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Remo Bodei
The analysis of power implies not only an exploration of obedience, but also a look into the possibility of the human world being reduced to Hegel's "spiritual animal kingdom". The fact that obedience represents what I like to call a painful mystery for those who are induced or coerced into it is quite a well-known aspect of its core definition (less known is its joyful nature). This problem, explicitly addressed for the first time by Étienne de la Boétie, found its greatest and most discerning interpreter last century in Elias Canetti. In a crucial passage of his book Mass and Power, Canetti maintains: "Order is older than language, otherwise dogs would not know it". Therefore, although Man is distinguished from other animals for having an articulate voice that serves to discriminate right from wrong, he is often forced to regress to a pre-human condition. The master's voice triggers a conditioned reflex of submission in the archaic We, which is older than I. The effectiveness of an order depends on the threat of death that is exercised against those who resist the will of the strongest. The first order, Canetti says, is "the roar of the hunting lion". More recently, in an attempt to get to the root of obedience in order to reach a greater autonomy of the individual, in 1999 the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk caused a huge scandal for having supported the need to programme men using "zoopolitical" techniques based on prenatal selection and the modification of their genes. Since Humanism has failed in its attempt to control our destructive and self-destructive impulse, rather than leaving to chance our birth or relying solely on cultural tools to tame the beast within us, we should seize the opportunities offered by biotechnologies to improve our moral and intellectual capabilities. Sloterdijk's arguments arouse justified doubts, especially if they entail "positive eugenics", be they promoted or even enforced. He has, however, revived the problem of the analogies between governing men and breeding animals.
