What is a rule, if it appears to become confused with life? And what is a human
life, if, in every one of its gestures, of its words, and of its silences, it ca
nnot be distinguished from the rule? It is to these questions that Agamben's new
book turns by means of an impassioned reading of the fascinating and massive ph
enomenon of Western monasticism from Pachomius to St. Francis. The book reconstr
ucts in detail the life of the monks with their obsessive attention to temporal
articulation and to the Rule, to ascetic techniques and to liturgy.
