Viva voce conversations with Italian philosophers 9781438463797, 9781438463803, 1438463790, 1438463804

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Viva Voce

SUNY series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy —————— Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder, editors

Viva Voce Conversations with Italian Philosophers

Silvia Benso

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2017 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production, Ryan Morris Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Benso, Silvia, interviewer. Title: Viva voce : conversations with Italian philosophers / [interviews by] Silvia Benso. Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2017. | Series: SUNY series in contemporary Italian philosophy | Translations from Italian. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016031444 (print) | LCCN 2017000563 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438463797 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438463803 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy, Italian. | Philosophers—Italy—Interviews. | Philosophy, Modern. Classification: LCC B3551 .V58 2017 (print) | LCC B3551 (ebook) | DDC 195—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016031444 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction Italian Philosophy—Threshold between Cultures

1

one ETHICS, PASSIONS, PRACTICES Logics of Delusion, Passions, and Time A Conversation with Remo Bodei

17

Ethics, Bioethics, and Ethical Sentimentalism A Conversation with Eugenio Lecaldano

27

Life, Suffering, Happiness, and Virtue A Conversation with Salvatore Natoli

37

Truth, Figures of Truth, and Practices of Life A Conversation with Carlo Sini

51

Metaphysics, Ethics, and Applied Ethics A Conversation with Carmelo Vigna

63

two HISTORY, JUSTICE, COMMUNITIES Sexual Difference, Relational Space, and Embodied Singularities A Conversation with Adriana Cavarero

73

Ontology of Contingency, Power, and Historical Space-Time A Conversation with Giacomo Marramao

81

vi

Contents

Philosophy of Right, Historiography, and Individuality A Conversation with Fulvio Tessitore

93

Interpretation, History, and Politics A Conversation with Gianni Vattimo

107

Global Justice, Democracy, Uncertainty, and Incompleteness A Conversation with Salvatore Veca

113

three IMAGINATION, ART, TECHNOLOGY Technology, Communication, and Aesthetics of the Sublime A Conversation with Mario Costa Freedom, Guilt, Nihilism, and Tragic Thought A Conversation with Sergio Givone Imagination, Rituality, and Transit A Conversation with Mario Perniola

125 137 147

four RATIONALITY, SCIENCES, EXPERIENCE Mathematics, Sciences, Objectivity, and System Theory A Conversation with Evandro Agazzi

159

Mathematics, Freedom, and Conflictual Democracy A Conversation with Giulio Giorello

175

Science, Knowledge, Rationality, and Empirical Realism A Conversation with Paolo Parrini

185

five BEING, NOTHING, TEMPORALITY, PLACE Metaphysics, Experience, and Transcendence A Conversation with Enrico Berti The Absolute, Finite Beings, and Symbolic Language A Conversation with Virgilio Melchiorre Being, Memory, and the Present A Conversation with Ugo Perone

203 215 223

Contents

Being, Becoming, and the Destiny of Truth A Conversation with Emanuele Severino Topology, Nothingness, and the Possible God A Conversation with Vincenzo Vitiello

vii

233 243

six HUMAN BEINGS, EVIL, TRANSCENDENCE Religious Experience, Philosophy, and Theology A Conversation with Giovanni Ferretti

255

Person, Evil, and Eschatology A Conversation with Giuseppe Riconda

271

Select Bibliography

283

Index

303

Acknowledgments

I have received great encouragement and support from many along the way—my beloved husband, esteemed colleague, and fellow philosopher, Brian Schroeder, to whom I also owe special thanks for coming up with the title for the volume; my wonderful son, Erik, whose music, smiles, and general good humor have cheered up my days; and my Italian family and friends, who have always listened and provided precious nourishment for both the mind and the body in times of need. For all that, I am very grateful. I would also like to thank the Rochester Institute of Technology, and especially the College of Liberal Arts, for granting me leave time (which permitted extended research time in Italy to work on this project) and financial assistance (which supported the initial editing of the translations for the volume). With respect to the work of translating, I wish to thank my editorial assistant, Nolan Little, who with patience, promptness, and insight has read through an initial draft of the translations and has suggested necessary changes and revisions. I am especially indebted to Andrew Kenyon and the staff at SUNY Press not only for their enthusiastic backing of this volume, but also for their constant support of the SUNY Series in Contemporary Italian Philosophy. And last but not least, I extend my sincere and deepest appreciation to the contributors of this volume for their constant support, encouragement, and patience. Without them and their thinking, there would be no volume—and Italian philosophy would not be as exciting either.

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Introduction Italian Philosophy—Threshold between Cultures

AN INCREASING RECOGNITION Several years have passed since the publication, in 2007, of the edited volume Contemporary Italian Philosophy.1 Up to that point, a few contemporary Italian thinkers were certainly known to Anglophone readers of philosophy—most notably, Giorgio Agamben, Norberto Bobbio, Adriana Cavarero, Toni Negri, Mario Perniola, Carlo Sini, Gianni Vattimo, and a few others. Yet the translation of these thinkers’ works was more the result of fortuitous circumstances and personal events than the outcome of a concerted cultural effort to approach, understand, appreciate, and disseminate Italian philosophy in its overall context and richness. As a consequence, individualities glowed while overshadowing the culturally and philosophically rich context that had made the emergence of such singularities possible in the first place. Despite its limits, limitations, and omissions, the above-mentioned 2007 volume was the first book in the Anglo-American landscape to explicitly engage Italian philosophy in its own right as capable of contributing its own creative, innovative, nonscholastic perspectives on major philosophical themes.2 The volume, which gathered essays by seventeen leading Italian philosophers, added some new Italian voices to the continental philosophical tradition as known in the English-speaking countries, that is, a tradition deeply focused on French and German contributions. The chosen topic for the edited collection was the intersection of themes in ethics, politics, and religion; ever since Marsilio Ficino, Pico della Mirandola, Niccolò Machiavelli, Galileo Galilei, Giambattista Vico, up to Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile, and, more recently, Giorgio Agamben, Adriana Cavarero, Roberto Esposito, and Gianni Vattimo, these areas have not

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only intertwined, they traditionally constitute the core of major debates in Italian philosophy, which is overall characterized by its civic commitment. This is what Esposito, in a recent volume, Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy, has conceptualized in terms of the crossing of the “axis” of life, politics, and history.3 The 2007 volume was also the inauguration of a unique series devoted to contemporary Italian philosophy—a series that, over the years, has welcomed publication of translations of Italian philosophers’ major works as well as edited volumes on either specific Italian thinkers or aspects of Italian philosophy. There is no doubt that nowadays, within the Anglophone world, Italian philosophy has gained wider recognition and is granted much more scholarly attention than in 2007. Several volumes devoted to its representatives have appeared in various series with different publishers, and previously unknown Italian thinkers are being translated, published, and addressed in scholarly essays and conference presentations. Whether attention is paid to these authors because they are Italian or because they are philosophers is a question that can hardly be answered in the disjunctive form. Undoubtedly such thinkers receive consideration because of the theoretical merits and value of their thinking. Nevertheless, they can be the valuable thinkers that they are because they emerge out of a specific philosophical landscape, that is, the one constituted by the way in which philosophy is and has been done in Italy. In this sense, they are Italian thinkers according to a signification that accepts no partition of terms.

THE ITALIAN DIFFERENCE One question that lurks behind the denomination “Italian thinkers” is, understandably, the appropriateness or even desirability of framing philosophy within national borders and identities. At the conceptual level, it can be argued that, at least in its Greek essentialist legacy, philosophy pursues a project of universality that escapes reductive delimitations and identifications with the particularity of national identities. At the pragmatic level, we live in a historical time when transnationalism and cross-culturalism seem to be pervasive albeit yet-to-be-completely-attained realities, whereas the concept of the nation-state is debunked as a dangerous legacy of imperialistic and narrow understandings of what constitutes communities. Within this cultural climate, geographical or ethnic descriptions and delimitations may be construed as arbitrary and bordering on nationalisms and ethnocentrisms whose effects are violent, destructive, and ultimately lethal. Hence, all such

Introduction

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descriptions are undesirable and should be avoided. There is no way to deny that these remarks have their points of strength, and that nationalism is in fact a serious danger—out of place and to be shunned. Within the globalized world, though, and mainly to counteract the totalizing risks entailed in globalization, a concerted attention to the notion of place, the local, and the particular has also become predominant at both the conceptual and the socio-political-economic levels. From a philosophical perspective, a universality that does not take into account the particular is an empty concept, as Kant said. Places, localities, and geographies with their particular characteristics and geohistories that make them distinct and unique do affect how thinking develops. In this sense, it is this editor’s conviction that, precisely because of the place where it develops (which entails institutions, practices, available resources, self-understanding, and self-esteem—briefly, the socio-political-economic-historic-cultural landscape), Italian philosophy retains its own specificity and individuality—its own uniqueness and difference. Aspects of such specificity and individuality have recently been explored in Esposito’s volume Living Thought. In it, Esposito indicates the Italian theoretical difference as resting on “three paradigmatic axes”—the immanentization of antagonism, the historicization of the nonhistorical, and the mundanization of the subject. According to Esposito, these three themes, which also enable Italian philosophy to escape the trap of the “transcendental fold” proper to much so-called continental thought, situate Italian philosophy in a position of alterity with respect to the trajectory of modernity—not premodern or antimodern, as it has also been claimed, Italian philosophy rather sits “on the other side of modernity, or, more precisely, along a tangent that cuts across it diagonally, without being absorbed by it.”4 Esposito’s evaluation of tangentialism may be true especially with respect to Italian philosophy during the period of European modernity, namely, from the sixteenth century up to the crisis brought about by the two world conflicts. And certainly there may have been, as Esposito indicates, an additional tendency of Italian philosophy “to escape outside itself—its continuous deterritorialization,” for example toward the nonphilosophical. The conceptual movement toward the outside need not be read as an escape, though—that is, as a conceptual inability to dwell on what would constitute one’s own. The movement toward the outside could also be read, I maintain, as the gesture of an intellectual host who exits to meet and welcome the guest, as the reception and acceptance of the outside within the inside in a self-constitutive act, a fundamental self-opening that allows for the penetration of vital elements to be re-elaborated (or reterritorialized, to use Esposito’s Deleuzian language) into new, original

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reconfigurations. Whether the self-opening to the outside is due, historically and genealogically, to a fundamental weakness and absence of power at the center, to a millenary slavish yet shrewd instinct for survival that prefers submission rather than disappearance, or to a histrionic ability to adapt and make the most out of all adverse situations is not a question to be addressed here. “Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello, / nave sanza nocchiere in gran tempesta, / non donna di province, ma bordello!” (O Italy, you inn of grief, ship without helmsman in a mighty tempest, mistress, not of provinces, but of a brothel), writes Dante in a famous invective in Purgatory (vi, 76–78); and he concludes by repeatedly invoking (“vieni . . . vien . . . vieni . . . vieni” [come . . . come . . . come . . . come]) the intervention of “Alberto tedesco,” the German heir to the Holy Roman Empire, whom he chastises for having abandoned Italy (Purgatory, vi, 97–114). Be it as it may with respect to Dante’s own political stance, a fundamental aspect of Italian philosophy has nevertheless to do with a peculiar penetrability, permeability, and fluidity with respect to the possibility of infiltration by foreign elements—in the specific, the influence of nonItalian philosophies and thinkers on the Italian philosophical landscape. Porosity may have been, as Dante both laments and invokes, a trait of Italian philosophy all along. It is particularly accentuated and deliberately advocated in the post–World War II environment after the folding of Italian philosophy upon itself due to the centrality ascribed to Croce’s and Gentile’s philosophies during the fascist period. Whether Croce’s and Gentile’s positions were open or closed to outside influences is a scholarly question that goes beyond our scope here. It is undeniable, though, that during the fascist period Croce’s and Gentile’s thought systems, and especially Gentile’s, exerted a hegemonic role from which it was hard to escape. With the collapse of the fascist regime, permeability and opening to external influences become a publicly invoked matter of style as well as content—if style and content could, of course, ever be separated in Italian philosophy.

A LINGUISTIC EVENT Ever since its inception, possibly in 1308 thanks to Dante’s Comedia, which offers highly philosophical content expressed in nonphilosophical style, Italian philosophy is first and foremost a linguistic event. The Comedia (qualified as “divine” only later) in fact consecrates the Tuscan vernacular to be the Italian cultural language par excellence. Albeit still in Latin, Dante had already formulated and defended the dignity and legitimacy of the vernacular, in this case the Florentine idiom

Introduction

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that he thus elevates above the level of being a mere dialect, in his work De Vulgari Eloquentia, probably written between 1302 and 1305. There, Dante defines the “vernacular language” as “that which infants acquire from those around them when they first begin to distinguish sounds; or, to put it more succinctly, [Dante] declare[s] that vernacular language is that which we learn without any formal instruction, by imitating our nurses” (De Vulgari Eloquentia I, i–2). The vernacular stands in opposition to what Dante refers to as gramatica, that is, “a certain immutable identity of language in different times and places” (De Vulgari Eloquentia I, ix–11). In comparison with, and opposition to, such more formal, atemporal, and essentialized or essentialist language that only few master through long years of study (with the term “gramatica” Dante is in fact most likely referring to the study of Latin), in De Vulgari Eloquentia Dante argues for another, more Aristotelian, immanent kind of universality based on concreteness, originarity, and naturalness. It is such universality that legitimates the superiority of the vernacular in its specificity. As he says, “the more noble is the vernacular: first, because it was the language originally used by the human race; second, because the whole world employs it, though with different pronunciations and using different words; and third because it is natural to us, while the other is, in contrast, artificial” (De Vulgari Eloquentia I, i–4). In this unfinished work that is a true gem in linguistic studies (but also in negotiating concrete universality and particularities), among the fourteen forms of vernaculars he retraces on the Italian soil, Dante then identifies the “illustrious vernacular” in his beloved Tuscan idiom, the Florentine. Other writers follow suit, and through a process that spans over centuries and is possibly completed only in recent years thanks to the pervasiveness and influence of the mass media, the Tuscan vernacular becomes the Italian language and the major factor of cultural unification and identity. Dante’s move resembles ante litteram Descartes’ foundational operation that marks the end of medieval philosophical systems, the birth of modernity, and the beginning of national philosophies. The text that allegedly grounds French philosophy as a philosophy of subjectivity (and initiates modernity as the age of individuality), namely, Descartes’ Meditationes, is written not in the national language whose philosophical dignity it thereby legitimizes, but in what was considered a supranational language, namely, Latin.5 Whereas by the time Descartes writes, France was already set on its path of national identity at the geopolitical level, there was no Italy as a nation-state with a centralized government at the time when Dante wrote, and such a nation-state would not exist for a long time still. In other words, there is an Italian language and thus an Italian literature, philosophy, and culture based on such a language much earlier than Italy becomes a

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sovereign state in the modern sense. In this sense, Italian philosophy as a cultural event based on language precedes the formation of all possibilities of an Italian nationalism based on geographical borders. Being Italian is a cultural event ahead of all belonging to a territory, a soil, a nation (or even a blood lineage).

THRESHOLD OF ENCOUNTERS The fragmentation of the Italian geopolitical territory means that, ever since Dante’s foundational act, Italy is in fact crossed by (not always peaceful) influences from the rest of Europe (Spain, France, the remainder of the Holy Roman Empire based in what will then become southern Germany, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, Belgium and the Netherlands through the banking activities of the entrepreneurial Tuscan towns of Lucca and Florence especially), from Asia (with the Venetians, whose trade extended to Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire, India, and China), from northern Africa and the Middle East (especially with the Sicilians, whose commerce with Arab cultures turned Palermo into a center of medicine and Aristotelian knowledge), and even from North and South America through the Spanish and French dominations there. While the Italian language acts as some factor of unification at least in the intellectual world in which philosophy partakes, the land where the Italian language operates is open to a variety of cultural (and military) intrusions that are reworked, reelaborated, rethematized, and retheorized along lines of appropriation that are both different among the various geographical regions of Italy and yet not sheltered behind their isolation. What thus develops is a very unique, osmotic model of philosophical elaboration in which being Italian appears as a threshold, a border, a point of internal as well as external encounters, intersections, and exchanges. These dynamics occur at a double level: they take place among realities internal to the Italian peninsula (the various municipalities, principalities, dukedoms, and so on) that already share some elements of linguistic commonality or affinity but differ geopolitically (thus, the Florentine Dante, for example, spends most of his life outside of Florence); and they also occur between such realities and what lies outside of them at the linguistic, cultural, and geopolitical levels (Leonardo, for example, spent part of his time in France while many European thinkers, including Leibniz, Goethe, and Nietzsche among others, spent significant time in Italy). Ultimately, Italian philosophy appears almost as an alchemist’s or a magician’s laboratory where experiments of fusions, amalgams, and transformations happen

Introduction

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and new configurations are created as a result. To be an Italian philosopher might precisely mean to be such an alchemic, magic, perhaps kaleidoscopic threshold—an opening and a door onto the outside through which inside and outside enter in contact, communicate, and open up to new visions rather than a gate that ultimately defensively closes on itself in a nationalistic move.

NARRATING THE STORY Despite the recent increase in attention and recognition paid to contemporary Italian philosophy, a volume that provides a contextualization—that is, a tracing of the general interconnections, threads, and fabrics that nourish the emergence of contemporary Italian thinkers in their magnificent individualities and enable them to be the thresholds mentioned above—is still missing from the Anglo-American philosophical landscape. Albeit in a minimalist format, the goal of the present volume is precisely to work toward filling or minimizing such a lack. One way to minimize the gap would be to write a history of philosophy, perhaps of a theoretical kind, that provides an overview of the main affinities, lines of development, and major thinkers of the period under consideration. In the present context, the period that has been chosen is the decades that span from the aftermath of World War II to the end of the millennium, that is, the second half of the twentieth century. Because of the close temporal proximity that occludes our contemporary eye to what might be truly enduring in the judgment of history, engaging in delineating a grand history of contemporary Italian philosophy would however be a rather daunting project. Basing it on a narration that occurs from an external, third-eye, unified, and allegedly objective standpoint would also risk offering a still image of an environment that is on the contrary quite lively and animated. Additionally, the practices of historicism, hermeneutics, and deconstruction have taught us how all historical accounts bespeak the perspective of the narrator. In light of such considerations, it has been the more modest choice of this editor to let the story be told not by a grand narrative but by those who, through their scholarly writings as well as their academic lectures, public conferences, and performances of various kinds, have contributed to delineate such a history. Thus, the format of the interview has been chosen as the most appropriate mode of narration for the volume. The interview style has also seemed the best to correspond to and mirror a peculiarity of all Italian philosophers, namely, their self-imposed role of public intellectuals willing to express their philosophical positions

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not only in professional books and essays but also in public contexts and conversations such as political meetings, intellectual gatherings and festivals, daily and weekly newspapers, media performances and appearances, and so on. Most interviews have occurred not in a face-to-face conversation but over email, that is, already in the reflective mode allowed by the written format. To approximate the vivaciousness, wittiness, and lightness of live dialogues and still retain the rigor and discipline of serious philosophical thinking, interviewees were asked to keep their register of discourse at an informal but not frivolous level, to employ a technical but not technicistic vocabulary, to avail themselves of an agile but not superficial style, and to engage in punctual but not tedious, pedantic, or overly conceptual content expositions. The individual responses to the interview questions are very different in tone, content, form, style, length, main focus, and amount of detail given—each of the interviews is in this sense a true testimony to the differences that characterize each thinker as unique and give life to the variety of the Italian philosophical landscape as a whole. Of course, autobiographic narrations have their shortcomings and dangers too, one of the main risks being excessive protagonism on the side of the narrating self. Partially to deflect such a risk, each of the interviewees was given the same set (both in number and formulations) of questions to which they were invited to provide answers. The sequence of questions follows a zoom-in/zoom-out technique in which the past combines with the present to illuminate a current situation that in turns opens up toward the future. The interviews follow a three-step cadence. First, they start with more general questions that address issues of provenance, external (domestic and foreign) influences, and lineages. Next, they move to a self-description offered by each interviewed philosopher and aimed at highlighting the main tenets, theoretical originality, and timeliness of each individual position. Finally, the interviews dare to glance toward the future by asking for possible ways, suggestions, and advice through which philosophy can contribute to the delineation of such a future. The standardization of questions and their sequence has guaranteed some uniformity to the conversations while also leaving vital space for the self-disclosure of multiplicities and variations. What emerges is certainly not a history of contemporary Italian philosophy (even understood in minimalistic terms) capable of doing equal justice to all its representatives. What surfaces is rather a glance at a cross section of Italian philosophy as it was experienced in its development roughly after the 1950s. Some important thinkers of the period and their positions are at times simply mentioned, at times quickly glossed over, at times dismissively summarized, at times

Introduction

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sharply criticized, and at times expounded at length with affection, irritation, or admiration. The overall picture is enshrined in the details as much as in the overview the volume provides. In all cases, the connections that tie together and weave the fabric of Italian philosophy are disclosed in a vivid and lively picture.

SETTING THE PARAMETERS Historically, the period on which the volume focuses is very important for Italy. It is in fact only after World War II that Italy became the country we know today—both a unified country delimited by the current geographical borders and a democratic republic. On June 2, 1946, a referendum was held that irrevocably transformed Italy from a monarchy under the leadership of the Savoy dynasty (which some blamed, among other things, for having consigned Italy to Mussolini’s regime and then to the devastation of the war) into a republic. On January 1, 1948, the new constitution officially established Italy as a “democratic republic founded on work.” Thus the symbolic date when the reconciliation between Italian language and Italian territory occurred is 1948. What seems especially significant is that the politically foundational act is, from the outset, a democratic act—Italy is born as a sovereign state as the outcome of a people’s referendum and a referendum in which women too, for the first time, are called to vote; and Italy is constitutionally born as a democratic republic as a consequence of a shared, not-always-easy dialogue and debate among political forces very different in nature, histories, core values, and constituencies. The dialogical, which also means conflictual and differential, element is part of the very constitutive act that leads to the establishment of the Italian republic. That, at times, such an element has also worked to hinder the conversation is part of the internal logic that guides all dialectical movements. It is against such a socio-political-cultural background that contemporary Italian philosophy unfolds, carrying on itself the memory and mark of its republican, democratic, dialogical origin. As a symbolic date, 1948 has been chosen also as the watershed ultimately to decide, among the many possible candidates, which Italian philosophers to include in the present volume. The first, major criterion for inclusion has of course been the theoretical vigor that thinkers have displayed in terms of making meaningful and lasting contributions to the Italian philosophical landscape. Several years after the turn of the millennium, it is perhaps a bit less daunting to recognize the names of those who have left a mark on the previous century and, by extension, have influenced

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the shaping of the twenty-first. Even so, the number of those who merited inclusion seemed still too high given the editorial constraints of the volume, the need to offer profound reflections within a limited number of pages. The symbolic date of 1948 has presented itself as a helpful and seemingly appropriate chronological device. All the twenty-three philosophers who have contributed to the volume were in fact born before 1948, with Emanuele Severino being the oldest (having been born in 1929) and Adriana Cavarero the youngest (having been born in 1947). Significantly, Cavarero is also the only woman in the collection. This too is indicative of a period and an academic situation marked by women’s difficulty in entering the universities at the nonstudent level. When they succeeded in entering such a world, it was even more difficult to make their voices heard in their difference and specificity (that is, as creative thinkers and not as commentators of various kinds), especially at those higher academic levels that allegedly grant prestige, recognition, and the “official” status of an intellectual worthy of public audience. The date that has been chosen means that, generally, even the youngest thinkers included in this volume who were in their twenties in the late 1960s were able to play a major role in the shaping of Italian philosophy in the second part of the twentieth century. Even a quick glance at the bibliography at the end of the volume, which does not list journal articles, book chapters, invited lectures, or conference presentations, should suffice to attest to the philosophical stature of the contributors. Although somewhat arbitrary, the chronological criterion seemed less unfair than others that were also possible. This still entailed, however, that some important names that have become familiar to the Anglophone readers in recent years (such as Roberto Esposito and Maurizio Ferraris, among others) unfortunately had to be left out because of their not being of age, as it were, during the time under consideration. Some additional absences will also be evident—most notably, Giorgio Agamben, Massimo Cacciari, Umberto Eco, Diego Marconi, and Toni Negri, among others. These absences are due neither to deliberate omission nor to accidental forgetfulness on the side of the editor. Rather, they are to be ascribed to the modesty, reticence, or reservations harbored by some thinkers. Also absent are those Italian philosophers who, although of Italian nationality, have conducted most of their scholarly activities outside of Italy. This phenomenon, which has reached vast proportions in recent years due to the stalemate, intellectual asphyxiation, and lack of opportunities in the Italian academia, is known in Italy as “fuga dei cervelli” (brain drain or human capital flight). This despicable situation of exile has, for the most part, prevented such thinkers from deeply influencing the philosophical

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landscape within Italy, and thus they have not been included in the collection. Finally, some important thinkers are absent because unfortunately they are no longer with us; these include Nicola Abbagnano, Francesco Barone, Lucio Colletti, Dino Formaggio, Aldo Gargani, Eugenio Garin, and many others. Their names often appear in the memories of those who are part of the volume and so are present vicariously, as it were.

