Article

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political

38(3) 194-207
Erēmos Aporos as the ª The Author(s) 2013
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Paradigmatic Figure of DOI: 10.1177/0304375413497843
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Western (Thanato) Political
Subject

Mika Ojakangas1

Abstract
The originary figure of the Western political subject is neither the Aristotelian zōon politikon nor the
Agambenian homo sacer but the Socratic erēmos aporos. Like the Agambenian homo sacer, the
Socratic erēmos aporos is abandoned by his fellow citizens, not outside the polis but in the polis,
being a refugee in his own city. He lives, as Callicles says of Socrates in Gorgias (486c), ‘‘in his city as
an absolute outcast.’’ Moreover, like the Agambenian homo sacer, the Socratic erēmos aporos also
lives in a state close to death—‘‘in a state as close to death as possible,’’ as Socrates says of himself in
Phaedo (67d). However, there is a decisive difference between the Agambenian homo sacer and the
Socratic erēmos aporos. Unlike homo sacer, the Socratic political subject is not abandoned by the
sovereign but by himself through his own traumatic self-accusation. Furthermore, although erēmos
aporos is also a ‘‘living corpse,’’ he is not thereby at mercy of the sovereign. On the contrary, it
is he who has become sovereign, not because he has somehow managed to sublate his condition
as abandoned and forlorn subject, but because this condition is the condition of sovereign freedom.
In other words, it is neither his biological life in the order of nature (zoē) nor his form of life in the
symbolic order of the polis (bios), not even his exposure to the threat of imminent death (homo
sacer), but his symbolic suicide that renders him a sovereign individual subjected to no one. By remov-
ing the subject from his proper place in the symbolic order of the polis, such a suicide not only dis-
closes subject’s unlimited responsibility but also renders him capable of transcending his limited
position as a living being and becoming a thanatopolitical subject of his own biological death. Although
such a subject also affirms life, life that is affirmed here is not mere life but sovereign life in the shade
of the instinct of death.

Keywords
Socrates, political subject, conscience, biopolitics, thanatopolitics, sovereignty, responsibility, self-
sacrifice

1
Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

Corresponding Author:
Mika Ojakangas, Department of Philosophy and Social Sciences, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland.
Email: mika.ojakangas@jyu.fi
Ojakangas 195

Introduction
In the introduction to his Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben points out that there are two lines of anal-
ysis in Michel Foucault’s work: on one hand, the study of the biopolitical techniques with which the
state assumes and integrates the natural life of individuals into its center; on the other hand, the
examination of the technologies of the self by which the individual is bound to his own identity and
conscience. Then Agamben laments that the intersection between the biopolitical techniques and the
technologies of the self remained a blind spot or vanishing point in Foucault’s research—and that his
own inquiry in Homo Sacer ‘‘concerns precisely this hidden point of intersection.’’1 In other words,
the aim of Agamben’s analysis seems to be to identify those mechanisms through which the biopo-
litical techniques are transformed into the technologies of the self—that is, how the subject is formed
in and through this double subordination. Yet instead of analyzing this intersection in Homo Sacer,
the rest of the book is dedicated to the analysis of another intersection, namely that between the jur-
idicoinstitutional and the biopolitical models of power. In this analysis, the subjective aspects of
power remain as hidden as the intersection between the biopolitical techniques and the technologies
of the self in Foucault’s work. The protagonist of the book is, as Agamben maintains, the life of
homo sacer, a man who may be killed and yet not sacrificed, but nowhere in the book is there ref-
erence to those mechanisms with which this protagonist is transformed into a political subject, let
alone to the formation of the psychic life of this subject. According to Agamben, the production
of bare life—the life of homo sacer—is the original activity of sovereign power, but instead of ana-
lyzing this production from the perspective of the subject of power, Agamben concentrates solely on
the objective juridicotechnical side of the process, on the production of bare life as the object of
biopower.
Perhaps it is for this reason that Agamben comes to his conclusion that the concentration camp is
the truth of Western biopolitics and that Muselmann—rather than, say, an Aristotelian zōon politi-
kon—is the paradigm of the Western political subject. Toward the end of the book, to be sure, Agam-
ben points out that the Western political subject is also a bearer of sovereignty (‘‘sovereign
subject’’),2 but it is again from the juridicotechnical perspective that he proceeds in his analysis,
without an account of the formation of this sovereignty at the level of the subject.
In this article, my aim is precisely to focus on those subjective mechanisms with which the West-
ern sovereign subject is formed. In this respect, I argue that it is not subject’s bare life but his con-
science that plays the most central role in the Western tradition since antiquity.3 Moreover, instead
of picking up an extreme case such as Muselmann—supposedly revealing the norm—for the object
of my study I have chosen a generally acknowledged ethicopolitical hero in the Western tradition:
Socrates. I argue that it is neither the Aristotelian zōon politikon nor the Agambenian homo sacer but
the Socratic conscientious man that is the originary figure of the Western political subject. Surely,
the Socratic man resembles the Agambenian homo sacer more than the Aristotelian zōon politikon
inasmuch as the Socratic man—Socrates himself being the best example—is, like homo sacer, aban-
doned by his fellow citizens, not outside the polis but in the polis, being a refugee in his own city.
Further, like the Agambenian homo sacer, the Socratic abandoned and forlorn man (erēmos aporos)
also inhabits a condition that could be likened to death—‘‘a state as close to death as possible,’’ as
Socrates says of himself in Phaedo (67d)—but unlike homo sacer, he is not exposed to this condition
by a sovereign law but by himself through the continuous accusations of his own conscience. Indeed,
it is his conscience (daimonion) that makes him live close to death—or as Socrates in Apology (30b–
c) proclaims: ‘‘I shall not change my conduct even if I am to die many times over.’’ Socrates does not
change his conduct, that is, stop to philosophize in Athens, because his conscience does not allow it,
and Socrates believes that he has to obey his conscience even if it places his life in peril. This also
means that one’s conscience renders one capable of transcending the sphere of the mere life of homo
sacer and entering a new level of life beyond the instincts of self-preservation. It is a radical
196 Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 38(3)

revocation of such preservation as it makes one capable of sacrificing oneself for the Cause and
becoming the subject of one’s own biological death. Like Agambenian biopolitics of mere life, pol-
itics of conscience is thus always already thanatopolitics, politics of death; but unlike the object of
Agambenian sovereign thanatopolitics that is exposed to the ‘‘unconditional threat of death,’’4 the
Socratic subject (erēmos aporos) is characterized by a profound scorn of death. Yet, it is precisely
for this reason that erēmos aporos is able to overcome the sphere of mere life and to enter a new level
of life whereby the subject becomes sovereign with regard to his biological life.

