The Myth of Biography, or On the Impossibility of Political-Theology

Abstract

The text moves from the analysis of a letter of Sigmund Freud to Arnold Zweig. In this letter, Freud says that every biography is a form of lie and hypocrisy. In order to reconstruct the history of the erudite and philological investigation about the biographical genre, the author shows that philology did neglect a fundamental source for the history of biography: the gospels. After having collected rhetorical, philological, historical and theological proofs of the necessity of this rhetorical option of Christian Theology, the author discusses the problem of the consequences of the fact that at the very origin of Western Civilization there is not a mythological poem nor an epic work, nor a juridical code, but four short biographical writings. The conclusion discusses the destructive consequences of this fact on the idea of political theology.