Sergio Givone

"(About the Italian debate on euthanasia) We are faced with a strange alliance between technocratic culture and Catholic religious culture, both of which seek survival at all costs. But Catholic culture at least has a sense of the suffering of the dying, which is foreign to technology, interested only in the proper functioning of the apparatus."

"Nothing remains of the philosophy of '68. Simply because that philosophy never existed."

"Since ideology prevailed over criticism by a wide margin, it was precisely the authors whom the movement had chosen as teachers, or rather (since teachers were rejected) as guides, who were massacred."

"The 1968 movement was neither the subject nor the object of philosophy. It did not produce its own independent thought. Nor was it conceived as a philosophical event."

"Religion is a living thing."

"Either religion is alive and necessary, or it is not. Alive insofar as it is necessary. In the sense that it speaks to us of things we cannot do without, but above all of things that only religion is capable of speaking about."

"But what does it mean to remove the truth? It means, for example, that it will no longer be the law that has the power on its side (the power of truth, which legitimizes it), but power (power without truth) that will have the law on its side and do whatever it wants with it: perhaps legitimizing abuse on the basis of false evidence, invented for ideological purposes and power objectives. The idea that, once the truth is removed, there will finally be room for civil conversation in which what is worthy of belief or what, though not believed, deserves to be part of human heritage, will spontaneously flourish, is a beautiful idea, but perhaps hermeneutics should exercise a little of its art of suspicion on it."

"Dostoevsky puts a similar idea into the mouth of one of his characters, Versilov: that it is enough to renounce absolutes, to rid oneself of any claim to immortality is enough for men to learn to reconcile themselves with the earth, that is, with their finitude and fragility, finally loving one another, because there is no love except where there is a sharing of a common destiny and a feeling of pity for those who die, that is, for everyone. This idea in Dostoevsky's novel is not refuted, but simply put into the mouth of the Devil and dismantled with the most bitter of smiles. (chap. 5)"

"Does the name of God still mean anything to people today? According to Nietzsche, little or nothing. The very announcement that “God is dead” is destined to fall on deaf ears. Perhaps everyone repeats the phrase in relation to this or that (secularization, de-Christianization, single-minded thinking, and so on). But as if it were obvious, a foregone conclusion, to be acknowledged and then filed away without too much trouble. It's a bit like saying: we are modern, emancipated, faith in God belongs to the past. Centuries will have to pass—Nietzsche maintains—before men return to questioning the profound and mysterious meaning of this death."

"That the death of God appears to be an event that is now behind us and leaves us essentially indifferent is not atheism. It is nihilism. (chap. 6)"

"Atheism, in its own way, holds fast to the idea of God. If only to destroy and deny this idea, while at the same time dismissing all forms of transcendence: both the transcendence of moral law and the transcendence of the ultimate meaning of life. All things that, from the point of view of atheism, would force man into a state of subjugation and prevent him from realizing his full humanity. Atheism sees God as the enemy of man. Therefore, it wages war against him. (chap. 6)"