Arendt and Villa on the Socratic Ethics of Conscience

The origin of the Western thanatopolitics of conscience—at least one of these origins—can be found
in Plato’s Socratic dialogues. Of course, there is nothing original in this argument itself. Already
Apuleius identified the Socratic daimonion with conscience in his De deo Socratis. It dwells in the
most profound recesses of the mind in the place of conscience (in ipse peritissimis mentibus vice
conscientiae diversetur), guarding and observing us, reproving if we do evil, and approving if we
do well.5 Moreover, it has been noted long ago that Socrates’ introduced a novel ethicopolitical para-
digm in the history of the West, the politics of conscience. Montaigne alludes to this and Hegel con-
firms it.6 More recently, authors such as Hannah Arendt and Dana Villa have emphasized the same.
They both, Arendt first and Villa in her footsteps, have argued that Socrates is the inventor of an
ethics and politics the gravitational center of which is ‘‘the conscientious individual rather than tra-
dition, convention, or public norms and opinion.’’7 In Arendt’s estimation, the best description of
this can be found at the end of the contested Platonic dialogue Hippias Major (304b–e), in which
Socrates complains about a fictive ‘‘close relative’’ who lives in his house and who is always insult-
ing, blaming, and refuting him. It is worth quoting the lengthy passage in its entirety:

Hippias, my friend, you’re a lucky man, because you know which activities a man should practice, and
you’ve practiced them too—successfully, as you say. But it seems to me that some divine fortune (dai-
monia tis tykhē) holds me back. I am always wandering (planaō) and perplexed (aporō). If I make a dis-
play of how perplexed I am (emautōu aporian) to you wise men, I get mud-spattered by your speeches
when I display it. You all say what you just said, that I am spending my time on things that are silly and
small and worthless. But when I’m convinced by you and say what you say, that it’s the most excellent
thing to be able to present a speech well and finely, and get things done in court or any other gathering, I
hear every insult (kakos) from that man (among others around here) who has always been disgracing
(elengkhō) me. He happens to be a close relative of mine, and he lives in the same house. So when I
go home to my own place and he hears me saying those things, he asks if I’m not ashamed (aiskhynō)
that I dare discuss fine activities when I’ve been so plainly refuted about the fine and it’s clear I don’t
even know at all what that is itself! ‘‘Look,’’ he’ll say. ‘‘How will you know whose speech—or any other
action—is finely presented or not, when you are ignorant of the fine? And when you’re in a state like that,
do you think it’s any better for you to live than die?’’ That’s what I get, as I said. Insults (kakōs) from you
and from him, blamed (oneidizō) by both. But I suppose it is necessary to bear all that. It wouldn’t be
strange if it were good for me. I actually think, Hippias, that associating with both of you has done
me good. The proverb says, ‘‘What’s fine is hard’’—I think I know that.8

For Arendt, the ‘‘close relative’’ Socrates is speaking about is what the subsequent Western tra-
dition has called ‘‘conscience.’’9 Correspondingly, the entire passage is, according to her, a good
example of the ‘‘inner dialogue’’ characteristic of the Socratic politics of conscience.10 And it is
indeed possible that the relative in the passage is a metaphor of conscience. Yet less convincing
is her argument that at stake here is a dialogue, for it is obvious that the relative does not discuss
with Socrates but interrogates and reproves (elengkhō) him, calling ultimately his entire existence
into question (‘‘do you think it’s any better for you to live than die?’’). It is, I think, precisely this
Ojakangas 197

calling into question rather than moral integrity or noncontradiction—as Arendt, Villa, and many
others maintain11—that is the touchstone of Socratic politics. To be sure, Socrates also speaks about
moral integrity, in Gorgias (482b–c), for instance. For Socrates, however, integrity is not merely the
absence of the inner contradiction. For one can avoid the inner contradiction like Alcibiades who
constantly escapes the disharmony of the soul by keeping himself busy in the public life of the polis.
According to Socrates, this is absolutely lamentable. One should not avoid inner contradiction by
escaping it. Integrity is something one must earn and one can earn it only if one is sensitive to the
inner contradiction. However, this is not possible if one has no living experience of this contradic-
tion. In fact, it is precisely this experience rather than its absence that is, for Socrates, the condition
of all virtue.

