The way of life in the primitive monasticism: Interlocutions with Giorgio Agamben

The article presents a reflection on the way-of-life of the first Christian monasticism in the problematizing context between rule and life, regula vitae. Taking as reference the research developed by Giorgio Agamben on this theme, it is analyzed how the tension between rule-and-life of the first Christian monastics privileged life as a constitutive referent of the rule, and not the other way around. The article analyzes how the monastic life creates its rule and makes the rule a way-of-life, in such a way that living the rule exceeds any legal obligation, thus deactivating the force of the law through the life that lives the rule beyond the mere prescriptive obligations of the law. To reach the experience of the monastic way-of-life, its necessary to internalize certain exercises (askeses). Among the various exercises-askeses, the monastic form-of-life developed what it called horologium vitae, through which it was proposed to the monk to live a dense and qualified experience of time with attention to de moment in which one lives. This is called kairos time, which is opposed to de mere chronological happening in which event pass as a superficial and empty routine. Chronos time is linear time, empty of experience, while the monastic form-of-life proposed to reach the experience of kairos of every moment lived. Finally, the article correlates the problem of the way-of life of early Christian monasticism with the context of current control societies in which life is massively captured through an infinity of devices that governamentalize the behavior of subjects. The modes of resistance to current biopolitical devices for controlling life require the ability to create forms of life in which living is not separated from the form.