The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days PDF
Preview The Mystery of Evil: Benedict XVI and the End of Days
The Mystery of Evil This page intentionally left blank M E R I D I A N Crossing Aesthetics Werner Hamacher Editor This page intentionally left blank THE MYSTERY OF EVIL Benedict XVI and the End of Days Giorgio Agamben Translated by Adam Kotsko stanford university press stanford, california Stanford University Press Stanford, California English translation © 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. The Mystery of Evil was originally published in Italian in 2013 under the title Il mistero del male: Benedetto XVI e la fine dei tempi © 2013 by Giorgio Agamben. Originally published by Gius. Laterza & Figli, S.p.A. Roma- Bari. This book was negotiated through Agnese Incisa Agenzia Letteraria, Torino. Translator’s Note © 2017 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid- free, archival- quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Agamben, Giorgio, 1942– author. Title: The mystery of evil : Benedict XVI and the end of days / Giorgio Agamben ; [translated by] Adam Kotsko. Other titles: Mistero del male. English | Meridian (Stanford, Calif.) Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2017. | Series: Meridian: crossing aesthetics | “Originally published in Italian in 2013 under the title Il mistero del male. Benedetto XVI e la fine dei tempi.” | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2016049164 (print) | LCCN 2016050729 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503600935 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602731 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781503602748 Subjects: LCSH: Benedict XVI, Pope, 1927– —Abdication, 2013. | Political theology. | Good and evil. | Eschatology. Classification: LCC BX1378.6 .A3313 2017 (print) | LCC BX1378.6 (ebook) | DDC 282.092—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016049164 Contents Translator’s Note ix Prefatory Note xi I. The Mystery of the Church 1 II. Mysterium iniquitatis: History as Mystery 19 Appendix 40 Declaration of Celestine V 40 Declaration of Benedict XVI 42 Tyconius, Liber regularum 46 II. The Lord’s Bipartite Body 46 VII. The Devil and His Body (Excerpt) 52 Augustine, City of God, Book XX, Chapter 19 59 Bibliography 67 This page intentionally left blank Translator’s Note For this text, I have broken with a long- established tradition in Agamben translations by declining to mark the distinction between two pairs of terms: diritto/legge and potere/potenza (conventionally trans- lated as juridical order/law and power/potential, respectively). In neither of these texts is Agamben exploring the conceptual problems that motivated the technical usage of these pairs, and hence translating them in the conventional way struck me as unidiom- atic and distracting. Nevertheless, Agamben’s usage of the respective pairs is systematic within this text and can be tracked fairly easily based on the sense. Diritto appears exclusively in “The Mystery of the Church” and always refers to “law in general” (for instance, diritto naturale e diritto positivo is translated as “natu- ral law and positive law” rather than “natural juridical order and positive juridical order”), and every use of
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