Philosophers From Italy

"The public demands that the thinker be someone, provide a sufficiently clear and defined image of himself to be able to circulate in the mass media, flatten himself into a formula, a title, a slogan (to be, for example, the philosopher of simulacrum or transit or enigma), but in doing so, he precludes the possibility of understanding what he is seeking. Because reading, thinking, and writing are not about expressing subjectivity or realizing oneself, but quite the opposite: losing oneself, feeling like a conduit, a passage, a transit for something different and foreign. (p. 48)"

"Apollonian infallibility presupposes self-control: the shot is all the more perfect the steadier the archer's hand, the more devoid of violent emotions his soul. But only those who believe they have succeeded in everything they do succeed in everything: in this annulment of one's hopes, dreams, and past projects, in this complete adherence to the historical world, lies the deepest meaning of Apollonian infallibility, the essential link between Apollo and victory. (p. 98)"

"Read the differences because only then can we discuss, otherwise it's just unctuous and ceremonial."

"Hans Urs von Balthasar is the only one in our century to have raised the question of the essential “form” of Catholicism, a form that Balthasar finds more often in the works of certain poets or writers than in those of theologians."

"I don't like the fact that you try to drive a wedge between atheists and agnostics."

"There is a secret in communication: it consists in making oneself invisible through excessive exposure. (p. 13)"

"Be wary, therefore, of those who cry out that the world is neither rational nor moral, because either they are ineffective, that is, they do not know the world, or they are dishonest, that is, they know it too well but in a one-sided way. Between the impotence of having to be (which is not) and the idolatry of the fait accompli (which often only appears to be so), there is a third way, which is precisely that of aesthetics. (p. 67)"

"The philosopher is precisely the one who makes himself nothing in order to listen to the present in all its enigmaticity, the one who silences his own desires, his own disordered affections, his own intimate opinions so as not to place obstacles and misleading screens in the way of understanding the manifestations of history, the one who makes himself a pure conduit, a place of transit, a a “gateway” for phenomena that surprise, disturb, and amaze us because they present themselves in unexpected and unpredictable ways. (p. 51)"

"We are in a position to know very little, and with our vast ignorance, we all need to seek the truth, which cannot be reduced to mere opinion, especially today when there is a worrying return to illiteracy and a infantilization of the public for which the media, especially television, are responsible, as they tend to simplify every message."

"Mario Perniola, Contro la comunicazione, Einaudi, Torino, 2004."

"Goodness is beautiful insofar as it is governed by the right measure, by overall balance, by the middle ground established by the exact laws of virtue, which is “harmony.”"

"Death is never trivial: it is solemnity, it is mystery."

"Each of us lives other lives in our imagination, fueled by literature and the media. Through them, we attempt to remedy the limitations of our own existence."

"Despite recurring announcements, it is [...] certain that philosophy, like art, is by no means “dead.” On the contrary, it is revived every season because it corresponds to needs for meaning that are continually—and often unconsciously—reformulated. Philosophy seeks answers to these questions, whether silent or explicit, by measuring and exploring the drift, conformation, and faults of those symbolic continents on which our common thinking and feeling rest."

"The danger of Heidegger's philosophy lies not so much in its masked nihilism, which is always perceptible, but in the fact that, in its undeniable depth, this philosophy contains within it demands that cannot be rejected by contemporary thought, so that the value of many of Heidegger's analyses becomes a cover that often prevents us from recognizing the negative that constantly lurks behind the positive. (chap. 8, p. 210)"

"Enzo Paci, Introduzione all'esistenzialismo di Jaspers, in Logos, Vol. II, S. A. Editrice Perrella, Roma 1940."

"Every work of art carves out its own unique time and space."

"Enzo Paci, La filosofia contemporanea, series Saper tutto, Garzanti, Milano, 19634."

"Hartmann [...] often said that what matters in philosophy are the problems and not the solutions [...]. (chap. VII, p. 194)"

"The future development of 20th-century philosophy could be determined, at least in part, by a revival of Husserlian philosophy. As Husserl's manuscripts are published, it becomes clear that not only Scheler and Hartmann should be interpreted in relation to the philosophy of Husserl, but that Martin Heidegger's existentialism is also part of a particular problem that arises from phenomenology. (chap. 8, p. 204)"

"It can be said that the joy of thinking consists in crossing ever more distant boundaries, in moving away from initial assumptions in such a way that—once the journey is over, looking back—one can measure the extent of the distance traveled."

"Mario Perniola, Del Sentire, Einaudi, Torino, 2002 (first edition 1991)."

"Each of us is born without knowledge or will, at a specific time and place, with a body inherited from our parents, and we struggle hard to reach, in forced stages, an understanding of the world into which we have fallen. The risk is that, in the end, everyone forms their own opinions without comparing them."