Humiliation as the Method of Ethics

One is now of course tempted to ask, what is the experience of contradiction in the sphere of mor-
ality? In the tradition of the West, this experience has been called the experience of bad conscience,
guilt, shame, disgrace, and so on, but perhaps more important than any of these terms, denoting usu-
ally one aspect of the wholesale phenomenon, is the essence of this fundamental experience—the
experience the Greeks identified with synoida emautō (‘‘knowing with oneself’’). Synoida emautō
is a verbal construction at the etymological root of the Greek conscience (syneidēsis), which in clas-
sical Greek could have a neutral meaning, signifying that one is conscious of something concerning
oneself, but which could involve a moral meaning as well. Common to all these ethical uses of
synoida emautō is that it expresses a profound sense of disorientation—a personal, moral, political,
and religious sense of loss.12 It is this experience of disorientation originating in the experience of
conscience that constitutes the essence of Socratic politics. Recall Socrates’ words in Hippias Major
(304c) I quoted above, ‘‘It seems to me that some divine fortune (daimonia tis tykhē) holds me back.
I am always wandering (planaō) and perplexed (aporō).’’ We also remember why he is aporos,
meaning ‘‘helpless,’’ ‘‘without passage,’’ and ‘‘without orientation.’’ He is aporos because the ‘‘rela-
tive’’ living in his place constantly accuses him and puts him into shame no matter what he has done.
In other words, especially if we interpret, with Arendt, the ‘‘relative’’ as a metaphor for conscience,
the Socratic conscience is not a source of opinion, not even of normativity, but first and foremost the
source of aporia. The conscience does not tell Socrates what to do and what to avoid but merely
disturbs him up to the point of absolute confusion (‘‘when you’re in a state like that, do you think
it’s any better for you to live than die?’’). In the same passage, however, Socrates also states that it is
necessary to endure all this, because he thinks that it is good for him, and it is good to him because he
believes that absolute disorientation is the necessary condition of true morality and politics. Only
the one who, by virtue of humiliation, ‘‘knows with himself’’ that he knows nothing is capable of
leading virtuous life: ‘‘I know with myself (synoida emautō) that I am not wise at all’’ (Apology
21b). This was a new formula of ethics and politics in the tradition of the West. The way to true
moral and political knowledge goes through the absolute disorientation in terms of such knowledge.
All the known truths have to be relativized in the confusing experience of conscience because there
is no true virtue without absolute moral and political disorientation.
This is also the backdrop of Socrates’ famous ‘‘method’’ of elenchus. We may translate elengkhos
as ‘‘cross-examination,’’ but given the fact that the word derives from the verb elengkhō signifying
‘‘to reprove,’’ ‘‘to disgrace,’’ ‘‘to shame,’’ and ‘‘to accuse,’’ a more illustrative translation would be
humiliation. In fact, it is precisely the verb elengkhō Socrates employs in Hippias Major (403d)
when he laments that his ‘‘relative’’ is always disgracing him: ‘‘I hear every insult from that man
( . . . ) who has always been disgracing (elengkhō) me.’’ Hence, the ‘‘relative’’ employs the same
method of elenchus in the case of Socrates as Socrates, the gadfly, employs when he ‘‘cross-exam-
ines’’ or more precisely, reproves and disgraces the Athenians: ‘‘I shall,’’ Socrates proclaims,
198 Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 38(3)

‘‘question and examine and disgrace (elengkhō) everyone in Athens, young and old, citizens and
foreigners’’ (Apology 29e–30a), continuing that ‘‘I never cease to rouse each and every one of you,
to persuade and reproach you all day long and everywhere I find myself in your company’’ (Apology
30e). In Theaitetos, Socrates likewise proclaims, ‘‘I am a most eccentric person (atopos) and drive
men to aporia (poiô tous anthrôpous aporein)’’ (Theaitetos 149a), adding that ‘‘those who associate
with me ( . . . ) are in pain and ( . . . ) perplexed (aporia) night and day’’ (Theaitetos 151a). And, if we
are to believe Plato, he was sometimes quite successful. Even Alcibiades, the proudest of the young
Athenians, felt ashamed before Socrates, the self-appointed ‘‘conscience’’ of the Athenians:

Socrates is the only man in the world who has made me feel shame—ah, you didn’t think I had it in me,
did you? Yes, he makes me feel ashamed, because I know with myself (synodia emautō) that I can’t
prove he’s wrong when he tells me what I should do; yet, the moment I leave his side, I go back to
my old ways: I cave in to my desire to please the crowd. My whole life has become one constant effort
to escape from him and keep away, but when I see him, I feel deeply ashamed, because I’m doing nothing
about my way of life, though I have already agreed with him that I should. Sometimes, believe me, I think
I would be happier if he were dead. (Symposium, 216b–c)

It is sometimes complained that Plato’s Socratic dialogues are aporetic and do not lead to any
conclusion, but, in truth, the only aim of such a ‘‘method’’ is aporia. In other words, the aim of the
‘‘method’’ of elenchus based on the accusations Socrates makes on his interlocutors is not to figure
out what virtue means but, on the contrary, to reveal that all our conceptions of virtue are worth noth-
ing and, ultimately, to elicit absolute disorientation in terms of morality and politics. The Socratic
‘‘method’’ of elenchus does not lead anywhere, or better still, it leads to nowhere. This is not a sign
of the method’s failure, because it is the aporia that was sought for in the first place.13 It was sought
for, because Socrates believes that true moral and political knowledge can emanate from such an
aporia alone. Only the one who, by virtue of disgrace and humiliation, knows with himself (synoida
emautō) that he knows nothing, to whom the world as a whole has become impenetrable, is capable
of virtue. As Socrates proclaims in Philebus (16b), ‘‘There certainly is no better road (hodos), nor
can there ever be, than that which I have always loved, though it has often deserted me, leaving me
lonely and forlorn (erēmon kai aporon).’’

The Tragic Model of the Socratic Politics

Although Socrates outlined the tenets of the Western politics of conscience, he was not without a
model. This model can be found in Greek tragedies. Let us consider the most famous of them,
Sophocles’ Antigone. Hegel may be wrong in claiming that Antigone is not a subject of conscience,
but he is certainly wrong when he asserts that there is no such a subject at all in Antigone.14 There
indeed is such a subject of conscience, although this subject is revealed only at the end of the play.
This subject is Creon who acknowledges his hamartia (1306–1310), ‘‘Ah, no! I tremble with fear.
Why does no one strike me full on my chest with a two-edged sword? I am miserable—ah—and
bathed in miserable anguish!’’ A little later (1343–1345), he continues, ‘‘I do not know which way
I should look, or where I should seek support. All is amiss (lekhrios) that is in my hands.’’15 This is
the moment when the conscience enters the play. It is the moment when all the landmarks of moral
and political orientation vanish, the moment when one finds oneself thrown into the ‘‘wilderness’’
(agrios; 1274). It is the moment when the known ways of the world, its authorities, laws, norms,
traditions, and values are called into question, including Creon’s own authority. They have become
relative, superfluous, turning eventually into nothing, at least for the subject that goes through this
terrible experience that ‘‘no sacrifice can bring to an end’’ (1285).
Ojakangas 199

Such a turning point can of course be found in almost all classical tragedies. The hero acknowl-
edges his hamartia resulting in the turmoil of his soul. To be sure, it is not always a ‘‘conscience’’ but
also the Furies (erinyes), Dike’s loyal maidens of vengeance, who are understood as the cause of this
terrible experience. This holds true particularly for Aeschylus. In Sophocles’ plays, however, the
role of the Furies is already diminished. In Antigone, for instance, they are mentioned only once,
and even here (603) Sophocles speaks about the Furies in the mind (phrenōn erinys). Most clearly,
however, this new attitude appears in Euripides’ plays, particularly in Orestes. In a decisive passage
(392–397) where Orestes complains about his inner sufferings, he does not mention the Erinyes at all
but speaks about synesis:
Orestes: Here I am, the murderer of my wretched mother.
Menelaus: I have heard, spare your words; evils should be seldom spoken.
Orestes: I will be sparing; but the deity is lavish of woe to me.
Menelaus: What ails you? What is your deadly sickness (nosos)?
Orestes: My conscience (synesis); I know (synoida) that I am guilty of a dreadful crime.
Menelaus: What do you mean? Wisdom is shown in clarity, not in obscurity.16