STRUCTURING THE VOLUME The philosophers whose interviews do appear in the volume belong to a variety of traditions, schools of thought, academic institutions, and areas of provenance (geographical as well as cultural, political, and intellectual). Their respective works differ in content, methodology, and areas of interest. Their personalities, modes of expression, registers of voice, and approaches to matters are as varied as the intellectual and cultural paths that have led them to being the unique philosophers they are. Altogether, what emerges is a broad, deep, lively, witty, at times humorous, and even irreverent picture of the Italian philosophical landscape. The individual contributions have been arranged not according to philosophical areas, fields, or disciplines, but according to connecting themes that work as lines of flight capable of gathering and holding together different trajectories along ideal affinities and commonalities. Six of such thematic lines have been identified to give structure to the volume: (1) Ethics, Passions, Practices; (2) History, Justice, Communities; (3) Imagination, Art, Technology; (4) Rationality, Sciences, Experience; (5) Being, Nothing, Temporality, Place; and (6) Human Beings, Evil, Transcendence. Italian philosophers are generally very versatile. During the span of their philosophical careers, most concern themselves with many areas, topics, and authors so that even conceptually very distant thinkers end up overlapping in some of their interests or works. In this sense, they represent a challenge to all disciplinary delimitations, not only within the general field of philosophy but within the cultural world in general (some of them are also politicians, mathematicians, poets, novelists, or jurists). The thematic lines, the parts of the volumes into which thinkers have been forced (not without their consent) as well as the titles assigned to their interviews (again, not without their agreement) are not an entirely accurate, exhaustive representation of the complexity of each individual philosopher. Other lines, themes, and titles could be imagined. Lines, themes, and titles are thus more suggestions than categories or statements, more evocations than descriptions. Like buzzwords, they hopefully provide

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an initial albeit limited insight into the complicated, multilayered, multifaceted landscape that constitutes Italian philosophy during the second half of the twentieth century. Amid the variety of voices and their narrations, whose variations would be impossible to capture and recapitulate in an introduction, elements also emerge that work toward delineating some shared traits of the general Italian philosophical landscape. Among them are the enthusiasm for philosophy generally sparked during the years of high school; the desire to overcome the primacy if not the hegemony of idealism and its legacy in the form of a pervasive historicism; the recognition of and at times discomfort with the sharp division (religious, political, but also philosophical) between a secular trend associated with the study of the history of philosophy and a Catholic trend devoted to metaphysical issues broadly construed; the delay in the spreading of epistemology and philosophy of science, and the absence of analytic philosophy until quite late in the twentieth century; and an understanding of philosophy as “impure reason,” to use one of Remo Bodei’s expressions, that is, as an activity deeply involved in various other practices of life. It goes without saying that all limits and limitations of the volume, including awkward translations of very different philosophical registers and conversational styles, are imputable to the editor and not to the interviewees. All philosophers included in the volume have been very prompt in interactions that almost always occurred over email; highly enthusiastic in their adhesion to the project; extremely supportive in their willingness to offer suggestions and advice; and incredibly gracious in understanding the constraints of the endeavor and in working with the editor’s own idiosyncrasies. Conversation and dialogue are the heart of philosophizing. The interviewed philosophers have shown themselves to be masters at that. In thanking them, this editor hopes that the conversation may continue and the dialogue extend to the Anglophone readers, who will find here ample material for thought and meditations. If, as anticipated and hoped for, the invitation to enter and continue the dialogue is accepted, this will be an additional attestation to Italian philosophy’s ability to be a genuine threshold between cultures. Ivrea (Italy), July 2015

NOTES 1. Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder, eds., Contemporary Italian Philosophy: Crossing the Borders of Ethics, Politics, and Religion (Albany: SUNY Press, 2007).

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2. A previously edited collection by Giovanna Borradori, Recoding Metaphysics: The New Italian Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988) organized Italian thinkers in terms of their response to Heideggerian metaphysics and thus provided a rather specific and tributary grid of interpretation. 3. Roberto Esposito, Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy, trans. Zakiya Hanafi (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 10. 4. See Esposito, Living Thought, 22. 5. Descartes’ Discours de la Méthode, written in French, precedes his Meditationes. It is in the Meditationes, though, that the importance, originality, and novelty of his theoretical position as a philosophy of subjectivity fully emerge in their theoretical power.

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ETHICS, PASSIONS, PRACTICES

Logics of Delusion, Passions, and Time A Conversation with Remo Bodei (Cagliari, 1938)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? I am a philosopher and historian of ideas, who has devoted himself especially to the theory of passions, the genesis of the modern individual, the paradoxes of time and memory, forms of knowledge, aesthetics, and the genesis of machine culture. My most recent works, which have been translated in fifteen countries and often revised during the various reprints and translations, clarify my interests better: Scomposizioni. Forme dell’individuo moderno (Breakdowns: Forms of Modern Individualities) (1987); Hölderlin: la filosofía y lo trágico (Hölderlin: Philosophy and the Tragic) (1990); Geometria delle passioni (Geometry of Passions) (1991); Le forme del bello (The Forms of the Beautiful) (1995); Le prix de la liberté (The Price of Freedom) (1995); Una scintilla di fuoco. Invito alla filosofia (Fire Spark: Invitation to Philosophy) (2005); Le logiche del delirio. Ragione, affetti, follia (Logics of Delusion: Reason, Affects, Madness) (2000); Ordo amoris. Conflitti terreni e felicità celeste (The Order of Love: Earthly Conflicts and Heavenly Happiness) (1991); Destini personali. L’età della colonizzazione delle coscienze (Personal Destinies: The Age of the Colonization of Consciousnesses) (2002); La sensation del déjà vu (The Sensation of the Déjà Vu) (2006), Paesaggi sublimi. Gli uomini davanti alla natura selvaggia (Sublime Landscapes: Human Beings in front of Wild Nature) (2008), La vita delle cose (The Life of Things) (2009), Ira. La passione furente (Anger: Mad Passion) (2011); Immaginare altre vite (Imagining Other Lives) (2013); Generazioni. Età della vita, età delle cose (Generations: Ages of Life,

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Ages of Things) (2014); La civetta e la talpa. Sistema ed epoca in Hegel (The Owl and the Mole: System and Epoch in Hegel) (2014). SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? I begin with a general premise and a preliminary look at some fundamental features of Italian thought. Even if philosophy is by nature transnational, there is a specificity to Italian philosophy. Ever since its origins in humanism and the Renaissance, the preferred interlocutors of Italian philosophy were not specialists, clerics, or the students who attended the universities, but rather a wider public that philosophers were trying to orient and persuade. For this reason, Italian philosophy gives its best not in the areas of technicalities and academic subtleties but rather in the attempts at undoing the variable bonds and twists between awareness of the limitations imposed by reality and projections of desire; opacity of historical experience and its transcription into concepts; impotence of morality and toughness of the world; what is thought and what is lived. Thus, Italian philosophies are more often philosophies of “impure reason,” that is, a reason that takes into account the conditionings, imperfections, and possibilities of the world, than of a pure reason geared toward knowledge of the absolute, the unchangeable, or the rigidly normative. In the years of my formation, such an approach had in many cases diluted into a historicism that flattened thought onto historical events or into forms of combinatory eclecticism that pasted together idealism, more or less orthodox Marxism, phenomenology, and Christian personalism. Beside more coherent philosophical traditions, represented by Thomism, or more innovative trends close to critical rationalism and neopositivism, the seemingly most curious phenomenon was the conversion of scholars of communist formation into appreciators of thinkers earlier considered to be politically compromised or “rightist,” if not inspirers of Nazism or themselves Nazis, such as Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Carl Schmitt. Remarkably absent from the choir remained Enzo Paci, Giorgio Colli, and Norberto Bobbio. I have been immediately allergic to the kind of historicism I mentioned because to me it seemed “invertebrate”—all nuances and no structures. Of the Italian tradition, I like to preserve the philological care in the interpretation of texts, the attention to the particulars, and the taste for an ars inveniendi (art of invention) capable of joining reason and imagination.

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I have never intellectually claimed, though, to belong to a specific national tradition. Once, Richard Rorty defined me as “the least peninsular of the Italian philosophers.” By that, he meant that I had a more international formation. I answered, and only partly as a joke: “Yes, because I am the most insular.” Actually, once I left Sardinia, which is geographically closer to Africa than to Italy, the trauma of separation was overcome. I have moved a lot, with a desire to understand the diversity of cultures but not to be influenced more than some. I have been concerned with the aesthetics of the tragic, the ugly, and the sublime and with authors such as Hölderlin, Goethe, and Thomas Mann, who, like rough diamonds, contain ideas that philosophy can cut out and make clearer to its own advantage. However, I do not at all like seductive thought, in which the use of literature becomes an excuse to give up cogent argumentations. I prefer agonistic philosophy, in which each brings an argument that one wishes to be better than the others, yet each is ready to yield when a more persuasive argument is encountered. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? Between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, Italian philosophy started to open up again, and with greater energy, to European and American philosophies. The debates on the primacy of Croce, Gentile, or Togliatti’s kind of Marxism were cast aside and Gramsci’s thought was being absorbed. The positions of Adorno and the Frankfurt School in general (Horkheimer first and then Habermas), those of Althusser and structuralism (which acted as a solvent of previous historicism), and those of Dewey, Pierce, and Wittgenstein started to spread and were met with favor. At the political level, Carl Schmitt’s position was of great influence. At the theoretical level, Nietzsche became influential starting in 1964 when Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari set off to publish his work. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? My interest in philosophy began during my early years in high school, when I started reading the classics directly. After oscillating in the choice

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of university studies among physics, literary studies (especially linguistics), and attending the Naval Academy, I decided to study philosophy. At the university and at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa I had several teachers whose names I like to recall: in the philosophical disciplines, Giorgio Colli, Cesare Luporini, Arturo Massolo, and Francesco Barone, and in history, Delio Cantimori, Emilio Gabba, and Armando Saitta. More important for my formation though were some figures from the previous generation. I associated with them and I considered them as venerable friends despite the age difference. Such were the historian Arnaldo Momigliano and the philosopher of rights and political thought Norberto Bobbio. I spent almost fifteen years abroad as student, visiting professor, or professor: at the universities of Tübingen, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Bochum, Berlin, Geneve (Fondation Hardt), Cambridge (King’s College), Ottawa, New York (NYU), Toronto (UoT), Mexico City (UNAM), Girona, Los Angeles (UCLA), and New York (Columbia). As philosophical figures, I was impressed by Eric Weil (with whom I associated in France and Italy), Ernst Bloch, Eugen Fink, Theodor Adorno, and Jürgen Habermas (whose Frankfurt lectures I sometimes attended when I was in nearby Heidelberg), Dieter Henrich, Otto Pöggeler, Jean Starobinski, and Bernard Williams. I must add that I have always sought autonomy of thinking and, albeit with a sentiment of gratitude for my teachers, whether alive or dead, I have never considered myself a disciple (strictly speaking) of anyone. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? I started by reading Plato and Camus, yet no philosopher in particular has been fundamental. In terms of works, Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Gramsci’s Notebooks from Prison, and Bloch’s The Principle of Hope have been fundamental. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. I have focused especially on the relations among the anomalous logics of the passions, delusion, and ideologies, and on the paradoxes of the notion of time. When studying passion, I have always tried to understand the

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relation between reason and passion in such a way as not to understand passion as a simple upsetting of reason, as madness or temporary blindness, or as a provisional “going out of one’s mind.” I have instead shown that reason and passion obey two logics that are, simultaneously, mutually complementary and antagonistic. We should not let ourselves be impressed by the aura of majesty that surrounds logic. The term logos and the verb legein have a humble root, the same root as “legume,” something that is gathered and ordered. Nothing thus prevents there also being a logic of passion or a logic of delusion. I bring up a very simple example having to do with anger. It is the passion par excellence, the most studied in the ancient world, because it causes a loss of self-control, and therefore it deprives the individual of his or her freedom. Let us say that I tell a friend to bring me, the next day, some documents that are rather important but not exceedingly so. We have an appointment, let us say, at noon. The friend comes, but has forgotten the commitment he had made. While I flood him with insults, I become upset. No wonder anger appears to be irrational. In this as in other cases, there is an evident disproportion between cause and effect. In the newspapers sometimes we read “Kills wife (or husband) because of pointless reasons.” If we look carefully, we will realize that the reasons are only apparently pointless. The logic of passion does not concern only the moment of the disproportionate reaction. In anger, it is as if all frustrations and delusions that have accumulated in time formed a critical mass that discharges itself on the closest “lightning rod.” There is proportion, there is logic (of anger or of other passions), but it should not be measured as being proportional to only one event, as if one could put all the eggs in the same basket, as the popular saying would have it. One additional problem with which I have continuously confronted myself is the paradoxes of time. I understand “paradox” in the etymological sense of that which goes against doxa, against the commonly perceived opinion. I have dismantled in various ways the model of time understood as a line on which there flows a point indivisible and without thickness, namely, the present, which, advancing at constant speed, leaves the past irreversibly behind precisely while nibbling away at the future. My purpose has been to show that there can be possible alternative schemas, and here are some: How come, in an Augustinian way, we never move away from the present, so that the past only exists in the present as memory and the future always exists in the present as awaiting? Are there historical gaps, times that are out of phase, such that the “wild” people of Amazonia live in our same chronological time but not in the same historical time? What is the meaning of the often-misunderstood word “eternity,” which by now

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we conceive of as an infinitely long time, whereas the Greek aión and the Latin aeternitas have nothing to share with such perspective? In Plotinus and Boetius, eternity is respectively zoê (life) and plenitudo vitae (fullness of life). That is, it does not identify with a length that can be prolonged at will; rather, it means precisely plenitude of life that may even last only one second. This is in opposition to time, which represents some sort of hemorrhage, loss of life, something that escapes us. Another paradoxical aspect of temporality is the one that presents itself in déjà vu. All of us have experienced the sharp and sudden sensation of having lived through the exact same situations in an indefinable past, of having already met a person we are meeting for the first time, of having already seen a place where we have never been, or of having already uttered sentences we have never said. This sporadic, evanescent, and sudden impression of paradoxical recognition of the impossible is accompanied by the acute awareness that the current perception does not match any actual memory. We even perfectly know that this is the first time we are living through the specific experience. Yet the sensation of repeating fragments of the past is, for some instants, so sharp and imperious that it fills us with bewilderment and causes a temporary temporal disorientation. Unlike normal knowledge of what-has-been, which, since we know it, does not upset us, déjà vu is always accompanied by a feeling of astonishment mixed with incredulity and anxiety. The certainty of the perfect identity of past and present coexists with a strident cognitive dissonance. When the present loses its trait of unforeseeable novelty and finds itself reduced to unrepeatable repetition of what-has-already-been, then perception and memory, original and copy, seem mutually equivalent and interchangeable even if the mind clearly realizes their heterogeneity. Entering a contradiction with itself, the evidence of the phenomenon simultaneously affirms and denies what it displays. On the basis of a special chemical reaction, déjà vu and jamais vu, certainty and vagueness combine in a state of mind of unfamiliar familiarity and generate the torn feeling of acceptation and denial of what one experiences. Reality and unreality overlap and temporal differences are annihilated precisely while they are underlined. Past and present, then and now, elsewhere and here, enter a shortcut that annihilates not only the flow of time but even its very annihilation. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? I do not like this kind of ranking, but if I am forced, I will select the 1991 volume Geometria delle passioni (Geometry of the Passions).

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SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? I wanted to avoid practicing a philosophy that would result in forms of Adorno-like “forced conciliation.” On this basis, my project has been to expand the region of intelligibility without exhausting aspects of alterity (passion, delusion, history, beauty) through their assimilation, colonization, or subjugation to reason itself. Levi-Strauss speaks of pensée sauvage (understood not as savages’ thinking but as spontaneous thinking because the pensée sauvage in French is also a flowering plant, Viola tricolor). Paraphrasing him, I have tried to oppose the vie sauvage, the life grown wild because it has been abandoned by a way of thinking that aims exclusively at absolute certainty. I refuse to believe that there are phenomena that cannot, within some limits, be understood—certainly in a nondefinitive way (as I have shown in the case of the passions, especially fear, hope, and anger, and in the case of delusion). Delusion, for example, traditionally presents itself as synonymous with irrationality (absurdity, groundlessness, mistake, chaos); its opposed mirror image, reason, defines itself by contrast through the attributes of evidence, demonstrability, truth, and order. With time, the two concepts have become complementary. The radical alternative delusion/logic, upheld under the mark of their mutual incompatibility, makes sense only from the perspective of a restricted, defensive, and self-referential rationality. Without any need to annihilate the difference between the two terms or in any way abdicate our critical faculties, I have shown that a welcoming and expansive, humbler but not thereby less rigorous rationality is capable of recognizing cores of truth, the specificity and uneven variety of delusions. The welcoming attitude of such a form of rationality is not guided by pretentious arrogance, by mere logical charity (by the desire to come close and alleviate psychic suffering), or by the intention of exorcizing what one does not understand with a propitiatory “Vade retro!” (Go back!).” On the contrary, this kind of welcoming rationality is willing to take upon itself the contradictions and paradoxes of delusion, but not to let itself be fascinated and charmed by them. Nothing prevents us from talking about one or more logics of delusion and therefore from understanding specific modalities, no matter how anomalous, of articulating perceptions, images, thoughts, beliefs, affections, or moods according to their own principles, that is, according to principles that do not follow the criteria of argumentation and expression shared by a given society. Once we take up this perspective, the absolute irreconcilability of logic and delusion becomes less plausible.

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Delusion represents an extraordinary test for our main “metaphysical” categories (those that are also most common in everyday language): namely, “reason,” “truth,” and “reality.” We should not idealize delusion; rather, delusion forces a lazy or fearful reason to look into its own folds, recognize itself not as a monolith but rather as a family of procedures that refer to a common root and that, to evolve, must accept constant challenges. In reasonable discussions, being convinced means being won together (from the Latin, cum-vincere) by the strength of the argument, with no personal humiliations. I have tried to put in contrasting relation two kinds of logic: a “normal” or, if one wants, Aristotelian logic and an anomalous logic (nondialectical, non-Hegelian, a logic without Aufhebung). My model has been music (I have studied at the conservatory), where maximum rigor, rational and mathematical, coexists admirably with maximum pathos. I consider philosophy in its development neither as a continuum (according to the historicist model) nor as eternal history à la Vico nor as philosophia perennis (eternal philosophy) but rather as meta-morphosis, as change of forms. I have then thought in terms of what I call “crystals of historicity,” that is, conceptual formations that are due to the sedimentation and structuring of events and ideas in time, which certainly change, but according to determinate formal modalities. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? Speaking in common language terms, there is nothing more untimely than what is timely—today it is timely, tomorrow it is no longer so. If we understand timeliness in the sense of Aristotle’s energeia, though, or Machiavelli’s “effective truth of the thing,” or Hegel’s Wirklichkeit, then what produces effects (what wirkt) is not reduced to days or years but rather, like human institutions such as religion, the state, or the family, has existed for a long time in its metamorphoses (and I concern myself with this). After all, the majority of the great philosophers of the past are more “timely” now than our own contemporaries, because their ideas bloom again at every season. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? In general (but this depends on specific nations and cultures), philosophy together with all the other humanities is losing ground compared to sci-

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entific and technological disciplines. This happens also because one does not understand the paradoxical usefulness of what is useless (or appears to be such) for the formation of the person and the continuation of culture. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? In addition to problems it has faced ever since its beginning, currently philosophy must confront new challenges: the meeting-clash of civilizations that have been separated for millennia; the raging development of computer science technology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and bioethics; and the introduction and effects of biotechnologies. These elements in fact question millennia-long convictions, habits, and ideas that up to now had been considered to be founded on the rocks of unshakeable evidence or even on the authority of divine revelation. Up to now, nothing had appeared less doubtful than the fact that an individual is born according to the old and established methods of natural sexual reproduction, with a body and a mind subject to congenital diseases and deformities, as an individual who suffers, enjoys, and dies together with all his or her organs. Biotechnologies force us rapidly to reformulate, even at the level of common sense, the ethical and juridical norms ruling the rights of individuals and families, and the grain, variety, and intensity of specific passions. In the last-mentioned case, what is changing is the system of feelings that mark all the most solemn moments of human existence: conception, birth, marriage, paternity, maternity, sickness, and death. Additionally, those functions that appeared as morally or naturally inseparable, such as sexuality and reproduction, become now autonomous due to contraceptives, especially those of a chemical nature. The same happens in the case of procreation and the parental figure. The body as an organism composed of indissoluble parts is divided and single organs can be exchanged and made to pass from one body to another, from one that is dead to one that is alive. Matter becomes transportable; it is rendered compatible through operations via molecular biology on the chromosomes of the cell nucleus and their fundamental constituents, that is, the DNA molecules. Different human existences and stories that meet even after death are thus put into relation. Barriers among species virtually disappear. The repositioning of the borders of life in its knowledge, genesis, quality, duration, and even outcome modifies also the expectations of the individual and thereby the understanding that one has of oneself and others. That which appeared to be tied to the hard and unfathomable laws of necessity turns into an object of choice, antidestiny. By concerning

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itself with ultimate questions, bioethics renders problematic that which was previously considered normal. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? Ancient philosophers had considered coherence between philosophy and life as the core of their existence. In classical times, philosophy in fact aimed at converting individuals’ lifestyles, at indicating to them the path toward happiness and freedom. Philosophers offered “the most desirable lifestyle” as opposed to glory, power, riches, or search for pleasure. Modern philosophers have given up this goal. One could think for example of Rousseau, who wrote Emile, one of the most beautiful pedagogical books, and then sent his children to the orphanage; or of Max Scheler who, found in a brothel by the university president, a scientist, when asked, “How come you are here, you, a professor of moral philosophy?” calmly answered: “You know, philosophers are like street signs; they tell where one should go, but that does not mean that they go there themselves.” I also think that one should reject the choice made by many twentieth-century intellectuals to be “organic” to an ideology or a political party. As Bobbio claimed, one should instead preserve one’s autonomy with respect to politics to “avoid that the monopoly of power also becomes the monopoly of truth.” At the same time, and going against the current trend, one should avoid the move from organic intellectual to media intellectual whose ambition is to enter the star system. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. Not only in the Western world, younger generations are confronted with a dramatic crisis that makes their existence precarious (lack of work and perspectives) and presents the risk that they will give in to resignation or to being content with artificial paradises and illusory consolations. The difficult effort to be made is to not give up and to instead use the weapons of knowledge and courage.

Ethics, Bioethics, and Ethical Sentimentalism A Conversation with Eugenio Lecaldano (Treviso, 1940)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? In the course of my work, I have especially kept up with the area of reflection connected with questions of ethics. This is ultimately the unifying center of my work, which has unfolded in various dimensions. I have considered these various dimensions equally important and have learned to see them as strongly connected and interactive thanks to my constantly frequenting David Hume’s works. I have tried to understand the structural forms of moral experience, that is, the modes in which ethical judgments and decisions originate and the ways through which one can argue for and justify one’s preferred solutions. I have not refrained from explicitly indicating the solutions to which I morally subscribe when it comes to issues in bioethics or the most adequate forms of liberal-democratic society in the face of pluralism. As for the preliminary theoretical comprehension of the nature of ethics, it seems to me that such an understanding relies heavily on the recourse to and confrontation with accomplishments already achieved by past and contemporary thinkers who have already worked in this area. Understanding the historical context within which these thinkers have elaborated their own reflections on morality has become central for my work. My activity has also been geared toward making available texts by some of these authors that were not previously available or not sufficiently known in Italy. This has been the case especially for Hume, but also for 27

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Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill. These four thinkers I have always kept in mind in my research, along with thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. As for the way ethics has presented itself in contemporary thought, I have thought it necessary to rely on the elaborations advanced by analytic philosophers attentive to the logic of moral discourse (first of all, Richard Merwin Hare and, in Italy, Uberto Scarpelli) and also to the various practical issues emerging at the heart of popular and philosophical moral reflection (starting with questions of bioethics). Based on an approach that situates philosophical analyses of meanings and concepts within a naturalistic and secular context, my research has been motivated by the effort to grasp a general reconstruction (and a reconstruction more satisfying than traditional ones) of the functioning of ethics. Concretely, this has entailed removing reason from its position as the foundation of ethics and replacing it with feelings and emotions. It has also implied showing that this different image of the moral life is entirely reconcilable with a critical reflection on preferred practical conduct. This different reconstruction enables us to set aside an ideological way of considering value conflicts and disputes and instead bring to the fore the consideration of individuals. The goal is to find in their actions evidence that lets us appreciate such individuals because of their virtues and disapprove of them because of their vices. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? During my philosophical formation, I had the sense, perhaps partly distorted, that idealism dominated the Italian philosophical culture and that Croce and Gentile (given the presence, in Rome, of Ugo Spirito, who had been Gentile’s student) represented hegemonic thinkers from whom one should distance oneself. Behind these authors one could glimpse not only Hegel and historicism but also (with some youthful approximation) spiritualist thought—for example, the Italian thinkers Augusto Guzzo and Michele Federico Sciacca. In general, what was to be contested was the metaphysical approach, which was perceived as being strongly connected with religious contacts capable of monopolizing even the political and institutional picture.

