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Western culture has been perennially killing and resurrecting its fathers. The history of these parricides can be correlated with crises of cultural change, fundamental shifts in Weltanschauungen from which new systems of meaning arise. The breakdown of the medieval theological synthesis resulting in what Nietzsche has called “the death of God” and the toppling of the feudal order with the French Revolution are examples of cultural crises in which the death of the father has played a significant symbolic role. This thesis is stated radically in order to force the question: Is the loss of the father both as symbol and actuality so frequently cited in contemporary literature as symptomatic of the loss of meaning in present day life merely another episode in this history or is there something unprecedented in the present situation? Alexander Mitscherlich (1970), for example, titles his psychoanalytic study of social change in Germany, Society Without the Father. Are we to interpret this title as signifying a crisis from which, phoenix-like, new and alternative meanings for paternity are likely to emerge or does the phrase, “society without the father,” demand a more nihilistic reading?
While it is difficult to answer these questions from the eye of the hurricane, we can hope to shed some light on the significance of the break with symbolic structures of paternity by showing that Western culture in killing the father at this stage in its history, has reverted to a long-forgotten paradigm for the understanding of human origins. Some preliminary remarks are necessary before the complex character and significance of this shift can be made plain.