This passage has given scholars the reason to attribute to Euripides the very discovery of conscience,
for he demythologized, as Bruno Snell says, the Furies by rendering their objective punishments into
a purely subjective experience.17 Here, however, more essential than to speculate who discovered
conscience is to focus on the consequences of this experience. For I contend that it is precisely these
consequences, both internal and external, that are decisive regarding the Socratic politics of con-
science. What then are these consequences? First of all, the experience of conscience entails the col-
lapse of all the familiar coordinates of the world, whereby the hero finds himself, like Creon, thrown
into the wilderness (agrios). He finds himself utterly alone and forlorn (erēmos kai aporōs), as
Socrates describes the effects of his method in Gorgias. True, the exact expression erēmos aporos,
that is, desolated, isolated, and abandoned (erēmos), helpless or without a way (aporos), occurs quite
rarely in tragedies. We find it in Oedipus at Colonus (1735) where Ismene moans, ‘‘Unhappy me!
Abandoned and helpless (erēmos aporos), where am I now to live my wretched life?’’ Yet tragedies
are full of corresponding expressions, the most frequent of which is erēmos apolis, signifying aban-
doned (erēmos), without a city (apolis). We find it in Sophocles, in Philoctetes (1018) for instance,
where Philoctetes accuses Odysseus of mistreating him: ‘‘You bind me and intend to take me from
this shore where once you left me, a friendless, lonely without a city (erēmos apolis), living corpse.’’
But it is again Euripides who employs it most frequently. We come across the expression in Medea
(255) as well as in Hecuba (811) in both of which the heroine complains of being erēmos apolis:
‘‘Now I am your slave,’’ says Hecuba to Agamemnon, ‘‘a happy mother once, but now childless and
old alike, bereft of city, utterly abandoned (apolis erēmos), the most wretched woman living.’’ We
find the same motif in Euripide’s Hippolytus (846) and Suppliants (1132) as well, but now it is the
whole oikos that is desolated: ‘‘I am destroyed: my house is desolated (erēmos oikos), my children
are orphaned,’’ Theseus bemoans.

A Refugee in One’s Own City

Let us return to Socrates. While the Greeks felt pity for a man who had gone through the tragic expe-
rience of synoida emautō leading to the condition of erēmos apolis, Socrates saw in him the model
for the ethicopolitical subject. Accordingly, the aim of his ethical ‘‘method’’ (elengkhos) was to cre-
ate such abandoned cityless subjects, like he himself, knowing not which way to look, or where to
seek support, to use Sophocles words again: ‘‘It is,’’ Socrates says in Meno (80c), ‘‘not from any
sureness in myself that I drive others to aporia (poiō aporein): it is from myself being more in aporia
(autos aporōn) than anyone else that I drive others to aporia (poiō aporein).’’ Yet, we must be precise
200 Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 38(3)

here. Socrates never says that he is an apolis—if we do not take into account his ‘‘exodus’’ (exodos)
outside the polis in the beginning of Phaedrus. He is not an apolis but abandoned and helpless (erēmos
aporos), atopos (displaced, out of place), as Socrates says of himself in Theaitetos (149a) and Callicles
confirms in Gorgias (494d). As a matter of fact, it is not until the Cynics and especially the rise of
Christianity that the condition of apolis as the true condition of wise and pious man is fully affirmed.
A little before the passage in Discourses (3.22.94) where Epictetus proclaims that conscience (to synei-
dos) gives a Cynic the same power as guards and arms give to kings and tyrants, he asserts (3.22.47)
that such a person, like he himself, is aoikos and apolis, without a house and a city.18 Diogenes Laertius
likewise reports (6.38) that Diogenes the Cynic used to say that all the curses of tragedy had lighted
upon him: ‘‘At all events he was,’’ Laertius continues by citing some lost tragedy ‘‘apolis, aoikos,
patridos esterēmenos,’’ without a city and home, deprived of a fatherland.19 In early Christianity, this
citylessness and homelessness became a paradigm. Those who live in Christ are but ‘‘aliens (paroikos)
and exiles (parepidemos),’’ without home (oikos) and without land (demos), as we read in 1 Peter 2:11.
And although the theme is the most visibly present in the writings of early Fathers, it never disappears
entirely. The true Christian is but a peregrinus, a ‘‘foreigner in the world (peregrinus in saeculo)’’
(15.1), as Augustine repeats almost throughout The City of God.20
In contrast to this Cynico-early-Christian paradigm, Socrates categorically refuses to leave the
polis, because, as he says in Phaedrus (230d), he is a friend of learning—and ‘‘the country places
and the trees won’t teach me anything, and the people in the city (astu) do.’’ Hence, Socrates is not
a Diogenes, let alone an early Christian. But we must take into account what kind of a city dweller
Socrates is. For he is not a proper citizen of the polis either, ‘‘I am not the politician (ouk eimi ton
politikōn),’’ as he says in Gorgias (473e). To the Greeks, a proper citizen was one who took part in
the political life of the polis, but Socrates discredits ‘‘all the business commonly called politics’’
(Euthydemus 292e). Hence, Socrates does not fit in either of well-known categories in Politics
(1253a) by means of which Aristotle distinguishes men from animals and gods. Socrates is not a
zōon politikon, but strictly speaking he is not an apolis either, that is, ‘‘a lower animal (therion)
or a god (theos),’’ living without a polis. Rather he is an apolis within the polis, a sort of animal-
god as citizen. In other words, even though Socrates does not dwell outside the polis abandoned
by his fellow citizens, he is not a citizen among others but a citizen abandoned in the polis, a refugee
in his own city. He is erēmos apolis not outside the polis but at the heart of it—as a new figure of the
citizen, the one who takes up the true political craft:

I believe that I’m one of a few Athenians—so as not to say I’m not the only one, but the only one among
our contemporaries—to take up the true political craft (hē hōs alēthōs politikē tekhnē) and practice pol-
itics (prattein ta politika). (Gorgias 521d)

Instead of the Aristotelian zōon politikon, it is precisely the Socratic abandoned citizen (erēmos
apolis) that is the paradigm of the Western ethicopolitical subject and, at the same time, that of the
autonomous citizen.