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This dominating paradigm made philosophical research evasive with respect to the most present questions in people’s everyday lives—in particular, the questions of freedom and individual responsibility. Furthermore, an idealist (or spiritualist) metaphysics directed philosophy toward ways that remained impermeable to scientific research. When it did not lead to useless chatting, such metaphysics forced one to be concerned with the so-called eternal questions while providing absolutist answers that were entirely outside ordinary experiences. Conceived in this way, philosophy appeared as empty and useless rhetoric and could certainly not be linked to any precise and rigorous research. The task was thus to study and understand those philosophical perspectives that opposed this prevailing approach, which was furthermore especially inadequate in terms of its way of setting up moral and ethicalpolitical questions. Such questions were considered as completely objective and not at all related to individual, personal choices. In this sense, already during the years of my university education in Rome, some trends in Anglo-American analytic philosophy that seemed to provide a more adequate approach had a strong appeal. In the early 1960s, the elaborations by positive existentialists such as Nicola Abbagnano played some role. More generally, though, it was the representatives of the neo-Enlightenment who seemed to open a path worth trying. It became a matter of studying the works of Ludovico Geymonat, Norberto Bobbio, and Giulio Preti. Trying to focus on the questions raised by normative languages, I treasured the arrival in Rome of Aldo Visalberghi and retraced Visalberghi’s relation with northwestern Italy’s analytic philosophy, especially Bobbio and Scarpelli. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? In my case, the predominating foreign influences were Ludwig Wittgenstein and the philosophy of ordinary language understood as a trend involving George Edward Moore as well as John Austin, Gilbert Ryle, and Peter Frederick Strawson. Ultimately, it was the philosophical style of thinkers such as Richard Merwin Hare, Stephen Edelston Toulmin, and Patrick Nowell-Smith that appeared as the most productive in order to understand the nature of moral language, its logic, and its argumentative forms capable of addressing moral disagreements. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought”

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did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? I was spurred to do philosophy by the search for the nature of basic ethical principles. I did not receive adequate education in this direction during my study time at the Sapienza University of Rome, though. Philosophy was in fact developed almost exclusively as historiographic research. The encounter with the classics of philosophy, such as Aristotle’s Metaphysics or Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason, was certainly very helpful even though the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume were entirely absent from the list of classics. Teachers rarely encouraged me to pursue philosophical, theoretical research that would maintain its own autonomy and at the same time not lose sight of people’s everyday life. The teachers who offered the most important courses, such as Ugo Spirito, Franco Lombardi, and Guido Calogero, were concerned with ontological and metaphysical questions. They did not think it necessary to direct students toward theoretical research in philosophy that was rigorous and capable of confronting precise and specific questions arising from everyone’s experience, such as the questions at the center of the analyses on the ordinary uses of everyday language. Calogero presented his own dialogical philosophy, which was certainly fertile from many points of view, mainly in a defensive and abstract manner. Theoretical research seemed blocked. To provide some rigor and precision, philosophical professionalism focused on texts, and philology therefore seemed preferable. What prevailed was a form of historicism very much influenced by Eugenio Garin. Such historicism was devoted mainly to rejecting the idea that philosophy might be a theoretical activity endowed with its own specificity and systematicity. Beside the analyses of the logic of evaluative language by Visalberghi’s (who, starting in the 1960s, often referred to John Dewey), a role was undoubtedly played by Tullio De Mauro’s readings of Wittgenstein’s works. The search for philosophical approaches external to the Roman climate was widespread among some of those who attended the Institute of Philosophy. They looked at the elaborations in theoretical philosophy made by the representatives of the neo-Enlightenment (not so much Abbagnano as Geymonat) or by those interested in the functioning of languages not so rigorous as the logical and scientific language (on the one hand, in general, the elaboration by Ferruccio Rossi-Landi on ordinary meaning, and on the other hand, more specifically, the researches on normative and evaluative languages by Bobbio, Preti, and Scarpelli). I recall that I attended classes

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taught by Bobbio in Turin and Geymonat in Milan during the time when, before graduating from the university, I taught philosophy at the Liceo Classico Carlo Alberto in Novara. It was the British philosophers, however, who interested me. Beyond Alfred Jules Ayer, the later Wittgenstein and Austin, Strawson, and Ryle were the authors whose texts we shared and discussed. Furthermore, as far as I am concerned, Hare’s first two books, The Language of Morals and Freedom and Reason, were essential. They introduced a form of ethical noncognitivism that was more fertile than Ayer’s and Charles L. Stevenson’s emotivism. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? Frequent attention to David Hume’s works has certainly been fundamental for me. Starting with the end of the 1960s, my attention to Hume’s writings continuously increased. This process was facilitated by the opportunity to avail myself of work done in Italy by previous generations of scholars, such as Mario Dal Pra and Antonio Santucci. The preparation, jointly with Enrico Mistretta, of the first complete translation of Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature, which was started at the end of the 1960s with Tullio Gregory’s encouragement, became for me very important. This translation was carried out through a substantial revision of the preexisting translation of the first book of the Treatise by Armando Carlini. The new translation was also an attempt to coin a philosophical language consistent with an empiricist and naturalist vision of the world. Such a vision was still very marginal within the Italian culture, which had been so slow to accomplish the process of modernization. The editing of Hume’s Works for the publisher Laterza in 1971 has been a strong presence in my life, given that the initial version has been constantly revised and corrected for subsequent editions. Still in the winter of 2014–15, I offered a reading seminar for the philosophy graduate programs at the universities of Rome II and Rome III on Hume’s Treatise. On Hume, I have tried to provide constant scholarly contributions. I have published also in English, participated in numerous meetings of the Hume Society, and was part of the editorial board of Hume Studies for some years. Hume, and especially his Treatise, has provided me with a general naturalistic context of reference within which to situate my detailed analytic researches on ethical sentimentalism. Again in Hume, I have found approaches that have helped me deploy the picture of evolutionary biology in a philosophical direction and elaborate a contemporary

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version of atheism as an overall perspective on life. Ultimately, this thinker has provided me with the main suggestions to delineate a vision of human nature that not only opposes religious assumptions and those conceptions gravitating around the acknowledgement of the primacy of reason, but also positively reconstructs the human mind in terms of emotions and feelings without thereby relinquishing the demand for rigor and truth. An important role has undoubtedly also been played by frequent attention to John Stuart Mill’s work, mainly On Liberty and Utilitarianism. Mill’s work has enabled me to delineate more clearly an updated theory of virtues, to grasp the principles of human conduct (first of all, the principle of self-determination) in practical spheres such as bioethics, and to set up in a more cognizant manner the confrontation with the political dynamics of pluralist societies. In recent years, I have found Bernard Williams’ reflections and his way of presenting philosophy as a humanistic discipline to be interesting ways to bring the legacy of past philosophy up to speed with the problematics of today’s world. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. One of my constant interests has been ethical life in its various dimensions: morality, rights, and politics. My research has been oriented toward a markedly naturalistic dimension and has also involved showing the difficulties and damages that ensue from deriving ethical solutions from religious assumptions. I have tried to develop such a line of thought systematically, and starting in the 1980s, I have taken into account reflections on questions of bioethics. This activity has entailed not only a theoretical elaboration but also my participation in, at times, rather heated debates taking place in Italian society (in this sense, my participation in the works of the national committee for bioethics has been very helpful for observing the Italian debate). Currently, the nature of ethics can no longer be characterized exclusively through the tools of philosophical analysis and in-depth examination. Part of my research has been geared toward integrating metaethical conceptions derived from philosophy with discoveries regarding human beings’ ethical conduct that come not only from psychology and sociology but also from ethology and evolutionary biology. Proceeding on this path, I have advanced a conception of ethics understood as practices that human

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beings develop through their peculiar ability to feel moral sentiments that move them to approve or disapprove of what other persons do as well as what they themselves, induced by their own character, are doing. This human practice is rooted in our evolutionary history. Through it, we tend to minimize conduct that causes unwanted suffering. Delineating a comprehensive form of empiricist ethical sentimentalism has been at the center of my recent research. This ethical sentimentalism finds in Hume its founding father and can avail itself of the researches that philosophers and ethologists have conducted on the role of sympathy and empathy. It can suggest a perspective on human conduct in terms of virtues and the choice of life. This would be a perspective completely free from references to religious and transcendent dimensions and yet capable of answering questions of meaning and value. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? If I were to consider the books that have sold and perhaps circulated the most, then I would have to indicate both the various editions of Bioetica. Le scelte morali (Bioethics: Moral Choices) and the fortunate circulation of Un’etica senza Dio (An Ethics Without God). If I think of my research commitment, I would indicate two different titles in which the two dimensions of my work appear: in terms of historiographic research, Hume e la nascita dell’etica contemporanea (Hume and the Birth of Contemporary Ethics), and in terms of my efforts at a theoretical elaboration, Prima lezione di filosofia morale (First Lesson in Moral Philosophy), which was envisaged as a little systematic summa of my way of conceiving of ethical sentimentalism. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? At the historiographic level, I think it is the attempt to find in Hume’s work a positive conception of personal identity gravitating around the dimension of pride in one’s behavior (this is sort of an anticipation of the contemporary emphasis on the central role of self-esteem). At the theoretical level, I have tried to elaborate to the best of my abilities an indication of the various ways in which a conception of ethics grounded on sentiments and passions could appropriate notions such as objectivity and justification, yet not be forced to embrace relativistic or

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nihilistic positions. Time after time, I have thus developed arguments that could show the resources that ethical sentimentalism possesses in order to give universal, objective, and valid value to the prescriptions it formulates (while also requalifying them) regarding fundamental questions such as choices concerning life, birth, and death or the questions of the meaning of life and truth. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? An awareness of the connection between the attempt at theoretical elaboration in philosophy and the historical context in which one moves seems to me necessary if, as in my case, one shares Bernard Williams’ idea that philosophy is a humanistic discipline. One of the perspectives I have tried to develop in my work has been to carry out an analysis of conceptual questions by identifying the specific, concrete, and (when this is the case) new modes in which such concepts present themselves in common problems within the society in which I live. Philosophical analyses must be concerned with dimensions of conceptualization of the present that are nevertheless not entirely levelled on experience; in fact, they must be able to grasp and make explicit the connections between what has been transmitted to us by the tradition and what is required of us by the age in which we live. In my case, this approach has concretized itself in terms of the ethical questions at the center of public reflections on the society in which I have lived. In geographical terms, this is obviously Italian society; more generally, it is Western culture as the heir of the Enlightenment. The confrontation with problems at the center of contemporary reflections has been helpful, whether in the case of questions of bioethics, questions raised by our responsibility toward the environment, or questions of social justice in the age of globalization. One could argue that the horizon of a naturalistic and secularized perspective is the only one capable of taking care of the human species today. The human species includes seven billion members and is moving toward ten billion, and encompasses diversities and differences that are enormous and increasing in comparison with past periods. Sentimentalist virtue ethics can present itself as a productive attempt to address this historical cultural context through solutions to the most recurrent problems in everyday experience—solutions that are open to the needs, desire, sufferings, and pleasures of the people directly involved.

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SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? These days, philosophical research is perhaps more set apart and apparently more marginal than in other epochs of human history. I am referring to philosophical research of a theoretical nature and not to historic or historiographic research like that done in the course of academic teaching, which transmits knowledge of great thinkers of the past. It is difficult to agree today with the thesis that philosophical reflection may directly orient the groups that lead and transform our world— assuming both that identifying these groups is easy and that in the past the relation between philosophical thought and the agents of social change was more immediate. I am not sure, though, that the situations of other thinkers, for example those I have often mentioned such as Hume and Mill, were much different. I even think that today there is less psychological isolation because philosophical research often unfolds as part of a biography centered on teaching and constant contact with younger generations. Of course, there may be the fear of engaging in an activity that no longer addresses anyone and is destined to disappear. These anxieties, though, have probably always accompanied those who search for a path in philosophy. We cannot know whether the anxieties are destined to be confirmed by real historical events more today than in other periods. My instinctive tendency is not to think so. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? I think that, today, philosophical reflection should clarify what things matter for enabling an acceptable human life (obviously not only material goods but also mental capacities and activities); it should also indicate through what ways potentially all human beings can come to benefit from these things, experience them, and attain the conditions for them. We live during times when various forms of violence, transformations, and changes seem to present themselves with unsustainable gravity. If, however, we try to reconstruct some natural history of human passions, then the above-mentioned thesis of ongoing radical change appears less acceptable. If we do not lose track of what matters for human lives, perhaps we will find

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ourselves inserted in a long-term process not entirely subject to uncontrollable mundane forces, and we will help one another to identify forms of coexistence and communication that make us less insecure and frightened. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? As I have suggested, those who concern themselves with philosophy should help identify long-term trends and thus not lose track of the natural history of human culture. Once again, I have in mind the perspective that, I think, inspires Hume in his Treatise and that, today, is certainly very clear not only to those who are concerned with philosophy, but also to those who consider the human being in light of evolutionism or who search for its dimensions of permanence and variation through the instruments of the cognitive sciences and neurosciences. To philosophize might perhaps mean to engage in an activity of mediation between the more immediate horizon of everyday life’s problems and the awareness that the way in which such problems present themselves depends on the historical and cultural events of our species. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. I think that we can oppose the difficulties that continuously confront and will confront us with a soothing awareness that, as human beings, we will not lose the curiosity to try to understand what happens to us and how we might best handle life’s situations. Within this horizon, philosophical reflection as well as the sciences can offer contributions.

Life, Suffering, Happiness, and Virtue A Conversation With Salvatore Natoli (Patti, 1941)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? My way of philosophizing has increasingly taken up the form of a hermeneutics of ideas. I catch such ideas in the sites where one experiences them, especially in the extreme sites: in suffering and happiness. It is pulsating life that causes the authentic need for theory. Bringing life into thought and restoring thought to life is the movement that shapes my way of doing philosophy. Consequently, my thought is never abstract, not even in its densest elaborations. It is never purely academic, formalistic; rather, it is always guided by a gaze attentive to existence, to the plurality of life’s manifestations, to its dynamics. My thought nourishes itself with the flesh of the world. Life produces and reproduces itself through contaminations and hybridizations. My way of thinking, which moves at the intersection of hermeneutics and ethics, is loyal to such a principle in both the themes and the authors to which I refer. Among the philosophical themes that are closest to my heart and have concerned me over the years are the conditions of truth and the status of knowledge; the forms of subjectivization and the various models of Western anthropology, which I explore through a close confrontation with the classics from the social sciences, economics, and political theory; the modes of action and an ethics of the finite, that is, an ethics marked

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by the experience of suffering and where practices, affects, and virtues are key terms; and finally, a philosophical rethinking of the relations that exist between paganism, the Jewish and Christian traditions, and the modern dynamics of secularization. Doing philosophy for me means, also and fundamentally, entering a dialogue with the social and civic environment, with groups, associations, and institutions; that is, attending to those places where life bustles. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? I arrived in Milan in the early 1960s. This was a period of major religious and social changes—the Second Vatican Council, which signified also an opening to ecumenism and non-Catholic positions; the cultural and intellectual immigration from various regions of Italy, which turned Milan into a metropolitan city; and some major strikes in factories such as FIAT Mirafiori and the revival of the union movement, which revealed a different way of doing politics, away from the parties and closer to the workers’ experiences. Milan was in a stage of great vivacity, social innovation, and political experimentation. At the Catholic University, where I studied, main figures were Gustavo Bontadini and Emanuele Severino, who were also my teachers. The proofs for the existence of God were major topics of discussion, but these were the occasion for debating other issues, such as the principle of noncontradiction, the contradictoriness of becoming, the structure of ground, and the theme of the incontrovertible, as we used to say at the Catholic University. The question of God was the motivation for serious logical, ontological, and epistemological conversations and discussions. What we were trying to determine was the structure of reality. Questions of thought inevitably came to concern life. Authors and schools were approached with the goal of ascertaining the line of discrimination between truth and falsity. The question of God was a question of truth. Very well known at that time in Milan was also Enzo Paci, who taught at Milan State University and was renowned for his contaminations and encyclopedic attitude. He combined in fact Husserl and Marx; Van Gogh and Melville; philosophy, literature, art, and politics. Italo Mancini’s presence at the Catholic University was also fundamental, at least for me. Thanks to him, I was introduced to some Protestant

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theologians such as Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, Cullmann, and Ricoeur, and to other readings having to do with biblical exegesis. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? Among the foreign philosophers I read during the years of my formation in the early 1960s in Milan, I recall Wittgenstein, Quine, the Frankfurt School authors (especially Horkheimer and Adorno, but also Habermas), Benjamin, Merleau-Ponty, the structuralists, and the semiologists, especially Roland Barthes. And, of course, Husserl, whose transcendental philosophy was quite widely discussed at the Catholic University. The social and political experiences of those years made Marx a very popular thinker, of course. Marxism constituted a kind of basic vocabulary to understand and move within social conflicts. With respect to this, one should rather speak of Marxisms, in the plural, given the various versions that circulated at that time. Heterodox Marxisms, the so-called third ways, enabled many, like me, to value Marx without being a Marxist and to belong to the left while remaining alien to all party logics. Heterodox Marxisms often combined good intentions and naiveté. Other forms of Marxism were true dogmatic madness that ended up turning into terrorism or superficially supporting terroristic outcomes. Mounier, the philosopher who linked person and revolution and was the representative of a personalist and communitarian revolution, acted as an antidote to all totalitarian ideologies. Those who belonged to the Catholic world had, for the most part, been brought up on him. Sartre was also quite popular. In his philosophy, the body, the flesh emerged. It was Sartre who spurred me to move from the transcendental to the existential. I wrote my dissertation on Sartre. His Critique of Dialectical Reason was published in those years. The book presented a clear Marxist option, focused, however, on the theme of groups-in-fusion. Nietzsche was quite present too but he became influential for me later. I encountered his thought thanks to Heidegger and Foucault. Foucault was especially able to intertwine the situations of the present with the history of culture and the systems of thought. Even if he did not like to define himself a philosopher, Foucault advanced the idea of philosophy as contemporaneity. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the

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relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? My interest in philosophy developed during my high school years in Sicily. It was spurred partly by theological and religious questions coming to me from the Catholic family environment in which I grew up and partly by studying Greek tragic theater and classical literature (the Iliad, the Odyssey, Dante, Shakespeare, poetry). In high school, I met teachers who came from a secular and explicitly Marxist culture. This led me to read Machiavelli and Gramsci and to discover the political dimension. In those years, through reading Thomas Aquinas, I also developed a taste for theoretical controversies and rational argumentation. I was especially taken with Aquinas’ method of the quaestio. I owe to Aquinas my initiation into reasoning. In 1961, I enrolled at the Catholic University in Milan. As I already mentioned, frequent topics of discussion were the proofs for God’s existence and the theme of the incontrovertible, which was the central theme of my teachers, Bontadini and Severino. What dominated at the Catholic University was an idea of doing philosophy that was driven by the search for a strong truth, which demands consistency of reasoning and confutational attitude at the same time. From this experience of doing philosophy, I learned the habit of being rigorous, especially thanks to Severino. Severino influenced me a great deal in terms of style of thinking, even though I did not share his philosophical position. Severino forced me to give consistency to my reasoning, to provide justifications that supported my claims. He inoculated me, as it were, against the vice of philosophical fashion. The demand for argumentative rigor combined, in me, with a keen sensitivity toward current issues. In Milan, I also attended Enzo Paci’s lectures at the State University at the same time as I frequented Ludovico Geymonat. I increasingly developed a strong interest in the connection between forms of thought and the life world. At a strictly theoretical level, the university years in Milan were very fruitful for me. On the one hand, I became well acquainted with the Western philosophical canon. On the other, I came in contact with the richest and liveliest positions of the period: Mounier’s personalism; Protestant theologies, which were introduced to me by Mancini; Marxism, especially in its heterodox versions, what were known as “third ways” to Communism; Benjamin; the thinkers from the Frankfurt School; Sartre, on whom I wrote my dissertation in 1966; and structuralism. Mancini was the first to introduce me to Lévi-Strauss. It is during those years that I also developed an interest in anthropology and the symbolic universe. Religious experience turned from a personal belief into the object of research and reflection on cultures and civilizations.

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My relation with Milan Catholic University came to an end in 1968, when I was dismissed as persona non grata, a somewhat Socratic charge, because of my involvement with the student movement. The Catholic University defended itself against the increasingly secular, Marxist coloring of the student movement. Already in the 1960s, following up on the Second Vatican Council, several scholars had hypothesized the Catholic University’s transformation into a Faculty of Theology or of Religious Sciences open to the secular culture. With the events of 1968, everything came to a head. The Catholic University dismissed several professors, including Severino, and others left on their own. For my part, I was in any event no longer interested in being part of this environment. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? My thought has developed in terms of themes more than authors or books. I have never written books on specific authors. On the contrary, I have engaged in my own personal digestion of some philosophers, and this digestive process has then produced my own philosophy. I could say that my thought has directly focused on the “thing itself,” die Sache selbst of thinking. Had I however to identify some specific philosophers who have deeply influenced my thought, I would name Aristotle with respect to the problem of God; Husserl, Heidegger, and Sartre, that is, the phenomenologicalhermeneutic tradition, for the question of the relation between truth and intersubjectivity, and for the question of ground in general; and, finally, Foucault, for the themes of subjectivity and the care of the self. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. My philosophical position as it appears in my later works finds its premises in my first, 1979 book, Soggetto e fondamento (Subject and Ground). In it, I begin to problematize the absoluteness of ground, and thematize its mobility. The ground is necessary, but it need not be absolute. The ground is not an incontrovertible a priori. Rather, it is the outcome of a process that starts in predetermined and predetermining places—the places where one already is, the preexisting practices in which one’s discourse is rooted. The subject is one of such places. Yet, as Aristotle already teaches us, the subject itself is both stable ground and mobility; it is the tode ti, the absolutely singular

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and therefore unsayable of anything else, as well as materiality, hyle, as well as form, eidos. There is a constant slippage, that is, mobility, of ground. The subject can be defined differently depending on how one looks at it. And the look is always perspectival, so the form of the subject is susceptible to being decentered. The topoi, that is, the modes of argumentation and discourse, delimit the “boundaries of reality” time after time, and they grant the stability of such boundaries. This analysis is carried on further in my 1980 book, Ermeneutica e genealogia (Hermeneutics and Genealogy), which aims to answer the questions: What reason? Where does reason come from? Where is it born? The topological approach employed in Soggetto e fondamento, which thought in terms of categories of thought, turns into genealogy: topoi are mobile because they are historical. I thus recognized a close link between practices and truth; each “regime of truth” is a practical construction. Practices are performatives, but once established, any regime of truth becomes prescriptive. Genealogy aims at going back to the origin understood as birth, provenance, and not pure, unconditioned beginning (Herkunft and not Ursprung, Nietzsche would say). Genealogy is not only the reconstruction of a genesis but also the individuation of a dynasty, a series of forms that are historical but also atemporal. The beginning, as I have thematized it, is the incipit, the opening where questioning occurs. Hermeneutics thematizes such a questioning, tries to paraphrase the emptiness that allows the emergence of any discourse. The dimension of questioning is the opening of a field of experience, and such an opening is what I call “world,” in which we emerge as historical, transient individualities. Genealogy is for me the analytics of positivity, and hermeneutics is the opening of the field of experience within which such positivities make themselves manifest. In my position, hermeneutics is never free perspectivism. On the contrary, it is an exercise in the interpretation of positivities. On this path, of course I encountered Nietzsche. In my interpretation, Nietzsche’s will to power is understood in relation to the will to truth, which appears to me as a metamorphosis of the will to power because truth is a more sophisticated, more powerful mode of domination. Nietzsche’s philosophy seems to me not to be an apology of power but rather to provide an analytics of powers and forces. Reading The Birth of Tragedy various times led me to the conclusion that next to the vitalist, rebellious, destructive Nietzsche, the one so much beloved by the avant-garde, there is also a Nietzsche who appreciates measure understood not as external imposition (that would be slave morality) but as ability to give oneself measure, to find one’s own measure within oneself and by oneself. Nietzsche taught me that reason is not opposed to instincts, but rather it is their transformation,

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which arises out of the need for self-preservation, for protecting life, for maintaining intact one’s own singularity and form. Reason emerges out of the need to dominate the powers of excess. My passion was not for the beyond, but for how to move within the world, how to realize oneself in it. Up to this point, my philosophizing appeared as a kind of “topology of the fields of experience,” an inquiry into discursive practices and the historical world, philosophy itself being one way of practicing the world. I never thought philosophy could explain everything, but up to this point I had always thought that it could at least cast some light face to face with the great dilemmas of life, with the darkness of existence. This held true until I came to confront the experience of suffering and think deeply about it, as thematized in my 1986 book L’esperienza del dolore (The Experience of Suffering). This was a pivotal book for me. In the face of suffering, I realized that all argumentations fail. Suffering neutralizes discourse; words are always both too much and too little at the same time. Yet suffering also compels us to search for a meaning, and thus transforms all human beings into philosophers. We would all perish under the experience of suffering were we not capable of expressing it. By communicating it, we enter relations with others, we find ways to reweave the threads of life that have been lacerated by suffering. The healing happens more easily when human beings practice the same forms of life, when they share the same vision of the world. One learns to suffer the same way one learns to speak. In suffering, the individual becomes a unique and original interpreter of a text that, in many senses, has already been written. In L’esperienza del dolore, I have looked at three visions of the world in which suffering has been given some meaning so that life could go on: the Greek (tragic) scenario, in which the source of all suffering lies in the cruelty and contradictoriness of existence; the Judeo-Christian scenario, in which suffering is consoled by the fact that God becomes a companion in suffering (in Job as well as in Christ); and the contemporary scenario, in which suffering is experienced and conceptualized within the horizon of technology, which thinks it will be able to eliminate suffering (but actually cannot). All my subsequent reflections—on happiness, virtue, an ethics of the finite, the proper use of the world—find their roots in my meditation on suffering. Suffering is more frequent, but happiness is more originary. One cannot suffer any loss unless one has experienced and enjoyed a good. When one suffers a loss, then one is spurred to think about fullness, one becomes aware of, recognizes, and appreciates the good. Loss is a factor within happiness if by happiness we understand, as I do, the ability to grasp, in each moment, its joy, the capability to master life victoriously. Happiness originates within suffering because life is stronger than death. Life wills

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itself eternally, and here is where happiness finds its root. Happiness is not the goal but what we are as living beings. Happiness is action, expansion, complete valorization of life as a whole, that is, of each single moment of one’s existence. We love life despite suffering, we do not wish to relinquish life unless life is already abandoning us. The one who is happy lives life at its fullest, loves life in its expansion. Happiness consists in making good use of one’s existence, in enjoying one’s life. As sentiment, happiness springs from one’s harmony with the world, with the environment, with others. It is intimacy with the world. We do not know how to retain happiness, but we know its condition. To search for happiness, which is what philosophy is about, amounts to liberating the life within us, the potency that we are. This implies that we need to valorize our capabilities, we need to experiment with ourselves. For this, we need virtue, which is not conformity to rules but rather the good administration of our desires. Virtue is the art of life, the art of living well, the art of knowing how to make a good use of ourselves and the world. The matter of happiness becomes ethics: to find one’s own rhythm, one’s right measure, to abstain from pursuing the impossible, to cultivate what is possible, to cultivate the good in the sense of realizing ourselves by understanding and listening to what we are. In this sense, there are not many but only one virtue, which is the same potency that, in different contexts, actualizes itself as this or that virtue, as this or that vice. These are the themes of my philosophical position as it unfolds in the books written subsequently to the book on suffering. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? My thought has found expression in many books. Because of the meaning and impact this specific book has had on my thinking, however, I would say that my most representative work is the book on suffering, L’esperienza del dolore. Le forme del patire nella cultura occidentale (The Experience of Pain: The Forms of Suffering in Western Culture). My subsequent books, such as those on happiness, virtues, and ethics, find their source in that initial work. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? First, I would like to point to my effort constantly to tie together life and truth of thought. This is captured especially well in the title of the collection of essays that some of my students, friends, and colleagues have

