In this book, the author wonders "What remains of the father in the era of his sublimation." This is the fundamental issue that governs the work of psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati. In the era of the collapse of the father's ideal, what still constitutes the paternal function? What makes the transmission of desire possible in the era of the decline of Oedipus? Through Freud and Lacan, as well as representatives of literature (Philip Roth and Cormac McCarthy) and cinema (Clint Eastwood), the characteristics of the father of action are outlined, not necessarily of blood origin.
It is what we can expect from what remains of the father in the era of his sublimation: an act, a unique testimony to his desire, an embodied solution to the unsolved enigma of life and death.