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Political  Concepts:  Singularity  (Samuel  Weber)    

1. For  many  people  today,  the  word  “singularity”  serves  as  a  synonym  for  

“individuality”.  And  although  the  two  terms  are  historically  intertwined,  and  perhaps  

inseparable  from  one  another,  their  usage,  in  both  non-­‐technical  language  and  

scientiFic  discourse,  separates  them  signiFicantly.  Whereas  the  individual,  if  taken  

literally,  suggests  indivisibility,  and  thus  a  certain  elementary  self-­‐identity,  what  is  

“singular”  is  not  just  unique  –  that  is,  separate  and  different  –  but  also  odd.  What  is  

“singular”  does  not  just  stand  out:  it  does  not  .it  in,  and  in  this  it  recalls  the  kind  of  

experience  that  Kant  in  his  Critique  of  the  Power  to  Judge  associated  with  “reFlective  

judgment”,  provoked  by  the  encounter  with  phenomena  that  cannot  be  

comprehended  or  subsumed  under  existing  general  concepts.  A  reFlective  judgment  

–  whether  as  an  aesthetic  judgment  of  beauty  or  of  the  sublime  –  therefore  for  Kant  

can  have  no  conceptual  content,  and  in  a  traditional  sense  therefore  is  not  a  

judgment  at  all.  I  will  note,  in  passing  –  we  can  come  back  to  this  perhaps  in  the  

discussion  –  that  this  so-­‐called  “reFlective  judgment”  marks  a  point  where  traditional  

cognitive  judgments  begin  to  move  toward  what  later  will  be  called  “decisions”,  

which  entail,  for  Kant  at  least,  not  so  much  cognitions  as  communicable  feelings  of  

pleasure  and  pain.  In  the  case  of  aesthetic  judgments  of  taste,  however,  such  feelings  

are  held  to  be  communicable,  although  they  can  never  be  directly  communicated  or  

shared  in  any  actual,  present  moment.  They  are,  as  Kant  puts  it,  mitteilbar,  impart-­‐

able.  

2. Following  in  this  Kantian  tradition,  but  also  radicalizing  it,  Walter  Benjamin  from  his  

earliest  writings  on  –  i.e.  from  his  Program  of  the  Coming  Philosophy  –  emphasized  

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the  need  to  rethink  the  notion  of  experience  (Erfahrung)  by  no  longer  simply  

equating  it  with  cognition  of  general,  timeless  objects,  but  rather  emphasizing  its  

temporal  and  singular  dimension.  In  German  the  word  for  “singular”  –  Einzeln  –  can  

in  no  way  be  confused  with  that  for  individual,  Individuum.  If  the  singular  must  be  

construed  as  “that  which  does  not  Fit  in”  –  as  the  “odd”  –  it  stands  in  a  necessary  

relation  to  that  into  which  it  does  not  “Fit”.  In  short,  what  is  “singular”  can  only  

conceived  or  experienced  as  an  event  that  quite  literally  comes  out  (e-­‐venire)  of  that  

which  it  exceeds.  In  this  respect,  the  singular  event  –  the  event  as  singular  –  is,  in  

contrast  to  the  in-­‐dividual,  eminently  divisible.  It  can  only  be  acceded  to  through  a  

process  that  seems  to  be  its  direct  contradiction:  a  process  of  repetition.  But  it  is  a  

repetition  that  is  composed  not  just  of  similarity,  but  of  irreducible  difference.  