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assembled in my honor. The collection is in fact aptly titled La vita nel pensiero (Life in Thought). Connected to this first aspect is also the attempt, which characterizes my thinking, to combine rigor and existential situations. Furthermore, my philosophy is always displaced by the event, and thus it posits itself as constitutively open to life happenings. An original feature of my thinking is however also the resistance to the idea that thought may be carried away by the flux of life. The matter of thought is to rule passions; there is no doubt that the conceptual framework bridles life. Nevertheless, thinking, at least my thinking, does not and cannot forget life. When I say “life,” I mean existential dynamics, passions, affects, but also political events and societal assets. One of my most recent books, Il buon uso del mondo. Agire nell’età del rischio (The Good Use of the World: Action in the Age of Risk), deals precisely with action in the age of risk; that is, it deals with exploring to what extent, within our hectic daily activities, we are “agents,” subjects capable of self-realization in what we do, and to what extent we are instead “acted upon,” impersonal elements in an anonymous and causal series whose beginning and end are not perceivable. An important and original aspect of my thought is also the confrontation with Christianity and with secularization understood as a process geared toward overcoming the gap between laity (laicismo) and dogmatism. In this context, paganism, which today seems to surface again, presents itself as a progressive retreat from creatural finitude in favor of a deeper understanding of the naturalness of finitude. The Greek, the pagan, the nonbeliever do not wait for a world-to-come. Conversely, they operate and act within the boundaries of the finite. My thought plunges in the multiple forms of finitude. Christianity too experiences the finite. My thought however immerses itself in such a finitude without any expectation of transcendence, without the prospect of the hope for some beyond. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? In many senses, I am a philosophical explorer of contemporary space and time. My way of proceeding has always been philosophizing by interpreting the events, by speaking of the world. The world is the terrain of my explorations. Several of my books contain the term “world” in their titles: Stare al mondo (Being in the World), Il buon uso del mondo (The Good Use of the World), Il crollo del mondo (The Collapse of the World). My works are

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an immersion in our contemporary period. The human condition coincides with being in the world. A successful life means being able to live in the world well. To live well one must be able to dwell within one’s own time, which is the only time that every human being has available. One must be ethical, where ethics is always marked by a double belonging: to oneself and to one’s community. Initially, my thinking was marked by its connection with the events of 1968. The timeliness of my thinking then had to do with my reflections on the themes of the life world, which is also the world of politics and political life. The proprium of politics has always been its being invested in the body. In modernity, power (the power enacted by the social machine) puts bodies to work, enslaves them by investing in them, and makes them docile exactly at the point when it activates them. This inevitably entails also a domination of spaces. It is a centerless power, as Foucault recognizes; it is diffuse, disseminated power, a power that is everywhere and nowhere in a world that lives in perpetual transition. More recently, the timeliness of my thinking concerns the theme of how to position ourselves in the time of uncertainty, the age of risk to which technology has brought us. I am not antitechnology, but whereas in the beginning technology meant progress, now it opens new issues, problems, and concerns. It exposes us to risks that are also opportunities. I think about both. In what age do we live? What is its rhythm? What is the rhythm of thought that matches the rhythm of our own age? We need to distinguish, as the Greeks did, between acting (praxis) and doing (techne). Acting is finalized to a good (or an evil), is oriented toward a meaning—the meaning of life, of my life. Doing is geared toward production, toward performances, but not toward the meaning of life. We live in an age where we have blurred the distinction, we think of doing as if it were acting; but it is not. Within the dimension of doing, we move without knowing where to go, we are alienated amid things. We busy ourselves with the world, we keep ourselves very busy, but we are not happy or even content about the meaning of our lives. We confuse mobility, of which we have a great deal, with freedom, which we now understand as access to goods and not as the ability to choose, to have options. We use the world by appropriating things to ourselves, but without valuing them. We consume them but we do not benefit from them in terms of our own self-realization, our own happiness. This is because we do not know ourselves. Self-knowledge requires reflection, distance, askesis, which is not asceticism or self-renunciation but rather finding the point of essentiality that enables us to empower ourselves, get-

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ting rid of all the superfluous that clutters existence and prevents us from flourishing. Self-knowledge entails oneself as well as the world. The timeliness of my philosophy lies in its being a reflection on the world that teaches respect for the world; it teaches how to make good use of the world, how to do things in a way that is also good acting, good administering of the world and things—not only objects, but also relations, bonds, connections with things and people. We must find a good rhythm, a good relation or right measure between ourselves and the things of the world. This is the meaning of temperance, moderation, or virtue in general—the rule of oneself and of one’s relation with others. Temperance is the agreement, the harmony of the triad self-world-others. We need to value in everything and everyone the potencies, the capabilities that are latent in each, what Aristotle referred to as the flourishing of beings. This is what my philosophy thinks about. This is its timeliness. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? The contemporary epoch is complex. I would even say that complexity is one of the terms that best describe our period. Complexity does not mean complication, though. Complication is something concerning simple machines that need additional pieces to match higher demands for performance. Complexity is instead born out of the specialization of performances, out of the differentiation and progressive independence and autonomy of functions. Complexity means that the reductio ad unum, the reduction to one, a universal machine, a machina mundi have become impossible. This does not mean that human beings no longer come together. What we have is an endless unfolding of performances with no hierarchical dependencies and with reciprocal interdependencies instead. We have aggregations, disaggregations, that is, mobility, constellations of relations in a world that no longer has a perimeter. Within the play of mobilities, subjects (by which I mean individuals but also social groups and even institutions) need to find their own meaning, the reasons for their self-conservation, and the forms of their performances. They need to develop the ability for self-preservation in relation to the environment. To maintain themselves, subjects need to innovate, and to do so, they need to know more about themselves and the world. This is complex because more than ever, there is a dissymmetry between what is there to know and what we can in fact know.

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More than in the society of technology, which is a somewhat obsolete formulation, I think that today we live in the risk society (the expression is not mine but Luhmann’s)—technology puts us at risk. Today, being in the world means being in a situation in which we are called to rule over contingency. My proposal of an ethics of virtue is a philosophical response to this situation. Virtue is the modality of self-empowering that is highly necessary in a situation of improbability—self-strengthening understood not as will to power, aggressiveness, or omnipotence but rather as ability to activate positive relations with the world. Within the contemporary society, human beings are more protagonist but also more exposed and solitary than ever. Within our society, the notion of rebellion has faded away, whereas the notion of perversion is on the rise because we no longer have bans and proscriptions. Human beings no longer know what to do, where to go. For this reason, they need to start again to understand, to reflect upon themselves. This means developing again an ethics of virtue that is inflected in a relational, intersubjective dimension attentive to the dynamics and mechanisms of power and abuse. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? Two are, I believe, the fundamental themes: virtue and an ethics of the finite. After the extreme attempts at mastering time (the various totalitarianisms of the twentieth century are an example thereof), we are now confronted with constant world emergencies. We can no longer conclude history; we must instead govern, or better, administer events. This is what I call the “mastery of contingency”: no longer the pretension of conquering the future but rather the need to take up the emergencies of the present time. The future presents itself as endless possibilities to which we are exposed and which we must somehow foresee and anticipate not to be overwhelmed by them. Within this contest, virtue is the ability to maximize our power. It is self-competency to the goal of perfecting our abilities, refining our capabilities as far as our entire being is concerned: body, mind, feelings. If human beings can do this in any circumstance in life, their capability will emerge. In this way, virtue turns the good from a contingency into a stable condition. The one who reaches this kind of happiness realizes that instants are outstanding, but they are not the most important dimension of happiness.

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Happiness is fundamentally habit toward the good. Then, happiness takes the form of serenity. The sky is always clear—this is the meaning of serenity: there is always light, the sun is always shining; one need not perceive the gap between rain and sunshine. Buddhism says the same thing: to free ourselves from desire means to enter the stable dimension of the good; happiness resides not in pleasure but in the continuity of the good. As competency in one’s own desires, virtue inhibits selfish dynamics and fecundates life. Happiness corresponds to a general increase in life. Authentic happiness lies in the ability, in each single occasion, to live up to the moment, to find joy in each single instant. To do this, one must be capable, one must know. Oftentimes happiness escapes us because we have no virtue, we do not know how to read and decipher what surrounds us. Happiness is the ability to welcome the world, to be open to it, to let oneself be solicited by it. Those who are open toward the world are in a constant condition of wonder. Only those who can wonder can benefit from the unexpected. Only those who are curious about the world can in fact encounter the unexpected, be visited by it. Virtues generate some sort of magnetic field that attracts events and makes them happen. Of course, at times there is so much suffering that for many, happiness becomes impossible. Human beings are often unhappy, though not because happiness is unreachable but because they are not capable of attaining it. They have no virtue; they do not possess happiness because they do not deserve it. The ethics of the finite, as I have also defined my philosophy, emerges on the background of what I have just said. Finitude is not the absolutization of the finite as a single, separate entity that, as such, would not even be perceivable as finite. On the contrary, finitude delineates itself on the background of the borderless, in the awareness of our own exposure to improbability: we are born by chance, we are constantly exposed to chance, we are precarious beings. At the same time, our existence is precious; we are unique because irreplaceable and as such absolute; no one is like us, and thus no one can be in our place. Our place is nevertheless always within the world, among and in relation with others. We are and exist in relations. One could just think of being born as being called, becoming a guest in the world; and one could think of the world as the dwelling of our transitioning. Philosophy, and certainly my philosophy, takes thus the form of an ethos: a dwelling and acting by the finite. Contemplation is also part of this. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time?

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I have always understood philosophy as being in the world, as the title of one of my books recites. Being in the world means being in the opening, which is the space of human movements, of human tensions and protensions. Within the world, the task of philosophy is to raise questions about the truth. This is an endless task. The novum, that is, the newest or latest, can never be deemed to be the last. Confronted with such novum, thought must continuously come up with threads of meaning capable of holding together events, namely, material objects, signs, language, time, and history. Within such events, human beings suffer pains and sorrows, they experience happiness, and they live their lives. Beyond all disorder, life and the world always reveal an order. This is precisely the meaning of the word mundus (world): something that is clean (from the Latin, mundus), tidy, ordered. The world is so well ordered that it can be named kosmos, that is, well-done, well-arranged. Now, does thought discover an order that is immanent to the world, or does it order the world by devising grand fictions, by staging scenarios? Most likely thought does both at the same time. In any event, the world is experience of forms. The experience of life is determined by and determines the forms of thought, which are many, various, and diverse. Philosophy is simply one of such forms of thought. Its peculiar character is that of capturing life within thought, but also and moreover of thinking of the world as a totality. A philosophy that does not delineate a horizon of meaning is hardly a philosophy. In the course of the history of philosophy, each philosophical position has grasped, in its own way, pieces of the truth and has enabled human beings to move or at least to find some direction within the world with some meaningfulness. There have been and there still are many philosophies, but what is at stake is always the same thing—the truth, aletheia, tearing apart the veil with which nature loves to hide. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. Philo-sophy is the destiny of reason. It is inevitable. There are no perennial philosophies; what is instead perennial is the activity of philosophizing. Philosophizing is certainly the work of thought, the elaboration of theories; it is building models of the world. Moreover and more fundamentally, though, philosophizing is an ethos, a way of living and being committed to and within life.

Truth, Figures of Truth, and Practices of Life A Conversation with Carlo Sini (Bologna, 1933)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? For many years, I have taught theoretical philosophy, a university discipline that I believe exists only in Italy. It is a bit like saying theoretical physics. Properly, “theoretics” is not a disciplinary area; rather, in some way it is the foundation of all specializations and disciplines. It is where one teaches not philosophy (an impossible thing according to Kant) but to philosophize. That is, one teaches how to familiarize oneself with the philosophical practice. This of course also includes knowledge of philosophical history and its texts, but they are questioned, as Kant would say, in their material and transcendental conditions of possibility. Within this framework, I have been especially concerned with phenomenological thinking (from Hegel to Husserl and Heidegger), the hermeneutic problem, and the horizon of linguistic and semiotic thought. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? I began studying philosophy at the Università Statale in Milan around 1953–54. There, and perhaps in Rome and in a few other universities, 51

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the neoidealist thinking born out of Croce and Gentile was still alive. Existentialism too, which had started circulating in Italy at the beginning of the 1940s, was still influential. Neopositivism and philosophy of science though were rapidly spreading, especially in Turin and northern Italy. Quite alive also were both the tradition of Catholic thinking (Milan “Catholic” University was the center of excellence, but the universities of Padua and Genoa were also quite important) and Marxist thought, especially in the prevailing Gramscian variation. A synthesis that soon proved to be quite influential was that between Marxism and pragmatism, which was especially successful within the pedagogical field. With respect to job searches for philosophy professorships at the academic level, a peculiar model became widely operative: the area of “theoretics” was mainly (albeit not exclusively) left to the schools in the Catholic tradition, whereas the histories of philosophy were given to secular (laiche) and nonconfessional currents. This was an eminently political division. To my mind, it was not beneficial to Italian philosophical studies and penalized independent and solitary scholars whether they were Catholic or secular (laici). SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? Existentialism, especially French but not only, was certainly quite present. Authors such as Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Gabriel Marcel, Jean Wahl, Albert Camus, and Karl Jaspers were very well known and their works had been widely translated. Heidegger too was quite present; he was then considered the master of existentialism. In theology, Karl Barth was very well known. Within the philosophical and pedagogical area, John Dewey was quite influential, as were the German and British neopositivist teachers (on the contrary, Wittgenstein’s influence was still to come). Formal logic and epistemology, that is, philosophy of science, were slowly starting to assert themselves. Of course my memory is partial, conditioned by the time that has passed and by my inevitably limited experience during the years of my first formation. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment?

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Philosophy had started being attractive to me ever since my high school years thanks to a course taught by Giovanni Tinivella. At the Università Statale in Milan, I attended for two years the courses by Giovanni Emanuele Barié, who, like Antonio Banfi, came from the school of Piero Martinetti. Barié was the last significant representative of Italian neoidealism. His original reading of Kant’s dialectics and Hegel’s logic was very important for me. After Barié’s death, Enzo Paci came to teach at the Università Statale, and that was my decisive formation. Paci, who was one of the first and most original Italian existentialists, was at that time in his relationalist stage (Whitehead, etc.), which soon after would result in the great adventure of the rebirth of phenomenology (after existentialism) and in the revolutionary synthesis of phenomenology and Marxism. It was a great cultural battle, with important international resonances. I had the fortune to be an active part of it for at least a decade, from 1960 up to the early 1970s. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? Fundamental to my thought have been Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, Husserl’s Crisis of the European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, and Peirce’s Collected Papers. Marcuse wrote that with Hegel’s Phenomenology, life in its activity and the life-world as work and practice become the center of philosophy. This had never happened before, either in antiquity or with Kant’s abstract reason, which is still far from understanding the organic relation between truth and history. This “philosophical novel,” as Hegel’s masterpiece has been called, opens the way for a new style and meaning of philosophizing. I think that not only are this style and meaning still current, they are also still ahead of us. In Hussserl’s Crisis of European Sciences, I read an analogous appeal to practice, including “theoretical praxis,” understood as the foundation of all figures of truth. Everyone’s and anyone’s doing constantly intertwines various forms of knowledge such as opinion, common sense, doxa. This is a form that Husserl, against the whole tradition, claims as the site of origin and growth of the entire encyclopedia of scientific knowledge. Doxa is an active life and practice that encompasses us and, as it were, precedes us, “an immense and anonymous realm,” as Husserl says. Husserl’s appeal to what I myself indicate and analyze under the expression “practices of life

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and knowledge” is deeply inspired, especially with respect to the notion of meaning, by Peirce’s writings on pragmatism. For Peirce, and in this I follow him entirely, meaning is neither the result of judgment, that is, a logical product of the mind, nor an ontological structure in itself of the world. Meaning has to be grasped in, and must be brought back to, “habits of response.” It is defined in terms of what one is ready to do, that is, on the basis of a practical truth that happens in the ways in which human beliefs intersect and clash among themselves and with the world. For me, this integrated vision of truth has been a fundamental lesson. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. The questions of the foundations of knowledge, truth, and the formation of self-consciousness have always been central to my research. I have addressed them under the methodological influence of phenomenology (Hegel first, Husserl next), hermeneutics (Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Foucault), and Peirce’s unlimited semiotics. In the course of my development, the theme of writing has taken up a decisive importance. I have in fact traced the origin of Western forms of knowledge, beginning with philosophy itself, back to the logical and grammatical revolution of writing. In particular, I have individuated the alphabetic practice as the source of the formation of an analogical and analytic, inductive and deductive way of thinking; hence the formation of logic and the logical mind, dialectical argumentation, the algorithmic construction of definitions and rational language, and finally, prose and historical and aesthetic researches. In the end, the outcomes of this study have convinced me of the necessity of a profound, ethical revolution in philosophizing, a philosophizing to be made free of the formal prejudice of logic and the superstition of ontology, which are both typical products of the alphabetic practice. The ethics to which I am referring is inspired by the theory of meaning understood as Peirce’s habit of response, and by the themes of discursive practices and language games in Foucault and Wittgenstein. Within such an interpretative framework, I have attempted a genealogical reconstruction of the encyclopedia of Western forms of knowledge. At the heart of it, I have placed the question of “practice”: behind any theory and meaning there are specific intertwinings of practices of life, speech, and writing, which delimit their sense and effectiveness. The subject and object of the metaphysical tradition and of common sense are internal products of practices, and not

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vice versa. It is not possible to refer to them meaningfully without explicit reference to the practices that have produced and cultivated them. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? Transito Verità. Figure dell’enciclopedia filosofica (Transit Truth: Figures of the Philosophical Encyclopedia), which was published in 2004–05 and is now part of my collected work, Opere, edited by Florinda Cambria. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? First of all is the distinction between truth as event and truth as figure of meaning. The widespread confusion between the two moments is lethal. It leads to the superstitious claim of identifying truth with one of its transitory figures. It is not a matter of subscribing to the relativism and nihilism of so much contemporary thought; that truth is relative or inconsistent is a meaningless claim. But neither is it a matter of sharing the naïve objectivism of the scientistic mentality and the self-declared realist philosophies inspired by it, or the primacy of the grammar of being, still according to the metaphysical tradition. It is a matter of rendering conscious and explicit the figures that, embodied in the practices of life and knowledge, relegate their meaningful figures to the event of their very own being and happening, provenance and project. Our being constantly subject to the intertwinings of living practices constitutes what I consider to be the second original contribution of my work. Practices are the product and outcome of an invisible power that constantly modifies human beings’ complex relations among themselves and with the world in the context of the so-called natural and social life. This power is constituted, in an anonymous and unconscious form, by what Hegel would call “the doing of everyone and anyone.” The presuppositions and results of such collective doing, which is both material and intellectual, constitute the condition of happening of all figures of truth (including the truth we are here presenting). The event is not circumscribable or reducible to the meanings it initiates. The event is rather the truth in its infinite happening, and the practices are its transient figures. The absolute event of truth (that is, its happening not relative to any of its figures of meaning) and the being-in-error of its figures are congruent and mirrored in an inseparable relation. Truth happens in the erring of its figures; truth is nothing except such an absolute and infinite happening in and as figures.

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Being aware of this “situation” requires a new philosophical posture, aimed at attending and consciously enlivening the transformational threshold of the life of truth and the formation of knowledge that derives from it. The modality of this awareness suggests the formation of a new philosophical writing, that is, a new writing of the various forms of knowledge that first of all overcomes the traditional distinction between humanistic and scientific knowledge. This is the third contribution that I consider original in my work. It has led to the attempt to write, within the philosophical practice, in a manner that I have named, following Peirce, “world-sheet” writing (scrittura del foglio-mondo): not the abstract, doctrinal exposition or the continuous “medieval” commentary of texts but rather the active production of an exercise that, in its “graphs,” leaves transient traces of possible worlds and initiates consistent and conscious outcomes in terms of the habits of its executors and users. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? As Nietzsche was well aware, a philosophy that claims to be original, that is, to see and say something new, can only be untimely. Its time, if it even ever has one, is a time to come. What is at play here are many circumstances whose invisible and incalculable power no one can truly rule or produce. As, again, Nietzsche said, new thoughts are like a dove’s steps that bring a hurricane: they belong to all and no one, and their destiny is not in our power. On the contrary, it is we who depend on them, and are destined to become what we will become. This means that individual thinkers can and must be disinterested with respect to the contingent fortune of the thoughts they have happened to cultivate. What I can say with respect to my work is that it seems to be of interest for researches of semiotics, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and sociology—that is, in general, the fields of the humanities, even if some physics and biology scholars seem to have some interest in it also. Of course, any dialogue between disciplines is always very difficult and complex. A shared ground is missing. My attempted experiments of world-sheet writing precisely aim at constructively addressing this problem. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life?

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Heidegger correctly said that currently, philosophy is near its end. Capitalism and industrialism have generated a mass society in which performance and information, and thus efficiency and usage, have become the driving forces of collective life. In this context, the formation of global knowledge, that is, of that knowledge characterizing philosophical awareness and vision, has progressively lost all true consistency and effectiveness. The universities’ profound crisis in terms of formative abilities stems from here. Scientific practices and methodological and technological reductionism have absorbed all meanings of knowledge. Physicists, for example, claim to have replaced philosophy in matters of cosmological knowledge without realizing that these very claims are neither physical nor cosmological (at most, they are bad philosophy). Politicians, busy only with attaining consensus through unscrupulous techniques and sophistries of persuasion, no longer need philosophy or ideologies to which to make reference. Specialization, illusionism, and financial commodification rule sovereign. Philosophical research and practice appear obsolete to politicians and educators. School reforms increasingly tend to marginalize genuine philosophical research or, simply, eliminate philosophy. Those philosophers who still resist in their practice and ethos must find, from this situation, inspiration and reason to invent positive reactions. That is, they must learn to build sites and ways of precious and magisterial survival. It is not the first time that this has happened to philosophy. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? To understand its current situation and its possible future, philosophy can draw inspiration from two-and-a-half millennia of its own history. In the ancient world and up to the modern revolution, philosophy has mainly embodied an aristocratic form of knowledge that nevertheless has initiated great revolutions in morality, knowledge, religion, art, and social and economic life. This occurred because of pyramidal societies ruled by a few who had access to economic privilege and cultural exclusiveness. The formation of the highest social hierarchies and their introduction to revolutionary ideas were thus incredibly successful. With the modern period, which has been capable of crossing oceans and unifying peoples, and has progressively been directed toward financial and commercial globalization, rapid and profound changes took root everywhere and affected the daily life of everyone’s and anyone’s actions. From Galilei’s great scientific revolution to the spreading of banks, stock markets,

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and money, up to the industrial transformation of agriculture and craftsmanship into assembly lines and workers’ labor—these and other phenomena set in motion a process that overwhelmed and wiped out the old social classes and promoted, albeit amid many unbalances, traumas, and conflicts, a democratization in lifestyles, political institutions, and educational sites. Here philosophy still had an essential role for guidance and transformation by identifying with the progressive bourgeoisie’s way of thinking and inspiring the great French Revolution and finally the Marxist revolution in the Soviet Union. These revolutions ended up, in various ways and for various reasons, with a defeat of the philosophical ideals and ideas that had promoted and nourished them. What has happened starting with the last century has been the affirmation of mass society in the areas of consumption, information, and the logic of the market and of international capital. In this new social climate, philosophy’s aristocratic knowledge has lost most of its relevance and influence, albeit with some rare, exceptional moments during the ephemeral 1968 student revolution. In the strictest political sense, this revolution was in fact ephemeral even when it was meaningful in terms of customs. Now we live in an extremely problematic and contradictory situation. The extraordinary progress in scientific knowledge, technology, and industrial production seems to promise a better future for billions of human beings on the planet. At the same time, though, this process is still prey to contradictory outcomes, unheard-of violence, and colossal injustice. It initiates degenerations in terms of the commodification of life and the diffusion of mass conformisms, which are opposed with analogous conformisms on the side of various political-religious fundamentalisms. The issue that philosophy must confront first of all is the appropriation of the meaning of the general path of knowledge, which is increasingly crucial and widespread in everyone’s life. This path cannot be abandoned to blind specialization and the ignorant and obtuse fragmentation of competencies. The specializations of knowledge, divided into silos, with no unified, shared, and organic idea of encyclopedia, generate the superstitions of scientistic objectivism and naturalism as well as the consequent depoliticization of culture. Precisely because of its methodological and ideological delimitations, culture is in fact prevented from assuming general, conscious responsibility and real social effectiveness. Philosophy must take charge of a program of genealogical reconstruction of the figures of knowledge. This must be done starting with the narration of the historical deeds of all world cultures that have produced meaningful, influential outcomes and must continue up to the current cultural intertwining of anthropological figures, which are to be evoked and

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addressed with phenomenological spirit and collaborative intent. The goal could be the reconstruction of a new, shared ground aimed at encouraging everyone’s attendance to the life of truth and its meanings, that is, of truth’s multimillennial adventure. This program extends well beyond our own cultural tradition and the history of the West. It is ideally inscribed in such a history and tradition, though in the universal proposals of justice and peace. Ever since Plato, these proposals have nourished the thought and life of Western authors. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? Plato said that the philosopher is the pantomime of truth. I would take this image very seriously, and I would charge the philosopher with the task of staging, through speech, writing, educational activities, and shared and interdisciplinary research, some sort of a theater of truth figures genealogically reconstructed and represented, and of engaging in this activity with full awareness of the reminiscing gesture and the living reinterpretation. Understanding human time as “historical” time is a typical product of our cultural tradition. It risks becoming in its own turn a prejudice and a superstition, however, if we are incapable, as it were, of historicizing ourselves and our own historical look, too. This is the only way that historical sense, which is definitely an important contribution to human cultural life in general, can maintain a liberating character and can offer itself as a gift to other non-“historical” (that is, lacking historical sense) cultures on earth. What matters is avoiding remaining blind to our own historicizing operations as well as our own theorizing or narrating activities. The issue is that of asking ourselves how to make them explicit, how to turn them into the object of a reflective theoretization and an intuitive allusion that highlights their meaning and their evanescent figure at the limit of our writings. At the same time, the issue is one of readying ourselves to inhabit new forms of writing, new configurations of the transit of truth within knowledge and life. We need to do so without remaining uniquely captive of the linearity of the letter and the tempography of the alphabet and the text. Rather, we need to revitalize their meaning within new frames and contexts of sense. It is a matter of a new educational ideal and a new pedagogical project capable of taking charge of the contradictions but also the potentialities of mass scholarization and information culture. It is a matter of a new global

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education that does not hesitate to multiply models and renew practices endlessly. It is the eternal exercise and problem of becoming “human” on a path that has opened under the mark of distance and desire and is configured in such a way that it cannot close or conclude but can rather renew itself in agreement with the metamorphic powers of life. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. I would like to remind the younger generations of the fact that the great Copernican revolution, the revolution that cost Giordano Bruno his life and Galileo Galilei life imprisonment, is more than four hundred years old. Yet it is far from being understood and shared by all peoples and cultures on the planet. Moreover, it is also and precisely we who are in general far from having our lives informed by its truth. Our mentality is not yet truly “Copernican.” On the contrary, it is limited to a regionalism that is very partial and, as it were, still wild. We know that thousands of years ago homo sapiens, setting out from Africa, miraculously spread over the entire planet in only ten thousand years. Mainly in the distance and solitude that intervened meanwhile, multiple languages and cultures developed, having been generated by circumstances having to do with environment, climate, the struggle for survival, and up to only forty thousand years ago also in competition with other kinds of “hominids” very similar to us. The originary shared culture became fragmented and forgotten. Perhaps now is the time when, due to the economic and institutional globalization that pervades the entire world and due to the reduction of distance thanks to real travels in time and ideal travels in so-called real time, a new, reconstituted human unity may be possible. This would be a unity respectful of historical and local differences. From differences, it might be even capable of deriving new teachings and new vital nourishment for all. We need to regard ourselves as exposed to Bruno’s Infinite of cosmic life, where each point is center and periphery, with no established boundaries. We also need to see and know ourselves as immersed in the infinite drift of life on our planet, which in its turn is a drift of cosmic life. Not only within the specialized studies inspired by Darwin’s great revolution but also within the conscious vision and action of collective daily life, we need to become aware of the abyss of the endless and primordial antiquity of life, of the infinitely complex epic of its transformations, as Vico would say.