"(Referring to ideograms, ancient sophia, and Zen practice) The latter, for example, is an exercise that teaches us to inhabit the exercise itself. There is no answer to the question of why we should focus on breathing. In Zen practice, the why is sucked into the concentration itself. In the same way, philosophers today can only inhabit doubt. Not asking why doubt exists, a question that would presuppose a way out of it, but practicing it. A bit like Socrates did more than two thousand years ago. And it is no coincidence that he never wrote anything."

"I have come to believe that the West embarked on the path of logic, and therefore of philosophy and science, because it had a linear writing system, that is, a highly idealized alphabetic writing system."

"This is where the decline of public truth comes in, so that the sense of the end of politics that we are experiencing today was already perfectly clear to Nietzsche, who spoke of the end of great politics. When Europe realizes the violence inherent in the Western political project, everyday life also loses its certainties. Forms, places, structures, and institutions go mad. [...] We no longer believe that the West, with its conceptual apparatus, is the destiny of the world. At this point, it would be natural for a dialogue to begin again between different cultures that once had a common stock."

"Socrates is a man of writing. He says of himself, “I do not read,” but in reality he does not read because when he went to read, he did not find what he was looking for in books. But he is certainly someone who searches for the concept of what justice is. In a world of orality, justice does not exist. There are meaningful phrases, meaningful behaviors, rituals, stories, and myths. in order to have justice, I must have written it down with the alphabet, then I can isolate it and say ‘what is it?’. So we realize that philosophy is the product of a very precise human practice, and I insist on the question of writing. Even Socrates' famous phrase in court, “a life without inquiry is not worth living,” belongs to a certain type of man."

"Ultimately, the last word is never ours. Peirce said: the meaning of my life is entrusted to others. [...] Which proves that truth is never something definitive; we are always mistaken. On a journey. It is no coincidence that I speak of the “transit of truth.”"

"We must realize that human work is continuous transformation and therefore constantly involves approaching limits and crossing boundaries. Otherwise, we simply have experts and not researchers. Only researchers are up to the task of humanization and therefore of truly human wisdom, not simply disciplinary knowledge captured by very particular, private interests."

"(About Greek philosophy and Christianity) In these philosophies or worldviews, there is an idea of perfection that has caused damage and misunderstanding. And all this arose from the claim to entrust writing with the pivotal role on which the West based its knowledge."

"When I say that truth is “relatively absolute,” I mean that the search for truth, which we cannot renounce, always takes place within a relationship. And truth, being dynamic in turn, arouses in us a moral duty, an uninterrupted questioning that can never be satisfied with a particular piece of knowledge."

"Vico and Foscolo had already warned us: where there is a tomb, there is civilization, which presupposes a community between the living and the dead. It is the horizon of celebration and the sacred, and it is the understanding of how end and beginning are inextricably linked. Knowledge, in itself, usually marks the end of an adventure, placing itself in the moment when Orpheus turns to look at Eurydice, sees her, and, seeing her, loses her forever."

"The introduction of writing changes our perception of the world. The Logos, of which the Greeks speak, could not exist without writing. Interviewer: Why? Carlo Sini: For the simple reason that all writing has a medium that is outside the body of the speaker. Writing—unlike speech—presents us with objective knowledge that must be interpreted. When it is the voice that transmits knowledge, there is no separation or distance between what we say and the world that receives it and of which we are a part. In writing, on the other hand, we can recognize that objective root that will develop with science. It is a continuity. Without alphabetic and mathematical writing—which are forms of writing for everyone—we would not have had the universal and therefore science. The universal—which the Greeks called Logos—has determined the course of Western knowledge."

"The entire Western tradition originated there, in the sense that Socratic doubt is the passive non-acceptance of tradition. His question is why? It is a transcendental question, it is beyond the boundaries, it is not understood by his contemporaries. What he asks of his contemporaries is not within their perspective, within their possibility. Socrates always wants the definition of things “ti esti” and they always respond with myth. But he is not understood, even when he plays on the issue of ignorance “I know that I know nothing,” he actually knows."

"I think that asking “what's the point?” when referring to the contents of a study or research project can be indicative of a utilitarian, pragmatic, consumerist mindset. I believe that advanced civilizations should leave room for knowledge as a value in itself."

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

"Not everything that is “in fashion” is truly “current.”"

"Unlike joy, which is a momentary experience, localized in specific times and reasons, happiness perhaps has a more general meaning. Aristotle warned that a life can only be judged happy after it has been fulfilled. I would also use another formula, which I like very much and which says: happy is that life which realizes in maturity (or old age) the dream of youth."

