Umberto Galimberti

"And so, by giving nothingness a semantic power that radiates at a distance to mean anything, fashion cheaply solves identity problems that put an end to the agonising question: “Who am I?”."

"If old age no longer shows its vulnerability, where can we find the reasons for “pietas”, the need for sincerity, the demand for answers on which social cohesion is based?"

"Since we were born, we have been taught that appearing is more important than being. And to this terrible dogma we have sacrificed our bodies, charging them with representing what we are not, or even what we have avoided knowing."

"In this regard, I would like to recall that Thomas Aquinas, commenting on Paul of Tarsus, says that faith, unlike science expressed by human reason, leads in captivitatem omnem intellectum, that is, it makes the intellect a prisoner of content that is not evident, and therefore foreign to it (alienus), so that the intellect is restless (nondum est quietatus) in the face of science, towards which it feels in infirmitate et timore et tremore mult”. Where has this Thomistic prudence gone, which does not allow us to immediately identify faith with truth? And if Catholics already possess the truth, what is the point of studying and teaching philosophy if they already possess the truth that philosophy seeks to find? What do they say to Heidegger when he writes that when philosophy is accompanied by an adjective, as in the case of ‘Christian philosophy’, we are faced with a square circle or, as Heidegger puts it, a ‘wooden iron’? And finally, what kind of dialogue is possible with a Christian if he is already convinced that he possesses the truth?"

"“The stroke of genius of Christianity”, which exorcises death by guaranteeing immortality to every human being, has become a common belief that even science has failed to undermine; indeed, in a certain sense, it has contributed to definitively rooting this conviction."

"I am not a theologian, but a philosopher of history who follows Nietzsche's “genealogical” method, which, unlike Plato's, does not ask, for example, “what is the soul?”, but rather: “How did this concept come into being, what is its history, what meanings has it taken on, what effects has it had on reality?”, convinced as I am that the essence of a thing, its meaning, lies in its history."

"The importance of Heidegger lies in the fact that he describes his philosophy as “going beyond metaphysics”. Given that metaphysics refers to all philosophical thought from Plato onwards, this means placing oneself in a pivotal position, of which Heidegger is fully aware. What does metaphysics mean? Nothing more than the philosophical version of the religious view of the world. (p. 59)"

"If it is true that we are able to understand our time even without the word “God”, it is equally true that we would not understand it if we removed the word “Technology”, the meaning of which has been clearly explained by Sergio Givone. Heidegger said some essential things on this subject. He illustrated on several occasions that technology has brought the humanistic era to an end, so that man is no longer the “subject” of history, but the “functionary” of technical apparatuses, by which he is in some way “employed” (be-stellte). Indeed, he risks becoming raw material, indeed the most important raw material (der Mensch der wichtigste Rohstoff ist), from the point of view of absolute usability. (p. 60)"

"The more temporal power is separated from spiritual power, the more correct the relationship between the two is."

"The Church considers itself the sole repository of ethics. Ethics as the exclusive prerogative of religion brings Christianity considerably closer to the Islamic mentality. Fortunately, we have had the Enlightenment and the secular state, which have partially immunised us. On the part of the Church, however, there is a tendency to deny that ethics is a human quality, as Kant said, and instead to assert that it derives from religious dogma. Humans would be incapable of producing morality. At this rate, we end up with a theocratic state. But morals are nothing more than rules of coexistence aimed at reducing conflict. Humans can give themselves these rules: ethics is an anthropological category."

"Sometimes I wonder if the Church still believes in God. This is certainly a paradoxical and provocative statement, but it has its justification: when the Church intervenes massively to promote legislation favourable to its ethics, then we may wonder whether those who wield ecclesiastical power believe more in the instruments of the world or in the work of God."

"In ‘The House of Psyche,’ it is noted that the problems that exist today can no longer be addressed through psychoanalysis, as they once were. Psychoanalytic tools treated the discomfort of the individual, the discomfort of civilisation in the sense of the miserable conditions in which people lived, in what I call “the society of discipline”, where the game was between the desire of those who wanted to break the law and those who wanted to suppress this desire. Today, this is no longer the scenario of pain. The scenario of pain, especially under the influence of American culture, which pushes us to achieve our goals in the shortest possible time, produces situations of anxiety determined by demand. No longer the traditional psychoanalytic demand (what is allowed and what is forbidden), but what can I do, what am I capable of doing? This inability to achieve goals when the bar is set higher and higher creates a sense of inadequacy, of a lack of meaning and, ultimately, beyond the technique that has no purpose but simply functions within an absolute, radical lack of horizons in view of who knows what."

