Academics From Italy

"Si direbbe che Kodra tra le sfaccettature del tardo cubismo del primo dopoguerra, abbbia rintracciato le scaglie luminose dei vecchi mosaici bizzantini. I bagliori delle antiche moschee e le favolosità dei pastori bivaccano su le pendici dell'Olimpo."

"In quello che è il codice di figurazione del pittore Kodra, persone, cose, interi paesaggi sono schematizzati in squadrate forme geometriche. Attraverso simile processo geometrizzante l'artista, intende chiaramente dare rappresentazione del condizionamento entro il quale è costretto a muoversi, a vivere, l'uomo contemporaneo. La figura umana assume, così rappresentata, un'aspetto robotico, divenendo personificazione delluomo postindustriale, il robot cibernetico e informatico, l'uomo numero."

"Kodra: Quasi un simbolo generazionale."

"The authority of the State is not subject to negotiation, or compromise, or to divide its terrain with other moral or religious principles that might interfere in consciousness. The authority of the State has force and is true authority if, within consciousness, it is entirely unconditioned."

"The merit of Fascism was that it courageously and vigorously opposed itself to the prejudices of contemporary liberalism—to affirm that the liberty proposed by liberalism serves neither the people nor the individual."

"The authority of the State was not a product, but a presupposition. It could not depend on the people, in fact, the people depended on the State… The Fascist state, on the other hand, is a popular state, and, in that sense, a democratic State par excellence… Every citizen shares a relationship with the State and is so intimate that the State exists only in so far as it is made to exist by the citizen."

"Of which liberalism does one wish to speak? I distinguish two principal forms of liberalism. For one… liberty is a right; for the other a duty. For one it is a gift; for the other a conquest… One liberalism conceives liberty rooted in the individual, and therefore opposes the individual to the State, a State understood as possessing no intrinsic value—but exclusively serving the well being and the improvement of the individual. The State is seen as a means, not an end. It limits itself to the maintenance of public order, excluding itself from the entirety of spiritual life—which, therefore, remains exclusively a sphere restricted to the individual conscience. That liberalism, historically, is classical liberalism—of English manufacture. It is, we must recognize, a false liberalism, containing only half the truth. It was opposed among us by Mazzini with a criticism, that I maintain, is immortal. But there is another liberalism, that matured in Italian and German thought, that holds entirely absurd this view of the antagonism between the State and the individual."

"In the Renaissance there is much light, yes, and there is much in it with which Italians may share national pride. But there is much darkness. For the Renaissance is also the age of individualism, that through the splendid visions of poetry and art brought the Italian nation to the indifference, skepticism, and distracted cynicism of those who have nothing to defend, not in their family, their Fatherland, or in the world where every human personality conscious of its own value and personal dignity invest itself."

"Gentlemen: Fascism is a party, a political doctrine. But Fascism, while being a party, a political doctrine is above all a total conception of life. So the fascist, whether his is writing in newspapers or reading them, going about his private life or talking to others, looking to the future or remembering the past and the past of his people, must always remember he is a Fascist. Thus he fulfills what can really be said to be the main characteristic of Fascism, to take life seriously. Life is toil, is effort, is sacrifice, is hard work."

"It is necessary to distinguish between socialism and socialism—in fact, between idea and idea of the same socialist conception, in order to distinguish among them those that are inimical to Fascism. It is well known that Sorellian syndicalism, out of which the thought and the political method of Fascism emerged—conceived itself the genuine interpretation of Marxist communism. The dynamic conception of history, in which force as violence functions as an essential, is of unquestioned Marxist origin. Those notions flowed into other currents of contemporary thought, that have themselves, via alternative routes, arrived at a vindication of the form of State—implacable, but absolutely rational—that finds historic necessity in the very spiritual dynamism through which it realizes itself."

"For Fascism...the State and the individual are one, or better, perhaps, "State" and "individual" are terms that are inseparable in a necessary synthesis."

"Fascism as a consequence of its Marxian and Sorelian patrimony . . . conjoined with the influence of contemporary Italian idealism, through which Fascist thought attained maturity, conceives philosophy as praxis."

"How many times has Fascism been accused with obtuse malevolence of barbarity? Well yes: once you understand the true significance of this barbarity we will boast of it, as the expression of the healthy energies which shatter false and baleful idols, and restore the health of the nation within the power of a State conscious of its sovereign rights which are its duties."

"The Fascist, on the other hand, conceives philosophy as a philosophy of practice (”praxis”). That concept was the product of certain Marxist and Sorellian inspirations (many Fascists and the Duce, himself, received their first intellectual education in the school of Marx and Sorel)—as well as the influence of contemporary Italian idealistic doctrines from which Fascist mentality drew substance and achieved maturity."

