Personified in
Roman myth as Necessitas, Necessity originally appears as the Greek goddess
Ananke. Ananke not only represents necessity, or the inevitable but, in addition, force and constraint,
as well as compulsion and, according to some accounts, power as well. But these
are not the limits of her attributes; Ananke is also associated with the Greek
Goddess of violence, and violent haste, Bia, with whom she was worshipped at
Corinth. Among other things, Bia, violence, was understood by the ancient
Greeks to be “essentially antithetical” to Dike, the principle of justice.[1]
Representative
of necessity and the inevitable, and implicitly opposed to justice, Ananke was,
as Aeschylus informs us in his Prometheus Bound, one who “permits no resistance.”[2]
A Protogenoi, one of the primeval gods Ananke, along with Chronos/Time, is
credited with having created the cosmos. Blended among one another and
enwrapping the world, the two of them, as time and fate, maintain the
universe’s perpetual movement. As Plato described it, the whorls of the cosmos
rotate around a spindle, and this spindle “turns in the lap of [Ananke].”[3]
In Book X of his
Republic, Plato
informs us that
Ananke is the mother of the Moirae, The Fates.[4]
In charge of carrying out their mother’s orders, the three Fates, each holding
one of her hands on the spindle, control the life and death of every human
being. And while Zeus is the most powerful of the gods, reputedly stronger than
all of the other gods combined, when it comes to the Fates, “even he cannot
escape what is foretold.”[5]
In spite of all
of this, however, the son of Apollo, Asclepius, “the godlike healer of all
mortal sickness,”[6] was able to
defy the Fates. Once Asclepius had developed his skills sufficiently, he could
not only heal the sick but could raise the dead as well, transgressing the
jurisdiction of the Fates and upsetting the order of the universe. That is,
salus/health was not only able to function beyond the rule of salus/necessity,
it was able to do so in direct opposition to Necessity. Implied in this
negation of Necessity and injustice via Bia is a realization of health as
justice. For his transgression Asclepius was promptly incinerated by a
lightning bolt from Zeus and was subsequently deified.
This story not
only illustrates the opposition of Health and (apparent) Necessity, and the
congruency of Health and Justice, but that Health in realizing a truth, reveals
the falsity of Necessity’s claim to be ‘inevitable’ after all. By operating not
only beyond what was sanctioned but beyond what was considered possible Health
exposes potentialities that Necessity is, for various reasons, incapable of
realizing and thereby demonstrates the contingency and the merely arbitrary
nature of Necessity/Ananke. As such, one recognizes that necessity as force, as
fate, and as utile, is merely necessity’s semblance. In actuality, necessity –
as objective, as universal – is health.
While he does
not refer to its structure, or to its analogues, Walter Benjamin’s observation,
concerning the relationship of Fate and violence, that “far from inaugurating a
purer sphere, the mythical manifestation of violence shows itself fundamentally
identical with all legal violence”[7]
is notable here.
As mentioned
earlier, The Moirae, or Fates, are three sisters. Though they all act in
unison, each has a specific function to perform in realizing (apparent)
Necessity. Clotho, the spinner, spins the thread of life. Lachesis, the
measurer, measures out a length of this thread. And Atropos, known as Morta to
the Romans, the goddess of death, was the cutter. Often depicted with a pair of
scissors, it was her function to cut the thread of life.[8]
The Fates’
structure is identical to an entity central to the argument of this essay: the
tripartite schema of government which, while it has its roots in the works of
the ancient Greek historian Polybius, is articulated modernly by Montesquieu in
his Spirit of the Laws. Just
as Ananke’s power, the Fates, is separated into three aspects, so did
Montesquieu divide power into three branches – in order to separate it. As such, his Legislature occupies a
position that is roughly equivalent to that of Clotho, the spinner. The
Legislature spins the thread of power into laws. The Judiciary performs a
function comparable to that of Lachesis; it measures the laws to determine
whether they conform to the constitution. And finally there is the Executive,
whose function George W. Bush memorably described as being “the decider.” That
the term ‘to decide’ literally means ‘to cut off’[9]
is not coincidental here. What is peculiar, however, is just how closely the
separated powers mirror the Fates. Perhaps, however, this should not come as
such a surprise since The Fates are also separated powers – the separated
powers of Necessity.
This raises the
question as to what in Montesquieu’s scheme holds the analogous position of
Necessity apropos the Fates; that is, what entity subtends the Legislature,
Judiciary and Executive of Montesquieu?
Far from
separating powers in order to preclude their concentration into tyrannical
excess, the main practical benefit of such a design ‘separating’ power between
different entities is that it brings stability to the institution of
government. Far from checking power, then, its separation stabilizes it,
securing it.
[1] Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer, p.31
[2] Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound, 103 ff
[3] Plato, The Republic, Book X, 617 b.
[4] Plato, The Republic, Book X, 617 c.
[5] Ibid, 510 ff
[6] Pindar,
Pythian Ode 3. 5 ff (trans. Conway) (Greek lyric C5th B.C.)
[8] While
different from the Hindu concept of the Trimurti, it is interesting to note
that the Fates share a very similar structure to the Hindu Trimurti. Brahma,
the creator, holds a position analogous to Clotho’s; Vishnu, the preserver, is
comparable to Lachesis; and Shiva, the destroyer, or transformer, corresponds
to Atropos.
[9] from L. decidere “to decide,
determine,” lit. “to cut off,” from de- “off” (see de-) + caedere “to cut”
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