"So let's suppose that God speaks: are we sure we understand what he says? When I give a lecture, I am convinced that my students, whether there are thirty or fifty of them, understand thirty or fifty different things. Because language is immediately a translation: when you listen to me, you translate what I say into your world view. And so this translation means that you understand something I did not say. What's more, God; I don't know: some people hear him, some people believe he speaks to them. But let's be clear: did you really hear him with your ears, did he say things to you when he met you, or do you imagine that those are the words of God?"

"This is how philosophy was born: philosophy meant going into the square and teaching people how to govern well, how to lead the soul well, how to respect nature. Philosophy was born for this: to teach men these things. Socrates did this, he went to the square and talked to people. Then it became entrenched, it became an academic, self-referential thing, a doctrine. Something that now closely resembles a sort of daughter of theology."

"I am thinking of something: philosophy is always translated as love of wisdom. But this is not the case, it is the opposite: it is not love of wisdom, it is wisdom of love. And so the figure of love is first and foremost intersubjectivity, it is exchange. That is, truth must not emerge as a doctrinal body: this is wisdom, not philosophy. It must arise from dialogue. From dialogue between two people. Dialogue with the other and above all with that other who is woman. Why is it that no woman ever appears in the history of philosophy: what is this being sidelined? Perhaps women navigate in regions that are not overly logical, which frighten men? These are questions I ask myself."

"Shame is a fundamental feeling. Shame [In Italian: vergogna] comes from vere orgognam: I fear exposure. Today, exposure is no longer feared. So what happens? If I behave in a transgressive manner, well, what's the harm? I fulfil the hidden desires of each of us and expose them, how clever I am. And so at this point, the codes of good and evil are no longer clearly visible. Kant said that everyone feels good and evil naturally, he used the word “feeling”. Today, this is no longer true. Simply put, if someone has the courage to show themselves to be vicious, if they have the courage to show themselves to be transgressive, they are a person of value, at least they have courage, they have interpreted the hidden feelings of each of us. This now means, I would not say the collapse of collective morality, but even of individual morality, internal morality, psychological morality. Therefore, the end of times."

"Today, however, there is a much more subtle form of power, which is essentially the control of thought, the control of ideas. This is very dangerous because when I control the ideas of all those who are subordinate to power, they think like power, they applaud it, they want it, they desire it, they adore it. Because they think like it. And then the second degree, even more pernicious, is the control of feelings. There are television programmes that teach young people how to love, how to hate, how to fall in love, how to get angry. When I have established control over feelings, I have absolute power. Because not only do I think as the television media has taught me to think, but I feel as they want me to feel. At this point, I have achieved complete control over the world in which I operate."

"Crossed by sexuality, the ego yields its limit in order to reaffirm it at a higher level. By coming into contact with the other part of itself, the ego goes beyond fascination and desire to reach that “immense void” where the ontological decision is made, where being reaches its limit and where the limit defines being. (p. 233)"

"The explicit transition from the interiority to the exteriority of the soul, to which Christian practice had contributed, takes place with Descartes who, in radicalising Platonic dualism, ends up “abolishing” it, resolving the body and the world into representations of the soul, which thus becomes the absolute horizon of presence."

"So sex as the source of life and life as the reproduction of harmony. The sexual act as an act of creation where one does not get caught up, as we do, in births or abortions, but where at a certain point one celebrates the meaning of heaven, earth and the ten thousand things that inhabit heaven and earth in composed harmony. Why do we Westerners believe in the stars and horoscopes that fall from the stars and have forgotten that our slow, agile or violent acts change the stars, their balance, their light, their rotation? Man's act creates harmony or disharmony in the universe, and our sex, as a composing act, can become a fading not so much of ourselves, but of the cosmos that does not ignore us. (p. 219)"

"Philosophy loves disagreements, because disagreements produce, generate, feed, and create thematic variations, heuristic games, and absolute novelties. (p. 88)"

"Sexuality is a risk where the individual gambles with their identity and society with its order. To avoid this risk, we resort to the imagination, which, in a hallucinatory way, allows us to live illusory experiences that we do not have the courage to dare. Thus, the ego experiences the thrill of its identity being put at stake without losing it, and society experiences the turmoil of disorder that does not, however, affect its order. The imaginary serves this purpose, not to enhance sexuality, as is believed, but to appease it at that phantasmagorical level that leaves reality intact as it has been constructed. (p. 208)"

"Sexuality does not belong to the narrative of the ego because, in its presence, the soul undergoes a dislocation which, by shifting the regime of its rules, weakens self-possession. Its plot is interrupted by something excessive which, by breaking the continuity of speech and the order of discourse, leads to escape routes that the ego and the reason that governs it are unable to pursue. Drives and desires, in fact, bursting in as uncontrolled signifiers in the established order of meanings, bring to light other connections, other plots, other intertwining threads whose knots sink into the other part of ourselves. (p. 207)"

"Brothels have been closed down, not by the Merlin law but by a shift in demand, which no longer seeks sexual exchange but the buying and selling of the imaginary. In large cities, prostitutes have been almost entirely replaced by “'veados”', mostly Brazilian transvestites, imported for a season and then sent back to their “'favelas”'. This is a sign that what is sold on the streets is not sex and even less sexual exchange, but rather the “'representation”' of sex and the glitz of the images it produces."

