A key problem is the apparatus of the will. Philosophy is primarily an investigation of "void verbs", verbs that have no meaning or significance apart from what they reference. These are non-apophantic verbs, which have no truth claim. To say "John walks" is to posit something verifiable (either he is walking or isn't). However, the non-apophantic verbs attempt a reference to a possible reality. "John can walk" or "John will walk" ultimately refer to a non-existent reality without itself summoning it. These are not pure commands - imperatives - that attempt to manifest a reality: "Walk!" However, they, in their own way, open a space of contingency where something may or may not occur. This is the central crisis of Western metaphysics, which has only become more perverse in democratic regimes. Agamben notes that the democratic regimes do not issue commands, only authoritarian prescriptions. They suggest, insinuate, and prod, but with a looming shadow of force. Participation does not free you (as if you, the Sovereign Voter, manifest your ideal), but enslaves you. Agamben dovetails with Jacques Ellul, who worried about the extent of "technique", a disposition of a certain mode of life. It's not the mere fact of an existent object, it's the web of social relations it draws you into. Hitting a button on a smart phone is not the imperious will of the user, but enactment of prescripted pathways (coded into an app) through the human sock puppet. Per technique, a device (like a phone) lives through the human wetware.
This is precisely the error in "the will" as an apparatus, a phenomenon which plagued Medieval metaphysics. The "will" becomes a mechanism to not only solve embarrassing problems, but a way to transmogrify the imperative into something new. Ivan Illich, a renegade Roman priest, made it clear that the 20th c. was neither a rejection or supercession of the Christian Era (as if we had entered an anti-/post-Christian epoch), but a fully Christian. Such is not to say it's obedience to Christ, but rather reflects a certain current of theology which sought to remake the world. It's the Grand Inquisitor cleaning up after Jesus. Corruptio optimi pessima. The apparatus of the "will" was a mechanism to solve the potential embarrassment of divine omnipotence. If God is all-powerful, as the creed states, then what would stop him from gross immorality? Could a world exist where Jesus incarnated as a lizard? What if God willed rape as moral? What if Judas were saved and the Twelve damned? The solution, per Medieval theologians, was to split God: potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata. The former was God-in-himself, in pure potentiality, the possibilities of God in fathomless numbers of worlds; the latter was God in reality, per his will, what he had bound himself to. God could not save Judas, begin a regime of fornicators, or take the skin of a salamander because he had chosen otherwise. This choice - the apparatus of the will - bound God to a particular form of action. Thus, the hyper-Christianity of the Mass Democracy New World Order is apparent in the passive phrase "There Is No Alternative". It's not that *we* wanted this! It's the way it is! Deus Vult! We can do nothing other than we do.
Agamben sees in Kant's ontological wrangling the pure emptiness at the heart of liberal democracies. The pure potency of the "I can" is none other than the Kantian "we must be able to will", an apparatus which wraps three distinct void verbs into a daisy chain of pure formality. A demonic triad, such a disposition neither requires nor expects, yet it demands indirectly. It's this apparatus which marks out the current regime, where governments do not command, but represent what simply is back to what is through a sleight-of-hand. The totalizing cruelty of democratic regimes are in their offloading responsibility back onto the victim. The democrat does not imperiously command "Obey!", for he is none other than The People staring back at itself. Rather, facing a vaccine mandate, the citizen-subject must be able to choose the common good. His inability is disqualification. The People ought to be able to choose the Good, and so do (thus the public displays of Representatives of The People receiving shots, from Jerry Ford to Joe Biden). Refusal places one outside the body-politic, and thus the pure impotency is erased. Rather than reveal the void at the heart of the system, it must be brutally suppressed through the proper media epithet to diagnose the alien substance. Terrorist! Racist! You are not *us*, and thus in a manner reflective of Nazi efforts to square the circle of nationalism, they increasingly must be purged. It is not violent as if it were murder (where one kills an other). It is more akin to combing lice out of your hair or taking antibiotics to kill off bacteria. Thus, the medieval apparatus of God's ordained will secularizes as The People's Representative government carrying out its approved mandate.
Agamben ends with a gesture towards one of the most bizarre, yet entrancing, characters of Herman Melville: Bartleby the Scrivener. Confronted with the imperious demand of a fair minded liberal capitalist (Melville's corrupted successor to the New England puritan), Bartleby simp refuses: "I prefer not to". Such is a negation of the will's apparatus, an exit from the regime. The story, narrated through the boss, constantly gropes forward from desperation to desperation. Bartleby is the Hegelian negative consciousness, a pure "No", an immovable object. The liberal sentiments of the boss result in the brutal end of Bartleby, but not at his hand. Having fired him (yet still he remained), the boss decides to move his company and sell the building than involve the police. However the next occupants (as expected) do not tolerate Bartleby's loitering, and he's hauled off to jail. The boss visits, only to find Bartleby ultimately expired. On the jail yard, Bartleby simply refused to move without force and his ghostly life came to an end. The boss, a handwringing post-puritan liberal of fair sentiments, lamented the fate of Bartleby, even as it existed as his hand. Bartleby, and his death, represent the negation of not only the imperious demands of a capitalist ("work!"), but also Melville's prescient predictions of democracy's offloading of responsibility ("you fired yourself because you would not do x!"). Such is the current state of the imperative, an archaeology of the command buried within the empty (yet deadly) advice column.
Yet to further elaborate beyond Agamben: the hope is found in Christological debates. While it's true certain elements of the debate furnished the medieval theological apparatus that would prove damning when secularized, it also offers the means of escape. The key here is the diothelite debate and the sixth ecumenical council. Christian in the 7th c. debated whether Christ had one or two wills, whether the will pertained to person or to nature. Monothelites (including both Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonians) possessed the upper hand and saw a staunch diothelite, like Maximus the Confessor, effectively martyred. But rather than a trivial obscurity of doctrine, it was a question of biblical interpretation. The question was Jesus' prayer in the garden of Gethsemane: "Lord take this cup from me...yet your will, not mine, be done". Was this prayer a juxtaposition between two appetites in Christ? Was it human weakness overrode by divine command? Was it a charade? For Maximus, and the diothelites, it was the twinning of human and divine wills that made this prayer profound. It was entirely human, and entirely divine, to ask to survive (had not God created human nature to live?). It was also entirely human, and divine, to submit through negation. Christ does not assert his own will, or offer justification in transition between two modes of thought. Rather, Christ's prayer is a negation of his own will: "not my will". In this way, Bartleby is a crypto-messianic figure, who chooses death before absorption into the system (whether Roman or New England capitalist). But such is in light of resurrection, where the darkness of the dark is exposed before the light of morning casts it aside.
Thus the Messianic call that Agamben highlights, in rejecting the apparatus of will, is negation. The darkness reveal as dark is a necessary moment towards the lightness of light. The "I prefer not to" exposes the impotency of the command, and opens up the potency of thought. For what is it that I prefer?
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