Erēmos Aporos as the True Politician

We must ask, however, why Socrates conceived such a displaced erēmos apolis withdrawn from the
normal social and political relations of the polis as the true ethicopolitical subject. The most obvious,
yet all too simple answer is that by withdrawing from the public affairs of the polis Socrates is able to
avoid injustice, for it is, as he says in the Apology (31d–e), impossible to avoid injustice if taking
part in politics. The true key to this paradox lies rather in Socrates’ understanding of the allegedly
positive consequences of the aporia incurred by the experience of synoida emautō. As already said,
the negative consequence of the experience of synoida emautō is an absolute disorientation in terms
Ojakangas 201

of morality and politics, because it tears the subject from the social bond and, by the same token,
from itself. Such a subject stands abandoned and helpless (erēmos aporos)—or, as Callicles says
of Socrates in Gorgias (486c), he ‘‘lives in his city as an absolute outcast’’ (atekhnōs de atimon zēn
en tē polei). However, to live in the city as an absolute outcast also signifies that the subject is no
longer constituted by this bond but by the very painful division within the subject itself, the same
division that cuts him out of the social bond in the first place. It is precisely for this reason that
Socrates was able to scorn public opinion, ‘‘We must not consider at all what the many will say
of us,’’ he says in Crito (48a). Indeed, if we accept Aristotle’s definition of shamelessness as con-
tempt for public opinion (Rhetoric 1368b20–25), Socrates was the most shameless man in the Athe-
nian polis. Yet Socrates’ shamelessness did not signify, at least not in his own opinion, that he was a
bad citizen. In his own estimation, he was not shameless at all. On the contrary, he believed himself
to be the only citizen capable of true shame. True shame is not dependent on public opinion, for true
shame is not shame before others but before one’s conscience. Unlike ‘‘normal’’ shame—shame
before others—which makes one’s existence entirely dependent on others’ opinions, the Socratic
shame before one’s conscience is a liberating experience. The subject of conscience stands aban-
doned and perplexed, but not because other people despise him but rather because the nothing of
conscience sets him radically free from the principles, norms, values, and opinions of the commu-
nity. In other words, the subject of conscience stands apart as a sovereign individual. He is like the
Cyclop in Euripides’ Cyclops, for the Cyclops are, as Silenius explains to Odysseus, ‘‘abandoned’’
(erēmoi) and ‘‘solitaires’’ (monades; 116), but precisely for this reason ‘‘none of them is subject to
anyone’’ (akouei d’ ouden oudeis oudenos; 120).21 This is why Socrates commends his ‘‘relative’’
who carries on ceaselessly relativizing him and his world, for he realized that the absolute disorien-
tation incurred by the experience of synoida emautō entails a fracture in the web of immanent social
relations and thereby, the birth of a sovereign individual subjected to no one. Socrates is no longer
dependent even on the constitution (politeia) of the polis (Gorgias 513a), that is, its truths, virtues,
customs, and laws. The constitution of the polis and by the same token, the constitution of the entire
visible world, has lost its meaning to him. It has become null and void, absolutely nothing, but it is
precisely from this nothingness that the sovereign individual is born.
Thus, it is not his capacity to think that enables Socrates to distance himself from the ‘‘routines of
everyday life,’’ as Villa maintains,22 but the disorienting experience of being rendered erēmos
aporos by the accusing voice of conscience. In what sense, however, is such an erēmos aporos qua
sovereign individual morally superior to a normal Athenian citizen? He is superior, according to the
logic of Socratic ethical politics, because a normal citizen takes care of the affairs of the polis in his
own limited and partial perspective measuring his action and responsibility according to the given
norms and values. The displaced erēmos aporos, instead, measures his action according to the mea-
sureless measure of the nothing of conscience. This entails that he also takes care (epimeleomai)—or
is capable of taking care—of the affairs of the polis (of its justice, piety, etc.; Apology 36c) in the
same modality, that is, in the modality of unlimited responsibility. It is for this reason that Socrates
reproaches and disgraces everyone in Athens, for he wants that all Athenians become lonely sover-
eign outcasts (erēmoi aporoi), because only such outcasts are capable of taking care of the affairs of
the polis as well as their own souls (Apology 36c).
Also this turn from the condition of erēmos aporos qua sovereign individual to the responsible
political subject also has its model in the Greek tragedies. While the Homeric hero, at least occasion-
ally, blamed his misdeeds on delusions of the gods,23 the tragic hero acknowledges his responsibil-
ity. In Antigone (1317–1322), Creon confesses:

Ah this responsibility (aitios) can never be fastened onto any other mortal so as to remove my own! It was
I, yes, I, who killed you, I the wretch (meleos ¼ useless). I admit the truth. Lead me away, my servants,
lead me from here with all haste, who am no more than a dead man (mēdeis ¼ nobody)!
202 Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 38(3)

