Roberto Esposito

"Recalcati reconstructs in all its facets the development, far from linear, of a thought, such as that of Lacan, formed at the point of convergence and tension between existentialism and structuralism, capable of absorbing, translating them into a highly original mixture, the influences of Hegel and Heidegger, Sartre and Kojève, Saussurre and Jakobson – not to mention Freud, who remained his privileged interlocutor until the end."

"There is no real escape from this vortex. The only way to become immune to the plague is to expose oneself to its contagion. But this inevitably means becoming prey to it in an endless cycle. The plague generates itself, reproducing tirelessly, despite and precisely because of attempts to eradicate it—in reality, hiding it, crushing it against the fragile wall of oblivion and repression. Humanity is nothing more than that thin strip of land that stretches between one wave of the plague and another – emerging into the open only when the tide recedes, before rising again and submerging us once more. That in some seasons the plague – this plague in man and of man – disappears, recedes, vanishes, is our impression. It has always been there, lurking, waiting to return and explode stronger than before, like the dark shadow that stretched across the burning heart of Western civilization in the 1930s."

"The plague is a metaphor for evil. Of evil that comes from outside, or from above, like the arrows shot by Apollo at the Greeks leaving for Troy. But also, and above all, of evil that arises and grows within us. Within the world and from the world. Rooted in that nature that both envelops us and constitutes us as finite, fragile beings, exposed to the icy wind of death."

"But the question of the plague—in its not only pathological but also moral, ontological, and metaphysical meaning—had already been raised by Lucretius and, before him, by Anaximander. The plague is destiny, but also, when measured by ethical standards, the fault of a man who, being part of nature, shares its evil or, at least, senseless character."