| | Agamben [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy] |
 | | This “happy life” should be rather, an absolutely profane “sufficient life.” that has reached the perfection of its own power and its own communicability — a life over which sovereignty and right no longer have any hold (ME 114-115). |
 | | For Benjamin, while happiness is not and cannot bring about the redemption of Messianic time on its own, it is nevertheless the profane path to its realization - happiness allows for the fulfilment of historical time, since the Messianic kingdom is “not the goal of history but the end (TPF 312). |
 | | Drawing on this figuration, Agamben appears to construe happiness as that which allows for the overturning of contemporary nihilism in the form of the metaphysico-political nexus of biopower. |
| www.iep.utm.edu /a/agamben.htm (4923 words) |