Ivan Dimitrijevic
(Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw)
Abstract:
If we can agree with Giorgio Agamben that the essence of the European thought is to be found in its permanent rethinking its own origins, than in order to comprehend the transformations of work in the post-digital age, we firstly have to try to grasp the original semantics of the concept of work. The work was initially conceptualized by Plato and Aristotle: the ergon argument is discussed both in Republic I and Nicomachean Ethics I. The ergon represents the missing link between dynamis and energeia (in Aristotle) and nature and politics (in Plato): indeed it was considered by contraposing the proper work of man against the work of the technician, of the parts of the body, and of other living beings. Agamben argues that on our definition of work it depends how do we think life, nature, politics, and happiness and what tasks do we assign to the living beings, the body, and the city. All of these things cannot be thought, acquired, practiced, without referring them to the work. In order to get rid of the teleological structure of Western metaphysics and its bio-political apparatuses, which reduces the bios, the body, and social activities to functions of metaphysical operations of the soul, Agamben elaborates the idea of inoperativness (inoperosità), that is, of a work (opera) that does not aim at its own completion: in other words, a work that produces pure potentiality of working and living and that consequently generates freedom from metaphysics. Such an important theoretical contribution will be examined by comparing Agamben’s semantics of inoperativness and the ethical dimension of the ancient concept of ergon.
Ivan Dimitrijević studied philosophy at the University of Trieste. He holds the PhD in cultural studies from the University of Warsaw and teaches at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”. He has published several articles and essays in political philosophy and ethics, mainly by applying the Begriffsgeschichte methodology, and is the author of La contraffazione della politica: la paura della fine, la tutela del bios e il potere della socializzazione (Saonara: il prato, 2016) and co-author of Come la teoria finì per diventare realtà: Sulla politica come geometria della socializzazione (Udine-Milano: Mimesis, 2014, with P. Orłowska). He has edited and translated into English Alessandro Biral’s Plato and the Political Knowledge (Saonara: il prato, 2016).