"Then came Christianity and with it the curse of the flesh. Christianity broke the mandala, the four that make up harmony. Three are gathered together and separated from the fourth, the devil, whom iconography began to depict with the features of Pan, the Greek god of sex who, at his favourite time of day, chased the nymphs of the forest with his goat's hooves and broken horns. Christianity kept sexuality in check in the West, where heaven was separated from earth and spirit from flesh. If one fine day we stopped condemning pornography, which is nothing more than the flesh in its solitude, and began to condemn those who have reduced the flesh to solitude, separating it from heaven to make it the antechamber of hell, the first circle of the “'Comedy”'. (p. 220)"

"The sunset of the West is the fulfilment of a meaning contained in the word that says: “'land of the evening”', “'occasum”', the last glimmer of that light which, rising at dawn, has dominated the day. The word expresses a destiny that cannot be escaped. The sun cannot be stopped. Sunset is inevitable. The West is the land destined to host this sunset. But what is the meaning contained in the word? Is “setting” the inevitable decline of light or is it the unconscious withdrawal of the earth from the light? To grasp the meaning of this question is to decide between waiting and choosing. (Introduction to Book Two: “Western Thought”, p. 277)"

"The meditations on Nietzsche by Heidegger and Jaspers have highlighted with the utmost rigour the metaphysical essence of nihilism and its profound traces in all aspects of the Western soul. (Introduction to Book Two: “'Western Thought”', p. 279)"

"The tragic conclusion of the Second World War, with the atomic destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, is not just a historical fact for Jaspers, but an indicator of the nihilistic outcomes to which technical and scientific development left to its own devices can lead. (Chapter 58, “False Consciousness and the Claim of the Technical-Scientific Apparatus to be Beyond Comparison”, p. 422)"

"Humans have never inhabited the world, but only the description that myths, religion, philosophy and science have given of the world from time to time. (p. 15)"

"We still carry within us the traits of pre-technological man, who acted with a view to goals inscribed in a horizon of meaning, with a wealth of ideas of his own and a set of feelings with which he identified. The age of technology has abolished this “humanistic” scenario, and questions of meaning remain unanswered, not because technology is not yet sufficiently perfected, but because finding answers to such questions is not within its remit. Technology, in fact, does not tend towards a goal, does not promote meaning, does not open up scenarios of salvation, does not redeem, does not reveal the truth: technology “works”. (p. 21)"

"What does this crisis consist of? A change in the sign of the future: from the “future-promise” to the “future-threat”. And since the psyche is healthy when it is open to the future (unlike the depressed psyche, which is entirely focused on the past, and the manic psyche, which is entirely focused on the present), when the future closes its doors or, if it opens them, it is only to offer uncertainty, precariousness, insecurity and unease, then, as Heidegger says, “the terrible has already happened”, because initiatives fade away, hopes appear empty, demotivation grows, and vital energy implodes. (p. 26)"

"The lack of a promising future deprives parents and teachers of the authority to show the way. A “contractual” relationship is then established between adolescents and adults, as a result of which parents and teachers feel constantly obliged to justify their choices to young people, who may or may not accept what is proposed to them in an “egalitarian” relationship. But the relationship between young people and adults is not symmetrical, and treating adolescents as equals means not containing them and, above all, leaving them alone to face their own impulses and the anxiety that comes with them. (p. 29)"

"But which teachers assess, in addition to the cultural skills of their students, the degree of self-esteem that each of them has for themselves? Which teachers are aware that much of learning depends not so much on goodwill as on the self-esteem that triggers goodwill? Who, with appropriate recognition, reinforces this self-esteem, the primary driver of cultural education, and avoids destroying it with epithets and derision that, if directed at adults, would lead straight to court? (p. 32)"

"If learning cannot take place without emotional gratification, then neglecting emotions, or addressing them in such a hasty manner as to be counterproductive, is the greatest risk that a student faces today when going to school. And this is no small risk because, if it is true that school is the highest experience in which models of centuries of culture are offered, if these models remain contents of the mind without becoming formative ideas of the heart, the heart will begin to wander without horizon in that restless and depressed nothingness that even the noise of youth music cannot mask. (p. 38)"