3. For  the  Benjamin  of  the  Origin  of  the  German  Mourning  Play,  singularity  so  

understood  is  at  the  origin  of  history.  From  his  “Epistemo-­‐critical  Introduction”:  

“Origin  …  an  entirely  historical  category  …  is  accessible  only  to  a  dual  insight.  It  

needs  to  be  recognized  as  a  process  of  restoration  and  reestablishment  on  the  one  

hand,  and  on  the  other,  and  precisely  because  of  this,  as  something  imperfect  and  

incomplete.  …  The  principles  of  philosophical  reFlection  are  recorded  in  the  dialectic  

that  is  inherent  in  origin.  This  dialectic  shows  singularity  and  repetition  to  be  

conditioned  by  one  another  in  all  essentials.”  (45-­‐46)  Singularity,  then,  emerges  only  

through  a  process  of  repetition  that  seeks  a  certain  restoration  or  reproduction,  but  

cannot  attain  it.  This  implies  that  singularity  can  only  be  experienced  negatively,  as  a  

form  of  resistance  or  of  loss  –  but  also  as  one  of  anticipation  and  hope.  

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4. A  performative  instance  of  this  “dialectic”  –  that  might  better  be  called  an  “antinomy”  

or  an  “aporia”:  the  title  of  the  book  by  Pascale  Quignard  and  of  the  Film  directed  by  

Alain  Corneau:  “Tous  les  matins  du  monde”  (in  English:  “All  the  mornings  in  the  

world”).  The  title,  for  those  who  have  neither  read  the  book  nor  seen  the  Film,  would  

probably  suggest  a  certain  form  of  generalization:  all  the  mornings  in  the  world  have  

certain  characteristics,  which  once  and  for  all  deFine  their  essence  as  mornings.  In  

view  of  this  expectation,  the  rest  of  the  phrase,  from  which  the  title  is  taken,  may  

come  as  a  surprise:  “Tous  les  matins  du  monde  sont  sans  retour”:  “All  the  mornings  

in  the  world  never  return.”  What  all  the  mornings  in  the  world  have  in  common  is  

that  they  can  never  return  identically.  In  short,  what  they  all  share  is  their  respective  

differences.  In  the  book  and  Film,  this  phrase  immediately  follows,  and  comments,  

the  suicide  of  a  young  woman:  the  singular  mornings  she  spent  with  her  father,  sister  

and  lover,  will  never  return.  It  is  this  that  is  asserted  of  all  the  mornings  in  the  world.  

And  yet  their  uniqueness  is  only  determined  negatively:  all  the  mornings  “in  the  

world”  will  never  return  –  not  at  least  in  this  world.  And  this  non-­‐returnability  of  all  

the  world’s  mornings  reFlects  a  similar  characteristic  of  the  living  beings  that  

populate  those  mornings.  All  the  mornings  in  the  world  are  as  unique  and  as  Finite  as  

the  lives  of  those  beings.    They  are  all  unrepeatable  –  but  as  such  tied  negatively  to  

the  possibility  of  repetition.  

5. I  turn  now  to  another  mourning  –  one  that  does  “come  again,”  albeit  not  identically.  It  

is  the  “mourning”  (spelled  with  a  “u”)  that  can  translate  the  title  of  Walter  Benjamin’s  

study,  “The  Origin  of  the  German  Mourning  Play”.  It  is  this  relation  between  

singularity,  repetition  and  “the  living”  –  a  phrase  that  Benjamin  often  prefers  to  use  

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in  place  of  the  more  familiar  noun,  “Life”  –  (it  is  this  relation)  that  Benjamin  places  at  

the  historical  origin  of  the  German  mourning  play.    Whereas  many  discussions  of  

singularity,  in  philosophy  and  in  science,  tend  to  treat  it  almost  as  a  logical  Figure,  the  

great  merit  of  Benjamin’s  study  of  the  German  baroque  theater  is  that  its  singular  

origin  is  resolutely  historicized.  It  is  not  simply  treated  as  a  universal,  but  rather  tied  

to  an  enormous  but  still  temporally  and  spatially  limited  historical  phenomenon:  the  

emergence  of  the  Protestant  Reformation,  and  in  particular  its  Lutheran  version,  

which  in  turn  calls  forth  a  Counter-­‐Reformation  that  Benjamin  insists  cannot  be  

limited  to  any  one  religious  group,  such  as  Catholicism.  Western  modernity,  

