Infancy and History ‘The Destruction of Experience i — GIORGIO AGAMBEN Translated by Liz HeronFtp seers pei {UsA:29 Wes 39h Sr ew Yor, NY 100012398 aN NOH gb) ih itary Cataloging Pbiton Data Acie cd or roa ane ae Bet Lary bay of Cangas Cataloging in Poin Dat ‘catgut oat ook tale em te ae of Care Prine ad bound Gee Br by Rae 12d CONTENTS “Translators Note Parrice Experimentum Linguae Insancy AND HisTorY "An Essay on the Destruction of Experience InPuayiao ‘Reflections on History and Play ‘Tse aN Histon (Cetique of the Instant and she Continuum ‘Tus Paance AND THE FROG. “The Question af Method in Adorno and Benjani Faas ax Histon ‘Considerations on the Nativity Gib Noreson Gesrune Proyecr FoR A Review 4 6s 89 107 12s 133 utTRANSLATOR’S NOTE have tried, wherever possible, to annotate quotations tha had no ‘eferences in the original, and to use published English translations of these quotations where they exist Ihave found the Feench edition of Infancia «Storia help inthis respect In| ‘other cases have translated quotations diecly from the French, and in instances where no English tealation from the Geeman js available, Ihave craslated from the Halian, while coasulking the French edition. [ wish 10 thank Malcolm Imvie for the assistance he gave mein tracing references, Lu. PREFACE Experimentum LinguaeEvery eriten work ean be regarded as the prologue (or rather, the broken cast) ofa work never penned, and destined to remain to, because later works, which in tam willbe the prologaes the moulds for other absent works, represent only sketches oF death masks. The absent work, although is unplceable in any presse chronology, thereby constituter the wristen works #3 prolegomena or paralipomens of non-existent text, Of in & ‘more general sense, as parerga which find cheir true meaning ‘nly i the context of am ilegible ergo. To take Montaigne's Fine image, these are the frieze of grotesques around an unpaie ted partest o, in the sprit of the poeudo- Platonic leer, the ‘counterfeit of book which connor he weten. "The hese way of introducing this book, which will be read in ‘English translation some fifteen years after the first alan caition, would be to attempt to sketch the outlines of the tanerites work of which i forms the prologue, then possibly t0| refer 0 the later books which ace its aterwords Infact, between Infancy and History{1977) and Ii finguaggio ela mots (1982), ‘many pages have been writen which ates the project of work that remsins stubbornly unwritten. The ate ofthis work is La voce umana (The Human Voice) or, as otherwise noted, Etc, ‘over della voce (Pthic, an essay on the Voie). One ofthese ages contains this. Isthere a human vos voice thatthe voice of man asthe chip ‘the voiceaf the cricket othe ay the vice of he donkey? And, ifivexis this voice language? What she eltonsip between ‘ocean langage, borten poe snd logne? And i ich» thing {sa human voice doce nor exis in what seme can ta sll be ‘koe athe livng being wich bs Lenguage? The questions hs formulated mark of» pilosopbialntropaion. Inthe tation tfshe ancien, the quent ofthe voice ata cardial phlosoph ical question. De eis nemo magi quam plifosoph tact, we read Sets, ad for che ois, who gave the decisive impulse 0 Western thinking on language, the vee was the athe of theAsc, Ye philosophy hse hardly ever posed the question ofthe Ie is significant thatthe author should have arrived at hie inguiy into the human voice (or ts absence) precikelytheowgh 2 reflection on infancy. Infancy, which is this book’s subject, is hot a simple given whose chronological site might be isolated, ori elke an age ora psychosomace state which a psychology fr a palacoanthropology could constrict as a human fact Independent of language every thought can be casifed according 10 che way in which i articulates the question of the limits of language, the concept of infancy is then an attempt to think theough these limits indirection other than that ofthe valgaly ineffable. The inffabl, the un-sid, are in fact categories which belong exclusively to human language; far from indicating a limit of language, they express its invincible power of presupposition, the unsayable being pecieely what language must presuppose in ‘order ro signify. The concepe of infancy on dhe contrary, is accessible only to a thought which has been purified, in the ‘words of Benjamin writing to Buber, “by eliminating the usa able ffom language’. The singularity which language must ‘ignify is not something inetable hot something superatvely Ssayableehe sing of language. ‘This is why, inthis book, infancy finds its logical place in a presentation ofthe relationship between language and exper ce Taking Benjamin's guidelines fr bis projec ofthe philoso phy to come, the experience at issue