"After criticising Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel so much for establishing a system of categories that predetermined the path that spiritual development had to follow, the neo-Hegelians of Italy were unable to do anything other than replace it with a more restricted set of categories from which we cannot escape. What a beautiful story, deluding itself that it is walking when in reality it is always standing still in the small circle of those few forms, marking its steps in a monotonous rhythm! But life has little respect for these a priori assumptions; it teaches us that spiritual categories, no less than the physical-mathematical categories of space, time, cause and quantity, are schemes that we construct to coordinate our experiences, and that they have nothing fixed, nothing necessary or eternal that can be deduced a priori."

"Many of the principal theoreticians of Fascism, as we have seen, had been schooled in Marxism and, like Giovanni Gentile, demonstrated a competence in the material that won the admiration of Lenin himself. The fact was that the philosophical neo-idealism that served Fascism as its normative foundation shared its origins with orthodox Marxism through their common connection to Hegelianism… Like Marx, Gentile rejected the ‘liberal’ conviction that human beings are best understood as independent, self-sufficient monads, possessed of inherent freedoms, interacting only at their conveniences."

"There is persuasive evidence that the thought of Karl Marx exercised considerable influence over all Gentile’s subsequent philosophical development. It can be said, in a qualified sense, that Gentile entertained considerable sympathy for the neo-Hegelian Marxist intellectual tradition."

"It was Gentile who prepared the road for those—like me—who wished to take it."

"What distinguished Gentile’s Fascist rationale from that which came to characterize the legitimating rationale of Marxist-Leninism was Gentile’s identification of the nation—rather than the ‘proletariat’—as the community of destiny that would shape our time. For Gentile, proletarians represented only component elements of a larger organic community: the nation. In the modern world, only the nation could provide the material, intellectual, political, and moral environment in which the individual might find fulfillment."

"Bombieri is one of the guardians of the Riemann Hypothesis and is based at the prestigious Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, once home to Einstein and Gödel. He is very softly spoken, but mathematicians always listen carefully to anything he has to say."

"When things get too complicated, it sometimes makes sense to stop and wonder: Have I asked the right question?"

"According to leading Italian political scientist Norberto Bobbio, freedom of opinion and expression (and of association) strongly influences political participation and decision-making processes. Free public debates between political actors are essential in the political life of a community. The possibility of dissent in any public political or mediatic confrontation is the core of a democratic system of governance."

"Bobbio’s realism, what can be seen as the conservative strand in his thinking, had always coexisted, however, with liberal and socialist strands for which he is better known, and that held his primary moral allegiance. The balance between them was never quite stable, synthesis lying beyond reach. But in extreme old age, he could no longer control their tensions."

"Lewis has written that "man makes history." Althusser unleashes a pamphlet at him maintaining that such is not the case: "Ce sont les masses qui font I'histoire." I challenge anyone to find a social scientist outside the Marxist camp who can seriously pose a problem of this type."

"If, then, at the end of this analysis, I am asked to take off the mortar-board of the academic and put on the hat of someone deeply involved in the political developments of the age he lives in, I have no hesitation in saying that my preference is for the rule of law rather than of men. The rule of law is now celebrating its final triumph as the basis of the democratic system. What is democracy other than a set of rules (the so-called rules of the game) for the solution of conflicts without bloodshed? And what constitutes good democratic government if not rigorous respect for these rules? I for one have no doubts about how such questions are to be answered. And precisely because I have no doubts I can conclude in all good conscience that democracy is the rule of law par excellence. The very moment a democracy loses sight of this, its inspiring principle, it rapidly reverts into its opposite, into one of the many forms of autocratic government which haunt the chronicles of historians and the speculations of political thinkers."

"Philosophically, Bobbio’s response to the contemporary political condition of the West is the opposite of that of Rawls and Habermas. Where they have sought to efface the difference between sein and sollen, in a continual slide between idealizations of the existing world and factualizations of velleities beyond it, he has held fast to the principles of the legal positivism and political realism that formed him: values and facts are categorically separate domains, that are not to be confused. This is certainly an intellectual advantage he enjoys over them. But it comes at a price: to cut all connexion between the historical and the desirable risks delivering the world to what is undesirable, in the name of the same realism."

"Bobbio’s account of human rights is thus a far cry from the deontological versions of Rawls or Habermas. It is radically historical."

"Once data are ruled out as arbiters among theories, those theories become pointless, just another clever intellectual game."