Benjamin  implies,  is  indelibly  marked  by  this  Counter-­‐Reformation,  which  

acknowledges  the  challenge  of  the  Reformation  to  universal  authority,  but  only  in  

order  to  defuse  and  absorb  it.  I  want  to  suggest  that  Carl  Schmitt’s  theory  of  political  

sovereignty  can  stand  as  an  exemplary  modern  product  of  this  restorative,  counter-­‐

reformational  striving.  Not  for  nothing  does  Schmitt  conclude  the  First  chapter  of  his  

Political  Theology  by  praising  an  “unnamed  Protestant  theologian”  –  Kierkegaard  –  

for  having  insisted  on  the  importance  of  the  exception.  Schmitt  seeks  to  give  a  

concrete  deFinition  of  political  sovereignty  by  linking  it  to  the  constitutional  

possibility  of  some  one  or  some  instance  “deciding  on  the  state  of  exception.”  

Political  sovereignty  consists  in  the  power  to  take  exception  to  positive  law  by  

rooting  it  not  just  in  an  exceptional  situation,  but  in  what  in  German  he  describes  as  

an  Ausnahmezustand  –  a  state  of  exception.  Exceptionality  is  thus  preserved  but  also  

transformed  into  the  basis  of  juridical  and  political  order,  in  the  spirit  of  the  Counter-­‐

Reformation.  The  rule  of  the  general  over  the  particular  is  thus  to  be  secured  through  

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the  decisive  intervention  of  an  exceptional  individual  or  individual  instance  –  the  

executive  –  in  “deciding”  that  the  exception  is  in  fact  a  state  of  exception.    

6. In  other  words,  for  Schmitt  the  singularity  of  the  exception  is  valid  only  insofar  as  it  

can  be  subsumed  under  and  identiFied  with  the  self-­‐identity  of  a  sovereign  

individual.  This  is  surely  why  in  1934,  following  Hitler’s  public  justiFication  of  the  

massacre  of  Ernst  Rohm  and  the  leading  Figures  in  the  SA,  Schmitt  had  no  problem  

legitimating  the  National  Socialist  Führerprinzip  in  his  famous  or  rather  infamous  

article,  Der  Führer  schützt  das  Recht.  Citing  Hitler’s  pronouncement,  that  „in  this  hour  

I  was  responsible  for  the  destiny  of  the  German  nation  and  hence  the  German  

people’s  supreme  judge  (oberster  Gerichtsherr),  Schmitt  goes  on  to  conclude  that  “the  

true  Leader  is  always  also  a  Judge.  From  the  Leader  derives  the  Judge.”  

In  short,  the  exceptional  Leader  is  the  source  of  all  general  and  universally  binding  

laws,  which  derive  precisely  from  his  exceptionality.  But  in  this  notion  of  

exceptionality,  the  heterogeneity  of  the  singular  disappears  behind  the  self-­‐identity  

of  the  individual.  It  is  not  for  nothing  that  Schmitt  calls  this  book  in  which  he  unfolds  

this  conception  of  sovereignty  Political  Theology.  However,  he  might  have  added  a  

further  qualiFication:  not  just  political  theology,  but  political  mono-­theology.  For  no  

doubt  the  original  and  most  powerful  paradigm  of  such  a  notion  of  Exceptional  

Sovereignty  is  to  be  found  in  the  book  of  Genesis,  which  recounts  how  a  single  and  

yet  universal  Deity  is  at  the  origin  of  the  world  itself,  and  in  particular,  of  all  worldly  

life.  In  this  mono-­‐theological  deity  can  be  found  I  want  to  argue  the  paradigm  of  what  

until  today  is  the  dominant  form  in  which  identity  is  construed.  I  therefore  will  call  it  

the  mono-­theological  identity  paradigm.  It  is  this  paradigm  that  both  responds  to  and  

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seeks  to  absorb  the  heterogeneous  existence  of  singular  living  beings  –  which  is  to  

say,  of  beings  whose  lives  are  constitutively  delimited  by  alterity  and  mortality.    