here can be defined only in terms ofthe ‘wanscendental experience’ that was inadmissible for Kant. ‘One of the most urgent tasks for contemporary thought is, without douby, to redefine che concept ofthe transcendental in Terie of ite elation with language, Po if ice uve that Kane was able to articulate his concept of the transcendental only by omitting the question of language, hese “transcendental” must instead indicate an experience which i undergone only within language, an experiment lnguae in the tue meaning of the words, in which what is experienced is language itself In his preface to the second edition ofthe Critique of Pure Reason, Kane presents as an Experiment der reinen Verunf the attempt to consider objects in so fara they aze “only thoughe’. This, he ‘writes, san experience which is undergone not with objets as inthe natural seienees, but with concepts and principles which we admit a prior (such objects, he adds, nus yer be abe to be thought"). Tn one of Endmann’s published fragments, this experiment is described asan ‘itlaton’ of pure reason: {endo eramine how much reason can know ri stro what ceeattsindependen of nab. This guston sa majonand frporane ong since shows maths destiny in lan ofan, ‘Toschiewe rach a goal 1 dexm ie necessary iol taton (die Vermuntiolleen] a8 well esrb, considering oly wht st be known a prior and how i bong in the rel of tease Thisexamsination in woation dive bevel Betracbbangh chs are lonophy reine Phowop ic] of ret wel (One need only giv close attention to the movement of Kantian though to realize that the experiment in pate reason is neces sanly an experiment inguae, founded only on the possibilty OF naming the transcendental objects whereby Kane describes “empty concepts without an object (the notnenon, for ext: ple) which contemporary linguistics would call terns without 3 Feferent (but which retain, Kant writes, transcendental Bedew sng) Talancy isan experimen linguse of tis kind in which the limits of language are ro be found not outside language, inthe dlzection of ts eerens, but in an experience of language as sec, ints pare self-reference But what can an experience of this kind be? How can here be cesprience aot ofan abject but of language itselP? And, if x0, vwthout language experienced as this ofthat signifying pzopos ‘on, bucas the pure fac that one speaks, that language exists TE for every author thee exists a question which defines the mos of his thought, then the precte scope of theze questions coincides with the terrain towards which all. my Work is ‘orientated. In both my vrieen and unwritten books, I have stubbornly pursued only one tain of thought: what is the meaning of ‘there is language’; what isthe meaning of I speak’? Ieis cerainly clear that nether the speaking nor the being spoken, which corresponds to it a parte object is a realpredicate which can be identified in this or that propery like that of being red, French, ol, communis). They ate, rather, ‘aascendentia in the meaning ofthis term within medieval logic ~ that is, predicates which transcend all categories while insisting ‘on each one of then to he more exact they have tobe conceived as arch-ranscendentals, or transcendentals tothe second power, ‘which, on Kant’s scholastic list [guodidee ene est wo, bern Doman sew perfectum|,ttanscend the very transcendentals and sve implicated in each one of them, “To cary out the experiment linguae, however, isto venture imo. prtetly empry dimension the lerer Raum ofthe Kantian ‘oncept-limit)in which one can encounter only the pre exte borty of language, that ‘calemene ds langage dans sm Gere brut? ff which Poncasle speaks in one of his most philosophically tense writings. Every thinker has probably hadto undertake this experience atleast once; i is even possible that what we eal ‘houghe is purely and simply this experimentur. In his lectures on the Essence of Language, Heidegger talks about having an experience with language [mit der Sprache eine Efabrumg machen). We have this experienc, he writs, oaly where we lack names, where speech breake on our lips, Thit breaking of specchs the backward step onthe road of thought’ Whereas infancy is staked on the possibility that there is an experience of language which is not merely a silence or a deficiency of names, bu one whose logiccam be indicated, whose siteandformola can be designated, at east upto poi In Infancy and History teste ofa transcendental experience of this kind lies in that difference between language and speech (Saussure's langue and parole ~or rather, in Benvenst’s terms, between semiotic and semantic) which cance be encompassed, and which every tflection on language most confront. In Showing that there is no way between these two dimensions, Benveniste led the