystery of anomia” provides a crucial lens through which to read Agamben’s account of the distinction between real and fictitious states of exception. Schmitt’s justification of sovereign violence is solidly grounded in the tradition that says that the state is necessary to prevent civil war. However, the normalization of the state of emergency means that, instead of political actors using anomie to preserve or create law, there is only a condition of generalized violence. The contemporary state is thus a threat to the very life it is ostensibly designed to protect: far from being a force that protects its citizens from civil war (katechon), the contemporary state is a lawless power (anomos) that is “leading the West towards global civil war.”<sup>75</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>对“失范之谜”的这种解读，为我们理解阿甘本关于真实与虚构的例外状态之间区别的论述提供了一个至关重要的视角。施密特对主权暴力的辩护牢牢扎根于这样一种传统：国家对于防止内战是必要的。然而，紧急状态的常态化意味着，政治行为者不再利用失范来维护或制定法律，而是仅仅处于一种普遍暴力的状态。因此，当代国家本身就对其表面上旨在保护的生命构成了威胁：当代国家远非保护其公民免于内战（ katechon ）的力量，而是一种无法无天的权力（ anomos ），它正在“将西方引向全球内战”。</font></font></font></div><div>For Benjamin, life in the absence of the Torah is just life: similarly, for Agamben, life in a real state of exception has “shed every relation to law.”<sup>76</sup> While political violence in the normalized state of exception is very real, under such conditions, the sovereign claim that this violence acts with the force-of-<span>law</span> is a fiction. This is because Schmitt maintains that political violence in the state of exception is the necessary precondition of law and order and so carries the force-of-<span>law</span>. This idea keeps the law working beyond its suspension, differentiating the state of exception from chaos, and maintaining the relationship between anomie and law. However, this claim is only plausible as long as the state of exception remains temporary: once the exception becomes the rule, it is no longer conceptually viable to assert that anomie is different from chaos. Benjamin’s eighth thesis thus brings about a real state of exception by unmasking the force-of-<span>law</span> as a fiction. This nullifies the Nothing of sovereignty, severs the relationship between law and anomie that sovereignty had maintained, and brings to light the absolute inoperativity of the law.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>对本雅明而言，没有律法的生活也只是生活；同样，对阿甘本而言，在真正的例外状态下，生活“脱离了与法律的一切关系”。 <sup>76</sup> 虽然在常态化的例外状态下，政治暴力是真实存在的，但在这种情况下，主权者声称这种暴力具有<span>法律</span>效力的说法却是一种虚构。这是因为施密特认为，例外状态下的政治暴力是法律和秩序的必要前提，因此具有<span>法律</span>效力。这种观点使法律在其暂停状态之外仍然有效，从而将例外状态与混乱区分开来，并维持了失范与法律之间的关系。然而，这种说法只有在例外状态保持暂时性时才成立：一旦例外成为规则，断言失范与混乱在概念上就不再可行。因此，本雅明的第八个论点通过揭露<span>法律</span>效力的虚构本质，从而带来了真正的例外状态。这否定了主权的虚无，切断了主权所维系的法律与失范之间的关系，并揭示了法律的绝对无效性。</font></font></font></div><div>For Agamben, however, the idea that sovereignty is a fiction that covers over the inoperativity of law does not only apply to the claims of the contemporary state: the law is, he writes, founded “on the essential fiction according to which anomie (in the form of auctoritas, living law, or the force of law) is still related to the juridical order.”<sup>77</sup> For Agamben, then, the sovereign claim to act with the force-of-<span>law</span> has always been a fiction. In order to develop this claim and what is at stake in it, we need to examine Schmitt’s critique of Weimar liberalism, before returning to Agamben’s Benjaminian critique of Schmitt.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>然而，对阿甘本而言，主权是一种掩盖法律无效性的虚构这一观点，并非仅适用于当代国家的主张：他写道，法律建立在“一种本质的虚构之上，即失范（以权威 、活法或法律效力的形式存在）仍然与司法秩序相关。” <sup>77</sup> 因此，在阿甘本看来，主权者以<span>法律</span>效力行事的主张始终是一种虚构。为了阐述这一主张及其利害关系，我们需要先考察施密特对魏玛自由主义的批判，然后再回到阿甘本对施密特的本雅明式批判。</font></font></font></div><div>Agamben argues that Benjamin’s eighth thesis appropriated the distinction between real and fictitious states of exception from Schmitt’s Dictatorship, which criticizes as fictitious attempts by Weimar jurists to regulate the state of exception through law.