That  the  notion  of  a  divine  and  immortal  Creator-­‐God  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  is  

designed  to  support  the  notion  of  a  Life  that  would  be  eternal  and  unbounded  is  

evident.  Death  only  arrives  as  a  result  of  the  transgression  of  Adam  and  Eve,  who  in  

eating  of  the  apple  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge  and  good  and  evil  defy  the  

prohibition  that  has  been  clearly  pronounced  by  God.  But  what  has  been  less  noticed,  

and  what  is  equally  important,  is  how  such  prelapsarian  life  is  in  fact  created.  God  

does  not  create  individuals  as  such,  but  only  individuals  as  representative  of  a  

species.  Or,  as  the  King  James  Bible  puts  it,  “after  their  kind”.  This  phrase,  which  can  

be  found  17  times  in  Genesis,  intervenes  only  where  living  beings  are  created.    But  in  

Genesis,  all  such  beings  are  only  created  “after  their  kind”  –  since  it  is  the  “kind”  

alone  that  can  survive  the  Finitude  of  the  individual  living  creature.  Only  in  the  case  

of  man  is  this  not  explicit.  But  it  is,  of  course,  stated  in  the  name  given  to  man,  

“Adam,”  “man”.  So  Adam  is  not  just  an  individual  but  also  a  human,  indeed  the  name  

of  “the  human”.  But  despite  this  generality,  Adam  –  man  –  suffers  from  solitude;  

eternity  is  not  enough,  something  else  is  required,  something  like  society.  And  so  

“Eve”  is  created,  be  it  out  of  the  earth  or  from  Adam’s  rib.  However  that  may  be,  

gendering  splits  the  genre  “man,”  making  it  eminently  divisible.  It  is  signiFicant  no  

doubt  that  the  Hebrew  word  for  Eve,  Hawwah  or  Khavah,  signiFies  “the  living  one”  or  

the  “source  of  life”.  If  however  the  source  of  life  is  this  “living  one”  –  i.e.  singular  

living  beings  –  then  the  life  it  engenders  will  be  very  different  from  that  found  in  the  

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Garden  of  Eden,  since  its  source  is  not  the  Eternal  Life  of  an  individuated  Supreme  

Being.    

But  this  is  not  the  story  Genesis  wants  to  tell.  For  if  man  is  said  to  have  been  created  

“in  the  image  of  God”  –the  God  that  created  him  is  individuated,  but  emphatically  not  

mortal,  nor  is  His  life  dependent  on  anything  beyond  his  own  being.  When  in  Exodus  

3:13  Moses  asked  God  to  tell  him  His  name,  so  that  he  can  convey  it  to  “the  sons  of  

Israel,”  God  responds,  “I  AM  WHO  I  AM”  and  adds,  “Thus  you  shall  say  to  the  sons  of  

Israel,  “I  AM  has  sent  me  to  you.”  Hebrew  specialists  have  suggested  that  a  better  

rendition  of  this  name  of  God  would  be  “I  AM  WHO  I  WILL  BE”,  thus  asserting  the  

self-­‐identity  of  a  First-­‐person  that  is  independent  of  temporal  alteration.    

When  it  is  said,  then,  that  Man  has  been  created  “in  the  image  of  God”  and  in  his  

“likeness”,  this  underscores  both  the  power  of  the  mono-­‐theological  identity  

paradigm,  but  also  its  self-­‐destructive  tendencies.  When  humans  seek  to  band  

together  to  build  the  Tower  of  Babel,  at  a  time  when  “the  whole  earth  was  of  one  

language  and  of  one  speech”,  they  are  following  the  call  of  this  identity  paradigm,  

which  informs  the  notion  of  the  proximity  of  the  human  to  the  divine.  But  as  in  the  