"It should be clear by now that there are people who can, in fact, be reasonably considered experts; that it is rational to rely, within limits, on expert opinion; and that it is possible, by exercising relatively simple criteria, to gain insight into whether a particular expert is reliable or not. It is also true that experts, of course, do make mistakes, and that even the agreement of a large majority of experts in a field does not guarantee that they got it right. That’s the nature of scientific truth, as we have seen throughout this book: it is tentative, because it is the result of a human endeavor that is limited both by the type and amount of available evidence and by humans’ finite mental powers and emotional reactions. But the examples above show how you can, with a little bit of practice, tell science from bunk!"

"They do not speak of boundless skies, of passing loves like silver clouds. They speak of cheerless towns, unwound: on hazy moors of muffled music."

"If you talk to the shadows, at least you know them well and the words, all of them, unfold themselves with ease on muddled walls and streets, when dusk comes on."

"Most lobbying is pro-business, in the sense that it promotes the interests of existing businesses, not pro-market in the sense of fostering truly free and open competition."

"A chi vuol dar buon giudizio del suono, bisogna il sentire l’una campana, e l’altra."

"Chi alloggia alia prima osteria in ch’ ei avviene, trova ben spesso la mala notte."

"Only the American controlled sovereignty of IMF and World Bank are allowed, along with the strong national sovereignty of the US. Little and medium countries have been encouraged to divide themselves - occurred in former Yugoslavia, in Czechoslovakia, and was attempted in Northern Italy - or to dismiss their personality in favour of supranational organizations - in fact directed by the US (p. 141)."

"The intention of the US found its feature through a clear formulation in the Agreement for the IBRD. The “purposes of the Bank” were defined as follows: “To promote private foreign investment by means of guarantees or participations in loans and other investments made by private investors; and when private capital is not available on reasonable terms, to supplement private investments by providing, on suitable conditions, finance for productive purposes out of its own capital, funds raised by it and its other resources” (p. 130)."

"Keynes’s design was in favour of the liberalization of the economy and the capital’s transfers, for the main purpose of monetary stability. To avoid devaluation of currencies - a practice followed by governments in order to sustain their export - Lord Keynes planned to introduce “Bancor”, a money of account to be accepted by all countries in international exchanges. The international body to be organized would get interests both from debtor and creditor countries, in order to finance the balance of payments system (p. 130)."

"The inspiring theory for Bretton Woods was suggested by a well known economist, beyond any suspect, John M. Keynes. Lord Keynes - as in the meanwhile he has been appointed by the English Crown - appeared worried about possible troubles in the international system of payments, like those occurred after World War One, which contributed to the new conflict. He has published an article on this subject in 1946. Consequently he gave the blessing of his authority to the agreements. Lord Keynes, as chief of the British delegation, was appointed chairman of the Commission II, charged for the institution of an International Bank for Reconstruction and Development - IBRD (World Bank). The Bretton Woods agreements represented a sort of solemn will for Lord Keynes, since he died out two years later the signature (p. 129)."

"It is in 1958 that the discussion becomes, I believe, more complex and starts to get really dangerous. This is the time when Mattei begins, in addition to the attack on U.S. oil interests, an attack on traditional Italian foreign policy. He opens up a foreign policy of greater detachment from NATO, greater opening toward the Third World, and potential neu¬tralism. This was the framework of the neo-Atlanticism in which Mattei, Fanfani, and Gronchi were involved, and oddly, also Christian Democratic right-wingers, for their own reasons, namely Guido Gonella and Giuseppe Pella (p. 25)."

"Going through the history of economic, cultural and human exchanges in the most cultivated, tumultuous, lively, and cosmopolitan part of the world-Western Europe being its centre-we discover a wide unted universe (p. 19)."

"The balance had been upset and the reactions from the American press and intelligence services were enraged. In a secret American report recently found in the archives, we read that Mattei's power must be contained at all costs and his possibilities for influencing the government must be reduced. Mattei is not only a force in industry, oil, and politics by now, but he also has a hold on information, because in 1957, through ENI, he took control of II Giorno, a Milanese daily, which at that time was much more important than it is today. It provided very lively coverage, had the best and brightest writers, it was present in every country in the world, and most of all, it had a policy of true support for the countries which were trying to free themselves from the colonial yoke, a policy of open support toward Algeria, for example, which was at the time a French colony. France was losing this colony, but there was a war, a savage repression from the French to hold onto their colony. Mattei sent Italo Pietra to Algeria, who later became the editor-in-chief of Il Giorno. He was the first, unofficial representative of Mattei who negotiated not with the French, but with the Algerians, the National Liberation Front (p. 25)."

