In this volume, Eigen places under sustained scrutiny some of our most basic modern assumptions about inheritance, genealogy, blood relations, and racial categories in order to answer the question, what constitutes "good" bonds among humans, and what compels us to determine them so across generations as both a physical and a metaphysical attribute? 

 

This book places under sustained scrutiny some of our most basic modern assumptions about inheritance, genealogy, blood relations, and racial categories. It has at its core a deceptively simple question, one too often taken for granted: what constitutes good bonds among humans, and what compels us to determine them so across generations as both a physical and a metaphysical attribute? Answering this question is complex and involves a foray into a seemingly disparate array of early modern sources: from adages, common law, and literature about bloodlines and bastardy to philosophical,...