Cain's Act

Massimo Recalcati, an Italian philosopher and psychoanalyst, argues that the foundations of human history and society were not laid by the command to love one's neighbor that Jesus preaches in the Gospels. He locates them instead in the story of Cain and Abel, with its brutality, jealousy and bloodshed.

This essay reads Cain's murder through the lens of psychoanalysis. Recalcati shows how the fantasy of being self-sufficient and perfect on one's own lies at the deepest roots of fear and violence in contemporary societies.

According to Recalcati, a person becomes whole only through others, never in spite of them. He presents Cain's fate as a lesson that remains strikingly relevant to our time.