First Philosophy Last Philosophy: Western Knowledge between Metaphysics and the Sciences

by Giorgio Agamben, Zakiya Hanafi (translator)

Che cosa è in gioco in quella che la tradizione della filosofia occidentale ha chiamato filosofia prima, ovvero metafisica? Si tratta di una speculazione astratta ormai desueta, oppure in essa ne va di un problema che ci riguarda da vicino, cioè quello dell’unità del sapere dell’Occidente? La metafisica è, infatti, «prima» solo in rapporto alle altre due scienze che Aristotele chiama teoretiche, cioè la fisica e la matematica. È il senso strategico di questo «primato» che si tratta allora di interrogare, poiché in esso è in questione nulla di meno che la relazione di dominio o di sudditanza, di conflitto o di armonia fra la filosofia e le scienze. L’ipotesi del libro è che il tentativo della filosofia di assicurarsi attraverso la metafisica un primato rispetto alle scienze si sia invece risolto alla fine in una sudditanza della filosofia, divenuta più o meno consapevolmente ancilla scientiarum, com’era stata in passato ancilla theologiae. Tanto più urgente è indagare, come questo libro fa attraverso un’indagine archeologica sulla metafisica, la natura e i limiti di questo primato e di questa sudditanza.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2023

About the author

Giorgio Agamben is one of the leading figures in Italian and contemporary continental philosophy. He is the author of Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life; Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive; Profanations; The Signature of All Things: On Method, and other books. Through the 1970s, 1980s, and early 1990s he treated a wide range of topics, including aesthetics, literature, language, ontology, nihilism, and radical political thought.

In recent years, his work has had a deep impact on contemporary scholarship in a number of disciplines in the Anglo-American intellectual world. Born in Rome in 1942, Agamben completed studies in Law and Philosophy with a doctoral thesis on the political thought of Simone Weil, and participated in Martin Heidegger’s seminars on Hegel and Heraclitus as a postdoctoral scholar.

He rose to international prominence after the publication of Homo Sacer in 1995. Translated into English in 1998, the book’s analyses of law, life, and state power appeared uncannily prescient after the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC in September 2001, and the resultant shifts in the geopolitical landscape. Provoking a wave of scholarly interest in the philosopher’s work, the book also marked the beginning of a 20-year research project, which represents Agamben’s most important contribution to political philosophy.

Reviews

[Alexander · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly extraordinary book of philosophy, and all the more extraordinary on account of its short length. At stake are some of the most exalted terms in the Western philosophical tradition - metaphysics, ontology, and the transcendental(s) - each given a specifically Agambinian articulation, all the better to reassess this practice called philosophy. At the outset, it’s important to note that what Agamben understands by ‘metaphysics’ here isn’t some neutral field, one given discipline among others, but rather, a kind of strategy, a strategy that developed in response to a problem articulated in the writings of Aristotle and whose hold on us remains unbroken still. For Agamben then, the book’s goal is simple one: to enable us to recognise this hold so we might finally free ourselves of it.

As for the problem itself, it’s in the title: how to situate ‘first philosophy’ with respect to ‘second philosophy’, or rather, how to treat the ‘science’ that deals with being-qua-being (being in its most general capacity, you might say), and the ’sciences’ that deal with being in its more delimited modes: physics and mathematics, the first of which deals with being only insofar as it ‘moves’, and the second only insofar as it is quantitative. This ‘splitting’ of philosophy between what of it comes ‘first’, and what of it follows, is a kind of original fracture that winds its way through all of what we now call philosophy, with Agamben’s book tracing its mutations all across the history of the art, from its uptake in Avicenna and Aquinas, all the way to Kant and Heidegger among others.

Particularly insistent is Agamben on the fact that for Aristotle, no such thing as metaphysics existed. While the identification of ‘first philosophy’ with ‘metaphysics’ is today taken more or less for granted, Agamben argues that metaphysics instead developed in the wake of the fracture of philosophy, as an effort to come to terms with the original division that defined it. Of even more decisive importance was the shift, beginning in the 14th century, of the treatment of first philosophy in terms of a ‘science of transcendentals’ (over and above a ‘science of being’). Such a shift entailed making explicit a link between being and language, such that the so-called ’transcendentals’ (‘being’, ‘one’, ‘true’, ‘good’) were simply the predicates that could universally attributed to all things, as per a kind of grammar.

This ‘transcendentalization’ of being - a wreathing of being with language, as it were - in turn transformed metaphysics less into a doctrine of being than into a doctrine of knowledge. A question no longer of the structure of the world so much as the structure of what and how we know it. Hence its apogee, more or less, in the philosophy of Kant, for whom ‘being’ was substituted for ‘the thing itself’, the process of which is traced here by Agamben back to its medieval provenance in the doctrine of the transcendentals. To say all this is, as usual, to offer nothing but the barest of bones of what is, in fact, a far more fully fleshed out retelling of the history of philosophy as given in this book. Although small, it’s not an easy read, and to see these complex threads come together in the way they do is testament to a lifetime of learning to which I can only hope to do a little honor here.

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Another review here suggests that this is Part I of a new project. Maybe so, but it's worth noting that this also does pick up and and extend themes explored by Agamben in a few places already, even as it articulates them in a fresh manner. The role of the transcendentals and negativity (which I didn't mention above) are explored in Language and Death, the 'ethical' aspect of this split is examined in Opus Dei, and much of what is said about language and metaphysics can be found as far back as the essays on Aristotle in Potentialities, and as far forward as What Is Philosophy? I imagine much here will be re-articulated anew in his translated-but-not-yet-released (as of this writing) L'irrealizzabile. Others will likely make different connections still! Which is only to say that this helps grow and complexify the Agambenian ecosystem which it still remains a part of.

[Rhys · Rating 3 out of 5]

'And the first one now will later be last" ... really, just Dylan with a lot of medieval references ...

[Tara Brabazon · Rating 4 out of 5]

A short book that is probably the start of a wider project for Agamben.

The title is terrific. The history of ideas, that created the 'first philosophy' through Aristotle's metaphysics, are convincing, provocative and strong.

The attention to 'last philosophy' - through Heidegger - is less well resolved.

For anyone interested in working through - in a granular fashion - the theoretical relationships between metaphysics and physics, and the challenges of those relationships, then this is a strong foundational text.

'Last philosophy' interests me - greatly. Let's hope that is the next stop for Agamben.

[Austin Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is proof that Agamben is onto another project; that I pray he finishes before he passes. Consider this book Part I..