However, to become erēmos aporos and to become a subject of responsibility are not two separate
moments but one and the same moment seen from two perspectives: becoming erēmos aporos through
the accusing conscience means that one acknowledges one’s responsibility and vice versa, acknowl-
edging one’s responsibility through the accusing conscience means that one becomes erēmos aporos.
Yet Socrates elevated this tragic scheme to a new level, for what is at stake for him in this responsi-
bility is not one’s guilt with regard to one’s evil deeds in the past but more profound responsibility in
which responsibility becomes a permanent attribute of existence. While the experience of synoida
emautō, the condition of erēmos aporos and responsibility defined the life of the tragic hero at a critical
juncture when he became conscious of his evil deed, in Socrates’ politics of conscience these elements
are put at the heart of everyday life. In Socratic ethical politics, one is no longer an erēmos aporos if
one finds oneself responsible for a crime. One has to make oneself an abandoned outcast, to commit a
sort of symbolic suicide (‘‘to live in a state as close to death as possible,’’ as Socrates says of himself in
Phaedo 67d) by means of continuous self-accusation. Due to these self-accusations, the condition of
erēmos aporos becomes permanent and responsibility ineradicable.
In the formation of the Socratic ethicopolitical subject, in short, at stake is the dialectical move
from the normal situation characterized by the morality of custom to the state of exception (erēmos
aporos) through the annihilating experience of conscience (synoida emautō) and finally, back to the
normal situation again as seen from the altered perspective of absolute responsibility enabled and, in
the last resort, necessitated by the traumatic and disorienting experience of conscience. This dialec-
tics is also the key to the enigma scholars have been wrestling with when trying to combine the rebel-
lious Socrates with the law-abiding Socrates loyal to the fundamental traditional principles of the
polis, that is, the Socrates who shamelessly refuses to assimilate himself to the order of the polis
(politeia) and the Socrates who in Crito (51b–c) proclaims that one must always ‘‘obey the com-
mands of one’s city and country.’’ Also Villa wrestles with this problem but he ‘‘solves’’ it by sub-
suming the conservative Socrates of Crito to the dissident Socrates of Apology.24 In this regard,
David D. Corey’s criticism of Villa is perfectly justified, as he argues that these two figures cannot
be reconciled within the framework of the Socratic dissident citizenship.25 However, Corey’s own
solution is not very satisfying either, for he argues that Socrates’ oscillating attitude toward obedi-
ence is due to the contingent interventions of Socrates’ daimonion understood as a supernatural
source of Socrates’ ethics and politics.26 For even if we accept Corey’s conclusion that there is a
supernatural source of authority for Socrates, it does not solve the problem how to reconcile the
Socrates of Crito and Apology—especially when we take into account that Socrates’ daimonion says
always the same thing, that is to say, it prevents him from doing wrong: ‘‘It is impossible that my
familiar sign did not oppose me if I was not about to do what was right’’ (Apology 40c).27 From the
perspective of the Socratic politics of conscience, however, there is no enigma here, for these two
attitudes articulated in Crito and Apology represent two moments in this politics. It is precisely his
refusal to assimilate himself to the principles of the polis made possible by the disorienting experi-
ence of conscience that enables Socrates to truly adhere to them in a conscientious way, namely in
the modality of unlimited responsibility.

Erēmos Aporos, Homo Sacer, and the Western Thanatopolitical Subject

If the Socratic disoriented, abandoned, and forlorn man (erēmos aporos) is neither the Aristotelian
zōon politikon nor an apolis pure and simple, that is to say, ‘‘a lower animal (therion) or a god
(theos),’’ but rather stands at the threshold of the polis and the wilderness (agrios), being as if an
animal-god within the walls of the polis, is he not then exactly what Agamben famously calls ‘‘bare
life’’ or homo sacer? Also homo sacer is abandoned and forlorn, but not outside the polis but rather
in the polis, being a refugee in his own city, a sort of anomos in the sphere of nomos. In addition, his
life is not defined by certain form of life (bios) meaning a definite place in the order of the polis, but
Ojakangas 203

neither does he live natural life (zoē) like an animal or a god, but is a same kind of atopos as erēmos
aporos. Finally, like homo sacer, erēmos aporos is a ‘‘living corpse’’ (en zōsin nekron), as Sophocles
describes the tragic hero in Philoctetes (1018), or he lives, as Socrates says of himself, ‘‘as close to
death as possible’’ (Phaedo 67d). What then is the difference between the Socratic erēmos aporos
and the Agambenian homo sacer, if any?
Unlike homo sacer, the Socratic ethicopolitical subject is not abandoned by the sovereign but by
himself through the traumatic accusations of conscience. Furthermore, although erēmos aporos is a
‘‘living corpse,’’ he is not thereby at mercy of the sovereign. On the contrary, it is he who has
become sovereign, not because he has somehow managed to sublate his condition as abandoned and
forlorn subject, but because this condition is the condition of sovereign freedom. In other words, it is
neither his biological life in the order of nature (zoē) nor his form of life in the symbolic order of the
polis (bios), not even his exposure to the threat of imminent death (homo sacer), but his symbolic
suicide that renders him a sovereign individual subjected to no one. This is not to say that erēmos
aporos would be an Agambenian sovereign, for although this sovereign occupies the same terrain of
ban as homo sacer (they are ‘‘symmetrical figures’’),28 they are nevertheless opposed to each other.
Instead, erēmos aporos occupies the zone of indistinction of homo sacer and the sovereign. He is
homo sacer as sovereign and sovereign as homo sacer, or rather, he is the sovereign continuously
exposed to the condition of homo sacer through which he must in any case pass in order to become
the sovereign subject of infinite responsibility. It is precisely this dialectics—continuous oscillation
between bare life and sovereignty—that makes the Socratic erēmos aporos infinitely responsible
political subject. However, the most decisive difference between homo sacer and erēmos aporos
remains unconcealed unless we have deciphered the exact meaning of that infinite responsibility
characteristic of the Socratic political subject.
As already said, the humiliating voice of conscience discloses one’s unlimited responsibility by
removing one from one’s proper place in the symbolic order of the polis. However, it also renders
one capable of transcending one’s limited position as a living being. It makes one capable of sacrifi-
cing one’s life: ‘‘I shall not change my conduct even if I am to die many times over,’’ as Socrates
proclaims in Apology (30b–c). Socrates does not change his conduct, because his conscience does
not allow it—to stop to taking care of citizen’s souls by reproaching them—and Socrates believes
that he has to obey his conscience even at the peril of his life. In other words, the man of con-
science—like Socrates—does not abhor even death. Indeed, he does not abhor death in particular,
for his own death has become indifferent or rather an object of scorn for him. Yet, it is precisely
once death has become an object of scorn that the instinct of self-preservation characteristic of mere
life is rendered inoperative. In this sense, politics of conscience is always thanatopolitics, politics of
death. It is a radical revocation of mere life and mere survival—a revocation that makes one capable
of sacrificing oneself for a political cause. Paradoxically, this overcoming of mere life by becoming
an absolute outcast in the disorienting experience of conscience which makes one capable of sacrifi-
cing one’s life also reconnects one to life, perhaps more tightly than ever. The conscience is in the
service of death as it demands that you must sacrifice yourself for the Cause, but it is precisely for
this reason that you are able to overcome the threat of death. Such overcoming entails affirmation of
life, but life that is affirmed here is no longer mere life but sovereign life. In Freudian terms, it is life
beyond pleasure and even reality principle—life under the auspices of the instinct of death. It is nei-
ther the Aristotelian zōon politikon nor the Agambenian homo sacer but the Socratic erēmos
aporos—the thanatopolitical subject of sovereign life—that is the paradigmatic figure of the West-
ern political subject.
This conceptually tiny but nevertheless decisive difference between erēmos aporos and homo
sacer becomes clearer if we consider Agamben’s primary example of the modern homo sacer. This
example is Muselmann, the most miserable inhabitant of the concentration camp, no longer living
but not yet dead, no longer human but not an animal either, but beyond them both.29 Instead, one
204 Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 38(3)