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In the activity of establishing a common custom and shared planetary consciousness, on the background of Copernicus’ revolution, biology, sociology, and philosophy can help us not to forget our origins and the endless situations that have determined our fate and our current human physiognomy and figure. In brief, we need to fertilize all our specialized forms of knowing with the light of the infinite that has opened the way to modern forms of knowledge; and we need to do so without thereby forgetting the debts toward the infinite past. Such a light is a light that renews the originary experience of wondering and questioning, that is, the experience that is the permanent core of the philosophical, Socratic revolution. We Westerners can and must donate this sense of the infinity of knowledge and of cosmological and historical wonder to all cultures on Earth, even when they have always already attended, in their own specific ways, analogous visions and emotions. Confronted with the crisis initiated by Nazism and the imminent war conflict, which led to the self-destruction of the Western world, Husserl asked with unforgettable pathos that we become “good Europeans.” Today, philosophy can and must ask more. It can invite all good-willed human beings to become “good Copernicans.” This is an urgent invitation addressed to the twenty-first-century generations without distinctions of race, history, religion, and culture. It need not be known that this is a possible gift from our philosophy.

Metaphysics, Ethics, and Applied Ethics A Conversation with Carmelo Vigna (Rosolini, 1940)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? I started by studying Italian neoidealist thought (Croce and Gentile) and the Italian neo-Marxist tradition (from Labriola to Gramsci). These studies have constituted the groundwork for some theoretical contributions within the areas of metaphysical ontology, philosophical anthropology, and general and applied ethics (especially environmental ethics, the ethics of sexual difference, and bioethics), which in the last three decades have become more important for me. As for my works on metaphysical ontology, I have collected the principal ones in the 2000 volume titled Il frammento e l’intero (The Fragment and the Whole). As for my essays on ethics, I have edited (and partly written) an Introduzione all’etica (Introduction to Ethics), published in 2001, and I am about to publish a collection of my contributions in a volume titled Etica del desiderio come etica del riconoscimento (Ethics of Desire as Ethics of Recognition). This volume will be followed by another—a third collection of essays—devoted to anthropology with the title Sostanza e relazione (Substance and Relation). The trilogy, with the general title Ontoetica (Ontoethics), will contain all my most important theoretical contributions. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical

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landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? At the time of my philosophical formation, what was very much studied was twentieth-century German philosophy: mainly Husserl and his great students, Heidegger, Jaspers, and Scheler. Of interest were also the representatives of the Frankfurt School: Marcuse, Adorno, and Horkheimer. Much attention was also devoted to French philosophy, which was often in great debt to Husserl (Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, etc.) but was also capable of generating independent voices (such as Bergson, Maritain, Blondel, Marcel, etc.). The British area was (paradoxically) present through Wittgenstein, an Austrian thinker. Analytic philosophy, which today is dominant in Italy and Europe, was at that time virtually absent. Very much present were some “classics” of modernity, mainly Nietzsche, Marx (and the various twentieth-century Marxisms that the Italian communists had created), and Kierkegaard. Freud and psychoanalysis were also considered favorably. From these few words, one can discern that Italian philosophy had little influence on youth. In the 1960s, there was a desire for deprovincialization, and with few exceptions, it was our teachers themselves who invited us to look elsewhere. Yet there were thinkers in Italy who stood on par with their European colleagues. Gustavo Bontadini was certainly not inferior to Jacques Maritain; Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce were not less authoritative than Max Scheler or Jean-Paul Sartre. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? My previous reply already provides an answer to this question. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the Italian and foreign philosophical environment? My first contact with philosophy occurred during my high school years in Noto, in Sicily. A young professor was sent to teach there. His name was Sebastiano Addamo. He turned out to be a remarkable writer of literary

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things, besides being a first-class thinker. I especially recall his readings of Plato’s dialogues. He read and commented on them in such a fascinating way that he left all of us enraptured. Sebastiano Addamo was truly some kind of Socrates. He was also that way in all other aspects of everyday life: in postures, speeches, and in forming relations. He was a “secular” man, with his own harshness. Despite all this, he always had a special predilection for me—for me who, at that time, was only barely an adolescent and a militant in the Catholic Action movement. He was the first to direct me toward philosophy. Empowered by his predilection, I convinced myself that philosophy would be my future path. From then on, the music he had evoked when reading Plato became my music too. From high school, I moved on to university, to the Catholic University in Milan. There, I could cultivate and consolidate this passion of mine as an adolescent thanks to the teachings of Gustavo Bontadini and Emanuele Severino, in addition to Sofia Vanni Rovighi, Virgilio Melchiorre, Italo Mancini, and some other professors, young and old. At that time and in what is essential, I was thus educated within Catholic philosophy (Aristotelian-Thomist) with a special imprint by Bontadini. That is, with an imprint that was, from a philosophical perspective, a mix of (Gentile’s) idealism and (Christian) Aristotelianism. Foremost among my thoughts was philosophy as rigorous knowledge, and as a task, the construction and defense of metaphysics. Within Italian philosophy, our doubles were the philosophers in Padua, who were also classical metaphysicians and were led by their teacher, Marino Gentile. Our “adversaries” were our colleagues in philosophical schools that fought against metaphysics and advanced, in many ways, ontological immanentism (Gianni Vattimo and “weak thought,” Enzo Paci and phenomenology, Paolo Rossi, etc.). Our allies were of course other philosophers who cultivated metaphysics but not as rigorous knowledge (in Turin, for example, Luigi Pareyson and his students; the Christian spiritualists such as Federico Sciacca, and some others). Because of Bontadini’s frequenting Gentile’s actualism, there was also a peculiar proximity with the Rome thinkers who were heirs to Giovani Gentile (Ugo Spirito, Antimo Negri, Gennaro Sasso, etc.). Finally, we had some allies abroad: the Louvain school, the Institut Catholique in Paris, German philosophy of a Catholic nature, and so on. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most?

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As I have already hinted, my “classic” teachers of reference have always been Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. My “philosophical-school” teachers from the twentieth century have been Gustavo Bontadini and Emanuele Severino. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. Initially, and for at least a couple of decades (between 1960 and 1980), I focused on ontology and metaphysics. Thus, I advanced a new semanticization of being and a (classic) (re)reading of world-becoming that was capable of solving, if I am not mistaken, the aporias of Emanuele Severino’s neoParmenidism. Such aporias somehow affected also the speculative position of Gustavo Bontadini, who at that time was the most listened-to teacher at the Catholic University in Milan and who had been a teacher of both Severino’s and mine. This new semanticization I advanced finds in being a configuration ad extra, so that being opposes nothing (Bontadini and Severino), and a configuration ad intra, so that being is divided into categories and other (even transcendental) forms (Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and many others). At the same time, it considers becoming as the annihilation not of being (essere) but (in a classic way) of a being (ente). The fundamental ontological difference becomes (again) the one advanced by Plato and Aristotle. It is the difference between the absolute or infinite being (that does not become) and the relative or finite being (that begins and ceases to be). I think that in this way I have also contributed to the stabilization of metaphysical “mediation,” which was absent in Severino and aporetic in Bontadini (but also in Marino Gentile and his students). After the two decades focused on metaphysical ontology, I devoted the next two decades (between 1980 and 2000) mainly to fundamental ethics and applied ethics (bioethics, public ethics, environmental ethics, and the ethics of sexual difference). Following up on Aristotle, I have always understood ethics as the ethics of human desire, which is in turn desire for another desire, that is, for another human being (another subject) who desires and recognizes us (and, ultimately, desire for an absolute Subjectivity). I have thus traced ethics back to the dynamics of intersubjective relations, which can easily be described according to three models. The first is a regulative model—it is the model according to which subjectivities reciprocally recognize one another as transcendental subjectivities, that is, as persons or beings who think and desire in a transcendental manner. The second is a transgressive model—it is the model in which subjectivities are in conflict and each tries to dominate the subject that stands before it by

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treating that subject as an object rather than a subject; in other words, they treat it as a “thing” that can be manipulated at liberty. The third, which stands somehow halfway between the other two, is the model I called, for lack of a better word, “oblivious” (oblativo). In it, one of the two subjectivities recognizes the other and is ready to treat it from the ground of the care and respect that it deserves, while the other subjectivity offers no recognition and tries to assert itself as a dominating subjectivity on the recognizing subjectivity. I have also engaged in some research on transcendental anthropology, which somehow brings this discourse to completion because transcendental anthropology is some sort of a presupposition to ethics. Within this kind of studies, I have tackled especially the concept of person as synergy of the ancient Greek (and medieval) notion of substance and the modern (and contemporary) concept of relation. To my mind, the human being is this permanent synergy because it is simultaneously both relation to itself and relation to the other (in various aspects). This is, ultimately, the general structure of transcendental intentionality (which the human being is in essence) when it is considered absolutely. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? With no doubt Il frammento e l’intero, which I have mentioned earlier. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? I think that my most original contribution in metaphysics is the development of the semanticization of being. My most original contribution in ethics is, I think, the speculative determination of human subjectivity as originary intersubjectivity. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? In terms of the timeliness of my philosophical position, I would indicate it in my proposal of an ethics of recognition that develops on the ground of a metaphysical ontology. I do not think that anyone has walked this speculative path among the various twentieth-century proponents of an ethics of recognition (Taylor, Habermas, Honneth, etc.). Today, an ethics

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of recognition is the proposal that best matches the need for human relations that are universally open in a multicultural or intercultural world. Yet without a protective metaphysical ontology, ethics runs the strong risk of remaining an arguable exhortation to good will rather than being, as it should be, a highly regulative, grounded, and commanding indication. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? As a tendency, philosophy is unfortunately almost no longer practiced as “first philosophy” (Aristotle), that is, as a doctrine about the totality of things that are insofar as they are (ontology). One prefers to cultivate an “applied” philosophy or a “second philosophy” (philosophy of economics, communications, sexual difference, science, technology, etc.), which is more “sellable” on the publication market. One cultivates, that is, the illusion of the more-or-less immediate effectiveness of philosophical activity on practical life. Yet, Leibniz correctly admonishes that philosophia, quo magis speculativa, eo magis practica (the more philosophy is speculative, the more it is practical). . . . SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? Here, I am only going to address ethics because I wish to avoid lengthy discourses and because today ethics is perhaps the most “engaged” branch of philosophy and the one that is closest to the average human being’s questions. In the future, ethics should hold very strongly onto the true meaning of its “fundamentals” (happiness, virtue, freedom, and so on). Then it should take care of cultivating at least five thematic areas: science and technology, media, (financial) economy, public ethics, and bioethics. If it succeeds in discriminating between good and evil in these major problem areas of our time, then it can provide the best contribution that, I think, can be asked of a philosopher; namely, to enlighten the average individual (the nonphilosopher) so that he or she can lead a good life (that is, so that he or she can always honor truth and the good). SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time?

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The role of the philosopher? This is simple—to search for the firm truth of things and indicate how to follow the true good. In this way, he or she will serve in the best possible manner (our) historical era, which is often seduced by the exhibition of illusory truths and the offering of apparent goods. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. Escape the spectacularization that besieges us. As Aquinas says, veritas declinat in minus (truth hides in what is small). . . .

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HISTORY, JUSTICE, COMMUNITIES

Sexual Difference, Relational Space, and Embodied Singularities A Conversation with Adriana Cavarero (Bra, 1947)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? I teach political philosophy and history of political doctrines at the University of Verona. My areas of interest are political theory, feminist thinking, and Plato and Arendt. I have also contributed to the history of vocal styles and narrative theory. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? I graduated from the University of Padua in 1971. The Italian philosophical landscape within the universities was very academic. There was nothing especially stimulating or original, but there were a lot of good professors who taught students how to read Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Hobbes, Locke, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and a few pages by Heidegger. The revolutionary wind of 1968 was blowing, though. The antiauthoritarian and antitraditionalist culture was spreading within the universities in Italy, too. We discovered Foucault, DeBeauvoir, Marcuse, Adorno, the Frankfurt

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School, and other authors. We learned, especially from the French wave, a new vocabulary for philosophy and politics. Nothing was as it seemed or as they had taught us it was. Every theoretical and intellectual question was also a political and social question. Underneath the text there was another text. We reread Gramsci, Lukács, and other Marxists. Militant feminism was part of this landscape of liberation. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? At the beginning of the 1970s, I did not belong to any “school” of thought. I was, rather, part of various youth groups that thought that the lever of cultural, social, and political change and transformation was in their hands, at all levels. When I was studying and then teaching in Padua, I belonged to various feminist groups, mainly of emancipatory inspiration. When, thanks to a research scholarship, I became part of the Department of Philosophy, there was only one other woman besides me. All the rest were men. The main problem was to reclaim a space of freedom and equality in relation to the decisively male-dominated environment within which we operated. In the 1980s, I moved to the University of Verona. There I founded, with Luisa Muraro and other colleagues, the feminist philosophical community, Diotima. The figure of reference for the community was Luce Irigaray, and the focus was on the question of sexual difference. This was a remarkable leap—from the theme of emancipation to the commitment to rethink, radically and creatively, sexual difference. As far as I am concerned, the major product of this period, which was very intense, is my book Nonostante Platone (In Spite of Plato). It was published in Italy in 1990. At the time, I was already in contact with Rosi Braidotti, who used to come often to hold seminars in Italy. I had also participated in many feminist conferences, national and international. At one of these conferences in Valencia, Spain, I met Judith Butler and became convinced of the need for dialogue with horizons of thought coming from cultural backgrounds very different from mine. Ever since, I have always tried to keep this dialogue open, to blend my thinking style with other styles, and to ask myself questions within a language and from out of perspectives that do not belong to my intellectual itinerary.

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Due to internal disagreements, typical of group dynamics, I left the Diotima community at the beginning of the 1990s. Now I am part of another research center at the University of Verona. Its name is Politesse: Politics and Theories of the Human. It is composed of young scholars, both men and women, and is concerned with studying sexual difference and queer theory. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? First of all is Plato. By education, I am a classicist. My interest in Plato goes back to my youth, and it still endures. Plato writes dialogues, tells myths, and builds allegories. His philosophical writing is still “experimental,” open, not yet closed within the form of the system or the treatise that, from Aristotle on and with a few rare exceptions (for example, Nietzsche), will become canonical. Furthermore, as is often said, Plato is the father of philosophy. His texts are at the foundation of the history of so-called metaphysics, and yet they are “inaugural.” Reading Plato means observing philosophy at the stage of its constitution as a discipline, in the inaugural period of its self-construction through the problems, aporias, and contradictions that confront all original moments of any form of knowledge. This facilitates and renders more creative readings that occur from the viewpoint of a specific perspective, that is, revisitations that question the text on the ground of moments belonging to our own present. My perspective is mainly feminist. The category with which I once again question Plato’s works as well as the entire history of Western philosophy and its macro-text is the category of sexual difference. I am very happy that I had many occasions when I could engage in dialogue with American women philosophers and, in general, with various international forms of gender studies and radical political thought. This has forced me to a constant confrontation with discursive registers that are not only multifarious but also regularly different from those that are hegemonic in the speculative landscape, even of a feminist kind, in which I was formed. I am Italian, I love my language, but I do not consider myself a nationalist. I am proud of having been educated within a tradition that teaches us to read the classics in their original language and frame all themes within their historical context. Nevertheless, I like measuring myself with intellectual approaches that are different from mine, with different styles

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of thinking, so that my writing gets to be tested through new stimulations. To my mind, there is no authentic critique that is not also a continuous self-critique. The practice of self-critique does not emerge from an internal rumination, a solipsistic self-interrogation; rather, it is activated by inspirations that come from elsewhere. The study of Plato is at the source of my second great interest: the work of Hannah Arendt. I encountered Arendt for the first time as a very original interpreter of Plato, in The Human Condition. Since then, Arendt’s texts have become my daily intellectual food, rich and inexhaustible. Arendt spurs me to think open-mindedly about philosophy and politics, and even better, to think in a free and radical manner. Born and raised in Germany, Arendt received the typical European education: reading the classics, a historicist approach, great attention to philology. She knows firsthand the texts of which she speaks, yet she takes the liberty to upset them and turn them around. Furthermore, and well before this became a fashion, Arendt mixes political thinking and philosophy with literature and the narrative tradition. To this one should add that her entire production, far from being overly theoretical and abstract, is characterized by the necessity of answering some contemporary urgent questions—in her case, the totalitarian catastrophe. I think that, from Arendt, I have learned not only ideas but, first of all, the method. What mainly interests me in Arendt is her anomalous vision of politics as an activity centered on the human condition of natality as opposed to metaphysics, which is instead focused on mortality. Furthermore, I appreciate her effort to elaborate a relational subjectivity in conflict with the solipsism of individualist ontology, and to rethink politics as a space of interaction in conflict with the understanding of politics in terms of a system of domination. I appreciate Arendt very much, I reread her works continuously, I teach her in my courses, yet I am not faithful to her, I betray her. In my works in fact I transform her notion of uniqueness into that of an embodied and sexed unicity, and I also insist on including the maternal figure within the landscape of natality, whereas Arendt resoundingly ignores the mother despite her conceptualizing birth. Additionally, as is well known, Arendt is not a feminist; however, I give a feminist reading of her texts. Another author I associate with is Levinas. I cannot ignore either his antiegological vision of a subjectivity entirely entrusted to the other, or his attention to vulnerability. This is an important theme I share with Judith Butler and other women philosophers. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years.

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Already in my student years in Padua, I breathed the need for an innovative thinking geared toward dismantling metaphysics and criticizing modern individualism. The postmodern perspective and the idea of fragmenting and dissolving the subject have never been appealing to me—nor did they enjoy great credit in the intellectual feminist and nonfeminist environments of which I was part. My genuine interest has always been for a concrete (sexed, embodied) subjectivity that is thought of in terms of relational unicity. Furthermore, and this may be the true legacy of 1968, I have always been convinced of the necessary intersection of a theory of subjectivity and the practice of politics. When in my works I inquire into the possible figures of relation (mother and child, lovers, the vocal style of the other, etc.), I am not aiming at aestheticizing outcomes; rather, I take these figures as basic modules for a relational conception of politics. The central core is, for me, saying the embodied unicity of each of us, man or woman, and saying the originary relation that each has with the other that constitutes us. Following Arendt, I understand politics as a relational space generated by the interaction of embodied singularities. In this sense, many feminist practices, and more generally, the various project-oriented practices that imply reciprocal interaction and exposure, are politics. Again in a very Arendtian manner, politics is not a system of power, an organization to administer the community and its goods; rather, it is a practice. Against Hobbes’ Leviathan and the idea, still very widespread today, that the political order is a necessary remedy for the individuals’ natural, egoistic propensity for conflict, one should think of a politics that is finally void of any violent foundation. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? I think that the book on narration, Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti (Relating Narratives), has turned out pretty well. The book is centered on the contraposition between philosophy as an abstract and universal discipline wondering about the what and biographical narration that is instead occupied with the who that is the protagonist of a story of life. It is not a matter of different but rather of opposite discursive registers. Philosophical discourse focuses on an autonomous and unrelated subject; biographical narration brings to light the desire of a self that can be narrated, immersed in the contingency and particularity of its own story. Every life story is a unique story and is intertwined with the lives and stories of others. Uniqueness and rationality are connected originarily. Philosophy ignores this, whereas narration accounts for it.

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SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? In my book Orrorismo (Horrorism), written after 9/11, I address contemporary violence and the difficulty of conceptualizing its various forms, beginning with the fact that “war” and “terrorism” are inadequate categories to describe and catalog this kind of events. My basic thesis is that here the case is that of a unilateral violence that affects defenseless victims by taking them as indifferent and contingent. Yet the victims are concretely singular, with a face, a name, and a story. Mass murders, attacks, and city bombings cause first of all an “ontological injury” to this embodied uniqueness. What should orient our analysis of mass murders that indiscriminately and casually kill their victims (as is the case for bombs that are detonated in crowded places, suicidal attacks, and other cases of widespread and arbitrary violence) is the condition of absolute vulnerability of those who undergo the offense, and not the abomination of the agents. In other words, contravening traditional canons, one should take up the standpoint of the defenseless victims rather than that of the warriors, whether they are regular or irregular. This allows us to rethink the human on new grounds, in opposition to the processes of dehumanization triggered by contemporary global violence but anticipated by the Armenian genocide, Auschwitz, and the long history of massacres that, starting with the Biblical murder of innocents through to Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and other horrorist theaters, reaches up to us today. The history of modern wars, at least starting with World War I, is characterized by large-scale massacres of civilians and other defenseless people—massacres that are for the most part justified in the name of political goals. Rethinking the human in terms of vulnerability also means rethinking politics. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? In Italy, there are many philosophy festivals (the major one is in Modena) or festivals that engage in philosophy among other disciplines (in Turin, Pordenone, and many other cities). They are always very well attended. Young and not-so-young people pack town squares and rooms to hear the words of men and women philosophers. Of course there is an aspect of spectacle and entertainment in this phenomenon that can be very con-

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troversial. Yet the popularity of these festivals is a good sign. Evidently, especially in this age of crisis and faced with the violence that surrounds us, there is a need for “a meaning.” People think that philosophy consists precisely of the search for such a meaning.

Ontology of Contingency, Power, and Historical Space-Time A Conversation with Giacomo Marramao (Catanzaro, 1946)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? “Discipline” is a military term that has been transferred to bureaucracy and now to the techno-specialized division of knowledge into territories (the well-known disciplinary-scientific areas). For this reason, in the course of my work I have abided by Aby Warburg’s precept, namely, I have eluded the surveillance of the “border patrols of disciplines” by practicing along the shadowed border lines between different disciplinary languages. The unity of my philosophical journey relies not on a territory of belonging but rather on the persistence, in the various stages of my thinking, of two thematic epicenters that can be brought back to the questions of power and time. In addressing these two themes, I have not limited myself to entangling the two areas of theoretical philosophy and political philosophy. Rather, I have made them interact with other constellations of knowledge, from linguistics, to the history of ideas, theology, anthropology, sociology, the natural sciences, economics, and psychology. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene?

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In the 1960s, the principal philosophical trends that most affected my education were, on the one hand, the mutual tension between the perspectives of my Florentine teachers, that is, the historicism of the Renaissance historian Eugenio Garin (with his thesis of “philosophy as historical knowledge”) and the critical and basically antihistoricist Marxism of Cesare Luporini (who, after his polemics with Galvano Della Volpe, looked with interest from his ontological-existential approach at the antihumanist reading of Marx advanced in those years by Louis Althusser). Highly suggestive for my generation were also the phenomenology of Enzo Paci (with his journal aut aut) and Giuseppe Semerari (with the journal Paradigmi, starting in the 1980s); the new reception of Nietzsche prompted by the critical edition of Nietzsche’s works by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, both working in Florence; and Umberto Eco’s semiotics (I met Eco as a student while he was teaching at the Faculty of Architecture at Florence University). SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? Sartre’s humanistic existentialism was in decline, replaced by Levi-Strauss’ anthropological structuralism and Althusser’s Marxist structuralism. For my generation, though, Merleau-Ponty has been quite important. Foucault was still little known. The increasing interest in the Frankfurt School was coupled, on the one hand, with the Marx renaissance inaugurated by the discovery of that extraordinary laboratory constituted by the Grundrisse (the first sketch of The Capital), and on the other hand, with the rereading of Max Weber’s works mediated through the revival and new reception of Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? The first stage of my formation was marked by the decisive encounter with the works of Kant, Hegel, Tocqueville, and Marx himself. I started reading them during my high school years, when I devoured the classics of nineteenth-century literature, from Dostoevsky to Proust, Kafka, and Musil. The Marx I read was light-years distant from all orthodoxies. It was a Marx received through Althusser’s poststructuralist and antihumanist reading.