science of language fan, With it the entire cohort of the human sciences with linguistics a8 thee plot science) face eo face with the supreme aporia, Beyond which it cannot advance without ts transformation into philosophy. is clear, therelore, that fora being whose experience of language ‘was not always split into language nd speech = in other words, a primordally speaking being, primordally within an undivided language ~ there would be no knowledge, no infancy, no history: he would alzeady he diet one with his linguistic nature and would nowhere find any discontinuity or dlference where any history or knowledge might be prolaced, The double articulation of language and speech seems, cere forestoconstcue the specifi stracrure of human language. Only from ths ean be derived the true meaning ofthat oppostion of cdynamis and energez, of potency and act which Aristotle's ‘ought has bequeathed co philosophy and Western science, Poteney = or knowledge ~ isthe specially human faculty of connectedness as ack; and language, in ite eplie between lan {guage and speech, srucarally contain this connecedess, i fothing other than this connectedness. Man does ot merely know nor metely speak; hes neither Hosa sapiens nor Homo loguens, but Homo sapiens loquerdh, and thi entwinement consttates the way in which the West has understood is and laid the foundation for both its knowledge and ite skill, The unprecedented vilence of human power has is deepest roots in thisstructare of language nthe sense whats experienced nthe experimentum linguae is wot meeely an impesibilty of saying: father, i 18 an impossibility of speaking from the bass of languagesic isan experience, via that infancy which dell in the margin between language and discourse, ofthe very faculty oF power of speech, Posing the question of the transcendental ‘means, inthe final analysis, asking what it means ‘to have a faculty and what i the grammar ofthe verb tobe able. And the only possible answer isan experience of language. Inmy unwritten work on the voice, she sit ofthis transcendental experience was sought instead inthe difference between voice and language, between phon and logos, inasmuch as this Allferenee opens the very space of ethics. From this perspective, ‘there are numerous drafts ranseribing the paseage inthe Politics ‘where Aristotle, almost inadvertently, poses 2 decisive question ‘which Isr oue to interpret ‘Natwe as we ay, does nothing without some purpsts ad or dhe prpose of making man polical anal she hs endowed him Slane among the aisle withthe ower of ressoned speech, Speech |s something different from voy which i ponssed hy ome, animal lo and wed by them to expres pai e lesa forthe tatral power of Some anal do ined enable th both ofcPleasure and pis and to communicate these wo each eter Speech fn the other hand serves to mciate what i wall ad what acm apd 50 slo wha ight and what wrong, Forte el “ference beeen man and other anal that bara lon have perception of pod and evi ight and wrong jose abd unjust, Ad tris the shargg of s common view i dese matere that make Household foital or si poi] Te has pethaps not been sufficiently noted chat when, ia De interpretatione, Aristotle defines linguistic signification by refer- fing from the voice to the pathemata ofthe soul and to things, hie isnot merely speaking of phone, bt uses the expression tae te phan what isin the voice. What iit in the human voice that aticulats the passage fom the animal voice to the logos, from hture t0 polis? Anstotl's response is well Known: the voice articulates grammnata, lees. The ancient grammarians begen their argument with this opposition ofthe confused voice (phe synkechyméne) of animals and the human voice, which is instead énardbyos, articulated. Bur if we ask in'what this ‘articulation’ of the human voice consist, we sce that for them phone énartros simply means phone enrésimatos, vox quae ‘crib potst, dhe voee that canbe writen =n shor, lays pre= ‘existingas writen. ‘Aristotle's ancient commentators had asked why the philoso per had introduced the gramma as the fourth *hermeneut™ alongside the other three (voice, pathemata, things) which ‘explain the ice of linguistic signification So they auributed the Patecular status of the granorea tothe fat that, unlike the other three tis no as sign, but also an element [toicheon] of the ‘yoice, as articulation. As both a sign and a consiurive element ‘of the voice, the gramme thus come to assume the paradoxteal Status ofan index of lf [tds ei, In thi way the letter Is what always preexsts within the moat between phoné and Jogos the primordial structure of signification. ‘The hook I did nor write had quite a diffrent hypothesis. The ‘moat between voice and language (like that between language and