Rules, Laws, what's the difference?

Is a Rule of Life more or less a microcosm of state law? Or is it more like an art form, that transfigures life into something truly 'other'?

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Nov 04, 2025

Part 20 of our Ulterior Lives series: A Slow Research Project into The Outsider Politics of Monasticism. Read the introduction here.

We have described this new thing, the Rule of Life, in a few ways: a formalising of a pattern of life that already existed, a mode of community organising, an agreement or a pact in which some things are given up in order to gain others. In all these respects it amounts to a sort of sensible rearrangement of the existing pieces. It might almost be dismissed as nothing of great significance, as contracts are sometimes minimised by those seeking a quick signature. There is, however, an argument that the Rule involves something more than this: a threshold of decisive change and the introduction of something entirely new into the fabric of desert life.

Undoubtedly, the Rule brings into play two things that had previously been entirely absent; two figures of power, or authority. The first of these appears in the guise of the Rule itself. The second appears in the form of the Superior, who is sworn into office by the Rule. These two figures exist in a symbiotic relationship, and the whole structure relies on this symbiosis.

Firstly, the two exist to uphold and maintain one another’s power. After all, who will keep to a Rule that has no human agent to enforce it? And who will respect this person’s authority over others if it is not enshrined in the written code of the Rule?

Secondly, these two figures keep one another in check. A written Rule knows nothing of the complexity of circumstance, and so the Superior must be present to interpret and to protect the community from the tyranny of unreasonable dogmatism. On the other hand, what if the Superior becomes unhinged and begins to abuse their power over the community? In this case the community relies on the Rule to enforce limits on the Superior, and perhaps to provide routes for their removal (as the American constitution prohibits a third presidential term, for example).

We are observing here, in a distant and ancient microcosm, the symbiotic relationship between law and sovereignty. These two figures are crucial to the political imagination of Western power. The interplay between these two can be observed across the political spectrum, from democracies to autocracies. Tyrannies do not dispense with the law; they only make the tyrant freer in changing it.

In a sense we are observing something common and unremarkable to history. But we must not fail to observe it because, just as it is difficult to remember the point at which you fell asleep, it is unusual and illuminating to observe the moment this two-headed power structure emerges from the ground. It is our umbilical cord back to something that really is rare: the economically sustainable, socially responsible, political economy of the desert hermits who lived prior, without law or sovereignty. In a sense, the Rule marks the end of something these essays have been invested in: monastic anarchism. I am well aware that the hermits and the monks may not have been particularly invested in this, but for better or worse, this question has been my way into these tales.

And yet, perhaps the matter is not so clear cut. Perhaps this is not the best way to think of a Rule of Life. Perhaps this new form of life that Saint Pachomius brought into the world does not necessarily equate to concepts of political power. Perhaps the Rule is not to be understood as law. Perhaps the role of the Superior is not to be confused with the political idea of sovereignty.

The monastic Rule of Life is not like the law of the state. In his excellent book The Highest Poverty, Giorgio Agamben notes that law-makers at various times found themselves confounded by the monks. Bartolo said of the Franciscans: “so great is the novelty of their life that the corpus iuris civilis [the law] does not seem capable of being applied to it.” In this case, the Rule of Life appears not as a precursor to state law, but as a way of life that resists it.

Agamben notes that the Rule is different from the law in one elemental sense. The law comes into play only at the edges of life. It is activated only when a person reaches some limit and must be compelled to go no further: to not speed, or steal, or defraud, or to align with some outlawed cause. A Rule of Life, however, is not merely a law that manages limits but a pattern that saturates a person’s whole life. It centres itself on virtues and provides a frame for spiritual practices. It resides, we might say, at the heart of life, not the edges. “What is a rule,” asks Agamben, “if it seems to be mixed up with life without remainder?” It becomes something more like a chosen path by which a life is intentionally transformed. State law is of course obligatory, but a Rule of Life is chosen. It is not a law after all, but a discipline or an art, adopted by intention. “Be their example,” said Palamon, the master of Pachomius, “not their legislator.”

Which is the more truthful assessment of a Rule of Life? Is it a microcosm of state law or a chosen art that transfigures life into something quite other? I am still compelled by the second as possibility, but I can’t pass beyond those early days of the Egyptian Desert without some feeling of loss: anomalous to the histories commonly championed, a political economy entirely content with neither law nor enforcer.