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From this, I matured into a critical position regarding the historicist legacy of Italian Marxism. In my first book, Marxismo e revisionismo in Italia (Marxism and Revisionism in Italy, 1971), my criticism did not even spare Gramsci’s theoretical contribution, which in my judgment was conditioned by Giovanni Gentile’s philosophical interpretation of Marx. Despite the highly critical evaluation of the idealistic legacy of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, already in my inaugural line of thought I advanced two demands, complementary and in mutual tension, which were destined to deeply mark my subsequent work. They were, first, the need for a scientific approach to the forms and structures of history, an approach capable of holding together moments of continuity and break, of history-as-process and history-as-event; and second, the need for a differentiated analysis of the dynamics, both material and symbolic, of the constitution of the subject. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects in them have interested you the most? The three dominating figures in my philosophical formation are Aristotle, who is the master of practicing philosophy as the creation of concepts, and Hegel and Marx, who have projected the “logic of the concept” into the historical present. I have viewed these three great classics as inflected, however, in light of three other great authors, who represent their necessary counterpart. These are Duns Scotus, with his challenge to essentialism in his Opus Oxoniense, one of the great texts of Western ontology; Leibniz, with his ideas of contingency and possible worlds and with his notion of topological space, which disrupts the Euclidean geometrical paradigm shared by Descartes and Spinoza’s metaphysical systems and thus anticipates themes of the contemporary spatial turn; and Benjamin, with his interruption of the historical continuum and his catastrophic-Messianic transformation of the present. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. My encounter with the Frankfurt School’s milieu produced a decisive turn toward deepening and widening, at the international level, the line of research I had started in Florence. This occurred during the years I spent at the Goethe Universität in Frankfurt between the beginning and the middle of the 1970s. In this period, which was for me very intense, I came

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into contact with the radical wing of Critical Theory. This was represented by figures such as Oskar Negt and Hans-Jürgen Krahl. At the same time, I came into contact with Alfred Schmidt and with such experts on Marx theory as Hans-Georg Backhaus, Ernst-Theodor Mohl, and Helmut Rechelt. Only in later years did I start a fecund intellectual exchange with Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, Claus Offe, and Axel Honneth, with scholars distant from the Critical Theory positions such as Niklas Luhmann and Reinhart Koselleck, and with leading figures in philosophical hermeneutics such as Hans-Georg Gadamer and Rüdiger Bubner. On the one hand, my reception of the Frankfurt School’s main leading themes certainly made me increasingly aware of the turn represented by the analysis of the reification mechanisms present in mass society and by the assumption of the theoretical-practical relevance of subjectivity as an objective factor. On the other hand, though, it disposed me to a critical attitude geared toward underlining the aporias inherent in Horkheimer and Adorno’s notion of totality in light of a close confrontation with the social sciences. From this, in a countermove to the continuity structure of the Dialectics of the Enlightenment, I developed a tendency to value the economic theory, political theory, and genealogical contributions of authors such as Friedrich Pollock, Henryk Grossmann, Franz Borkenau, Emil Lederer, Otto Kirchheimer, and Franz Neumann. This stage of my education produced, between 1973 and 1975, my works on the “hidden side” of the Frankfurt School, from Grossmann’s crisis theory to Pollock’s analysis of planned economy (their translation into English was encouraged by my friendship with Perry Anderson and the encounter with Martin Jay). Later, it yielded my 1977 Austromarxismo (Austro-Marxism) and the1979 Il Politico e le trasformazioni (The Political and the Transformation). In these two books, I examined the various ways in which European Marxism tried to grasp the radical mutations that occurred, in the period between the two world wars, in the relation between economics and politics, between organized capitalism and democracy. I compared such ways of understanding not only with the philosophies of the crisis but also with the analyses by Weber, Schumpeter, Kelsen, and Schmitt. Carl Schmitt was an author for the most part absent from the theoretical elaborations of the Left. To his “concept of the Political,” I devoted one of my first university courses during the academic year 1977–78. This was also the first course on Schmitt’s body of work to be taught in an Italian university after World War II. The pages I devoted to him the following year in my already mentioned book, Il Politico e le trasformazioni, were the target of more than a few criticisms. I remember the surprise, or the uneasiness, of various friends with whom, at the end of the 1970s, I engaged in an

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intense philosophical and political dialogue and who would later approach Schmitt with different eyes. Among them are Christine Buci-Glucksmann, Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, Étienne Balibar, and Giorgio Agamben (who at that time was a fine scholar of Heidegger, Arendt, and Benjamin, but still far away from the theorizations of the homo sacer and the state of exception). Out of this background, I have followed a research path oriented toward valorizing the “heretic” lines of Kulturkritik that are at work at the intersection of philosophy and the social sciences within the Mitteleuropean context between the two world conflicts. From this comes the attention I have devoted to the philosophical-political and epistemological debates within Weimar Germany and to the role played by the AustroMarxist intelligentsia (namely, Otto Bauer, Max Adler, and Karl Renner) within Viennese culture in the first three decades of the twentieth century. My interest in these themes has been motivated by two distinct and complementary theoretical reasons: on the one hand, the identification of the breaking points at which the crisis of (metaphysical and scientific) “essentialism” delineates itself; on the other, a focus on the topical moments when twentieth-century thought has thematized the events of the fragmentation of sovereignty and the dislocation of the forms of power and conflict. With respect to the first aspect, I would like to mention again the volume I devoted to Austro-Marxism. Together with subsequent essays on the same theme published in Italy and abroad, this book aimed at highlighting the innovative as well as problematic features of a line of thought that, on the one hand, reads Marx in light of the epistemological revolution represented by Ernst Mach and Otto Neurath, and on the other, in terms of political and juridical philosophy, confronts itself with Hans Kelsen on the basis of Ernst Cassirer’s fundamental 1910 essay, Substance and Function. Although they lie on politically opposite sides, the Austro-Marxists and Kelsen share the demand for a desubstantialization of notions such as State, Sovereignty, and People and for their translation into relational and functional terms. As for the second aspect, Il Politico e le trasformazioni represented both the product of my Frankfurt period and the start of a new research trajectory centered (through a confrontation between “Marxisms” and the Weberian/ Schumpeterian analysis of “rationalization”) around the metamorphoses of “the Political” in the passage from liberal society to mass society, from “Manchesterian stage capitalism” to “organized capitalism.” By translating some motifs of the Anglo-American historiographic and political-theoretic debates (C. S. Maier, P. Schmitter) into social-philosophical categories, the book identified the event of “corporate pluralism” as one of the main factors

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in the decomposition of sovereignty and regarded the 1930s totalitarian solutions not as a reinstitution of sovereignty but rather as the attempt to resist its fragmentation through practices of consensus and disciplining, discrimination and violent repression, geared toward the “nationalization” of the masses (both my first reception of Foucault and Deleuze, reinforced through friendship with Félix Guattari, and my confrontation first with the work and later with the person of George Mosse, go back to the 1970s). Disengaging Weber’s category of “rationalization” from its unilateral interpretation advanced by the majority of the Frankfurt School, the analysis I carried out in the book ended up focusing on the theme of the “polytheism of values” understood not as a harmonious pluralism of viewpoints but rather as a conflicting constellation of attack points. In contrast with its peaceful and edifying versions, Weber’s Wertpolytheismus seemed (and still seems) to me not a Pantheon but rather . . . a Pandemonium. Along this line, I connected Max Weber’s diagnosis-prognosis with Carl Schmitt’s conception according to which, in the “age of neutralizations and depoliticizations,” the “concept of the Political,” once rendered distinct and autonomous from the modern form of the State, should relate to the tragic dimension of the conflict of values and world-visions that marks the new technische Zeit. Starting from Il Politico e le trasformazioni, the cross-reading of Weberian and Schmittian themes and the problem of the transformations of the Political in the direction of a post-Hobbesian order (to use Philippe Schmitter’s terminology) constitute for me constant reminders and points of no return, as attested to by my 1985 book, L’Ordine disincantato (The Disenchanted Order) and the 1995 volume, reprinted in its third edition in 2013, Dopo il Leviatano (After the Leviathan). At a subsequent stage of my work, I reached a further conclusion: namely, that to grasp the roots of the processes leading to the crisis of the major structure of the modern Leviathan, one cannot simply rely on the “short wave” of traditional political philosophy. On the contrary, one must activate a “long wave” of analysis capable of engaging a real genealogical reconstruction of the presuppositions of Western rationalism. In this sense, a decisive turn in my intellectual itinerary is my 1983 work, revised for the third, 2005 edition, Potere e secolarizzazione (Power and Secularization). In this book, the philosophical question of time becomes central, and from then on, in axial relation with the issue of power, it represents the core of my research. The “theorem of secularization” seemed to offer the most effective analytical pattern to reconstruct the genealogy of power on the basis of the “long wave” represented by the break that occurred within Western thought due to the irruption of the symbolic constellation of Jewish-Christian linear time. Cumulative, irreversible, future-

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oriented temporality interrupted the paradigmatic, synoptic circularity of the Greek conception of time. This turned the prophetic word into the first form of disenchantment, and historical time became the trajectory of a progressive secularization of the eschaton. In line with Weber and Löwith and despite Heidegger and his history of nihilism and metaphysics, it is not only Athens but also Jerusalem that captures the destinal feature of the West. The metaphorical and symbolic constellation of “futural” time (with its pillars, that is, the ideas of Progress, Revolution, and Liberation) appeared thus as the inescapable horizon of reference for the modern concept of universal history or world history (Weltgeschichte) that, starting with Kant, was destined to permeate the entire journey of the philosophy of history between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. The book retraced the steps of Western rationalism from the perspective of the metamorphoses of intuition and the experience of time. In doing so, it made reference not only to philosophical, artistic, and literary sources (and it confronted the polemics between Schmitt and Blumenberg regarding secularization, the Begriffsgeschichte by Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, and Anglo-Saxon research on metaphor); it also took into account the journey of the natural and social sciences, from the first scientific revolution to the epistemological turn represented by Niklas Luhman’s systemic paradigm and René Thorn’s theory of catastrophe. Moving against the trend of philosophical postmodernism, to which it opposed the category of “hypermodernity,” the volume took its bearing from Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thesis according to which the cumulative and futural temporality of Progress is not merely a property of modernity; on the contrary, it constitutes modernity’s form, a “typically constructive (typisch aufbauend)” form whose activity consists in erecting “an increasingly complex structure.” On the basis of this presupposition, and through a philosophical transformation of Koselleck’s “semantics of historical times,” I concluded that the hypermodern experience of time, marked by an increasingly intense and vertiginous acceleration of innovation, is represented by the syndrome of the “past future” (futuro passato), that is, a future that is no longer awaited and intentioned as hope for change but is rather experienced as déjà-vu and repetition of the same. In a subsequent 1994 volume, Cielo e terra (Heaven and Earth), I retraced the long series of semantic transfers and metaphorical extensions through which the lemma “secularization,” the horizon of which is constituted by a typical Western dualism, namely, the pair eternity/secular, has changed from a terminus technicus (a technical term) originally born in the juridical field to a concept proper to theology and philosophy of history, and ultimately to a term denoting the crisis of all models of “oriented history.” This occurs in

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a hypermodern climate delimited, on the one side, by the disenchantment produced by science, and on the other, by the powerful return of myths and various forms of religious fundamentalism and imagined communities. While my claims on the “theorem of secularization” became the subject matter of intense international discussions, especially in Italy, Germany, France, and the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, I carried out a stricto sensu theoretical deepening of the question of time in two successive volumes, the 1990 Minima temporalia. Tempo, spazio, esperienza (Minima Temporalia: Time, Space, Experience), which was republished in a revised and augmented edition in 2005, and the 1992 Kairós. Apologia del tempo debito, which was published in English in 2007 as Kairós: Towards an Ontology of “Due Time.” In these books, which somewhat anticipate the themes of the “spatial turn,” I “laterally” shifted the perspectives adopted in my genealogical research on secularization. Against Bergson’s and Heidegger’s conceptions, which, albeit in different ways, postulate a pure or “authentic” form of temporality, more “originary” in comparison to its representations or spatializations, I argued for the indissolubility of the nexus space-time. Following up on contemporary postrelativistic physics, I moved the structure of time back to an aporetic and impure profile for which the spatial dimension is the inescapable formal reference, so as to understand temporal paradoxes. The philosophical alternative that I was advancing through a crossconfrontation with the languages of art and science took up the features of a postmetaphysical ontology of “displacement” and “difference,” understood in a clear break with the current versions of the topic of nihilism. Unlike postmodernity, such postmetaphysical ontology pivots not around the usual “overcomings” and “overturnings” but rather around a “perspectival deangulation”; that is, a radical displacement of the viewpoint through which the entire Western philosophical tradition—from Plato to Bergson, from Aristotle to Leibniz, from Nietzsche to Foucault, from Baudelaire to Benjamin—has visualized the “question of time.” From this point on, the category of difference has played a strategic, decisive role in my work. This category, which was obtained through a close confrontation (started already in the 1970s) with the variegated archipelago of feminist philosophical thought, becomes the reconstructive criterion for a nonidentity universal, understood in not only pluralistic but also intrinsically conflictual terms. This occurs in my most recent works, such as the 2003 Passaggio a Occidente (translated into English in 2012 as The Passage West), the 2008 La passione del presente. Breve lessico della modernitàmondo (Passion of the Present: Short Lexicon of World-Modernity), and the 2011 Contro il potere. Filosofia e scrittura (translated into English as Against Power). In these works, I elaborate a connection between the genealogical

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perspective (prevailing in texts such as Il Politico e le trasformazioni, Potere e secolarizzazione, Cielo e terra, and Dopo il Leviatano) and the theoretical view (represented by Minima temporalia and Kairós) with the goal of casting some light on the conceptual and symbolic constellation of our global present. One more specification is in order, though. The perspective of a universalism of difference (and a cosmopolitan multilateralism), which was already outlined in the 2003 Italian version of Passaggio a Occidente, is retrieved and developed further in La passione del presente. This is a book orchestrated in a series of key terms meant to operate a possible lexicon for circumnavigating the logic and structure of our world-modernity on the basis of different conceptual positions. One of Hegel’s famous claims assigns to philosophy the task of understanding its own time in thought. I think that this specifically philosophical responsibility, characteristic of the modern age, cannot be delegated to other forms of knowledge and even less to those who claim to be the repositories of resources of meaning. The view of an ontology of the present, however, cannot be confused, as is the case in Foucault, with an “ontology of actuality.” If one wishes radically to think of the present and bring it to the concept, one must be able to grasp its secret untimely aspect. This aspect (not oriented to the past but rather, à la Nietzsche, an anticipating aspect) carries within itself, as Kant would say, the signum prognosticum of a to-come understood not as “horizon” but rather as a symbolic “potential” capable of producing an opening of experience toward the future. This explains the sense of the title of the book. Passion of the Present (that is, of a present that addresses us) means not only philosophical reflection’s involvement in the destiny of its own time but also the way in which philosophical subjectivity, as well as any other subjectivity, is implicated by the present itself in bearing (patire) the burden of the present and its necessitating logic. The programmatic assumption of the book explicitly states the need for an interaction of the two poles constituting two different philosophical styles, namely the analytic and the hermeneutic. Keeping open the field of tension between these two traditions of thought is for me an inescapable condition for coming to terms with the dilemma of truth and interpretation, a dilemma that paralyzes contemporary philosophical inquiry. Additionally and above all, it is also an inescapable condition for welding the diagnosis of the present to the dimension of “the possible” and “the decision” and for orienting it in the direction of an ontology of contingency. This task seems even more urgent because of a global predicament marked, at the symbolic level, by the implosion of the future (and the domination of the “past future”) and, at the theoretical level, by the expanding gap between

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“absolutism” and “relativism.” The thesis that sustains the book develops on the basis of the influential picture of a world-modernity marked by the passage from the “colonization of the future” (carried out by the Western ideology of progress) to the “eternalization of the present.” The present’s imago aeternitas (image of eternity), which is marked by the paradoxical pairing of “agitation and sterility” (Badiou), feverish acceleration and stagnation, risks eliminating from the horizon the “kairological” dimension of juncture, and thus of possibility and contingency. The identity violence that, under the mask of religious fundamentalisms, characterizes (transterritorial and transcultural) conflicts in the “glocalized” world (a world simultaneously uniform and diasporic), is simply the interface of an epoch of “sad passions.” These sad passions are induced by the crisis in our sense of the future understood as a horizon of expectation. Next to the perverse tangle of the phenomena of depressive implosion and molecular implosion, which are to be brought back to the pathogenetic aspects assumed by the logic of identity, we can however observe that emancipatory drives emerge in various areas of the world. Such drives demand a multilateral reconstruction of the universalistic project—a reconstruction that takes into account that, paraphrasing Hamlet’s famous remark to Horace, there are more forms of rationality (and hence more ways to freedom and democracy) than have been dreamt of in our meager philosophy thus far. The threads I have delineated through the key words of my book aim at such a reconstruction. The underlying conviction is that the theoreticalpractical possibility of a universalism of difference that pivots on the logic of a “disjunctive synthesis” (according to Deleuze’s fruitful “Kantian” intuition) can blossom only on the ground of a radical criticism of the substantialized and reified notions of the Self, and on the basis of the understanding that all identities are irreducibly process-based, dynamic, and simultaneously relational and antinomic. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? I could not indicate only one book. As I mentioned earlier, Potere e secolarizzazione (Power and Secularization) represented an important step for me. But I have left it behind, as well as all other books I have written. So, I feel like saying that the book of which I am the proudest is the next one. Even if some young editors are surprising me by asking me to publish the English translation of my first book, which is almost five hundred pages long. . . .

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SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? Evaluations and statements of originality cannot be pronounced by the author. Therefore, I limit myself to listing the Leitmotive, the aspects that are most important for me. They are: rethinking historical space-time on the basis of an ontology of the contingent, that is, of the intertwining of contingency and necessity; the analysis of the double status of politics as process and event, praxis and catastrophe (in the etymological and epistemological sense of the term); the anti-identity and anti-supremacist definition of the universal on the basis of the criterion or viewpoint of difference. Those who are interested in learning more are invited to read my texts. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? Philosophy is not “reflection” on something but rather a conceptualization in thought of the implications of events, salient moments, and passages that redefine the structure of the world—for example, the passage we are experiencing from an old order that is no longer to a new order whose profiles are not yet clear. It is not a transition but rather an interregnum, as I have defined it in my works over the past fifteen years. I have tried to conceptualize such an interregnum by welding together the two perspectives summed up in the terms “secularization” and “globalization.” SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? I do not identify with the koine of biopolitics that seems to have replaced the common languages of hermeneutics and deconstruction. I find increasingly appropriate, however, the incipit from Adorno’s Minima Moralia: “what the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of . . . mere consumption.” It is consumption of goods and consumption of lives. The time acceleration induced by modern philosophy of history has increased despite (or perhaps precisely because of) the decline of the philosophy of history and has turned into meaningless and serial consumption of lives strained in the dynamics of accelerated, self-serving innovation.

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Confronted with this landscape of ruinous edifications, philosophy should not provide answers or recipes for the restaurants of the future. It should not present itself as a mega-agency of Meaning. It should simply recapture its originary Socratic vocation—that is, help in posing questions about truth, passion, and value correctly. This should be done in the awareness that, in the Babelic landscape of the Cosmopolis, philosophy finds itself in an almost identical situation to the one within which it was born. At that time, philosophy was caught in the metaxu between the sage-based knowledge of the Presocratics and the relativism of the Sophists. Today, it is trapped in the grips of the “theoreticians of the Whole” (cosmologists or builders of algorithms) and the postmodern praise of the fragment or the antiuniversalist vocation of multiculturalism. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? To help to understand that the precariousness of our lives is the necessary consequence of the instability induced by a world that is structurally unequal and, in its inner logic, antagonistic. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? Conceptualizing the present on the basis of its untimely aspect and assuming universal uprooting as the only and authentic way of approaching the truth. This would be the opposite of Heidegger. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. It is necessary to rethink the nexus of singular and common, freedom and necessity, and consider limit and contingency as resources capable of changing the world. It is also indispensable to establish a field of fruitful tension between truth and experience—truth is not a dwelling but a journey, a path.

Philosophy of Right, Historiography, and Individuality A Conversation with Fulvio Tessitore (Napoli, 1937)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? I am a scholar of the history and philosophy of Historismus. If one prefers, I am a historicist philosopher in the sense in which I understand Historismus, which I will explain later. I must immediately add some clarifications, though. First, not by chance have I used the German word to indicate the prevailing object of my studies and my self-definition as a “historicist.” I have done so because I wanted to better clarify, even formally, what I am referring to, what I think, and what I have tried to define through my now six-decade-long work. I have tried to dissolve the “hodgepodge” of meanings of historicism, which is not only a technical term for philosophy and history but also a term in ordinary language, in journalism for example. Second, I insist on the “nexus” between history and philosophy not in the sense of the idealistic “identity” of history and philosophy, in which I do not believe. I am in favor of a historic philosophy and a philosophical history (in the sense of not marginalizing the questions proper to “philosophizing”). For this reason, too, I reject the academic definition of “philosopher,” despite the fact that I have taught the history of philosophy in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy for almost forty years, after ten years of teaching history of political theories.

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SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? The philosophical landscape at the beginning of my path can be easily intuited if one thinks of my birth date: 1937. I approached my first scientific education immediately after World War II in a country (and in a particular and important town within this country, Naples) that emerged defeated after two decades of ruinous Fascist dictatorship. It was a country that felt an inferiority complex with respect to the victorious countries and their cultures. It was a country that, while interrogating itself on its own recent past, wanted to try to understand the causes of the dictatorship and the defeat and to free itself from its inferiority complex. Briefly, it was almost a “question of guilt” (Schuldfrage) even without the tragic character of the German “guilt.” Additionally, Naples was one of the few, if not the only, true Italian “capital city.” For centuries, it had been the capital of “world” states. One can think of the Norman, Swabian, and Angevin kingdoms. These are things that do not disappear, and that one can feel in the stones as well as in people’s attitudes. It was a town of great cultural traditions. It had often been the site of a cosmopolitan culture that was not local, not minor. Culturally, it had also been cosmopolitan in the first part of the twentieth century and in the Fascist years, thanks to the “cosmopolitism” of the Crocean culture, which had turned Naples into the main site of opposition to the dictatorship. In Italy, in the years immediately after the war, Gentile’s and Croce’s idealisms were still dominating. The two idealisms cannot be made to coincide because they are radically different, even if Croce and Gentile both shared the program of a “new Italy,” which they understood differently, if not in the pars destruens certainly in the pars construens. After the war, out of the need to liberate itself from the “idealistic hegemony,” Italy opened itself up to Existenzphilosophie, Husserl’s phenomenology (both were present already in the last years of Fascism), analytic or neopositivist philosophies, and Marxism. Marxism was understood in a Gentilean vein as philosophy of history (typical of this is the so-called and mystifying Italian “Hegelo-Marxism”) and not in a Crocean vein as a historicist method of knowledge and analysis of the real world against its logical legitimation by the philosophy of history. Later, Italy opened itself to structuralism, both philosophical and nonphilosophical, and to its various trends. One should not forget also the Christian and/or Catholic thought, which was not simply a rethink-

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ing of Thomism and neo-Thomism, as shown by the great theology of the Second Vatican Council. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? I addressed this in the previous answer. I must add, though, that beyond their late “orthodox” epigones, the rethinking of Gentile’s actualism and Croce’s idealist historicism survived through the subsequent, not always digestible, mixtures of old and new where at times the new were non-Italian movements that had been imported into Italy; for example, mixtures of phenomenology and Marxism, “positive existentialism” and “problematicism,” and similia. This mixing did not however reach the arbitrary Mischungen that occurred in the following years between, for example, (more or less arbitrarily) reinterpreted Nietzscheanism and Marxism, structuralism and Marxism, even Marxism and Schmittism, and so on. This phenomenon has caused some to speak of an Italian philosophy’s tendency toward “grafts” due to ontological weakness. This has been the case mainly for minor positions, however, since it was these that were weak, and not the Italian tradition. If one must speak of “grafts,” these “grafts” have been of a very different kind. For example, the “grafts” of idealism, both Gentile’s and (mainly) Croce’s, were of a strong, not a weak kind in the sense that the two Italian masters thought that it was “other” philosophies that had to be grafted onto the strong trunk of neoidealism, considered as the culmination of modern philosophy. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? With respect to the general landscape I have mentioned, I must speak of a certain “eccentricity” of my first education. My degree is not in philosophy but in jurisprudence. I took many classes (in history and philology) at the Faculty of Letters and at the famous Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples. I chose the Faculty of Jurisprudence for reasons that it is here useless to recall, but I do not regret it. Neither did I think of it as a fallback with respect to my already perceived “vocation.” The study of law (diritto), that is, the study of a rigorous logic of the concrete, responded to my taste for

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history and moral philosophy, for philosophy of action. My philosophical formation has never yielded to the “logic of the abstract,” and has greatly benefitted from this. I must say that thanks to my juridical studies, from the outset I have been a philosopher of science; that is, of the science of right. I have precociously been libero docente of the philosophy of right for “exceptional merits.” As a parenthesis, and so as to be clear to the point of banality, I want to say that if I could, I would abolish all positions in theoretical philosophy. Here too I am loyal to one of Croce’s golden principles, namely that “purus philosophus, purus asinus (a pure philosopher is a pure ass),” and I have seen not a few of these champions. A claim I made earlier helps me to talk about my “school” and its inspiring figures and themes. My great teacher, Professor Pietro Piovani, in the beginning was a famous and distinguished philosopher of right. He taught such a discipline at the Universities of Trieste, Florence (where I was his assistant), and Rome from 1952 to 1963. Then he moved to Naples, in the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, and there he taught first history of political doctrines and then moral philosophy (from 1968 to 1980) until his premature death at fifty-eight. Piovani’s teacher had been another, not less distinguished philosopher of right, Giuseppe Capograssi, who was a “philosopher Catholic” and not a “Catholic philosopher.” Capograssi used to say, and Piovani agreed, that “true” (in the sense of rigorous) philosophers of science are the scientists who practice it. In our case, that is, the case of Capograssi, Piovani, and myself, this means those who practice the “science of right.” It is one of Vico’s principles (one knows what one does) that distinguishes the “philosophers of science” from the “philosophers on science,” that is, those who do not know because they do not practice any science and yet claim to explain to others what science is. That is, the rejection (which belongs to Kant if not to others before him) of the distinction between what one teaches and how one teaches. I must add that Capograssi and Piovani were two of the most original and autonomous philosophers in twentieth-century Italy. Great scholars of idealism and of classic idealist authors (such as Vico and Rosmini; these were Capograssi’s and Piovani’s great authors, to whom they devoted fundamental works still current and cited), they were not idealists. They both had deep knowledge of the Italian philosophical tradition, which they never denied (not even in the war years I mentioned at the outset). Yet they were open to the newest experiences of their times, which they studied without ever losing the core problems of their own reflection. If we want to define the thought of Capograssi and Piovani, I will say that Capograssi worked at a philosophy of action meant as analysis of common experience, whereas Piovani worked at a phenomenology of the individual that resulted

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in an original reflection on “ethical objectivization and absentialism” (as the title of one of Piovani’s books goes), which also aimed at overcoming negative ontology (an initial theme in Piovani’s reflection). Capograssi and Piovani paid for their specificity with some lack of notoriety in terms of mass communications, although they were both very well respected within their worlds of studies and profession—Capograssi ended up as constitutional judge. They were non-asocial solitaries because of their personal choices regarding discretion and sobriety, which were also strong ethical ideals having to do with rigor in research. Their specificity was very important for me, because it kept me from being tempted by all sorts of cultural fashions, as I will explain later. Here I add that Capograssi’s and Piovani’s teachings combined with (and strengthened) another element in my first cultural formation, the one I received in my family and high school. My father was a rigorous antifascist (from him I was educated to independence, freedom, and democracy). My first teacher, one of my professors in high school (when I truly “exploded” as a very good student after I had been a rather poor one in middle school), was an excellent historian of medieval and modern times—Professor Nicola Nicolini, son of Fausto, the great scholar and publisher of Vico. I must devote a few words to him. Mainly a historian of the relations between Naples and Venice during the years of Charles I and Charles II of Anjou and of Naples’ Jacobinism in the eighteenth century, Nicolini was the student of Michelangelo Schipa, a well-regarded representative of positivist economical-juridical historiography. From Schipa, Nicolini acquired the philological and erudite method, which he never relinquished, not even when he converted to Croceanism more out of ethical-political than theoretical motivations. I owe to Nicolini my basic Crocean formation. I must clarify that I started with Croce the historian and then moved to Croce the philosopher. From here comes the peculiarity of my Croceanism and my Croce studies. Nicolini’s personality also helped me avoid feeling the neurosis of the “liberation from the idealist hegemony.” This enriched my autonomy, and the originality and independence of my choices and options with respect to the dominating trends in Italy. I have always preserved, cultivated, and perfected such a character without giving in to the temptation of “timeliness” and the related instrumentalizations, contortions, and so on. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects in them have interested you the most?