Lacanian  mirror-­‐phase,  which  can  be  read  as  a  psychoanalytic  commentary  on  this  

identity  paradigm,  identiFication  with  the  imaginary  Other,  as  the  One  and  Universal,  

can  only  be  aspired  to,  but  never  permitted.  It  is  already  at  the  source  of  the  Fall,  so  

that  human  desire  to  transcend  the  anxieties  associated  with  Finitude  is  represented  

as  the  very  cause  of  mortality  itself.  But  in  the  postlapsarian  world,  it  is  also  at  the  

source  of  society,  which  is  born  in  the  violence  of  fratricide  as  a  response  to  the  

unattainability  of  the  divine.  After  having  killed  his  brother,  Abel,  whose  blood    

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sacriFice  has  been  accepted  by  God,  while  his  own  “vegan”  offering  has  been  

rejected,–  Cain  begs  God  to  put  an  end  to  his  life.  But  as  with  Adam  and  Eve,  God  

commutes  their  death  sentence  to  life  imprisonment.  However,  the  “imprisonment”  

of  Cain  is  marked  by  the  founding  of  the  First  cities,  societies  and  technologies:  and  

indeed,  the  First  city  is  named  after  Cain’s  son,  Enoch.  And  his  descendants  are  said  to  

be  at  the  origin  of  cattle-­‐raisers  and  nomads,  musicians  and  metal  workers.  But  this  

line  is  also  marked  by  the  continuation  of  lethal  violence,  in  the  Figure  of  Lamech.  

7. In  short,  what  will  later  be  known  as  Individualism  has  a  much  longer  history  that  is  

often  assumed.  Since  my  time  here  is  limited,  I  will  just  point  out  two  further  stages  

in  what  I  would  call  the  history  of  the  mono-­‐theological  identity  paradigm.  With  the  

emergence  of  Christianity,  a  highly  successful  attempt  is  made  to  bridge  the  gap  

between  I  AM  –  or  rather,  the  gap  in  a  notion  of  the  First  Person  Singular  as  

simultaneously  One  and  Universal,  One  and  Forever,  One  and  Independent,  through  

the  notion  of  the  incarnation  of  the  I  AM  not  just  in  a  human  being,  but  in  the  

biological  life-­‐process  itself.  In  place  of  the  Alliance  of  a  Universal  and  Exclusive  God  

with  a  non-­‐Universal  limited  People  or  Tribe,  the  attempt  is  now  staged  to  redeem  

Humanity  in  General  from  the  punishment  of  mortality  afFlicting  it  in  the  form  of  its  

guilty,  sinful  individuals.  Just  as  God  is  individuated,  so  man  is  now  construed  to  be  

both  individual  and  divine  –  potentially  divine  at  least,  since  the  guilt  that  removes  

him  from  his  Divine  Creator  can  now  be  seen  to  be  the  sacriFicial  pathway  to  the  

Universality  of  Eternal  Life,  of  Resurrection  and  Redemption,  affecting  the  individual  

person.  Eternal  Life  is  now  linked  more  clearly  than  before  with  individual  self-­‐

consciousness  (although  this  was  already  implicit  in  God’s  use  of  the  First  person  

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pronoun,  I,  in  naming  himself).  Thus  emerges  the  idea  of  Christian  Humanism  as  

exempliFied  in  the  Figure  of  the  individual  living  person.  “Man”  in  the  First  person  

singular  is  once  again  employed  as  the  name  of  the  Species.  The  collective  and  

general  is  now  modeled  after  the  Individual,  just  as  the  Individual  was  originally  

construed  on  the  model  of  an  Individuated  (but  universal)  God.  This  link  between  

the  Human  and  the  Divine  as  both  individuated  is  then  both  exacerbated  and  

undermined  with  the  advent  of  the  Reformation,  especially  in  its  Lutheran  form,  

which  rejects  any  phenomenal  connection  of  Good  Works  and  Grace  in  favor  of  “faith  

alone”,  which  is  located  in  the  deepest  depths  of  the  individual,  in  his  or  her  “heart”  

rather  than  “head”.  It  is  this  crisis  of  Christian  Heilsgeschichte  that  Benjamin  takes  to  

be  the  origin  of  Western  modernism  (although  he  never  says  this  in  so  many  words).  