<sup>78</sup> In Political Theology, Schmitt re-iterates this attack through the theory of sovereignty: as we have seen, he argues the state of extreme emergency proves that the law requires a discretionary sovereign decision that “emerges from nothingness” when “looked at normatively.”<sup>79</sup> He also develops his critique of the attempt to ground the legal order through an attack on Hans Kelsen’s attempt to produce a purely normative theory of law. Kelsen characterizes law as a dynamic system of norms, in which valid norms are the product of authorities whose power derives from higher norms. As legal validity can only be based upon a norm, Kelsen famously argues that the unity and validity of the normative constitutional order as whole is based upon the grundnorm, a norm that is superior to the constitution and which states that the constitution is legally binding.<sup>80</sup> The grundnorm provides the act of will that brings the constitution into being with legal validity, distinguishing law from non-law, and excluding moral and political considerations from scientific legal analysis.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>阿甘本认为，本雅明的第八条论题挪用了施密特在《 独裁》一书中对真实例外状态和虚构例外状态的区分，而施密特的《独裁》批判魏玛法学家试图通过法律来规制例外状态的做法是虚构的。 <sup>78</sup> 在 《政治神学》 中，施密特通过主权理论重申了这一批判：正如我们所见，他认为极端紧急状态证明，法律需要一种自由裁量的主权决定，这种决定“从虚无中产生”，尤其是在“从规范的角度来看”时。 <sup>79</sup> 他还通过批判汉斯·凯尔森试图构建纯粹的规范性法律理论，进一步阐述了他对试图为法律秩序奠定基础的尝试的批判。凯尔森将法律描述为一个动态的规范系统，其中有效的规范是权威机构的产物，而这些权威机构的权力又来源于更高的规范。由于法律效力只能基于规范，凯尔森提出了著名的论证：规范性宪政秩序的统一性和有效性整体上基于根本规范（grundnorm） ，这一规范高于宪法本身，并规定宪法具有法律约束力。 <sup>80</sup> 根本规范赋予宪法法律效力，从而体现了意志行为，区分了法律与非法律，并将道德和政治考量排除在科学的法律分析之外。</font></font></font></div><div>The theory of the grundnorm has always caused a great deal of perplexity: how can the validity of the positive legal order be based upon something that transcends the constitution and hence has no positive existence? In his General Theory of Norms, Kelsen explains the grundnorm by drawing on Hans Vaihinger’s analysis of the essential role of fictions in scientific thought. Where a scientific hypothesis is an assumption about the world whose truth is testable on the basis of experimentation, a fiction is a consciously false conception that is treated as if it were true, because such a misconception is necessary or useful to attain one’s cognitive goal. Kelsen argues that the grundnorm is a “full fiction” in Vaihinger’s sense: it is a logical presupposition that contradicts reality (no such norm actually exists) and is self-contradictory (legal norms are only produced by acts of a higher legal will, and yet the very idea of the basic norm is to deny the existence of any such will). This fiction is necessary because the legal validity of an act can only be grounded on a norm: without the presupposition of the basic norm, the act of will that brought the constitution into being would not be legal, and hence we could not speak of legal validity at all. The cognitive goal of this fiction is thus “to ground the validity of the norms forming a positive moral or legal order.”<sup>81</sup><font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>基本规范理论一直以来都令人困惑：实证法律秩序的有效性如何能建立在超越宪法、因而本身并不存在的事物之上？凯尔森在其 《规范通论》 中，借鉴汉斯·瓦辛格对科学思想中虚构本质作用的分析，阐释了基本规范 。科学假设是对世界的假设，其真伪可以通过实验来检验；而虚构则是一种有意为之的错误观念，却被当作真理来对待，因为这种错误观念对于实现认知目标是必要或有用的。凯尔森认为， 基本规范在瓦辛格的意义上是一种“完全的虚构”：它是一个逻辑预设，既与现实相矛盾（实际上并不存在这样的规范），又自相矛盾（法律规范只能由更高层次的法律意志产生，然而基本规范的理念本身却否定了这种意志的存在）。这种虚构是必要的，因为行为的法律效力只能建立在规范之上：如果没有基本规范的前提，制定宪法的意志行为就不合法，因此我们根本无法谈论法律效力。这种虚构的认知目标是“为构成积极道德或法律秩序的规范的有效性奠定基础”。