"Emotional excess and a lack of reflective cooling essentially lead to four possible outcomes: 1) the “stunning of the emotional apparatus” through ritual practices such as nights at the disco or drug use; 2) “disinterest in everything”, implemented to numb emotions through sloth and non-participation, leading to an opaque attitude of indifference; 3) “violent behaviour”, when not murderous, to release emotions and achieve an overdose that exceeds the level of addiction, as with drugs; 4) “creative genius”, if the emotional burden is accompanied by good self-discipline. (p. 42)"

"[...] before the psychotherapist's couch, where words are exchanged, as we know, for a fee, before the drugs that stifle all the words with which we could learn to name and understand our soul's movements, we must convince ourselves of the necessity and urgency of preventive emotional education, which is very rare in the family, at school and in society. (p. 49)"

"We knew madness as an excess of passion. We saw its symptoms, we foresaw its possible scenarios. Today, more and more frequently, in the world of young people, madness dresses itself in the clothes of coldness and rationality, revealing nothing and exploding in unsuspected contexts that give no hint or even the slightest suspicion. (p. 50)"

"Feeling is not languor, it is not ill-concealed melancholy, it is not anguish of the soul, it is not disconsolate abandonment. Feeling is “strength”. That strength that we recognise at the heart of every decision when, after analysing all the pros and cons that rational arguments unfold, we “decide” because we feel at home with one choice rather than another. And woe betide us if, out of convenience or weakness, we make a choice that is not our own, woe betide us if we are strangers in our own lives. (p. 54)"

"If we call “intimate” that which we deny to strangers in order to grant it to those we want to let into our deepest secrets, often unknown even to ourselves, then modesty, which defends our intimacy, also defends our “freedom”. And it defends it in that core where our personal “identity” decides what kind of “relationship” to establish with the other. (p. 57)"

"Injecting heroin is called “bucarsi” in Italian. The body becomes an “abyss”, which etymologically means “bottomless”. Similarly, in French, “being an alcoholic” is called “drinking like a hole” (“boire comme un trou”). Drug addicts and alcoholics speak in ancient Greek and describe their inability to “contain” themselves with Platonic images. (p. 66)"

"[...] Desire, which, as Plato reminds us, is made up of “lack” and “nothingness”, demands that the dose be increased, so that in a certain sense drug addiction reproduces, like nothing else, the perfect functioning of desire, which does not seek pleasure in the world, but the rapid and immediate extinction of that “lack” which is its constitutive structure. In fact, no one desires what they have, but only what they do not have. “Nothingness is the soul of desire”, which, in its anaesthetic version, makes appetite irresistible and pleasure unsatisfactory. (p. 70)"

"Starting in 1968 and gradually over the following years, the contrast between the permitted and the prohibited faded away to make room for a much more painful contrast between the “possible” and the “impossible”. (p. 80)"

"Love is between me and that abyssal depth within me, which I can access thanks to you. Love is very solipsistic; and you, with whom I make love, are that Virgil who allows me to go into my Hell, from which I then emerge thanks to your presence (because it is not a given that those who go to Hell will ever come out again). Thanks to your presence, I emerge: this is why we do not make love with just anyone, but with the one we trust; and what is it that we trust? The possibility that after plunging into my abyss, you will bring me back out."

"Unlike all the beings that populate the earth, in fact, man thinks, and every thought tells him of his total estrangement from the earth. “Thrown into the infinite immensity of spaces that I do not know and that do not know me, I am afraid,” says Pascal, and he is not alluding to the infinity of cosmic spaces, but to their ignorance of human affairs: “They do not know me”. The indifference of the earth, its strangeness to the human event it hosts without knowing it, and to which it sends only a message of loneliness. (pp. 13-14)"

"Between the Self and the Self, the conflict is as violent as it is between God and the earth. (p. 20)"

"A virtue (“'areté”') that is a path towards the invisible and unspeakable centre (“'árretos”') from which only the unfolding of those harmonious circumferences that are the straight, the round, the beautiful and the just is possible. But this requires “the highest knowledge (”'méghiston mathémata'“)”, that mathematical knowledge for which Plato had the words “No one may enter here who is not a geometer” written on the door of his school. (p. 40)"

"Love is only the key that opens the doors to our emotional life, which we delude ourselves into thinking we control, while it, deceiving our illusion, leads us down paths and detours where, unbeknownst to us, the vitality of our existence flows in a tortuous and contradictory manner. (“'Love and Desire”', p. 65)"

"Unlike animals, humans know they must die. This awareness forces them to think about the beyond, which remains so regardless of whether it is inhabited by God or nothingness. This makes the future unknown to humans and the hidden trace of their secret anguish. We are not anguished by “this” or “that”, but by the nothingness that precedes us and awaits us. And since there is nothingness at the beginning and end of our lives, the question of the meaning of our existence arises unavoidably. An existence for nothing or for God?"

"Love fades because nothing remains the same over time."

"It is easy to say “love”. But only the Devil knows what lies beneath this word."