Emanuele Severino

"To prevent nothingness from being, Parmenides asserts that things are nothing. Parmenides, who first appears on the path of Day, which runs far from the path that the West has travelled, takes the first step along the path of Night in the West, the path along which things are thought and experienced as nothing. Parmenides is the tragic sower who sows both the seed of truth and the seed of Madness. (p. 77)"

"Every civilisation, especially the Western one, has been nothing but edifying – even and especially when it has produced the extreme of destruction and horror. Can man ever fail to be edifying?"

"Adam would have been victorious over his own sin only if he had eaten the forbidden fruit."

"One can propose to control, modify, produce, or destroy the things of the world only if one has faith that they become, that is, that they can dissolve their bond with being and nothingness, that they can be and not be. Only if one believes that things are flexible, oscillating between being and nothingness, can one propose to bend them and control their oscillation. If the will to power is the will to dominate the world, the original form of the will to power is precisely the belief in the existence of the dominable, that is, the belief in the existence of becoming. The civilisation of technology is the most rigorous form of this belief. (chap. I, p. 17)"

"L“”'epistéme“” is [...] a contradiction in two senses. On the one hand, it is an affirmation of the infinite difference (or opposition) between being and nothingness, and at the same time (insofar as it is an affirmation of the existence of becoming) it is an affirmation of the identity of being and nothingness. On the other hand, it is an affirmation of the infinite difference between being and nothingness, and at the same time (insofar as it is the Law of the Whole, to which even that which does not yet exist must conform) it is the entification of nothingness, that is, it transforms that which does not yet exist into something that exists. [...] In its own subsoil, “episteme” is the violation and denial of what it itself affirms on its own surface: the infinite difference between being and nothingness. (chap. VI, pp. 56-57)"

"[...] there, where prediction is intended to be incontrovertible – as is the case in “episteme” and in the epistemic residues of modern science – prediction cancels out the becoming from which it seeks to defend – treating as unreal the danger against which it seeks to provide shelter – and it is therefore inevitable that the shelter itself will prove to be unreal and illusory. If one believes that the danger exists, but prepares a shelter that makes one lose sight of the danger, the shelter is illusory. Sooner or later, it is dismantled by the danger in whose existence, despite everything, one has faith. If the epistemic evocation of the Immutables causes one to lose sight of becoming (making it impossible and apparent), it is inevitable that faith in the existence of becoming will unleash forces that escape the dominion of the Immutables and thus make it apparent and illusory. (chap. VII, p. 69)"

"For the Greeks, “'epísteme”' is the ornament on the bow of a ship. It is the symbol of the bow imposing itself on the threatening fluidity of the sea. The “'epistéme”' is the “'epístema”' of the bow of domination. It imposes itself on the swirling and unpredictable fluidity of becoming. (chap. XIII, p. 121)"

"Every individual believes and doubts; they are a tangle of faith and doubt. But the truth is not only not what individuals think of the world, it is a doubt infinitely more radical than those of which they are capable, because it questions all of man's convictions – and yet its content remains unchanged. And again: since truth is the negation of error, without error there would be no truth. Error is irreplaceable; it has the greatness, power and even beauty of the irreplaceable. And it takes the great geniuses of the West to bring it to light. “Our” civilisation has brought error to light. The “madness” of the West is therefore precious, and it is impossible to propose to “annihilate” error and act to annihilate it. Error is also eternal. It is therefore a question of understanding – beyond all our cultural habits – what it means to “go beyond error” [...]. (chap. XXX, p. 295)"

"In its essential meaning, “ontological difference” is the way in which Heidegger's thesis of Kant's synthetic character of existential judgements [...] and, in general, the fundamental principle of Western thought that the unity of being and existing has an accidental character, is presented. For Heidegger, “being” (unlike the absolute, divine “Being” of the metaphysical tradition) “has no power over entities”; it is a letting-be of entities. But both traditional “Being”, which has power over entities, and allowing entities to be have the same foundation: faith in becoming; and becoming is that with respect to which one can take a position either through the power of metaphysical Being (or the scientific-technological apparatus) or by allowing it to be in its freedom and “naivety”. Even the “impotence” with which “being”, according to Heidegger, lets being be is based on the absolute will to power, that is, on the will that wants the existence of becoming. (chap. XXXIII, p. 318)"

