Carlo Sini

"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."

"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 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."

"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."

"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.”"

"(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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"(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."