The human condition has traditionally been defined in terms of mortality: Our knowledge that we will die has been said to constitute the axiological ground of existence, the value- and meaning-bestowing matrix underlying all our hopes, aspirations, relationships, and endeavors. But is this how we truly and actually live? Do we make choices, pursue personal and professional goals, value beauty and friendship, love our children, parents, and spouses because we are ever aware of our own and othersâ finitude? In his groundbreaking, utterly original exploration of the human condition, Michael Eskin puts paid to the hoary philosophical âargument from mortalityâ, proposing rather that it is our irreducible, universally shared condition of childhood â understood as our lifelong experience and consciousness of being necessarily and ineluctably somebodyâs child â which ought to be considered humanityâs most fundamental, existentially and ethically defining characteristic. On the basis of a granular analysis of the ontological, existential, and ethical dimensions of the condition of childhood â or what he dubs the âcondicio pueritiaeâ (with a parting nod to Ciceroâs âmortalis condicioâ) â Michael Eskin opens up unprecedented vistas onto humanityâs potential, possibilities, and obligations.