In this volume of Homo sacer, Giorgio Agamben makes an ambitious attempt to analyze the double genealogy of the ontologies of reality and the ethics of duty as they have been developed in the history of Western thought. The first was criticized by Heidegger, the second by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; in his study, Agamben not only relies on them, but seeks to correct and supplement their argumentation. Thus, he demonstrates that a central role in the development of both paradigms is played by Christian worship with its very special understanding of action and effectiveness, as well as the concept of “duty”, which came into Christian liturgical thought from the Stoic ethics developed by Cicero. Due to such prerequisites, ontology and ethics ultimately find themselves connected in a single circle, to which now corresponds a special subject, literally doomed to effectively perform actions that do not belong to him. This concept and its consequences, as Agamben shows, actively influence the sphere of politics right up to the present day.