The Second Birth: On the Political Beginnings of Human Existence
Tilo Schabert
Abstract
Whereas human beings have their first birth in the beginning of their bodily existence, only their second birth, in which their political existence and their relation to a government begin, makes them truly or eminently human. But while the origin of political existence is usually equated with the formation of communities, the present book utilizes the mythical, philosophical, religious and political thought cultivated in the European, American, Arab, and Chinese civilizations to identify the political dimension of human beings in Gestalten of power that render them political beings prior to t ... More
Whereas human beings have their first birth in the beginning of their bodily existence, only their second birth, in which their political existence and their relation to a government begin, makes them truly or eminently human. But while the origin of political existence is usually equated with the formation of communities, the present book utilizes the mythical, philosophical, religious and political thought cultivated in the European, American, Arab, and Chinese civilizations to identify the political dimension of human beings in Gestalten of power that render them political beings prior to their life in communities. These Gestalten include number, time, thought, Eros, the cosmological manifestation of the political that has its start in the body, the political effort to make all power a civilizing power, and the self-perception of human beings as “subjects to government” who, without altering the political mode of their existence, can set up a government over themselves as individuals in the mode of self-rule or self-control. Thus, human beings erect the work of the political world, which is their own creation, in a world that they have not themselves created.
Keywords:
politics,
government,
civilization,
power,
creation,
number,
body,
Eros,
law,
grace,
freedom
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2015 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780226038056 |
| Published to Chicago Scholarship Online: May 2016 |
DOI:10.7208/chicago/9780226185156.001.0001 |
