Philosophers From Italy

"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."

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

"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."

"In this way, personal merit ends up being the least significant factor in finding a job, resulting in personal frustration and the poor functioning of society, where it is only by chance or pure coincidence that the right person is found in the right place. We can thus understand why the fight against the mafia will never be won in Italy, because the mafia is nothing more than a gruesome version of widespread customs, where kinship, acquaintances, the exchange of favours, in a word, the “familistic” network prevails over the recognition of personal values and citizenship rights. What can be done? Very little can be done until the level of civilisation is raised, with the recognition of the value of individuals as its first pillar. In this regard, the Americans could teach us something and, given that today's widespread culture proclaims itself pro-American, we could import from them this one virtue in which they excel. But perhaps our pro-Americanism only means doing our business under their protection."

"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."

"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."

"The male-female sexual division is a very strict one, which serves society more than individuals... However, we all know - biologically and psychologically - that we are all male and female, but not in the proportions of 10% and 90%, but rather 40% and 60%. After that, society channels us into a strict sexual division, male and female ...which serves society to identify us, but does not serve our lives; and fluidity ... is an anthropological structure present in each of us. And a man who has a relationship with his femininity is much more interesting than a man with a square jaw."

"AIDS, by presenting us with this inextricable intertwining of life and death, and of love and death, reactivates the image of the vampire who, with his cleft lip, piercing canines, scarlet face, sharp tongue and single nostril, gruesomely represents that death which is never in its place and therefore haunts the unconscious of those who live striving to keep it as far away as possible."

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

"“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 had begun to wonder whether philosophy was a great defence against madness. [...] And I am still convinced of this today, because I am convinced that neurotics study psychology and psychotics study philosophy. Because if we consider who enrols in philosophy? People who enrol in philosophy are those who want to solve problems without going to someone else. [...] By every philosopher I mean a madman who wants to play around with his madness a little, but at the same time does not want to go mad and therefore arms himself to keep it at bay through a series of sound arguments, which are learned here... to keep madness at bay. :*from a conversation in the “'Master's Degree in Communication and Non-Verbal Languages”', Ca' Foscari University of Venice, December 2007."

"We have a continental philosophy that also speaks in a literary way, think of Heidegger, to name a philosopher of the last century. In reality, they [the British] have always been empiricists: Bacon, Locke and Hume were empiricists, then they had Stuart Mill in the 19th century, who was a positivist. In America, they have John Dewey and William James who are pragmatists. They need to see the concrete, so they are incapable of abstraction. Philosophy is abstraction... Eastern thought cannot enter into the abstract; we Westerners invented it."

"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)"

"All this to say that love is not possession, because possession does not tend towards the good of the other, nor towards loyalty to the other, but only towards the maintenance of the relationship, which, far from guaranteeing happiness, which is always in the search for and knowledge of oneself, sacrifices it in exchange for security."

"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."

"Fidelity, if we want to strip it down a little, is the virtue of those who feel weaker in the couple and have the impression that, having lost the man or woman they live with, they have no other “chance” than the desert of loneliness. And so they cling to the other's indifference, if not hostility, immersing themselves in those exaggerated forms of love that are the flip side of their absolute need for the other."

"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)"

"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?"

"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)"

"After Ernesto De Martino, Carlo Tullio-Altan, who passed away yesterday at the age of 89, was the greatest Italian anthropologist in two senses: as a significant exponent of cultural anthropology, a discipline so little cultivated in Italy, and as a ruthless investigator of the anthropology of Italians."

"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 Church already realised this at the time of Galileo and, without being deceived by the religious vision of history underlying both science and utopia and revolution, it came into conflict with these secularised versions of eschatological time, because it understood that they corrode it from within to the point of losing track of it, with irreversible damage to the institutions (the Churches) that have their foundation and justification in the eschatological vision of time and history. This is what history teaches us, and the facts confirm it."

"As for reason without faith, it seems to me that this falls within the scope of reason, which, as Kant reminds us, is a tiny island in the ocean of the irrational. Given its size, allow me to be among those who are committed to its defence."

"Before the birth of reason, which is a recent phenomenon, having emerged 2500 years ago with philosophy (which, to distinguish itself from theology, has always reasoned ‘as if God did not exist’), religion was an attempt to find causal links to defend oneself from the unpredictable and the unknown, which has always terrified man and generated anguish."

"Today, reason has found its highest expression in science, which does not conflict with faith, provided that faith renounces its claim to be the truth. Science has no relation to truth, because what it produces are only “exact” propositions, i.e. “obtained from (ex actu)” premises that have been anticipated hypothetically. The fact that the hypothesis is confirmed by experiment only tells us that we know the operational validity of that hypothesis, not the nature of the thing investigated with that hypothesis, because, when questioned, the thing did not show its face, but simply responded to the anticipated hypothesis."

"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."

"Still in accordance with God's command to man to have dominion over nature (Genesis 1:1-5), modern science will eventually take this dominion away from God, who, being less and less accessible to reason, ends up being increasingly confined to faith. Taking the place of God, reason becomes the legislator; it does not “learn” from nature, as was the case when nature was considered the unfolding design of God, but, as Kant says, it forces nature to answer its questions. In this way, nature has no meaning in itself other than that which it assumes within the human project, which tends to make it a resource available to man. Today, science, not in those who practise it, but in those (and that is all of us) who place their hopes in it, if not for salvation, then certainly for health, healing, progress and growth, continues to feed on religious ideology, even if its actual practice disregards this ideology and proceeds as if God did not exist."

"No historical era, however absolutist or dictatorial, has ever experienced such a process of massification, because no absolute ruler or dictator was capable of creating a system of conditions of existence in which conformity was the only possibility of life."