</font></font></font></div><div>Schmitt is deeply critical of Kelsen’s jurisprudence. Characterizing his own legal thought as a “philosophy of concrete life,”<sup>82</sup> Schmitt insists that the normative abstractions of the legal system only have meaning in relation to concrete political existence. From this perspective, the grundnorm is a mystification that conceals the political origins of legal order. What makes legality possible, according to Schmitt, is not subjective fiction projected by a jurist, but the state’s objective capacity to guarantee the continued existence of the law in the face of its enemies. The sovereign exception is the moment in which state authority appears in its purity: a power to enforce the law, separated from the norms of law themselves.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>施密特对凯尔森的法理学持深刻批判态度。他将自己的法律思想定义为“具体生活的哲学”，并坚持认为法律体系的规范性抽象只有在与具体的政治存在相关联时才具有意义。从这个角度来看， 基本规范是一种神秘化，它掩盖了法律秩序的政治起源。施密特认为，使合法性成为可能的并非法学家构建的主观虚构，而是国家在面对敌人时保障法律持续存在的客观能力。主权例外是国家权威以其纯粹性显现的时刻：一种独立于法律规范本身之外的执法权力。</font></font></font></div><div>While Agamben agrees with Schmitt that the fundamental presupposition of the rule of law is the anomic violence of the state of exception, he believes that the theory of sovereignty mischaracterizes and mystifies the nature of this anomic zone. Just as Schmitt accuses Weimar jurists of failing to accept the normative groundlessness of the legal order, Agamben accuses Schmitt of failing to accept just how radically groundless the legal order is and has always been.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>阿甘本虽然同意施密特的观点，即法治的根本前提是例外状态的失范暴力，但他认为主权理论误解并神秘化了这一失范领域的本质。正如施密特指责魏玛法学家未能接受法律秩序规范性的无根性一样，阿甘本也指责施密特未能接受法律秩序本质上是多么的无根，而且一直如此。</font></font></font></div><div>Despite his insistence on the importance of “concrete life” to law, Schmitt’s account of sovereignty involves a “true fiction” (to put it in Vaihinger’s terms): the belief that law survives in the state of exception contradicts reality (the obvious fact that law has been suspended) and is also self-contradictory (as it involves the paradox that the sovereign decision is both inside and outside the law at the same time). Again, analogous with Benjamin’s assertion that life without the Torah is simply life, Agamben asserts that the law simply ceases to operate beyond the suspension of its normative element: the state of exception is “essentially an empty space in which human action with no relation to law stands before a norm with no relation to life.”<sup>83</sup> This means that the sovereign claim to act with the force-of-<span>law</span> has always been a fiction and that the state of exception is and always has been an anomic void without legal form.<sup>84</sup> The legal order can be grounded neither in a legal norm, nor in the “legalized” violence of state authority. Conversely, human action within the state of exception has no claim to legal authority or legitimacy. The “cognitive goal” of the fiction of sovereignty is to conceal the originary inoperativity of the law, and thereby to hide the illegitimate foundation of state power and the radical groundlessness of human action. Although the law has always been inoperative in the state of exception, Agamben sees Benjamin’s assertion that the state of emergency is the rule as decisive, because with it, the conceptual possibility of a “fictional state of exception” collapses.<font lang="zh-CN"><br><font><font>尽管施密特坚持“具体生活”对法律的重要性，但他对主权的论述却包含着一种“真正的虚构”（借用瓦伊辛格的话）：认为法律在例外状态下依然存在的信念既与现实相悖（法律已被中止这一显而易见的事实），也自相矛盾（因为它包含着主权决策同时既在法律之内又在法律之外的悖论）。同样，正如本雅明断言没有《托拉》的生活也只是生活一样，阿甘本也认为，一旦其规范要素被中止，法律便不再发挥作用：例外状态“本质上是一个空旷的空间，在这个空间里，与法律无关的人类行为凌驾于与生活无关的规范之上。” <sup>83</sup> 这意味着，主权者以<span>法律</span>强制力行事的主张始终是一种虚构，而例外状态过去是、现在也始终是一个没有法律形式的失范真空。 <sup>84</sup> 法律秩序既不能建立在法律规范之上，也不能建立在国家权威“合法化”的暴力之上。反之，在例外状态下，人类行为不享有任何法律权威或合法性。主权虚构的“认知目标”在于掩盖法律的根本失效，从而掩盖国家权力的非法基础和人类行为的根本无根性。尽管法律在例外状态下始终失效，但阿甘本认为本雅明关于紧急状态即为常态的论断至关重要，因为正是这一论断，使得“虚构的例外状态”这一概念的可能性彻底瓦解。</font></font></font></div></section><section id="sec-4">
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