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Out of this situation, I graduated with a dissertation, “Vincenzo Cuoco filosofo dell’effettività delle leggi” (Vincenzo Cuoco, the Philosopher of the Effectiveness of Laws). Cuoco, a Vichian and a historicist, is the author of the first major book on the history of the Italian eighteenth century, namely, the 1799 Saggio storico sulla rivoluzione di Napoli (Historical Essay on Naples’ Revolution), published in 1801. He also wrote the 1804–06 Platone in Italia (Plato in Italy). After graduation, I studied Vichianism and the historicism of the Neapolitan and Italian liberals. From that, I moved to German Historismus, following up on Friedrich Meinecke. After a 1961 book on Cuoco, reprinted twice in new editions, and the 1963 volume, often reprinted, on Crisi e trasformazioni dello Stato. Ricerche sul pensiero giuspubblicistico italiano tra Otto e Novecento (Crises and Transformations of the State: Researches on Italian Thought on Public Rights Between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Centuries), in 1965, the year I became full professor at the university, I published a book, I fondamenti della filosofia politica di W. von Humboldt (The Foundations of W. von Humboldt’s Political Philosophy), and then in 1969 another book, Friedrich Meinecke storico delle idee (Friedrich Meinecke, Historian of Ideas). After that, without abandoning my interest in Italian philosophy between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries, I devoted the most consistent part of my research to the history and philosophy of Historismus, which I have studied widely in various essays and volumes: from Humboldt to Niebuhr, Ranke, Droysen, Dilthey, Meinecke, Troeltsch, and Weber. These are my authors. If I have to indicate three, as I have been asked, then I will name Humboldt, Croce, and Meinecke. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. As I have already mentioned, my research is characterized by the nexus of history and philosophy, so one could say that my theoretical conclusions are the outcome of the historiographic research. The core of this research can be found in my attempt to define the meaning of Historismus not as culture or Weltanschauung, but rather as a philosophy, a “type” of modern and contemporary philosophy that needs to be detailed in its own theoretical specificity, language, processes of conceptualization, functions, and goals. Of this philosophy, I have tried to identify the conceptual figures, the protagonists, and the tradition. I am convinced that Historismus is not only a choice of method, an episode in the methodological options of the historical-social sciences, which presumably started with Dilthey to end up in Weber’s systematization. I think that I have shown the consistency of this tradition, which,

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starting with Wilhelm von Humboldt’s Kantianism through philosophy of language (to be understood, à la Humboldt, as energeia and not as ergon) and philosophy of religion (Schleiermacher, Troeltsch, and Harnack), leaves classic idealist philosophies in the background and lingers on the great historian-philologists and scientists of life (Niebuhr and Ranke up to and beyond Meinecke, Hintze, the jurists of the historical school, social philosophers and historians, especially Max Weber, and so on). It then finds its own epistemological foundation in Dilthey, where it distinctly rejects, against the neo-Kantian hypotheses, all forms (negative, historical, etc.) of metaphysics and ontology. Historismus is a pluralistic, perspectival, and relational philosophy that within the sciences of spirit or culture represents a turn similar to the one marked by the theory of relativity or Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle within the physical and natural sciences, as Otto Hintze remarked in 1927. To say it briefly and effectively, I repeat here a very intelligent remark by Ortega y Gasset in 1923: it is the passage from the conviction that reality is absolute and knowledge is relative to the opposite, that is, “knowledge is absolute; it is reality that is relative.” The issue is the epistemological foundation of the particular sciences (Einzelwissenschaften), be they geistigwissenschaftlich or naturwissenschaftlich, acknowledging the interaction of the positive sciences within knowledge as function, the latter understood in a Kantian sense. It is understandable why the charge, the fear of falling into relativism understood as ethical indifferentism, makes no sense. The relativism belonging to Historismus is exactly the opposite. Historismus grounds a stronger ethics than the one based on precepts insofar as it rests on individual responsibility that, through action, turns into obligation (responsibility of obligation and not obligation of responsibility, to say it in Kantian terms). In other words, it is an ethics of action whose subject is the historically existing individual in solidarity with others. This is quite different from an ethics that derives from the translation of preexisting absolute principles that are then applied to the concrete cases of life, thus relativizing them. It is an ethics of responsibility that, without ignoring the ethics of conviction, is not exhausted by the drastic opposition to the latter. Rather, it consolidates and constitutes itself in the critical search for cooperation between responsibility and conviction while being inspired by the principle of limit and not that of the absolute. In this sense, Historismus as a philosophy is the opposite of the principles of identity and noncontradiction because its principle is that of individuality. Such individuality is considered as other-oriented, in solidarity but not communitarian or sectarian. It is the alterity of the “I” that is a “you” in relation to the other “I,” a “you” in his or her turn. In sum, it is

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a dialogical philosophy, whose criterion and measure is language as human language, as language of human speakers, who do not exist solipsistically. This is the opposite of the absolute, of the ontological absolutism of Heidegger’s die Sprache spricht. What descends from this is clear: for example, the rejection of a Verstehen supported by Heideggerian-Gadamerian ontological hermeneutics; the rejection of the ontology of existence as thrownness; the rejection of the eternity of time as “destinal” repetitiveness; the rejection of rationality as absolute essence of history. On the contrary, what is supported is a historical critique of reason stronger than the critique of historical reason. It is also evident that this Historismus has nothing in common with experiences such as the new historicism, metahistory, microhistory, and so on, or with “narrativism” resolved into realism and vice versa. The “narrativeness” of Historismus is the sought-for representation (Darstellung) of the actuality of the event as translation of Realität into Wirklichkeit. It is the conferral of meaning (Sinngebung) by the observer onto “the finite segment of the meaningless infinity of the world process,” which is Max Weber’s definition of culture. In this sense, I have devoted myself to the individuation of a “new history of culture,” and for it I have started a journal, the Archivio di storia della cultura (Archive of the History of Culture), which is now in its twenty-seventh year of existence. I must add that my Historismus shares nothing with Croce’s absolute historicism. Not that I think, as my teacher Piovani thought, that Croce’s idealism has nothing historicist in it. Rather, I think that Croce’s true historicism is not the one he systematized idealistically but the one that comes to him from his rethinking of Francesco De Sanctis’ philosophy of the real and rests on Croce’s attention for what he names “the moment of the particular.” Not by chance is this opposed to Gentile’s actualism, to Gentile’s “absolute” unity, which Croce defines as “mystical” in order to avoid all confusion with his own problematizing and critical thinking. That is why when, in 2011, I decided to gather a consistent part of my Croce studies, I titled the collection La ricerca dello storicismo. Studi su B. Croce (The Search for Historicism: Studies on B. Croce). SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? At least up to now, when I am seventy-seven years old, that is, for over fifty years of research activity, I have been given the fortune of preserving intact the curiosity, energy, imagination, and suggestions necessary for doing research. For someone like me then, all books, I would say all pages that

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I have written are dear, are representative of something of my research, whatever the economy of thought and method that governs them and that they express. This is not vanity, self-love, or love of self to various degrees of excess. It is the character, the test, the self-certification of research—to have a center to which everything can be brought back, directly or indirectly, explicitly or not, whatever the area of interest that is cultivated and addressed in various essays and books. I am convinced that I enjoy this condition that, if I am not mistaken, if I do not presume too much, holds together the multiplicity of my interests and makes them converge toward what is proper to my inquiry, somehow enriching and completing it, and showing its sought-for multilaterality. What I have just said does not mean that I cannot realize the different quality of the attained results, different quality that depends on various factors. In sum, I do not find the question I have been asked to be interesting. I even contest its legitimacy (not the curiosity that spurs it). At the same time, I acknowledge that there are books or essays that have their own (as it were) external relevance: for example, those that are tied to some important moment of one’s life or career. In my case, I could cite the book that provided me with an academic position when I was more or less twenty-six years old. Then I mention the 1965 monograph, I fondamenti della filosofia politica di W. von Humboldt (The Foundations of W. von Humboldt’s Political Philosophy), which is at the source of the main trend of my work, so much so that a dear friend and well established colleague wrote about me under the rubric “starting with Humboldt.” Or I could cite the book that found such a fortunate title that it became programmatic of the work to be done. Then I mention the essays collected in the 1971 volume Dimensioni dello storicismo (Dimensions of Historicism). Or I could cite the book that has had numerous reprints. It remains clear, I think, that these examples do not specify, as the question would like, “what the most representative book, the one of which I am the proudest” is; I do not prefer one book to the detriment of others. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? I think that they have already emerged from what I have said so far. If we want to sum them up, as it were without mercy for the articulation of my thought, I will say: the drastic, radical refusal of all metaphysical

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or ontological hypotheses; the attention to or centrality of the historical existence of individualities; the historical character, dimension, and function of knowing and acting; and pluralism. This suggests that I mention another aspect of my work that is very important to me. The consciousness of the pluralism of knowledge, joined with the awareness of the transformation of its traditional categories, has led me to study environments different from mine to grasp different processes of conceptualization and in any event overcome the by-now aged and inadequate logic of the “horti conclusi” (enclosed gardens). I have worked a lot in the area of Arab-Islamic historiography also on the basis of an old interest suggested to me by Professor Nicolini, his studies of Mediterranean Venice and Naples, and the courses I audited at the Istituto Orientale in Naples during my university years. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? I think that all philosophies have a connection with specific historical events. If anything, the issue is rather to say what “specific” means. This is natural for a reflection like mine, which has focused so much on the event (Ereignis, Entstehung) that one could define my historicism as “a philosophy of the event.” As I have mentioned, mine is a perspectival philosophy. Thus, I recall a fundamental claim by Ortega y Gasset: “I am myself and my circumstance,” where “circumstance” means one’s own way of being; one could say, citing a great Spanish historian, “la vividura,” “la morada vital.” At the (as it were) external level, I have already given some indications when I spoke of the years (which means the events) of my formation. I will say something more later. I do not know what the “timeliness” of philosophy is. In any case, it has never been one of my concerns. I have become interested in, I have started studying, historicism when it was considered a “dead dog.” I like to recall, because it is an ironically subtle testimony of what I am saying, that a dear friend and colleague from my first university, a well-regarded militant in the communist Left, presented with my works from those years (that is, around the middle of the 1960s), said: “You are a very good propagandist of spoiled goods. When my party, the Italian Communist Party, decides to reevaluate and retrieve Stalin, I will propose you as the right person to do so.” I was very happy and satisfied with this! Another dimension of timeliness that has never been attractive to me is the question of the “contemporaneity” of this or that philosopher. Within my

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scholarly interests and as a promoter of research (I have directed for twentyfive years and still direct an Institute by the National Research Council that edits the critical edition of Giambattista Vico’s works), I have heard a lot of talks regarding who Vico’s contemporaries would be. In such circumstances, I have read many erudite essays, which are the results of laborious, accurate, and intelligent researches. I have never been truly interested in them though. To clarify using the case of Vico as an explicative example, I will say that the timeliness and contemporaneity of a philosopher or a philosophy are not measured in chronological but rather in logical terms. This is shown by what remains an incorrect manner of historiographic work that nevertheless in this manner finds a justification different from journalistic curiosity. I am referring to the “historiography of forerunning and forerunners,” which is the most incorrect conceptual activity in the area of rigorous historiographic work, of the history of philosophy or better, as I prefer to say, the history of philosophical culture. In it, the norm should and must be not “categoriality” (which is something different), but rather “epochality,” knowing that an “epoch” is a field of forces in tension, which refer to each other: the old that dies after its work is done, the new that is born and develops, the future that prepares itself, voluntas quae fertur in incognitum (the will that will be taken into the unknown), a great principle of the unfolding of thought. To conclude, a last remark that concerns myself. I have never tried to be, I have never accepted being defined as, “an organic, engaged intellectual.” In the years when such figures of intellectuals were popular, I did not hesitate to define myself “a disorganic intellectual” and specify that I do not like the word “intellectual.” I will explain why, and explain also the meaning of my choice. I think that a scholar’s and a thinker’s true militancy must rely on the ethical value of his or her research (the ethics of responsibility), which thereby attains its own educational finalities of civil and public commitment. The organic intellectual has always appeared to me—not because of my imagination but as a result of continuous observation—as a “functionary” of the current “prince,” whether the party, the government, or this or that association or movement. These are all important things, let us be clear. All these things, however, require workers and consultants who are not, and cannot be, rigorous philosophers, whatever their quality and measure. Philosophers and scholars must persuade (if one wants to speak in these terms) on the condition that they are willing to be persuaded. Philosophers do not have the truth in their pockets, which then they distribute to the others. Philosophers must know this to avoid the continuous risk of relinquishing doubt, critical attitudes, and the problematizing character of research.

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The other figure, that is, the organic intellectual, is different, is something else. The other figure helps to persuade, to do propaganda, in not few cases attending also to his or her own personal interests, be they even just the ephemeral fame brought about by television or this or that commercial. This can be of interest to top models in fashion shows, with all due respect for this noble profession. The distinction is all the more important when, as in our case, we live at the center of a great “revolution,” the revolution of mass communications, which can be considered as an extraordinary new form of civilization on condition that we realize that it is one of the most complex, “pitiless” forms of society. Its dialectics always run the risk of turning into a game of exchange between true and false, between lie or mystification and intellectual clarity or honesty—the dialectics, as it has been well said, of “miracles and traumas.” SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? Everything has changed. Today (that is, for at least forty years, at least in Italy), we are in the middle of an “extraordinary transformation” of epistemological categories, ethical concepts, behavioral rules, and institutional dimensions. Unfortunately, at least in Italy (but perhaps not only in Italy, although in Italy especially), this physiological process has been and still is accompanied by unawareness if not even by cynicism (“addà passà ’a nuttata” [the night has to go by], as the great Italian actor Eduardo De Filippo fatalistically used to say). In this way, the transformation has turned into a pathological crisis in the sense of decadence and not of the birth of the new from the old that dies, or the birth of the different. I think I became aware of this a while ago. I have tried to respond to novelty because I have also realized that, at times, the concepts, the criteria on which I had been raised no longer matched the outcomes of my very own research, were no longer able to comprehend (in the sense of encompassing) and situate them. I have tried to do my part. Now I observe this as an aged person, but not as a survivor, at least for two reasons. The first is that I have always tried to know how to age and, as a consequence, I have tried to prepare the new for those who could welcome my legacy, whether great, small, or minimal. The second reason is that I have not egoistically limited myself to my own research work and my “fortunes.” I have always thought that a fundamental dimension of teachers who are capable of being teachers was—must be—the development

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of their own school (fare scuola). I harbor the presumptuous conviction of having done so and I am proud of it. This is the part of my work of which I am perhaps the proudest. I have helped a lot of young students to enter the world of scholarship, and I am proud of having helped, I believe, more than fifteen of them to obtain an academic position. With respect to this, I must mention, given that this is considered something exceptional and not normal, that these scholars have remained connected, affectionate, and loyal to me. All except three or four. I have never forgotten what a great pathologist once told me: “gratitude is a feeling that ends.” I too had to experience the bitter wisdom of such a warning. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? It should be clear by now that I think that today philosophy, already radically transformed by Kant’s understanding of philosophizing, is something completely new, especially in light of what I have said earlier concerning what I consider to be the current level, the meaning, of scientific research: namely, the interaction among positive forms of knowledge. For me, philosophy can no longer be conceived of in Aristotelian terms as the “science of first causes” or in Hegelian terms as the “science of being.” It is one of the positive forms of knowledge. It has the following task and future: enabling the epistemological grounding of particular and positive forms of knowledge and their interactions in view of their cognitive and active function. The problem of knowledge is no longer that of recognizing and expressing an ontologically preexistent object (which does not exist), but that of defining the laws of the process of objectivization, which is knowledge. This is the conclusion of a long process that starts with Kant (of course not the Kant-Fichteanism, the idealist Kant, the neo-Kantian Kant), if not even with Vico. I will say this so that we can smile together: when I used to teach and introduced my courses on the history of philosophy, when I remembered, I used to begin with the definition that an imaginary very intelligent student could give of philosophy: “that thing with which and without which one remains as one is.” At some point, I began not to say this any longer or to say it with extreme caution because a real, anonymous student, who was also an idiot, wrote in the university’s school paper that I was an enemy of philosophy. This perhaps was true, if the idiotic student and the other idiots had understood what I truly meant: namely, an articulation of the most convinced and greatest praise of philosophizing.

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SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? The current role of the “philosopher” is to show the meaning and value of the ethics of knowledge, which is the condition for public and private ethics. Together with an old teacher of liberal Italy, Giustino Fortunato, I am convinced that “on the path on which it is walking today, Italy (today one should say ‘the world’) will no longer be happy unless it recovers the taste for public and private morality.” Were this not to happen, then what would remain would be, as my old and wise writer feared, “to bow and anxiously recommend oneself and one’s homeland to the unknown god.” May it not be so! SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. Knowing and knowledge must live this umpteenth moment of “cultural transformation,” of transition to what is new and different, with consciousness and without cynicism so that globalization may be something other than inhuman and dehumanizing massification. Against the increasingly dehumanizing and inhuman technologies, which already the twentieth century tragically experienced and the twentyfirst century still experiences (racism, bombs, terrorism), one must be able rationally to think anew, historically and ethically, “the concrete utopia,” that is, the future as object of the ethical science of history, as judgment and not as justification.

Interpretation, History, and Politics A Conversation with Gianni Vattimo (Torino, 1936)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? I would define myself as an onto-hermeneutic thinker. This means that I place myself in connection with the philosophies of interpretation, starting with Heidegger, and I emphasize the ontological dimension of hermeneutics. I am not interested in the question of interpretation as a “technical” issue. Rather, I am concerned with the meaning of our being-there (esser-ci) as interpreters and not, let us say, as eyes that mirror the world “objectively.” SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? I began my university studies in Turin in 1954. Those were the years just after the post–World War II reconstruction. They were also the years after Fascism. A common idea was the need to get out of the cultural isolation Fascism created. That meant no more focusing on Croce and Gentile, no more idealism, and instead developing an interest in Anglo-Saxon

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philosophies, but with a variety of orientations: certainly an interest in Dewey, but also in Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. Marxism was very present: the Italian thinkers who had followed Croce and Gentile were drawn to it because of the shared historicism. Catholic philosophy was also present; for the most part, it was of a neoscholastic kind, with a form of non-Thomist spiritualism. Within the universities, what predominated was the division between secular (laicisti) and Catholic approaches. At that time, I was a militant Catholic. I was not a neoscholastic; rather, I was interested in a form of philosophy that remains open to religious experience. My teacher was Luigi Pareyson, who was a Catholic existentialist. I grew up in this climate, and after a dissertation on Aristotle and poiein, that is, artistic making, I started studying Nietzsche. Nietzsche is an antimodern (antirationalist, anti-Enlightenment, and so on) without being a Thomist. I think that this choice, which was at that time totally unwitting, anticipated my later interest in postmodernity. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? As I mentioned, existentialism was at the center of my interests, with Kierkegaard as its focus and Nietzsche as a second center. For my dissertation though, I worked on aesthetics. I studied Aristotle, often with reference to Thomas Aquinas’ commentaries. Pareyson’s Aesthetics was published in 1954. The proposal he advances in it pays close attention to the artist’s concrete act of making. My book on Aristotle, which appeared in 1961, owes a lot to this fundamentally anti-idealist interest, characteristic of the school of thought in which I took part. In those years, my religious commitment (I was a leader in the Turin section of the Catholic student movement, Azione Cattolica) took on an increasingly political color. I was a Catholic-Communist (cattocomunista), engaged in supporting the encounter between politically active Catholics and the Left. This also explains the sense of my work on Nietzsche—the interpretation of him I advanced understands Nietzsche as a philosopher critical of Christian-bourgeois ethics, a philosopher who does not—yet should and could—come to identify with the workers’ movement. One should note that this specific interpretation of Nietzsche occurred in and around the years of the 1968 movement.

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SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? Here they are: Nietzsche, and immediately after, Heidegger, whom I started reading in the late 1950s. It is not the Heidegger of Being and Time as much as the Heidegger of the Nietzsche volumes and of the works after the Kehre in the 1930s. It is the “worst” Heidegger, as one may want to say nowadays after the publication of his Black Notebooks. My interests pushed me toward listening to his thoughts on the history of being more than his analysis of existence. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. I would say that ever since the 1950s, I have read Nietzsche and Heidegger together. At a certain point, I even wrote an essay on Nietzsche and Heidegger for a Heidegger Festschrift edited by Von Hermann. Without the connection to Nietzsche’s nihilism, Heidegger risks being either a simple existential analyst or a neo-Kantian or a negative theologian, as Catholic readers often understand him. I think that the ontological difference—that is, being that does not coincide with beings—is to be understood as a feature within the history of being. It is being itself that “evaporates.” Its metaphysical image (ground, objectivity, and so on) dissolves. These are the themes of what I called, starting in the late 1970s, “weak thought.” Following up on René Girard’s work, I proposed weak thought as a secularized though faithful rendition of the Christian message. God’s kenosis, God’s Incarnation, is the same as the history of being as progressive weakening. All this entails a number of ethical and political implications. Ethics is not a positive realization of an eternal human model; rather, it is a constant process of reduction of the multiple forms of violence through which history is actualized. The same is true for politics, which is about the progressive elimination of all claims to objective validity on the side of laws and norms so as to bring everything back to a dialogue among free people and communities. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest?

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I keep thinking of my book from the 1970s, Il soggetto e la maschera (The Subject and the Mask), although now I should rather make reference to Della realtà (On Reality), which appeared a few years ago, in 2012. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? The originality of my works, if we want to use this expression, lies entirely in having historicized Heidegger’s ontological difference and thus pushed it beyond the metaphysical residue that still burdens it. It is this metaphysical residue that accounts for Heidegger’s misunderstandings, such as the more-or-less explicit antisemitism of his later writings, for example in the Black Notebooks. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? My “Leftist Heideggerianism” seems to me to be the only viable philosophy today. Today’s world is truly the world of “machination,” that is, the reduction of everything to the grand system of production-consumption in which mature capitalism actualizes itself. As many, including Adorno and the Frankfurt School thinkers, have thought, the logic of modern technics is intrinsically totalitarian. We can observe such totalitarianism at work today in the effects of globalization, which require an increase in social control mechanisms and the progressive liquidation of all privacy, of all personal freedom. For this reason, I think and write that Heidegger was correct in demonizing the world of his time in terms of Soviet Stalinism and Anglo-American capitalism. Yet he went terribly wrong in his belief that he should side with the Nazis. Stalinism prevented him from becoming a communist. This is what, if I may say so, happened to me, too. I could never be a communist because there was Stalinism, a wartime communism, whose ferociousness paradoxically came from its desire to establish a capitalist technology in a feudal country like early twentieth-century Russia. Of course I see the many dangers and problems with such a position. Heidegger’s mistake was not simply relying on Hitler, but also believing that one could realize a nonalienated society, a society that is no longer metaphysical and oblivious of being (what would have happened to the ontological difference then?). My hermeneutic communism runs the risk of falling prey of the same mistake. For now, I remain convinced that the

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qualification “hermeneutic” may save my communism from that risk. As Hölderlin said, we are a dialogue. The exit from metaphysics is always a task of humankind, not an “objective” fact. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? It seems to me that today, the tendencies among younger philosophers are largely dominated by what I consider as a “return to order,” a sort of will or desire to return to doing one’s job well, without too many questions about the limits and conditions within which one has to do it. It becomes important to be able to do historically grounded research, teach with passion, and educate other researchers capable of conducting analogous studies. Too much attention to the framework within which our work unfolds appears as a dangerous sin. One risks doing babbling philosophy, conversational philosophy, a kind of philosophy appropriate for media debates, and so on. I am very critical and suspicious toward this intensified professionalization of philosophical activity. It seems to me that what we lack is the “dialectical” inspiration we had inherited from Marxism. What we are told is that everyone should stay in his or her place, in any place he or she has been “placed” by the existing social order. I am reminded of the words from Nietzsche’s letter to Burckhardt, a letter Nietzsche sent when he was probably already insane: “I would have preferred to remain a Greek professor in Basel rather than being God; but I could not place my own comfort ahead of creating a world.” It is true, of course, that “creating a world” is an excessive task. It seems that our “professional” colleagues are more realist and concrete. Yet the order within which one should do one’s work (and nothing else) well is increasingly unreasonable and often inhuman. The globalization and homologation of tastes and ideas (if we can call them such) is increasingly intense and total. Is it simply one more philosophical mistake if we do not accept such a world? The precarious condition in which philosophers find themselves in schools and universities, a situation against which some react through an effort toward professionalization, is in all cases quite uncomfortable. Outside of such a condition, there are TV talk shows, some collaboration with weekly or daily newspapers, books (which are less and less liked by publishers, who are themselves in a situation of crisis) . . .

