Law and Life beyond Incorporation: Agamben, Highest Poverty, and the Papal Legal Revolution. Miguel Vatter Published Version In: Daniel McLoughlin, ed. (Edinburgh: Agamben and Radical Politics Edinburgh University Press, 2016) One of the central concerns of project is to identify the traits of a life Homo Sacer Agamben’s that escapes being captured by law. The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life provides one of the most sustained treatments of this problem by arguing that the Franciscan movement offers the first exemplar of an extra-juridical the ‘form-of-life’, at once rejecting connection between law and life that characterises sovereignty, and developing a radically relation to the world. According to Agamben, the Franciscan ideal of giving up on radically calls into question the internal relation all ownership (designated as ‘highest poverty’) between having ownership over things (dominium) and being a subject of rights (sui in the iuris) tradition of Roman law. Against the background of this principle of Roman law, it becomes conceivable that a form of life in which individuals own nothing would be equivalent to a that has escaped capture from law. This chapter reconstructs and problematises account of form-of-life and its Agamben’s emancipatory potential in by situating it within the context of the Papal The Highest Poverty of the 12th and 13th centuries. The Franciscan movement coincides with a ‘legal revolution’ moment of profound jurisprudential innovation, when Roman law is recovered and re-interpreted in light of both of Trinitarian theology and Aristotelian naturalism, in order to serve as the ultimate weapon in the of Western Christendom between the Papacy and the ‘global civil war’ Holy Roman Empire. Recent research on the Papal legal revolution indicates that this recovery of Roman law had the unintended consequences of establishing the conditions for the emergence
Law and Life beyond Incorporation: Agamben, Highest Poverty, and the Papal Legal Revolution. Miguel Vatter Published Version In: Daniel McLoughlin, ed. Agamben and Radical Politics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016) One of the central concerns of Agamben’s Homo Sacer project is to identify the traits of a life that escapes being captured by law. The Highest Poverty: Monastic Rules and Form-of-Life provides one of the most sustained treatments of this problem by arguing that the Franciscan movement offers the first exemplar of an extra-juridical ‘form-of-life’, at once rejecting the connection between law and life that characterises sovereignty, and developing a radically relation to the world. According to Agamben, the Franciscan ideal of giving up on all ownership (designated as ‘highest poverty’) radically calls into question the internal relation between having ownership over things (dominium) and being a subject of rights (sui iuris) in the tradition of Roman law. Against the background of this principle of Roman law, it becomes conceivable that a form of life in which individuals own nothing would be equivalent to a that has escaped capture from law. This chapter reconstructs and problematises Agamben’s account of form-of-life and its emancipatory potential in The Highest Poverty by situating it within the context of the Papal ‘legal revolution’ of the 12th and 13th centuries. The Franciscan movement coincides with a moment of profound jurisprudential innovation, when Roman law is recovered and re-interpreted in light of both of Trinitarian theology and Aristotelian naturalism, in order to serve as the ultimate weapon in the ‘global civil war’ of Western Christendom between the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. Recent research on the Papal legal revolution indicates that this recovery of Roman law had the unintended consequences of establishing the conditions for the emergence