discourse, potency and act) ean open the space of ethics and the polis precisely because dhete is no arthros no articulation between phné and logos. The Voie has never been writen ito language, and the gramna (as Derrida fortuitously demon: PREEACE strated) is bur the very form of the presupposing of self and of poteney. The space between voice a ago is an empty space, 2 lien the Kantian sense. Only because man finds himself cast ‘nto language withoot the vehicle ofa vole, and only because theexperimonnin lingua res him, grammales, into that oid and that aphoma, do an ethos and-a community of any kind become possible ‘So the community tha is born of the experiment linguae cannot take the form ofa presupposition, nr evn in the purely ‘grammatical’ form ofa self presupposition. The speaking and the spoken with which we measte oucseives in the exper: ‘mentum are neither 2 voice nor a grammas as arch-ans- endenals, they re not even shinkble as» quiddiny, a guid of which we could ever, im Plocinus’ fine image, take moa, any Share. The fist outcome of the experimenter: inguae therlore, ise radical revision of the very idea of Community, The only content ofthe experiment i that ther is languages we cannot fepresent this, by the dominant model in our culture, ay a language, as a state or a patrimony of names and rules which each people transmit from generation cogeneration. Iris, rather, the unpresupparable non-itency ia which men have always dwelt and in which, speaking, they move and breathe. For all the forty millenia of Homo sapiens, man has not yet ventured fo. assume this nomlateney, to have the experience of his speaking being. Ta the only public lecture he ever gave, before the members of a club self-styled ‘the heretics’, Wingenstein eeproposes his owen ‘experimenti lnguaes "And now shall describe the experince of wonderment before he ceitence of the worl, with these words the world this ‘experienced aba otal Tam now tempted to ay the the correct ‘presi language forthe miracle af ee exinence ofthe word ‘lle as expecsig nothing sethon langage, i the existence of Iangnage ul Let ws ry to follow through Witsgenten's experiment, by asking ourselves ifthe most appropriate expession of wonder. iment atthe existence ofthe world is the existence of language, what then isthe covtect expression forthe existence of lam ‘guage? “The only possible answer to this question is human life, as‘thos, ethical way. The search fora pois and an oka betting {hi voidand unpresuppostle commaiy che manera at farute generations Giorgio Agamben, 1988-9 NOTES 1. Gime Agamben, neue ond Desh The Place of Nein al Ce Rate a ka Har Mian once of Me 2. ‘Rete Tie ott Sind, Haemondomat: engin 1962, Boat ppt INFANCY AND HISTORY ‘An Essay on the Destruction of Experience To Claudia Rugfiont © matic, fate tame 4 eae srrore! Lo. spcto. non ba Ws, eché dove voce corpo. [0 mathematicians shed light on ‘ror sch thi The spt has 0 Sos becae where thee oie there body Leosanoooa VcrONE “The question of experience can be approached nowadays only swith an acknowledgement that i sno longer accesible 0 us For just as modern man has ben depeived of his biography, his ‘experience has likewise been expropriated. Indeed, his inca pacity © have and communicate experiences is pethaps one o the fw self-ertainties to which he can lay claim. As long ago 3s 41933 Benjamin had accurately diagnosed this ‘poverty ol exper ence’ of the modern ae; he located its origins m the caasteophe ofthe Fest World War, from whose batlehelds men returned... gos sent ~ not richer, but poorer in communi Cleexpenence- What enya ater was poured ou inthe ood ‘of war boo wat anything hut experience tht goes ror mouth ‘mouth. And here was nothing rearkable abou that oe never has ‘apeicnce been sontadited ors thoroughly than sate expect fc by tactical ware, economic experience by ition, bly experience by mechanical warfare, moral experince by those it power. A generation that had gone to school on 3 hone-deswm Strertear now stood under the open sky ina couneysde in which ‘nothing temained uachanged bur the luda, and beneath there ‘Shove ins fd offre of desritve torent and explosions wis ‘hein age kama bo." “Today, however, we know thatthe destuction of experience no longer necessitates a catastrophe, and that humdrum daly hfe in any city will sufice. For modern man's average day contains irtally nothing that ean sill be translated into experience Neither reading the newspaper, with is abundance of news that is irerievably remote from his hfe nor siting for minutes on tend atthe wheel of his eae ina tea jam. Nether the journey through the nether world of the subwa, aor the demonstration that siddenly blocks the set. Nether the cloud of tear gas Slowly dispersing between the buildings