The highest poverty : monastic rules and form-of-life / Giorgio Agamben ; translated by Adam Kotsko.

ISBN:

9780804786744

9780804784054

9780804784061

Title:

The highest poverty : monastic rules and form-of-life / Giorgio Agamben ; translated by Adam Kotsko.

Author:

Agamben, Giorgio, 1942- author.

Personal Author:

Agamben, Giorgio, 1942- author.

Uniform Title:

Altissima povertà. English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 157 pages).

Series:

Meridian : crossing aesthetics

General Note:

"Originally published in Italian under the title Altissima povertà : Regole monastiche e forma di vita."

Contents:

Birth of the rule -- Rule and law -- Flight from the world and constitution -- Threshold -- Regula vitae -- Orality and writing -- The rule as a liturgical text -- Threshold -- The discovery of life -- Renouncing law -- Highest poverty and use -- Threshold.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Monasticism and religious orders -- Rules.

Monastic and religious life -- History -- Middle Ages, 600-1500.

Added Author:

Kotsko, Adam,

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2013

Publication Information:

Stanford, California :

Stanford University Press,

2013.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
206.57	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

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.

Author Notes

Giorgio Agamben, an Italian philosopher and political theorist, teaches at the IUAV University in Venice and holds the Baruch Spinoza Chair at the European Graduate School. His most recent book available in English from Stanford University Press is The Kingdom and the Glory (2011).

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Agamben (IUAV Univ., Venice) has written a number of books on power and politics, including Homo Sacer (CH, Apr'99, 36-4413) and State of Exception (2005). Here he turns to the relationship between monastic communities' written rules and the lives of those who lived in monastic communities. He argues that the rules made moral issues out of things, such as clothing, that had not had moral weight before monasticism. One key argument is that monastic rules represented a very specific type of regulatory power and represented "techniques" of self-fashioning in ways quite different from other forms of "law." Hence, rather than being considered as external constraints, the rules were instead guidelines that monks internalized to allow them to live as they were expected to. This internalization was not simply about observing a precept; it was meant to shape an entire form of existence that cannot be reduced to obedience to a written rule. This dense but insightful work will interest students in both theology and political theory, as it deepens the insights of Agamben's earlier works and extends them into the theological realm. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and above. A. W. Klink Duke University