Yes, Agamben’s concept of Not-To (non-actualization of potentiality) is deeply influenced by Heidegger’s Gelassenheit (releasement or letting-be). However, Agamben reinterprets and radicalizes this Heideggerian idea within his own framework of potentiality, inoperativity, and destituent power. Let’s break this down:
1. Heidegger’s Gelassenheit: Letting-Be and Releasement
Definition: Gelassenheit (a term Heidegger takes from Meister Eckhart) refers to a letting-be, a non-grasping relation to Being. It implies a way of engaging with the world that does not seek to dominate, control, or impose will.
Heidegger’s Usage:
In Discourse on Thinking, Heidegger contrasts Gelassenheit with modern technological thinking, which always seeks to master and manipulate.
In The Question Concerning Technology, Gelassenheit is presented as a way of stepping back from instrumental rationality and allowing things to appear in their own essence.
It is a non-coercive, non-interventionist attitude toward Being.
In essence, Gelassenheit is a form of radical patience, an openness to existence that refuses to force actuality.
2. Agamben’s Not-To as a Radicalized Gelassenheit
Heidegger’s Gelassenheit says: “Let Being be.”
Agamben’s Not-To says: “Let potentiality remain.”
Agamben extends Gelassenheit from a metaphysical disposition toward Being to a political and ontological stance on power, law, and action.
a. Potentiality as Retained Possibility
In Homo Sacer and The Coming Community, Agamben argues that true potentiality is not simply the capacity to do something but the capacity to not do it.
He derives this idea from Aristotle’s dynamis (potentiality) but reinterprets it through Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle.
Agamben’s point: Potentiality is real only when it includes the ability to not actualize itself - that is, when it retains its openness without being forced into actuality.
This is structurally similar to Gelassenheit, which refuses the modern drive for mastery and instead allows things to unfold in their own way.
b. Inoperativity (Inoperosit): Suspending the Logic of Power
Heidegger’s Gelassenheit suggests a withdrawal from the will-to-power - a form of non-coercion.
Agamben takes this further: Instead of merely “letting be”, he argues for making inoperative (inoperosit) the structures that govern and dominate life.
In The Highest Poverty and What is an Apparatus?, Agamben sees monastic life as an example of inoperativity - a life structured around not-doing rather than productive action.
This connects with his political critique: Modern power works by forcing actualization (law, identity, sovereignty). The only way out is to neutralize this compulsion to act.
Agamben’s inoperativity is a political extension of Gelassenheit: rather than just letting things be, it actively deactivates oppressive structures.
3. Heidegger’s Influence on Agamben’s Political Thought
Agamben’s Not-To is more than just a metaphysical stance; it is a political and ethical intervention. This reflects Heidegger’s influence but also Agamben’s departure from him:
a. From Letting-Be to Destituent Power
Heidegger’s Gelassenheit is a meditative, almost mystical withdrawal from technological control.
Agamben, in contrast, sees a political necessity to render power inoperative.
In The Use of Bodies and The Coming Community, Agamben calls for destituent power -a force that does not seek to replace sovereignty but to deactivate it entirely.
This is a radicalized Gelassenheit: Not just a passive letting-be, but a strategic refusal to engage in the machinery of power.
Heidegger: Let Being be.
Agamben: Let power not be.
b. A Politics of Hesitation and Non-Coercion
Gelassenheit suggests a stance of patience, of dwelling with uncertainty rather than forcing outcomes.
Agamben’s Not-To proposes a political ethic of hesitation - a refusal to engage in the cycle of power that demands action, decision, and imposition.
Instead of sovereignty (which always insists on acting, ruling, deciding), Agamben suggests a form-of-life that exists outside of coercion and law.
Where Heidegger’s Gelassenheit was existential, Agamben’s Not-To becomes ethical and political.
4. Where Agamben and Heidegger Diverge
Although Agamben is heavily influenced by Heidegger, he also moves beyond him in crucial ways:
Heidegger’s Gelassenheit Agamben’s Not-To
Metaphysical: about how humans relate to Being Political: about how humans relate to power
Seeks openness to Being Seeks openness to potentiality
Passive letting-be Active deactivation of power
Critique of technological rationality Critique of legal and political sovereignty
Thoughtful non-intervention Strategic refusal to participate
Agamben takes Heidegger’s non-coercion (Gelassenheit) and radicalizes it into a method of neutralizing power.
5. Conclusion: Agamben’s Not-To as a Political Gelassenheit
Yes, Agamben’s Not-To is a radicalization of Heidegger’s Gelassenheit:
Both emphasize not forcing actualization.
Both resist Western metaphysics obsession with productivity, mastery, and action.
Both seek a mode of existence outside the logic of coercion.
However, Agamben extends Gelassenheit into the political sphere, turning it into:
1. A method for resisting biopolitical control.
2. A way of disrupting sovereignty without reproducing it.
3. A strategy for deactivating systems of oppression rather than replacing them.
Thus, Agamben’s Not-To is not just a Heideggerian letting-be but a revolutionary stance of refusal -an ontological and political strategy for escaping the modern compulsion to act, decide, and impose power.