ofthe city centre, nor the rapid blasts of gunfire from who knows where; nor questing up ara business counter, aoe visiting the Land of Cockayne at 8the supermarket, nor thote eternal moments of dumb promise ity among strangers in lift and buses. Modem man makes hi ‘way home in the evening Wearied by 2 jumble of evens, but however entertaining or tedious, snosaal or commonplace, harrowing or pleasurable they arc none of chem will have become experience Tes this non-ransarability into experience that now makes ‘everyday existence intolerable ~ a8 ever before ~rather than an alleged poor quality of life or its meaninglessaess compared with the past (on the contrary, perhaps everyday existence has never been so replete with meaningful events). {tis not until the nineteenth century thae we find the first liceary indiestions of this everyday oppeesivenes, and certain well-known pages of Sein und Zeit on the “banality” of the quotidian (in which European society between the wars was all f00 ready 10 recognize ise} would simply have made no sense even just 8 century earlier, but this s precisely because the everyday ~ not the unusual ~ made up the raw material of experience which each generation transmitted co the next. Hence the unteliabity of travellers tales and snedieval bestiaries; in n0 sense ant ‘ical’ chey merely demonstrate tha the unusual could noc in 29 ‘way be translated into experience. Fach event, however com ‘monplace and insignificant, thus became che speck of impurity around which experience acerued it authority ike» pear. Fo tsperience has ite necesaty correlation notin knowledge bu in authority ~ thats to say, the power of words and naration; aad no one now seems to wild sufficient authority to guarantee the teuth of an experience, and if they do, it does notin the least ‘occur to them thae theie own authority has is roots in an experience. On the contrary, its the character of the present time that all authoriy i founded on what cannot be exper ‘enced, snd nobody would be inclined to accepe the validity of an authority whose sole claim to leitanation was experience. (The youth movements denial ofthe meres of experience eloquent roof of this Hence the disappearance of the maxim and the proverb, which were the guise in which experience stood as authority. The slogan whieh has replaced them isthe proverb of humankind to ‘whom experiene is for, This does aot mean that today there are ‘homore experiences, but they are enacted ouside che individ ‘And it is interesting chac the individual merely observes them, ‘with cli From this poin of view vst toa museum ora place (of touristic pilgrimage is particulary instructive, Standing face 1 face with one ofthe great wonders of the world (er us say the patio de los eones in the Alhambra}, the overwhelming majority Of people have no wish to experience preferring instead that the camera should. Of course the poi isnot to deplore thie state of affairs, but ro take note of i. For peshaps at che hear of this Apparently senseless denial there Turks a grain of wisdom, in ‘hich we can glimpse the geeminatng seed of future experience, The task which this esay proposes taking up the legacy of Benjamin’ project ofthe coming philosophy, isto prepare the likly ground in which this sed ean matare GLoss A sory by Tico, titled Dat Lebenstberfls (Life's Superity), depicts «to penniless lovers who gradually renounce all poser sions and all ouside life to the point where they live closed up in thee oom. Finally, when they can no longer find wood for fuel, they burn the wooden ladder connecting their room with the fest f the house, and are let in isolation from the outside ‘world, owning nothing and alive to nathing but thet lov. This ladder ~Tieck gives us to understand ~ is experiene, sacrificed by them to the flames of ‘pure knowledge”. When the owner of the house (who here represents the cains of experience) returns and looks for the old ladder that led to the floor rented by the ‘ro young tenants, Heiarich (asthe male protagonists called) dlerides him with these words: “He wishesthatol experience should suppor im, ikea man on he sound who woul abe howe ap, one ep at atin othe bewis ‘thigh understanding; newer ths wl bese ost the Tmmediat sation of those wo, hk ws, have now abolished ll how vial moments of expeenc nde stages 0 sci they, 2 the ancien arse lw ap fs, the ving, ping ame of pre kowidg. mpan ‘Teck explains che elimination of the ladder i.e, experience — as "philosophy of poverty imposed on them by fate. Iti just ‘uch a "philosophy of poverty” that can explain the modern ‘ejection of experience by che young (but not only the young:“metropolitan Indians’ and tovrists, hippies and family bread- winners alike are affliated ~ far more than they