finds a paradigmatic example of the modern erēmos aporos in the citizen-subject of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau’s Social Contract—though here the voice of conscience is transformed into the voice
of people.30 In the initial situation of the contract, Rousseau tells us, the individual is pushed outside
every community, law, and tradition, separated and isolated from his family, relatives, friends, even-
tually from every human being. Yet although he is now like a bandit, he is not left outside the body
politic, but rather finds himself at the heart of it, for by the contract the individual not only alienates
himself from every existing community but also with respect to the new body politic constituted by
the contract: ‘‘These articles of association, rightly understood, are reducible to a single one, namely
the total alienation by each associate of himself and all his rights to the whole community (l’alie´na-
tion totale de chaque associe´ avec tous ses droits à toute la communaute´).’’31 This is how the indi-
vidual becomes what Rousseau calls a Sujet, totally at the mercy of the body politic that may compel
him as it wishes, even kill him. Yet, Rousseau argues that the contract also renders the individual a
Citoyen who by participating in the sovereign authority (l’autorite´ souveraine) of this new body
politic obeys himself alone. On what account the individual is a sovereign Citoyen, if he is an abso-
lute outcast at the mercy of the community? He is the Citoyen because he is an alienated, abandoned,
and helpless Sujet, for it is such a subject alone that is capable of attuning to ‘‘the voice of duty’’ (la
voix du devoir) which is the true mark of the Citoyen.32 To become a sovereign citizen presupposes
that one becomes an abandoned outcast deprived of every community, law, and tradition. The indi-
vidual is a citizen capable of giving himself a law and to obey it only on the condition that he is a
subject exposed to the condition of erēmos aporos. Here lies the key to the ‘‘working of the political
machine (le jeu de la machine politique),’’33 the working that culminates in citizen’s duty to sacrifice
himself for the cause of political community:

There is thus a profession of faith which is purely civil and of which it is the sovereign’s function to
determine the articles, not strictly as religious dogmas, but as sentiments of sociability (sentiments socia-
bilite), without which it is impossible to be either a good citizen or a loyal subject. Without being able to
oblige anyone to believe these articles, the sovereign can banish from the state anyone who does not
believe them; banish him not for impiety but as an antisocial being, as one unable sincerely to love law
and justice, or to sacrifice (immoler), if need be, his life to his duty.34

Conclusion
I am not the first to recognize that the Socratic politics is based on the self-imposed condition of
loneliness. In his article, ‘‘Alone in the World: The Existential Socrates in the Apology and Crito,’’
Emanuele Saccarelli emphasizes the same, coming to the conclusion that Socrates is essentially an
antipolitical and antisocial character.35 Yet, we must take into account that Socrates is antipolitical
and antisocial only in the context of the Athenian polis. In the modern context and more precisely, in
the context of the entire Western world since the birth of Christianity, he is neither antipolitical nor
antisocial but rather a paradigmatic figure of the Western political subject. Hence, Saccarelli hits the
mark when it comes to Socrates’ true character but fails to acknowledge the fundamental difference
between classical and modern political life. The modern political subject is not the one who assim-
ilates himself to the order of the state but, on the contrary, the one who is capable of distancing him-
self from that order, thanks to the alien voice within—the voice that does not only isolate him from
the rest of community as an autonomous individual but which by the same token enables him to
commit himself to the cause of community, as it is this voice that discloses him his real duty, that
is to say, his duty to sacrifice his life to his duty: ‘‘It will not always be possible to verify whether the
order has been carried out. With us, the verification must not, must never be left to a commissar, as it
is in Russia. The only commissar we have must be our own conscience (das eigene Gewissen).’’36
Thus, spoke Heinrich Himmler to his Schutzstaffel troops at Poznan on October 4, 1943.
Ojakangas 205

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publi-
cation of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publica-
tion of this article: The author has received financial support for this research from the Academy of Finland.