"Our entire past is an eternal lamp that appears in relation to that eternal will to turn on and off the eternal lights of being – that is, the belief that we have the power to turn them on and off. Concomitant with this will – when this will wants to extinguish the lamp of being – appear the darkness of pain and anguish. The pain of the world is the darkness that appears when one believes one has the power to extinguish the lamp of being: it is the eternal star of the night with which destiny responds to the provocation of Madness. [...] In the affairs of peoples, no force can extinguish the lamps of the past, it does not have the power to extinguish them: the darkness of the pain of the world is destiny's response to the provocation of mortals. Provocation wants the impossible [...] and obtains ambiguous answers [...]. Destiny always sends something other than what mortals want and delude themselves into obtaining. [.. .] The sending is not a “choice” or a “decision”; it is the inevitable passing, in the vault of appearance, of the eternal constellations of being. However, it is possible that fate will bring the madness of the will to power to an end and that, after the constellations of Night, the constellations of Day and Joy will arrive. (chap. XXXIX, pp. 361-362)"

"Nihilism, that is, the belief in the existence of becoming – and therefore the entire history of the West – is not the only possible form of negation of destiny, and yet it is the dominant negation. In its unconscious, this belief is the persuasion that being is nothing. This persuasion is the essence of nihilism. By denying the non-nothingness of being, it is therefore a denial of itself. But in the Western belief, destiny does not appear; it does not stand before it, but behind it. Western philosophy “sees” (that is, believes it sees) the becoming of being. Behind it is destiny, which “sees” that the affirmation of the becoming of being is, in its own unexpressed unconscious, the affirmation that being is nothing. It is in the eyes of destiny that Western faith appears as a denial of destiny and as nihilism, that is, as a denial of itself. (chap. XXXIX, pp. 363-364)"

"Democracy is a faith."

"Ethics is one of the extreme forms of violence, because it is the administration of becoming, with a view to achieving the goals that are considered suitable for the full realisation of man."

"Pride is a quality of those who are powerless. It is from God's point of view that Lucifer sins with pride. But God's victory over Lucifer is an illusion of God."

"Taking refuge in nature is to shut oneself up within the walls of violence."

"It is a matter of understanding that construction and destruction have the same soul..."

"[Addressing Emanuele Severino] You know that many critics say: Severino is brilliant, but he says things that are neither here nor there. And so they continue to sleep peacefully at night. Very often this is the attitude of hypocrites, of the ignorant."

"A lesson in humility springs from Severino's philosophy, however one may judge its Parmenidean assumptions: humility which, if it makes man more a spectator than an actor, is nevertheless indispensable to him as knowledge of his own measure. And the second lesson that can be derived from this philosophy is respect for the world and for the things of the world which, if they are authentic realities, cannot be reduced to nothing by human endeavour. Finally (and this is certainly not the least important thing), the philosophy that Severino defends places the recognition of truth, whatever it may be, even if painful and unpleasant for man, as the supreme value. Humility, respect, fidelity to the truth are not values that are commonly recognised and defended in the contemporary era. I do not know whether it is essential to go back to Parmenides in order to rediscover them. It is certain, however, that in this age the fascination of nothingness, which is expressed, among other things, in violence and destruction, plays a dominant role: and that those who fight it, by bringing its hidden sources to light, render a service not only to truth but to mankind itself."

"Emanuele Severino, Il parricidio mancato, Adelphi, Milano, 1985."

"Emanuele Severino, La filosofia futura, Rizzoli, BUR Saggi, Milano, 2006, p. 121. ISBN 88-17-00946-6"

"Emanuele Severino, La follia dell'angelo, Rizzoli, Milano, 1997."

"Norberto Bobbio, Umberto Cerroni, Umberto Eco, Italo Mancini, Paolo Rossi, Emanuele Severino, Gianni Vattimo, Che cosa fanno oggi i filosofi?, Bompiani, Milano, 1982."