#plessner

There have certainly been periods (and will be again in the future) when this fissure was not spoken of and the consciousness of the constitutive homelessness of the human being was covered over by strong ties to land and family, to hearth and ancestors. But these periods were not at peace, either, unless they sought peace. The idea of paradise, of the state of innocence and the Golden Age, which every human generation has known (today this idea is called 'community') points to what the human lacks and to his knowledge of this lack, by virtue of which he stands above the animal. As an excentrically organized being, the human must make himself into what he already is. -- Plessner, Levels of Organic Life and the Human