8. Since  I  have  no  time  to  develop  this  any  further,  let  me  close  by  referring  to  a  poet  

and  thinker  who  is  fully  aware  of  this  crisis  and  who  searches  for  an  alternative  –  not  

just  to  the  loss  of  Grace,  but  to  the  destructive  effects  of  what  I  am  calling  the  mono-­‐

theological  identity  paradigm.  Interestingly  enough,  it  is  in  his  Remarks  on  

Sophocles’  Antigone,  a  tragedy  that  is  precisely  not  part  of  the  mono-­‐theological  

universe,  that  Hölderlin  glimpses  both  the  same  problem,  but  also  a  possible  

alternative  response  to  it.  Although  he  develops  the  problem  with  respect  to  Greek  

tragedy,  Hölderlin  is  aware  that  his  translation  and  interpretation  of  these  tragedies  

cannot  be  separated  from  their  relation  to  his  contemporary  situation.  The  problem  

he  therefore  describes  as  the  point  of  departure  of  Greek  tragedy  is  that  of  humans  

seeking  to  become  one  with  God,  and  that  as  a  result  the  tragedy  demonstrates  how  

“limitless  uniFication  purges  itself  through  limitless  separation”  (Remarks  on  

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Oedipus,  Schmidt,  735-­‐36).  Such  striving  to  abolish  all  limits  –  Finitude  –  results  in  

precisely  what  it  is  seeking  to  escape,  namely  a  death-­‐drive.  Hölderlin  justiFies  his  

translating  the  proper  name  of  the  god,  Zeus,  by  “father  of  time”  or  “father  of  

earth,”  (Schmidt,  786),  “because  his  character  is  pitted  against  the  eternal  tendency,  

to  strive  out  of  this  world  into  the  other  and  to  turn  it  into  a  striving  out  of  an  other  

world  into  this  one.”  In  this  sense  –  and  I  have  to  resume  brutally  here  -­‐-­‐  Hölderlin  

can  conclude  his  extremely  elliptical  Remarks  on  Antigone  by  noting  that  “the  form  

of  reason  that  here  constructs  itself  tragically,  is  political,  and  namely  republican.”  

Hölderlin,  writing  at  a  time  and  in  a  place  where  Republican  ideas  were  sufFicient  

cost  one  one’s  liberty  and  even  one’s  life,  that  Sophocles  was  “right”  for  his  time  and  

his  fatherland,  but  that  we  must  equally  respect  the  traditions  of  our  time  and  

culture.  But  despite  such  caveats,  Hölderlin  still  courageously  concludes:  

For  us  such  a  form  is  still  useful,  because  the  in3inite,  the  Spirit  of  
Nations  and  of  the  world,  in  any  event  can  only  be  grasped  as  from  a  
point  of  view  that  is  skewed  and  askance.  

Hölderlin’s  German  here,  that  I  am  struggling  to  render  into  English,  is  actually  more  

complex  and  more  concrete  than  my  previous  translation  can  suggest:  in  German  he  speaks  

of  a  point  of  view  that  is  “linkisch”:  literally  “leftish,”  but  more  commonly,  “clumsy”.  In  

English  therefore  we  might  say  “gauche”.  To  acknowledge  that  which  surpasses  the  Finite  in  

the  Spirit  of  Nations  and  of  the  World,  from  a  point  of  view  that  also  seeks  to  respect  its  

Finite  limitations  –  its  singularity  –  can  only  point  toward  a  politics  that  takes  the  risk  of  

being  adroitly  gauche;  in  German  one  might  say,  mobilizing  a  word  that  plays  a  decisive  role  

in  Hölderlin’s  prose  and  his  poetry,  geschickt  linkisch.  In  other  words,  this  would  be  a  

politics  without  sovereignty,  but  that  nevertheless  takes  responsibility  for  decisions  that  do  

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not  seek  to  bring  exceptionality  to  a  halt  as  a  “state”  of  exception  –  or  as  an  unending  War  

Against  Terror.  

Samuel  Weber             Chicago,  February  2015

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