Notes
1. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Bare Life and Sovereign Power (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1998), 5–6.
2. Ibid., 128–31.
3. On the history of the politics of conscience, see Mika Ojakangas, The Voice of Conscience: A Political
Genealogy of Western Ethical Experience (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013).
4. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 183.
5. Apuleius, ‘‘On the God of Socrates,’’ in The Works of Apuleius (London, UK: George Bell & Sons, 1878),
365.
6. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (Kitchener, Canada: Batoche Books, 2001),
288–89.
7. See Dana Villa, Socratic Citizenship (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 15.
8. In Plato translations I have consulted Plato, Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper (Indianapolis, IN: Hack-
ett, 1997) and Plato in Twelve Volumes, vols. 1, 3, 5–6, and 9, trans. H. N. Fowler, W. R. M. Lamb, and P.
Shorey (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1925–1969).
9. Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, vol. 1 (New York: Harvest Book, 1978), 188–91.
10. See Hannah Arendt, ‘‘Socrates,’’ in The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken
Books, 2005), 25.
11. In addition to Arendt’s numerous writings on Socrates, see for instance Georg Kateb, ‘‘Socratic Integrity,’’
in Integrity and Conscience: Nomos XL, ed. Ian Shapiro and Robert Adams (New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 1998), 77–112.
12. The first and the only surviving document from the Classical period where the Greek word for conscience
(syneidēsis) is mentioned is Democritus’ fragment no. 297 (Diels): ‘‘Some people, ignorant about the
decomposition of mortal nature and in the syneidēsis of evil-doing in life, endure the time of their lives
in confusion and fear because of inventing lies about the time after death.’’ Cited and translated by Philip
Bosman, Conscience in Philo and Paul (Tübingen, Germany: J. C. B. Mohr, 2003), 61. It is not until the
first century BC that the noun came into more frequent usage. This does not signify, however, that the
Greeks did not know the experience of conscience, as is sometimes suggested. In order to express this expe-
rience, they used other nouns such as synesis or verbal compounds such as synoida emautō (‘‘I know with
myself’’) from which the noun syndeidēsis derives. The earliest instance of synoida emautō expressing
guilty conscience can be found in the Thesmophoriazusae (476–77) of Aristophanes: ‘‘I know with myself
of many terrible things (ksynoid’ emautē polla dein’).’’ Aristophanes, ‘‘Thesmophoriazusae,’’ in Aristo-
phanes with English Translation in Three Volumes, vol. 3, trans. B. B. Rogers (London, UK: William Hei-
nemann, 1963), 170–71. Translation modified. On the experience of synoida emautô in the classical polis,
see Philip Bosman, Conscience in Philo and Paul (Tübingen, Germany: J. C. B. Mohr, 2003), 49–105 and
Antonia Canrcini, Syneidesis: Il tema semantico della ‘‘con-scientia’’ nella Grecia antica (Roma, Italy:
Edizioni dell’Ateneo Roma, 1970).
13. Thus, I disagree with Gregory Vlastos’ influential definition of elenchus as Socrates’ method to provide
rational support for his own moral doctrines. Vlastos, ‘‘The Socratic Elenchus,’’ Journal of Philosophy
79, no. 11 (1982): 711–14. Socrates had no moral doctrines.
206 Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 38(3)

14. See G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press,
1977), 279.
15. In Sophocles translations I have consulted Sophocles, The Plays and Fragments, ed. R. Jebbs (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1908).
16. Euripides does not use the reflexive pronoun emautō here, but this may be due to reasons of meter. In Eur-
ipides translations I have consulted Euripides, The Complete Greek Drama, ed. W. J. Oates and E. O’Neill,
Jr. vol. 2 (New York: Random House, 1938); Euripides, Cyclops, Alcestis, Medea, ed. D. Kovacs (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); and Euripides, Children of Heracles, Hippolytus, Andro-
mache, Hecuba, ed. David Kovacs (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
17. Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought (New York: Harper &
Row, 1960), 124–33.
18. Epictetus, The Discourses in Two Volumes, trans. W. A. Oldfather, vol. 2 (London, UK: William Heine-
mann, 1928), 146–47 and 162–65.
19. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers in Two Volumes, trans. R. D. Hicks, vol. 2 (London, UK:
William Heinemann, 1925), 38.
20. Augustine, ‘‘The City of God,’’ in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff, 1st ser., vol. 2 (Pea-
body, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), 284.
21. As we can also read in Homer’s Odyssey (9.105-115), Cyclopes are ‘‘insolent giants without law (athemis-
tos),’’ but at the same time, and because of this, each of them ‘‘makes his own law (themisteuō).’’ The Odys-
sey with an English Translation in Two Volumes, vol. 1, trans. A. T. Murray (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1919), 310–13. Translation modified.
22. Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 29.
23. For instance, when Agamemnon (Iliad 19.86) realized that he had made a mistake by robbing Achilles’
mistress, he blames gods: ‘‘Not I, he declared, not I was the cause of this act, but Zeus and my portion and
the Erinys who walks in darkness: they it was who in the assembly put wild delusion (ate) in my under-
standing, on that day when I arbitrarily took Achilles’ prize from him. So what could I do? Deity always
have its way.’’
24. See Villa, Socratic Citizenship, 41–56; see also Kateb, ‘‘Socratic Integrity,’’ 88–94.
25. David D. Corey, ‘‘Socratic Citizenship: Delphic Oracle and Divine Sign.’’ The Review of Politics 67, no. 2
(March 2005): 207–209.
26. Corey, ‘‘Socratic Citizenship,’’ 226.
27. In the article, Corey also makes a strange claim that Socrates’ daimonion cannot be a conscience as
Socrates regards its voice as coming from someone other than himself. In order to reaffirm his argument,
Corey insists that Socrates’ daimonion intervenes also on occasions that are morally neutral as in the Euthy-
demus (272e–273a) in which his divine sign prevents Socrates from leaving a gymnasium. Corey,
‘‘Socratic Citizenship,’’ 220–21. On this point, see also Luc Brisson, ‘‘Socrates and the Divine Signal
According to Plato’s Testimony: Philosophical Practice as Rooted in Religious Tradition,’’ Apeiron 38,
no. 2 (2005): 6. On one hand, it is more than obvious that in the Western tradition the voice of conscience
has always been other’s voice within, be that other God, nature, or the voice of the father. On the other
hand, there are no morally neutral events for Socrates. Any man, as Socrates stresses in Apology (28b), who
is any good at all, should look to this only in his actions: ‘‘whether what he does is right or wrong.’’
28. Agamben, Homo Sacer, 84.
29. See Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive (New York: Zone Books,
2002).
30. This voice, understood as the general will, is exactly like the Vicar’s divine instinct of conscience in the
book four in E´mile: it radically detaches man from the social bond, it can be neither represented nor dis-
cussed, and it is ‘‘always constant, unalterable and pure.’’ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract,
trans. M. Cranston (London, UK: Penguin, 1968), 150.
31. Rousseau, The Social Contract, 60.
Ojakangas 207

32. Ibid., 64.

33. Ibid.
34. Ibid., 186.
35. Emanuele Saccarelli, ‘‘Alone in the World: The Existential Socrates in the Apology and Crito,’’ Political
Studies 55, no. 3 (2007): 522–45.
36. Heinrich Himmler, ‘‘Rede des Reichsführer-SS bei der SS-Gruppenführertagung in Posen Am 4. Oktober
1943,’’ accessed August 24, 2012, http://www.nationalsozialismus.de/dokumente/texte/page/4.

Author Biography
Mika Ojakangas is professor of political thought at the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. The
author of five books and over 80 articles, his research areas include continental political theory, the
history of political and ethical thought, and political theology. His latest book The Voice of Con-
science: A Political Genealogy of Western Ethical Experience has been published by Bloomsbury
Academic (2013).