Enrico Berti

"I would like to say to them, both students and teachers: being able to meet to talk about philosophy, literature, art, religion and science, as we do at school, is a blessing, a great blessing. For students and young people, for example, it is perhaps the best time of their lives, an opportunity that brings us into contact with values, ideas and the best things that humanity has produced. And I would remind teachers that our profession is, in many ways, one of the most beautiful. We are fortunate. But it is a profession that allows us to remain in contact with young people, with science, with art, with literature, with everything that makes up culture, throughout our lives. So, I believe we should consider ourselves fortunate."

"(Citing the Metaphysics of Aristotle) ‘The good and the beautiful are different because the former is always in praxis, while the latter is also in immovable things.’ [...] For Aristotle, a true good must be achievable through practice. Beauty, on the other hand, is not always achievable; there is one aspect of beauty that is achievable, which is achievable through practice and is therefore an action, but there is clearly another aspect of beauty that is not achievable and which places it in the realm of immutable realities, i.e. realities that do not depend on human action. [...] “Beauty is always order, symmetry and determinacy”. [...] These characteristics – according to Aristotle – also belong to immobile realities such as mathematical objects. Mathematical objects are beautiful because they are orderly, symmetrical and determinate. Think of geometric figures, think of geometric theorems. Mathematicians themselves say today that a theorem, a proof, can be beautiful, can be elegant. And this confirms Aristotle's idea of beauty as belonging to immutable realities. Mathematical objects are not practicable, they cannot be realised through action; they are there, they must be described, they must be proven, but they are not the product of our action, so they are immutable realities, but that is why they are beautiful. [...] For Aristotle, there are many goods: for example, health is a good, strength is a good, wealth is a good. Therefore, many human actions have these goods as their end. [...] However, some actions are good because they procure goods, but they are not beautiful actions, there is no reason to consider them beautiful."

"According to Aristotle, true happiness consists in doing the things we enjoy most with our friends. [...] Those who love philosophy love above all else to philosophise (in Greek: sum-philosophein) with their friends."

"Interviewer: What brings Aristotle closer to Lucretius' statement, “Happy is he who can know the causes of things”? Professor Berti: This is a point that has perhaps not yet been adequately explored because Lucretius was known to be an Epicurean, and Epicureans in ancient times were generally hostile to Aristotle and polemical towards him. Most of the anti-Aristotelian anecdotes preserved in history are of Epicurean origin. Nevertheless, Lucretius, the great Epicurean poet and philosopher, while sharing Epicurus' belief that happiness consists in pleasure – what he calls in Latin “'voluptas”', with which he begins his poem “'De Rerum Natura”' – Lucretius himself states that happy is he who has been able to know the causes of things. Therefore, this pleasure, this happiness, which is clearly an intellectual pleasure, includes knowledge of the causes, that is, the ability to explain phenomena and solve the problems that experience presents us with. And this is ultimately a trait shared by all great philosophers, but also – I would say – by all philosophers, all those who love philosophy, that is, the desire to know, the happiness that comes from solving problems and discovering the causes of why things happen."

"More than finalism (which in Aristotle concerns only internal finality), Christian theology owes to Aristotle the concept of a transcendent and personal Principle, which in Aristotle is the first among the immobile motors of the heavens, and therefore the first of beings and the motor of everything, while for Christians (as for Muslims) it is God. However, we must bear in mind the different meaning that the word “god” had for the ancients and has for believers in monotheistic religions. For the ancients (Greeks and Romans), ‘god’ is a common noun, the name of a species of living beings, like ‘man’, and is therefore written with an article and a lowercase initial letter (the god). For monotheists (Jews, Christians, Muslims), however, ‘God’ is the name of a single person, so it is written without an article and with a capital letter. These are grammatical rules, not ideological choices."

"What Christians consider to be Aristotle's “God”, i.e. the first unmoved mover – which for Aristotle is ‘a god’ because it is an immortal and happy living being – is not creator, it is not providential, and above all it is not a saviour. However, like the Christian God, it is transcendent and personal. Its transcendence is expressed by its immutability, which distinguishes it from every other reality we experience. His personality, on the other hand, is due to the fact that he thinks, therefore lives, and is happy to think, therefore possesses a will. However, I believe it is wrong to compare a philosophical doctrine, conquered by a man through exclusively human abilities (experience and reasoning), with a concept that is the result of divine revelation."

"Aristotle, like all the ancients, was a polytheist, that is, he believed in a plurality of gods, and “practised” his religion, that is, he prayed to the gods and made vows, as can be seen from his will. However, he criticised the anthropomorphic aspects of polytheism, interpreting the gods as the driving forces of the heavens, and recognised a “first” among them, thus paving the way, later taken up by the Stoics, towards monotheism."

"Interviewer: So today society is more in need of philosophy than ever... Professor Berti: Not only today, but always. Philosophy is in fact inherent in human nature; it has always existed and will always exist, despite attempts to decree its end. This was not only the thinking of Aristotle, for whom “all human beings by nature (i.e. males and females, free and slaves, Greeks and barbarians) desire knowledge”, and philosophy – if rightly understood – is the highest form of knowledge. Already in the Apology, Plato has Socrates say that ‘a life without inquiry is not worth living for a human being’."

"I began studying Aristotle when I was still a student here in Padua. When I decided to write my thesis, I approached a professor who seemed particularly interesting to me, Marino Gentile. I told him about my interests, which centred on the debate on metaphysics, in particular the objections that contemporary philosophy raised against metaphysics, represented by major currents such as Marxism, existentialism and positivism, which were hostile to metaphysics. The professor advised me to read Aristotle's Metaphysics, a text I had already read for some university exams. Reading it, I realised that there were still many things to be clarified, even though Aristotle was considered by my colleagues to be an outdated philosopher. Perhaps this was also due to the cultural isolation that Italy suffered as a result of the war and the presence of the historicism of Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce. In other European countries, he was still a relevant philosopher, especially in English philosophy, within the context of reflection on everyday language; English scholars continually discussed Aristotle. In Germany, Heidegger, one of the greatest philosophers of the last century, devoted a great deal of attention to Aristotle. Over time, I continued to study Aristotle, discovering more and more how relevant he was. Today, Aristotle is one of the most studied philosophers in the world and is considered an interlocutor, in contrast to those currents that are now almost obsolete."

"At first, I was greatly influenced by the Aristotelian tradition, represented by the Islamic and Christian worlds, a tradition in which Aristotle was the philosopher of those who wanted to give a philosophical basis to those who had a religious faith. Later, I realised that Aristotle did not have this problem at all; Aristotle's interest was exclusively scientific, leading him to deal with areas that have become our current sciences, and to question concepts such as cause, a concept much broader than how we conceive it on a daily basis."

"For Plato, the soul was something that entered the body and left it at the moment of death. For the pre-Socratics, it was a kind of spectre. Aristotle, as many know, defines the soul as the form, or the first act of the body. We need to reflect on the concept of form; form is not a part of the organism, which has its own unity. Organisms are bodies capable of performing certain functions; these capacities are obviously reduced in plants, while in animals they are already more complex. In human beings, we find activities that we call superior, such as thinking and willing. The soul is the possession of these capacities."