would be prepared co acknowledge — by the same expropriation of experience). For they ar lke those cartoon characters of ost "hhldhood who ean wal on thin ar a longa they don’ notice onc they eli oce dhe experience th they ae bound For this reason, even objectively their condition is a dreadal fone, there has never been a more revolting sight than that of eneration of adules which, having destroyed all remaining possibilities of audhentie experience ays itv own impoverish nen atthe door of younger generation bereft ofthe capaci for experience. When humankind is deprived of effective experi fence and becomes subjected co the imposition of a form of experience as controlled and manipulated as laboratory maze for ras ~ in other words, when the only posible experience is horror or les then the rejection of experience can provisionally ‘embody a legitimate defence. “The widespread existence of drug addiction today can alo be seen in terms of this destruction of experience, What distin: ‘uishes modern addict from the iaelletuals who discovered ‘drugs in the nineteenth cenray is eha che latter (a lest the less hucid among ther) could sill dlude themselves that they were undergoing. a new experience, while for the former tht is nothing more chan the discarding of ll experience. TWO none sens, the expropriation of experience was implicit in the founding project of modern science “Thee semaine bt mere experience, which when coffers ial i called chance; when its sagt afer, experiment. Bue dhs Kind of fagericnce ody bat 3 lose faggots and mere groping in the ‘tk a men at nigh ry all means of discovering the ight F054, ‘whe would be beter and more praden tert wat or day of roca alight and then proced. Or the eonsary the ral ode of ‘xperene begs by Seving up light, and thn shows the toad by [commencing witha regulaed and digested, ora misplaced and ‘gos cous of experiment and thence deducing inn, and Eom thes snioms now experiments In these words of Prancs Bacon, experience inthe raitional, sense ~ meaning what can be translated into. maxims and proverbs ~is already condemned iretzivably. The distinction beeween logical teuths and truths of sufficient season (which Leibnie formolates thos: "When we expect the sun t0 rise tomorrow we are acting as empiricist because it has always been 0 until today. The astronomer alone cam judge with sufficient treason’) subsequently sanctions this condemnation, Because, Against repeated claims tothe contrary, modern science has ts ‘origins in-an unprecedented mistrust of experiences it was traditionally understood (Bacon defines it as a “forest and a “maz” which has to be putin order). The view through Galilen's telescope produced not certainty and faith in experience but Descartes doubt, and his famous hypothesis ofa demon whose ‘only occupation sto deceive our senses "The scent verification of experience which is enaced inthe experiment = permiting sensory impressions co be deduced with the exactitude of quantitative determinations and therefore, the prediction of future impressions ~ responds to this lost of eraity by displacing experience a far a possible outside the individual: on to instruments and numbers. But traditional‘experience thereby los al el value. For ~ 35 demoasteated by the last work of European cule sill integrally Based on ‘experience: Montaigne’s Essays ~ experience i incompatible and once an experience has become measurable it immediately loses is authority ‘There 00 formulating 4 maxitn nor telling 4 story where scientific la holds say. Experience, with which Montaigne concerns him salf, ook so litle account of Science that he goes so far as ¢© ‘define its substance as 3 ‘subet informe, qui ne peut renerer en production ouveagere™ on which iti impossible to base a firm judgement (il n'y a aucune constant existence, ny de noe ‘este, nj de eli des objects... Ainsn i ne se pest extabli en ‘de certain de Pom autre. ‘The idea of experince’ ay separate from knowledge has ‘become so alien to ws that we have forgocten that unt the birth ‘of modetn science experience and science each had their own place, What is more, they were even connected to diferent Subjects. The subject of experience was common sense, some= ‘hing existing in every individual (Avstode's “judging prinipl* and the vis aestimatina of medieval psychology, neither of them ‘uite whae we mean by good sense), while de subject of science |S the mois or the active intellect, which is separate from experience, impassive™ and divine’ (though, to" be proce, knowlege did noreven have a subject inthe modern sense of sm ego, but rather the single individual was the subectom in which ‘he activ, unique and separate intellect actuated knowledge). Its tis separation between experience snd scence that