Luca Valsecchi

This paper aims to highlight the immunitary role of practices within Peter Sloterdijk’s philosophy and Norbert Elias’s sociological theory of the civilizing process. Starting from a theoreticalperspective, I will outline some point of affinity between the immunitary aim of what Sloterdijk calls“anthropotechnics” and the development of customs and manners described by Elias. In both casesa general tendency towards the reduction of uncertainty, unpredictability, risks of harm by violenceor sudden and violent death, will be found within the inner core of habitual, repeated actions. It willbe clear, in fact, that the increase in human interdependence and social differentiation, with theirreduction of immediacy, theorized by Elias, describe something quite similar to what Sloterdijksketches as theanthropological need to distance from the immediate pressure of reality expressed inthe building of habits and institutions.