"And so the Age of Enlightenment, which for Kant marks ‘the emancipation of humanity from a state of minority’, reveals itself to be much more backward, obsessive and persecutory towards masturbation than previous centuries, which were governed by religion, which perhaps, more than reason, is familiar with the flesh and the sufferings of its loneliness. (p. 50)"

"From the place where he had been imprisoned awaiting sentencing, Socrates was invited by his disciples to escape. But his response was peremptory: "I have taught you all your lives to obey the laws, and now you invite me to break them at the end of my life. What I had to teach you, I have communicated to you. My cycle is complete." There is no trace of anguish, despair or melancholy for a life that has come to an end, only consistency between teaching and life. Even the drama of the moment is subservient to the needs of teaching, to make it more persuasive, more effective. And if the moment is the eve of death, it must be faced with dignity. ‘But finally, Socrates, tell us how we should bury you,’ his disciples press him. ‘As you wish,’ he replied. And, laughing quietly, he continued: ‘O friends, I cannot convince Crito that the real Socrates is the one who is now discussing with you and not the one whom he will soon see dead’ (Phaedo 115 e). His disciples begged him to wait, as others had done, until sunset. But Socrates wants to avoid making himself ridiculous by clinging to life when there is no more. He drinks the poison in one gulp "without fear, without changing the colour or expression of his face, but, looking at his disciples as usual with his bull's eyes, he said: 'What do you think? Is it lawful to make libations to someone with this drink or not?'‘ (Phaedo 117 b). Then he resumed walking until he felt his legs grow heavy, then he lay down, and when his limbs began to grow cold, he said: ’'Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius; give it to him and do not forget it. “It will be done,” replied Crito, “but see if you have anything else to say.” Socrates did not answer this question" (Phaedo 118 a)."

"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)"

"As for the relationship between faith and morality, I believe that in order to establish a proper coexistence among human beings, reason is capable of establishing a morality (see Kant) independently of faith, which, as our times and past times demonstrate, contributes more to hostility and ferocity among human beings than to their peaceful coexistence."

"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."

"Among the enthusiastic followers of Tissot we find Rousseau and Kant, for whom those who masturbate are not unlike ‘suicides’ who destroy with a single gesture the life that masturbators sacrifice over time. (p. 48)"

"Antonio Labriola, Socrate, Laterza, 1909."

"Antonio Labriola, Storia, filosofia della storia, sociologia e materialismo storico, in "Scritti filosofici e politici", Franco Barbieri (editor), Einaudi, Torino, 1973."

"Antonio Labriola, Storia, filosofia della storia, sociologia e materialismo storico, in Scritti varii: editi e inediti di filosofia e politica, collected and published by Benedetto Croce, Giuseppe Laterza & Figli, Bari, 1906."

"Antonio Labriola, Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosofia, in "Scritti filosofici e politici", Franco Barbieri (editor), Einaudi, Torino, 1973."

"Antonio Labriola, In memoria del Manifesto dei comunisti, in "Scritti filosofici e politici", Franco Barbieri (editor), Einaudi, Torino, 1973."

"Today, the family seems to lack values to pass on, and society needs values and role models."

"In Milan, there is only one man, who is actually a woman, Kuliscioff."

"We will erect a monument to Giordano Bruno in Campo de' Fiori, in atonement for the sins of our ancestors, whose moral sloth was the cause of our delayed political progress, so that it may serve as a symbol to the multitudes of freedom of conscience, who will have it alive and powerful in time, when they grow in culture, and as a salutary warning to all the capable and all the lukewarm, who speak of conciliation without blushing."

"School helps young people if it manages to teach them critical thinking."

"For Schiller, freedom means precisely the absence of constraint, not only physical but also moral; because even duty constrains us painfully when it conflicts with sensible impulse, as in Kantian rigorism. Aesthetic freedom for Schiller is something more than moral freedom: the latter would indeed be a liberation from sensible impulses, but it would place us under the rule of a law imposed on our human nature. Aesthetic freedom also frees us from the suffering of this constraint, making us feel that ethical law is in accordance with our natural inclination."

"While technical instruments are generally the result of more or less fortuitous discoveries, which are perfected and refined over time through the accumulation of practical experience, machines have a distinctive feature: they are invented, i.e. designed in advance, and we know how they will be structured, how they will work and why they will work in a certain way before they are actually built. All this amounts to saying that there is nothing mysterious about a machine, that everything is, in principle, clear and distinct."

"There are things that can only be learned at school, but the proliferation of so-called “educations” has given rise to subjects that are a burden on schools. This is partly to ease the conscience of other institutions and demonstrate sensitivity towards an issue."

"Giuseppe Garibaldi was a man of the people, and of that part of the people which, through its habit of frankness, sobriety of life and honesty of customs, is the most incorruptible. In his popular instincts as a lover of justice, a hater of privilege, a defender of the oppressed, and a persecutor of all tyranny, he will remain forever, and as in effigy, the noblest, simplest, and most persuasive example of true democracy."

"In Kant's troubled criticism, there is all the torment of Christianity; in his theory of radical evil, the dogma of original sin persists, however philosophically transfigured. Schiller rightly wrote to Goethe: “There is always something in Kant, as in Luther, that reminds us of the monk who, even after leaving the cloister, cannot erase its traces from himself.” (from “'Logos”', II issue, p. 113)"

"Human perfection is not beyond the sensible world, but in the harmonious development of all human faculties in their integral certainty. from “'Logos”', II fascicle p. 113)"

"[...] for Schiller, art is the culmination of the life of the spirit and rational ethical conscience is only one aspect of it, having to integrate with sensitivity. Schiller, like Kant, maintains that moral action must be motivated not by sensory impulses but by reason. (from “'Logos”', II fascicle p. 115)"