"The path of speech (mythos odoio) (by Parmenides) contains within itself the path of day and that of night. It is no coincidence that Parmenides' poem comprises two parts. What exactly the second part contains and why it is so is an ancient philological and exegetical problem that we will not address here and which Plato already denounced in its ambiguity. In fact, it is not possible to separate being and speech without identifying them, and it is not possible to identify them without, ipso facto, separating them. The “simulation” (the simul) is immediate and structural. Human beings are simulators precisely because they are beings of truth. They cannot tell the truth without lying and vice versa. In this sense, they are beings of mediation, beings that stand in the middle, as you happily recall, that is, beings that ‘work’ to translate immediate experience into knowledge, or into a transferential process. God and nature do not work, but human beings do, first and foremost in naming the fruit of sexuality; it then places humans in the relational milieu of parents and children, brothers and sisters, offered, either really or symbolically, in sacrifice to God, that is, to the community of speakers. [...] The 20th century cannot exist without Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis cannot exist without philosophy, at least in my opinion."

"Either we are part of that reality or it is illusory to think we know it. Interviewer: Yet, if I could not distinguish myself from external reality, in the same way, I could not know it. Carlo Sini: Fair objection. In the sense that we are part of reality while distinguishing ourselves from it. We are part of the truth, but we are not the truth. Interviewer: A nice paradox. So what are we? Carlo Sini: We are in the difference of knowledge, or rather we are in what I call “being in error.” Truth and error are, in a way, two sides of the same coin."

"What a person says can and must be discussed by everyone and must be proven through experiments. Sensible experiences and certain demonstrations, argued Galileo Galilei."

"The idea of national unification matured in Italian political thought at the end of the 18th century and in the early decades of the 19th century under the weight of new foreign invasions and the failure of new political experiments such as the Neapolitan Republic and the Napoleonic Republic. These new disappointments eroded the remnants of the rhetorical tradition and put political speculation and reflection on the customs and public spirit of Italians to the test of realism. (chap. 6, p. 60)"

"Resistance to political unification was not Italy's only problem. This was certainly the primary problem, but it was also the result of a profound process of disintegration following centuries of fragmentation. Literary culture had long been sterile and remained so at least until Parini; philosophical and scientific culture was more a constellation of individual personalities, sometimes brilliant but almost always isolated and persecuted. In many respects, the condition of culture was the same as that of the Italian language: refined, but little connected to the everyday communication of Italians. (chap. 6, p. 62)"

"Overall, the three great figures of Bruno, Campanella and Sarpi attest that in Italy the distinction between civis and fidelis, opposed by the Church, had established itself in the highest consciences, laying the foundations for the sovereignty of modern states and also for freedom of conscience and religion. (chap. 5, p. 47)"

"The Cold War created serious ideological divisions, and the growing intrusiveness of political parties, encouraged by the proportional electoral system and the lack of alternative governments, led to clientelism, corruption and inefficiency. Land parcelling, hidden financing and parliamentary consociationalism led to a regression of the parties, prompting the intervention of the judiciary. Almost all parties, subjected to serious ideological erosion, had to change their names, symbols and leadership as a difficult transition to a new majority political system began. (chap. 7, pp. 83-84)"

"Umberto Cerroni, Il pensiero politico del Novecento, Il sapere, Tascabili Economici Newton, Roma, 1995. ISBN 88-7983-971-3."

"Poised between a last, desperate attempt to outline a strategy for the construction of a unified state and the dramatic awareness of the political impotence to which the Italians are reduced, Machiavelli is a great, solitary witness to the political decline of a highly intellectual civilisation. He has something of Dante in him, a passionate politician and disdainful exile, and of Luther. He is the last great voice of our realistic tradition and the first modern reformer of Italian consciousness. (chap. 4, p. 36)"

"Umberto Cerroni, Il pensiero politico italiano, Il sapere, Tascabili Economici Newton, Roma, 1995. ISBN 88-8183-265-8."

"[...] Machiavelli is the first great Italian political thinker completely and definitively freed from any cultural dependence on theology and Catholic culture: he is also the first entirely secular European political thinker, who no longer refers to the sacred scriptures, to which Hobbes and Locke will still refer. (chap. 4, p. 35)"

"Bruno makes a clear distinction between the ‘universe’ and the ‘worlds’. In his view of the cosmos, talking about a world system does not mean talking about a universe system. Astronomy is legitimate and possible as a science of the world that falls within the scope of our sensory perception. But beyond it lies an infinite universe containing those “great animals” we call stars, which encompasses an infinite plurality of worlds. That universe has no dimensions or measurements, no shape or form. It is both uniform and formless, neither harmonious nor orderly, and cannot in any way be considered a “system.”"