Optioning the Future: Financial Theology in Aristotle and Agamben

This paper offers a reading of both Aristotle’s discussion of δύναμις [dunamis] and ἐνέργεια [enérgeia]—‘potentiality’ and ‘act’—as well as the Italian philosopher Giorgo Agamben’s critical appropriation of it. Identifying Aristotle’s emphasis on the teleological priority of ἐνέργεια, or ‘act,’ with the structure of both sovereign power and financial capitalism, Agamben ties the possibility of a form of life not captive to the politics of sovereignty to what he refers to as “impotentiality,” a use of potentiality which refuses the temptation to subordinate potentiality to its capacity to be actualized. Using Aristotle’s own example of Thales of Miletus, one of the earliest recorded examples of an options contract, I will argue that the concept of impotentiality haunts the margins of Aristotle’s discussion of δύναμις precisely where Agamben does not go looking for it—in his account of money and finance.