We have to Se the meaning —an extremely concrete one, i no Way abstruse ~ of the disputes dividing Aristotelian interpreters in late Anciguty and the Middle Ages on the singularity and separation of the intellect and i communication with the Subjects of experience. Mind [nows] and soul [psyche] are not ‘ne and the sme thing for ancient thought (aor for medieval thought, atleast up co Aquinas} and the inlet is not, as we are accustomed to think, a faculty ofthe soul it doesnot belong to iin any way, but is ‘Separate, indviduated, impassive according fo the celebrated Arsttelian formal, and comm aicates with it to bring about knowledge. Consequently, for Amiquity, the central problem of knowledge is not the relation- ship berween a subjecr and an object, but the relationship between the one and the many. Thus elasical thoughe takes no INFANCY AND HISTORY cognizance ofthe gueton of experience as such, but what i fed foros asthe question of experience arose naturally in ‘reiiy asthe question ofthe reltion (fee ‘partipaton’ ist so of the ‘ference ae Plato wil say) tween the SCparaeinelacs and parca individual, Between the one SMa the many betwee he nelle and the snp, Between the human aid the divine Is this diflerence which the chorus In Atschges Oreste underlines characterizing human know fdge agains Agamemnons hubris 3 patel aos, what ‘SEs only though and ater fern, and excludes any Forti abegh hae othr ate “Tradtonal experience (in he sense wih which Montaigne i concerns} em th os separation of experience aed sence human knowledge an dine knowledge sn face Experts of the boundary Between thse to spheres. This Sry enh He Monge camo ine ron of expeince nang death-tha yan advance {Smarr troup an enrpaon of death othe extreme iit tf expen, But for Montaigne clini femaine something thar snot be expenened, whch ean nly be approached ( nus a poovos om, oes eposvon approche uta {hevery moment when es pag 0 Become amie’ wh dtu and to ‘asta ie stangenes Coston ay Pestangte, praighn I sfayon ten ssuvent en rete que more) he Terris tory abour hoe pionopher i exeles mesages du wempeqile ont exap en more mesine dela Ease et Sour, cont hander sp pour ve ge Co his ne ont pas evens none dele nouvelles Mp iy serch for coring, modem scene boss this sepucton and mae experenct the Ico = the neko hat she patsy of kasd. Bo co docs mast bein to sig epg antic Bl es Ingle deren subjects and replacing them with sgl ee ‘jes or pens I en ce ws os» trae of opposing expoencet authority the argent ex fe agains the angenonren ex verbo, which are ex in fat Treble) shan of eleing knowledge snd experince 0 "Ele tbjecy ich none other than cr conjnesion a hac Arcietian pine: the Cartesian coo, conscious »INFANCY AND HISTORY ‘Through this interpolation of experience and sient in a single subject (hich, being anivera! and bounded and atthe ‘Same tne an eg, unites ntsc the properties ofthe separate inellect and the sujecofexpenence, moder scene eect that liberation from the pet mathos and that conjunction of human knowledge with divine knowledge which constted the presse character of the experience ofthe Mysteries and found thei prescient expression i stolgy alchemy and Neopl tonic speciation. For it was no in classical philosophy but in the sphere of the religoas mysteries of late Ani thatthe boundary bemcen he haman andthe divine between the patel ‘milos and pute science (which, according to Montaigne, can ‘nly be approached, never touched) was ctoued for the Best tie, inthe ea of unuterabe tha i which the inate ‘experienced his own death (he knows the end of hfe says Pindar) and thereby acquired che means Yo sce a sweeter Prospect of death and ime gone by “The Ansotelian conception of homocenti celestial spheres spore, divine, intelligences mn from change sad corto. thon apd separate from the erly sabona world which the She of change and cvruption,cedscovers soil sense oaly ic ned he ea fae wh concen of ‘experience and knowledge a+ two autonomous spheres. Con tering a heoers” of pure elie ath thee of Individual experience isthe pest discovery of astrology, making it not an antagonisy but a necesary condition of modern science, Only because astrology (like alchemy, wit which its Sila) hed conjomned heaven and earthy the divine and the human, ina single sujet of fate nthe work of Creation} was science’ able {0-unify within anew ego. both scence sad ‘xperiene, which hitherto had designated wo distinc subject Tess only besuse Neopltonic Hermetic mystcim had hedged the Aristotelian scparation between nods and payee and the Platonic difference between the one and the many, ith an conanations system in which a continous herarcy af ate ences, angels demons and soul think ofthe ange-ealigences ‘t Avicenna and Dante) commanteated in 3