“The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: … the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.”

—  Martin Buber

Source: Between Man and Man (1965), p. 178

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Martin Buber 58
German Jewish Existentialist philosopher and theologian 1878–1965

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