Sjoerd van Tuinen

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Agamben’s modal metaphysics

21 October 2025, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+1)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

Starting from an observation made by the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, I draw the outline of what could be called a ‘continental modal metaphysics’. Agamben suggests that the difference between analytical and continental philosophy goes back to the unresolved tension between the logical notion of modality (the four modal categories of necessity, possibility, contingency, impossibility that quantify the reality of some quidditative thing) and the ontological concept of a mode that is itself real yet not like things, and that is more fundamental than the distinction between essence and existence. My argument consists of two steps. First, I discuss two problems in the dominant form of modal metaphysics, analytical modal logic and its Aristotelian antecedents: the problems of the indeterminacy of the possible and its exhaustion by the actual. Drawing on Agamben, I then develop a concept of mode of existence that revolves around difference rather than identity. I argue that we must modalize the relation itself between the possible and the real: what passes from potential to actual is not an essence mirroring existence according to varying degrees of perfection, but the modality or sense in which existence alters itself. Accordingly I argue that continental philosophy defends a sense of possibility that is, firstly, not separate from the real but strictly a part of it, and secondly, that is more rather than less than the actual.

This event is funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the project UID/00310, Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa