The Son's Secret. Massimo Recalcati

      1 1. I address this theme and the relationship between parents and their children in our time in general, in Massimo Recalcati, Che cosa resta del padre? La paternità nell’epoca ipermoderna [What Remains of the Father? Fatherhood in Hypermodern Times], Milan: Raffaella Cortina, 2011, and The Telemachus Complex: Parents and Children after the Decline of the Father, Cambridge: Polity, 2019.

      2 2. This is one of the reasons the event of a child’s death is so utterly senseless and traumatic, literally inconceivable, for a parent.

      3 3. G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller, Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 276–7.

      4 4. ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’: Mark 2:27.