"Mattei pushed hard for a line of detachment, of critical participation in NATO and even of getting out of NATO and into a neutralist position. Mattei therefore not only annoyed the United States with his oil deals in the Middle East, which broke up the balance of the international oil cartel, and broke up the price equilibrium, but it was Mattei who pushed even harder for Italy's entire policy to take its distance from the United States and to open up toward the Third World countries, which were traveling in a certain way along a road similar to the painful and laborious road which Italy had had to travel. Mattei was very sensitive to these problems, because he had been a witness to this difficult road of Italy's and had had great difficulties at the beginning of his career. So he knew what it meant for a country to free itself from the colonial yoke and find its own way, its own balance, and a way of arranging its own economy which would not be an economy of pure exploitation by the great powers (p. 23)."

"Mattei was convinced that Italy, a poor and defeated country, nonetheless possessed notable energy deposits of petroleum in its subsoil, and he was also aware that the oil business, even if there were not really resources inside the country, was an important business which one could not stay out of and in which one could not be at the mercy of the big guys. So Mattei's program was to try to use all available means to exploit the country's energy resources, and if this were not possible, to seek international accords with coun¬tries which had these energy resources, so that they could be used by Italy in order to become a partner of the major pow¬ers, and not be at their mercy (p. 23)."

"The area spreading out from Scandinavia and England towards Maghreb and the Nile, from Ireland and Portugal towards Estonia and Iraq, makes up - even with certain internal peculiarities and divisione - the most unitarian system. I mean from the point of view of its breadth, its rich exchanhes, its sophisticated cultures and religions, its advanced social systems, its cohabitation of so many races and cistoms (p.19)."

"Italy, we know, has been tied since 1949 to the United States in the Atlantic Alliance; and since 1949, there has been some strong resistance inside the Christian Democracy toward such a decisive, entangling, and suffocating involvement of our country with the United States. The most significant resistance to the Atlantic Alliance was perhaps not that of the great parliamentary protest mounted by the Communist and Socialist parties, but the subtler, more decisive, more pregnant, and more enduring resistance of certain sectors of the Christian Democracy who did not want to hitch Italy to the chariot of an unequal alliance, in which the scepter of command remained in the hands of the United States, but rather thought about the possibility of a neutralist policy for Italy (p. 23)."

"The prevailing trend – from the Atlantic sea to the Ural mountains – seems to move towards a paramount blow up of nationalities. Such a trend – alive in the souls also under the centralized structures of strong multinational states – has been to weaken the Eastern socialistic countries. It appeared in the former Soviet Union, in the Yugoslav republics, and in Czechoslovakia after the fall of the Eastern regimes (p. 11)."

"After two years of exploratory discussions, and a conference (1st - 22nd July), the Bretton Woods agreements were initially signed by 44 states; the others followed in the course of time. A co-author of the project was the United Kingdom, under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Since the Atlantic Charter, issued by Roosevelt and Churchill (August 14, 1941), UK shared the US commitment for the postwar dominance, a multilateral payment system, and an international cooperation. The US was then the world biggest creditor country (p. 129)."

"The beauty of physics lies in its precise statements, and that is what is essential to convey. Many readers won’t have the background required to distinguish fact from speculation. Words can turn equations into poetry, but elegant language shouldn’t come at the expense of understanding. Rovelli isn’t the first author guilty of such romanticizing... But when deceptively fluid science writing permits misleading interpretations to seep in, I fear that the floodgates open to more dangerous misinformation."

"Wedging old ideas into new thinking is analogous to equating thousand-dollar couture adorned with beads and feathers and then marketed as "tribal fashion" to homespun clothing with true cultural and historical relevance. Ideas about relativity or gravity in ancient times weren’t the same as Einstein’s theory. Art (and science) are in the details. Either elementary matter is extended or it is not. The universe existed forever, or it had a beginning. Atoms of old aren’t the atoms of today. Egg and flour are not a soufflé. Without the appropriate care, it all just collapses."

"Rovelli talks about time as a complex collection of layers and then strips away those layers... I find an elegant grandeur in how he relates the worlds of science, philosophy and art. What’s more, scientists and philosophers, going back to ancient times, have weaved a connection between poetry and physics, or, as it was once called, "." ...I can think of no one other than Rovelli who would begin all but one chapter of his nonfiction book with excerpts from the "Odes" of Horace. That single aberrant chapter... quotes Shakespeare’s "Henry IV, Part I." ...Rovelli’s new story of time is elegant and lucidly told, whether he is revealing facts or indulging in romantic-philosophic speculation about the nature of time."