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SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? Under the conditions I described, the task of aiding the realization of a “hermeneutic communist society” does not appear to be a viable project. Today, the philosopher’s only task is perhaps that of a sort of general epoché, a suspension of assent. One of Saint Paul’s expressions is os mé, which in Greek means “as if not.” We should live in the world as if we were not in it, always with only one part of oneself. Briefly, I do not feel I am in the condition to answer the question about the task of philosophy today in a positive sense. In the end, I also end up choosing the way of the “professionals.” Reading, cultivating, teaching the texts of the philosophical tradition is a form of resistance, a kind of monastic work, as in the medieval monasteries . . . SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? I would like to refer to Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach, but in an inverted form: up to this point, the philosophers have believed that they were changing the world. Now, though, it is time to interpret the world. In this position too one creates a world; something happens. The monastic life was not the hermit’s life; for the most part, it was the cenobite’s life. Realizing communities of resistance is a way of doing politics, namely, grassroots politics . . . SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. One of the scandalous words spoken by the new pope, Francis Bergoglio, is “hacer lio,” which in the youthful Italian vernacular means fare casino (causing troubles), creating disorder, producing an event. Might this be a way of thinking of philosophy as deconstruction?

Global Justice, Democracy, Uncertainty, and Incompleteness A Conversation with Salvatore Veca (Milano, 1943)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? In my research, I have focused mainly on issues of epistemology, political and moral philosophy, and metaphilosophy. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? I am not a historian of ideas, so I’ll answer the question availing myself of personal memories. When I started studying philosophy in the early 1960s at the State University in Milan, Italian philosophical thought was mainly influenced by German culture, and partly by the French elaboration of intellectual traditions and styles that in turn depended on German culture. Phenomenology and existentialism shared the territory with a more traditional family of historicist perspectives. Among these, some variation of Marxism was quite prominent. The Milan school had a peculiar feature within the Italian panorama: it was sensitive to the developments in the philosophy of science and logic that came especially from the experiences of neoempiricism and logical 113

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positivism. At that time, so-called analytic philosophy was almost entirely absent. Furthermore, philosophical inquiry was for the most part strictly tied to its historical dimension. It was difficult to distinguish between a genuine philosophical elaboration and the historical forms of philosophical ideas. This historical vocation was connected to the idea of the civic function of philosophy. It was a widespread conviction that the offering of philosophical theory had to be first of all geared to the public sphere, to the political and social arena. More precisely, the underlying idea was that this was a must, not an option, for philosophizing. This diffused conviction, which is very clear in my personal memories, had been and would still be very influential on the ways of thinking, the styles of reasoning, and the ways of philosophizing in Italy. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty were very popular philosophers. Martin Heidegger’s popularity and influence became prevalent later, starting with the end of the 1970s, together with the Nietzsche renaissance. Ernst Bloch and György Lukács had some relevance within Western Marxism, and there was a lively interest in Marx’s youthful work, Antonio Gramsci’s thought, and Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s critical theory. Philosophers such as Bertrand Russell or Alfred Ayer had marginal relevance. Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and his Philosophical Investigations circulated only among a few adepts. John Dewey’s thought had a more significant circulation. At the Milan school, the interest in neoempiricism and philosophy of science generated some attention to the philosophical contributions by Gottlob Frege, Rudolph Carnap, and Willard Van Orman Quine. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? I think that my philosophical vocation defined itself against a background of tension and oscillation between my passion for scientific research and its history, and the literary tradition and its canon at that time. I was very

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attracted by mathematics and physics on the one hand, and by poetry and the novel on the other. I was not able to do much in either field, so I happened to fall in love with philosophy during my first year in college, for two intertwined reasons. First, I encountered a professor who in his teachings suggested that philosophy had a peculiar, and in at least one sense, superior and primary character in comparison with other forms of knowledge. Second, philosophy seemed to me capable of illuminating and giving meaning to practices, scientific theories, and artistic languages; it connected all families of world visions to a perspective centered on our ways of living and rooted in the experience of our temporally shared life. The professor I am referring to was Enzo Paci, a philosopher who had advanced his own version of existentialism and was involved, in the early 1960s, in research influenced by Husserl’s phenomenology. The idea of philosophy as inquiry into the foundations and meaning of scientific and artistic visions of the world, an idea that had fascinated me during his lectures, in turn came from a peculiar interpretation of Husserl’s thought and his development from the Logical Investigations to the Ideas up to the Crisis of European Sciences. The phenomenological school in Milan was very hospitable. Terence’s saying that nihil humanum a me alieno puto (I consider nothing that is human alien to me) could have been its motto. My interest in scientific research could develop freely. In those years, I cultivated this interest by following Ludovico Geymonat’s lectures on philosophy of science, and I subscribed with bland heterodoxy to Husserl’s perspective focused on the search for the meaning and foundations of scientific endeavors. At that time, both phenomenology, in the peculiar version advanced by Paci, and epistemology were research programs and styles with a clearly marginal status in the Italian philosophical panorama. I devoted my dissertation work to researching the interpretation of modalities in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. My hypotheses on the relation between possibility, actuality, and necessity in Kant’s thinking, on which I would then publish my first book, Fondazione e modalità in Kant (Foundation and Modality in Kant), were certainly influenced by the phenomenological perspective. An important effect on me, however, was my study of Peter Strawson’s The Bounds of Sense, a great book to which I would return many times in the course of my philosophical research. Thinking more carefully, I would actually say that this was my first encounter with analytic philosophy. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most?

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In terms of my epistemological interests, Kant, and especially the Critique of Pure Reason, remains fundamental, regardless of the variable proximity and distance from Kant’s theses that have characterized my philosophical research over the years. In terms of my interests in political and moral philosophy, the encounter with, and the study of, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in the middle of the 1970s were fundamental intellectual experiences. I am still convinced that Rawls’s theory constitutes for us the best terminus a quo from which to address contemporary dilemmas within the space of normative political theory. As for my metaphilosophical interests, which aim at a perspicuous portrait of the intellectual activity that constitutes philosophical inquiry, Bernard Williams’s work, and especially his most recent book, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy, remain crucial. I must also confess that I have found his lecture on Philosophy as a Humanistic Discipline particularly enlightening. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. At the end of the 1960s, my initial interest in epistemology had led me to extend my field of research from the natural and formal sciences to the social sciences. In those years, in Italy as well as in France and Germany, the revival of some versions of Marxism was one of the results of the movements of protest and social critique by the younger generation. Within that context, I worked on Marx’s economic and social theory, and I conceptualized it as a theory that shares the core of the research program of classic political economy and, in particular, of Ricardo’s value theory. Adopting the perspective held by part of post-Popperian epistemology, I advanced an interpretation of Marx’s theory of capitalism that showed its contributions and limits. My central argument focused on the shortcomings of the labor theory of value, which, for Marx, supports his entire critique of the capitalistic mode of production. My conclusions have been formulated in the 1977 book, Saggio sul programma scientifico di Marx (Essay on Marx’s Scientific Program). In many respects, they are identical with the position held by Jon Elster in his monumental Making Sense of Marx, where he says that “it is not possible today, morally or intellectually, to be a Marxist in a traditional sense. This would be someone who accepted all or most of the views that Marx held to be true and important. . . . I find that most of the views that I hold to be true and important, I can trace back to Marx. The critique of exploitation and alienation remains central. A bet-

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ter society would be one that allowed all human beings to do what only human beings can do—to create, to invent, to imagine other worlds.” To use

the jargon of Derrida, an extraordinary public intellectual and a terribly confused philosopher, the specter of Marx continues to float around in the crises of capitalism, especially against the recent background of economics having become financial and globalized. At the end of the 1970s, after a long struggle with Marxism as an ideology, my work came to focus on the normative criteria that would enable one to sketch the configuration of a better society than the one in which we find ourselves living. As I mentioned, Rawls’ theory of justice as fairness was fundamental in this respect. One should bear in mind that Rawls’ work and the philosophical tradition in which it is situated were almost entirely unknown in the Italian and European philosophical cultures. I remember discussing my path of research regarding justice theories with Philippe Van Parijs. In 1982, I had published the first outcomes of my research, La società giusta (The Just Society). In 1991, Philippe had published his Qu’est-ce qu’une société juste? We realized that our two books on just society exemplified the same kind of philosophical and civil commitment embedded within traditions and styles of political philosophy that were alien and hostile to them. During the 1980s, I elaborated a perspective that showed how a conception of social justice could be interpreted as a theorem to be inferred from the axiom of the equal status of democratic citizenship. A theory of democratic equality is, in some ways, the presupposition that needs to be explicated to account for the normative commitments of justice as fairness. The focus of my research turned toward a theory of democracy understood as an intrinsic and noninstrumental value. In other words, I wanted to show that the core of ethical value underlying the form of democratic life entails the ideal of social justice. Of course, alternative conceptions of justice are possible, as Rawls recognizes through his famous distinction between the concept and conceptions of justice and through resorting to a generalization of the idea of collective choice or social contract. My thesis is that justice as fairness is the conception that best approximates what the ideal of a democratic form of life demands in terms of the design of basic institutions, norms, public choices, and social practices. The thesis implies that the shortcomings of current democracies, which are subject to challenges and pressures distorting their foundations, are symptoms or reminders of the possibility of severe experiences of the loss and dissipation of the criteria of social justice. In any event, my research in political philosophy, which occupied me greatly in the 1980s, took place in a context in which the boundary between theoretical involvement and ideological commitment

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was vague and porous. This vagueness and porosity probably depended on the vocation to civil and political functions that the available philosophical perspectives which I mentioned before embodied. This vocation remained as a persistent trait of philosophy as a profession, at least within the Italian and partly also the European context. Amid the great geopolitical earthquake of 1989 and the early 1990s, my conviction grew that it would be worthwhile giving some form of coherence to, and moreover inquiring into, the possible connections among the various research areas that had occupied me over the years. At that point, I was attracted by the idea of a genuinely philosophical research program beyond all ideological commitment. Thus, in the 1990s, I worked at trying to keep together the outcomes of my epistemological and normative research. What I had in mind was a theory of rightness (giustezza) that would make explicit the connections between questions of truth, justice, and identity. At the center was a very simple idea: namely, that we are induced to do theory, in science as well as in philosophy, when the boundary between the certainty and uncertainty of our beliefs becomes essentially altered in a variety of circumstances. It is uncertainty that demands theory. I have examined the question of the demand for theory in three philosophical meditations. The first focuses on questions of meaning, realism, and truth. The second centers on what holds true for us within the space of ethics and politics. The third focuses on the answers to the question of who we are as distinct from the answers to the question of what we are. Truth, justice, and identity are at the core of the three meditations in a book, Dell’incertezza (On Uncertainty), that was published in 1997 and that, I think, constitutes some sort of a terminus ad quem but also a terminus a quo of my philosophical research. Some critic remarked that my philosophical meditations are a reformulation of Kant’s three famous questions concerning what we can know, how we should live, and what we should hope for. I thought that if that were the case, then one could recognize that, at least, in philosophy, one never forgets one’s first love. In any event, I have used the outcomes of my research on uncertainty to pursue at least two projects. The first has to do with the main puzzle for political philosophy in the last several decades, that is, the problem of global justice. The second has a metaphilosophical character and questions the attempt at identifying the specific nature of philosophical inquiry, as opposed to the activities of other kinds of intellectual professions. With respect to the first project, I have been working at writing something like a prolegomena to a theory of global justice with an awareness of the difficulty of the endeavor, as attested by the persistent controversy

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between political and cosmopolitical philosophers, to use Thomas Nagel’s efficacious expression. I have advanced four fundamental ideas that can orient us in the search for an idea of justice that may be valid for everyone and everywhere, as Amartya Sen has suggested in his ambitious and controversial work, The Idea of Justice. These four ideas are: (1) the idea of a reasonable and situated utopia so as to have an adequate perspective available; (2) the idea of human development as freedom so as to adopt an evaluation criterion that is as independent from contexts as possible; (3) the idea of minimal procedural justice so that it can offer us a method of theory construction; and (4) the idea of a degree of institutional, cultural, and economic connection so as to have indications of where to look in the global space. At the center of the prolegomena for a theory of justice without borders I have proposed an argument in favor of fundamental human rights. This argument is focused on the priority of evil rather than on some idea of human good, because the idea of human good is inevitably indebted to religious, ethical, or cultural contexts, whereas on the global scale, pluralism is a fact. With respect to the second project, I have tried to delineate the essential traits characterizing philosophical activity in comparison to other activities, in primis scientific endeavors. Toward this goal, I have identified a peculiar tension that, in philosophizing, is at work in a prominent way or at least in a way difficult to find in other kinds of intellectual inquiry. In brief, the main thesis is that philosophy cannot escape its own history through time. To illustrate the main thesis, I have availed myself of two expository devices or two images. The first is the image of the connections explorer, who aspires to a very high degree of generality and abstraction in the solution of problems. The second is the image of the memory cultivator, that is, someone who guards the repertoire of alternative ways of seeing and evaluating things that belongs to the complex and plural philosophical tradition. The tension between the activities of the connections explorer and the memory cultivator accounts for the fact that we can consider as interesting and philosophically productive our conversation with Plato or Leibniz, Descartes or Hume, Frege or Wittgenstein, Weil or Arendt. This conversation does not necessarily imply agreement; it can rather have the features of disagreement or conflict of ideas. This however does not hold true in the same way for those who are involved in research activities in astronomy or astrophysics. For them, Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe can certainly be interesting; but they are interesting, if they are, only from the perspective of the history of scientific ideas, and not from that of the practice of scientific research. If Michael Oakshott’s and Richard Rorty’s solemn expression “human conversation” within time has any meaning,

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such meaning is clearly exemplified in the tension between the two types of intellectual activities of exploring connections and cultivating memories. This induces us to reflect on the historical and contingent character of our ideas concerning both what is there and what has value for us. Now, in contemporary philosophy, the recognition of the contingency and genealogy of our ideas has often been accompanied by the renunciation of all attempts at justifying the ideas that are rightly deemed as true and important for us. In my research on the idea of incompleteness, I have tried to explain that there is absolutely no necessity to abandon the justification and clarification of the reasons in favor of or against specific ideas. I am convinced that we can consistently acknowledge the historical and contingent character of our beliefs and persistently attempt to argue for and clarify reasons in favor or against those ideas. Otherwise, why should we take seriously the solemn, elusive, and yet precious ideas of a human conversation within time? The provisional outcomes of my research are contained in my 2011 book, L’idea di incompletezza (The Idea of Incompleteness). I think that the four sections of this book, in which the idea of incompleteness is focused within different domains, are complementary to the philosophical meditations contained in the volume Dell’incertezza. They deal with the nature of our responses to uncertainty within both science and philosophy, whereas the main motif of the 1987 book addressed the various circumstances in which theoretical questions are formulated in science as well as in philosophy. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? I think that it is Dell’incertezza, but I wish it were a new book in which the paradigms of uncertainty and incompleteness work jointly to cast light on some persistent philosophical issues. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? The question is embarrassing. I can only say that I am fond of a strategy that, on the one hand, attempts to explore the background of our philosophical hypotheses and clarify their reasons, and on the other hand, aims at connecting the important theses that originate in different contexts and are thereby immersed in a wider and more general context. At times, when things go well, one can highlight new and surprising perspectives. If the strategy fails, then one starts all over again, immer wieder, as Husserl used to say.

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SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? If in philosophy we are geared toward a perspicuous image of ourselves and the world of which we are part, then it is difficult to escape the time in which we happen to exist and coexist. Nowhere is there space for a cosmic exile, as Quine has suggested. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? For someone like me, who started doing philosophy in a context in which the relation between theory and political and social practice was stable, prevailing, and cogent, it is natural to remark that we are witnessing profound transformations both in terms of political and social activities and life, and in terms of philosophy, which takes up an increasing professionalization attending the increase in the division of intellectual labor. I am describing, not evaluating or providing a commentary on things. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? In his beautiful and short introduction to philosophy titled What Does It All Mean? Thomas Nagel has written that philosophy is the intellect’s adolescence. It is difficult to think that a culture that deprives itself of the contributions of philosophical inquiry is a more mature and responsible culture. The fundamental themes for a philosophy of the future will emerge on the background of the changes and transformations that will affect our ways of self-orientation in the world, from our cognitive and ethical standpoints. Innovations and developments in scientific knowledge will require a philosophical answer that, adopting a compatibilist perspective, does not accept the reductionist pretense. The changes in our ways of coexisting in “humankind’s great city,” as Giambattista Vico said, will in turn require a philosophical response that encourages us to look at ourselves and the world with “the eyes of the rest of humankind.” In circumstances of uncertainty, it will be natural to acknowledge that, as they used to say in the remote time of the French

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student revolution in 1968, c’est n’est qu’un début (it is just a beginning). Therefore, la philosophie continue (philosophy continues). SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? Hegel was right when he claimed that philosophy is its own time “apprehended in thought.” What Hegel would not have accepted is that our philosophical perspective on the current time is only one among many possible and alternative views. On the contrary, I am convinced that this is precisely the case. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. To the generations of the twenty-first century, I want to suggest two maxims on which to reflect, if they so wish. The first is by Robert Musil, the author of The Man Without Qualities, who writes: “To pass freely through open doors, it is necessary to respect the fact that they have solid frames. This principle, by which the old professor had lived, is simply a requisite of the sense of reality. But if there is a sense of reality, and no one will doubt that it has its justifications for existing, then there must also be something we can call a sense of possibility.” I wish that both the sense of reality and the sense of alternative possibility in difficult times were taken equally seriously, at the same time. And I wish that the sense of possibility took advantage of its tension with the past of the human conversation, and kept the past’s resonance alive throughout time. The custodian of the past is the memory cultivator, and such a past does not identify with the repertoire of our own intellectual tradition, which is only one among the great traditions in the world. I wish that in this past, there remained the echo of an essential plurality of world traditions. Hence comes the second maxim on which to reflect, if one so wishes. The maxim comes from Confucian wisdom: be loyal to yourselves, and therefore be open to others.

THREE

IMAGINATION, ART, TECHNOLOGY

Technology, Communication, and Aesthetics of the Sublime A Conversation with Mario Costa (Torre del Greco, 1936)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? When I was young, I turned my attention especially to art and poetry, and I looked for philosophies capable of helping me understand them. In the end, I can define the result of my work as an aesthetic theory that provides clues for a philosophical anthropology. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? In the 1960s and 1970s, Italy was intersected by all kinds of FreudianMarxian-Lacanian-Heideggerian-semiotic-hermeneutic-structural-deconstructionist combinations. I paid close attention to all of this, yet with the feeling that what was announcing itself in these combinations was a general crisis of the symbolic and a withdrawal of the notion of sense. Since the beginning of the 1980s, I have searched for the origin of this progressive weakening of the theoretical, which was increasingly forced to fold itself into a minimal philosophy made of “singularities,” “life forms,” interpretations of interpretations, “philosophies of the body,” and so on. I

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found an origin of that weakening in the role that the new technological situation was playing, and would increasingly play. I then began to think about what, as a consequence of this, could ensue for aesthetics and our already diminished artistic productions. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? I provided some indication of this in the preceding answer. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? I have not belonged to any “school,” and I have had no masters. The first books I read when I was twelve were Freud’s Introductory Lectures to Psychoanalysis, Rimbaud’s life and poetry, and Nietzsche’s polemical essay Contra Wagner. These precocious readings helped to keep me substantially away from all schools and academism. For me, philosophy has not been an academic question but a sort of speculative restlessness that has constituted the very meaning of living. The situation I mentioned earlier, in the form I perceived, characterized the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1950s, though, at the time of my university studies, which I did at the not-yet State University of Salerno, the situation was quite different. The entire cultural climate was pervaded by either an idealist-Crocean or old-Marxist inspiration. My lack of adhesion to either direction pushed me to move away from philosophical studies. I associated myself with a small group of psychologists and psychoanalysts working at the University of Naples. My intention was to continue my studies in that direction. Only after my college degree in education and after I obtained a position as a high school philosophy teacher did I start to confront the philosophers more than philosophy. I moved to teaching at the university level at the beginning of the 1980s, after twenty years of teaching in high school. I became convinced that I should not be too embarrassed of my high school teaching years, given that both Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, for example, did the same. At the university level, I have tried to teach something meaningful, first as associate and then as full professor of aesthetics.

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SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? Nietzsche’s Human All Too Human and The Gay Science, Spinoza’s Ethics, and Harold Innis’ The Bias of Communications. What was most interesting for me in Nietzsche was his throwing the truth in our faces. More than the seventeenth-century great moralists, Nietzsche was exhaustive and implacable. As for Spinoza, I was interested in his antihumanism. Compared to his, Darwin’s paled. As for Innis, Heidegger’s Question Concerning Technology appeared in 1953; Innis did away with the instrumental conception of technology before Heidegger, and did so concretely while also providing a possibility to continue his work. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. My philosophical reflection has time after time organized itself around some fundamental questions that it has identified and penetrated, namely, the aesthetics of communication, the technological sublime, and media anthropology and ontology. I have been discussing the technological sublime since the middle of the1980s. In 1990, the first edition of the book with that very title, Il sublime tecnologico (The Technological Sublime), appeared. In 1994 and 1995, French and Portuguese-Brazilian translations, respectively, were published. Il sublime tecnologico was a concise little book that provoked immediate reactions. It was necessary to say something regarding what was happening, and even more what would be happening, in art and aesthetics—and not only those fields. It was a matter of understanding what would happen to sensibility, perception of the world, and human life itself after the irruption and pervasiveness of the new technologies, which were barely announcing themselves and no one could yet foresee entirely. The Technological Sublime aimed at proposing, first, an aesthetic theory geared toward thinking about the fate of art in the epoch of the new technologies. At the time when this theory was formulated, reflections on art moved between those who announced that art’s death had already occurred, those who claimed that art continued to live because it never ceases to die,

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those who continued to speak of art as if the twentieth century had changed nothing, and those who made all possible theoretical efforts to justify art’s commercial drift, which became increasingly triumphant and explicit. My proposal arrived in this context, and it was clear and sharp: do away with art and all aesthetic categories that had accompanied it up to that point and focus instead on another strong aesthetic category—the sublime. In my opinion, what was happening technologically offered a new and different possibility precisely for the sublime’s self-manifestation. The matter was, on the one hand, recognizing that, starting with its nineteenth-century beginnings, technology had worked as a separating and destructive force with respect to an entire artistic-aesthetic tradition; on the other hand, trying to extract, out of its incontrovertible and inalienable existence, what technology in turn could offer to what used to be the fields of art and aesthetics. In 1983, the book on the aesthetics of communication, which precedes the most mature and comprehensive volume on the technological sublime, proposed and conceptualized an aesthetics of simultaneity at a distance. Simultaneity at a distance was made possible by communication technologies and was able to subvert and reinvent all traditional notions of event, presence, form, and space-time. Within the aesthetics of communication, the claim was first made that the aesthetic feeling of the beautiful would be replaced with the sentiment of the sublime. At this point, a more general aesthetic theory became necessary. It took shape in The Technological Sublime. First, the book traced the history of the sublime following its metamorphoses and ways of manifestation: the ancient rhetorical sublime, the nineteenth-century natural sublime, and modernity’s industrial-metropolitan sublime. Then the book indicated how the sublime was always born from out of something exorbitant, extreme, and excessive. The new excess, that is, the postmodern excess, consisted of the set of new electrical-electronic and digital technologies that were self-developing and self-organizing into a system that completely escapes all possibilities of human control and management. This new manifestation of the sublime on the one hand indicates the weakening of subjectivity and the fading away of art with its entire apparatus of categories such as beauty, style, artistic personality, expression, and so on. On the other hand, it may give rise to a still-aesthetic sentiment born precisely from desubjectification and the suppression of all symbolic elements and meaning in the products that it yields. Ever since its outset, this theory revealed that it would not and could not be limited to an aesthetic theory because all its claims entailed immediate anthropological aspects.

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In The Technological Sublime, the dimension of the social fades away in the conviction that between the technological and society there is not a reciprocal action, but rather a unidirectional action by the techno-logics of (increasingly significant and dominating) instruments on the anthropological configuration that precedes and grounds all social dimensions, which turn out to be constituted and acted on by it. It is only at the end of the twentieth century that globalization, worldization, and the “new economy” (all effects of “the Net”) highlight the dependency of the social on technomediated anthropology. The Technological Sublime had claimed this point ahead of the establishment of “the Net,” and had considered the social as a surface event void of philosophical interest. The Technological Sublime proposed an aesthetics of the “event” with the conviction that communication technology would overcome recording and memory-based technologies, and that the latter would end up serving the former. Today, nothing seems to be truer. Cellphone traffic (connectivity and communication compulsiveness, SMSs, sexting, and so on) and Internet traffic (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Skype, and so on) attest that live communication is the dominating anthropological activity. If correctly understood, surfing the Internet is nothing but a constant live communication with memory at its service. In the technological sublime, the subject ineluctably retreats into the background until the subject dissolves in technological excess. This fact became increasingly evident after the appearance of cellphones and the Internet, which did not exist at the time when the book was written. Behind SMSs, sexting, Facebook encounters, Twitter, and being constantly connected there is no longer a subject but only the shell of a subject, an impersonal and empty impulse toward communication. The Internet’s philosophical anthropology as delineated in The Technological Sublime claimed that (1) email, a fundamental function of the Web, increasingly belittles writing, which is the traditional organ of thinking. Within the Internet, a program such as Skype, which enables face-to-face communication in real time, further deprives writing of any anthropological relevance and reduces it to a sort of educated language, similar to what Latin was in the Middle Ages. This fact is confirmed today by what happens with cellphones, where a program like Smartchat moves everything from reading SMSs to viewing instant pictures perceptible for a few seconds and then disappearing soon after. The Technological Sublime claimed that (2) the Internet, by being an inexhaustible resource of the symbolic, in fact weakens all symbolisms, revealing their relativity and groundlessness. After the Internet, no one will ever be able to coincide with his or her own symbolic and dwell in

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it firmly and stably. The Technological Sublime (3) paired the liquidation of the subject with the formation of a hyper-subject put to work by and made of the Internet. By this, I meant two things: first, the Internet’s ability to create hyper-subjects, such as the “grillini” (that is, the followers of comedian turned politician Beppe Grillo) in Italy or the “jihadists,” which are real network hyper-subjects; and second, the hyper-subjectivity of the network itself. This means that the network constantly grows upon itself acting as a hypersubject, that is, as a subject that continuously implements itself and will end up emptying out and making all other subjectivities useless. The Technological Sublime argued that (4) virtual communities are not true communities because whereas subjects are behind communities, behind connectedness is their caricature: the Internet subject is a shell void of content. For The Technological Sublime, the synthetic image constitutes a mutation that interrupts the history of images and is rather defined as an “epiphany withdrawn within itself” (1982) or an “aselfhood,” that is, a new kind of reality completely independent from subject and object (but the same can be said in general for all synthetic products). The Technological Sublime attributed another feature to the synthetic image, additional to its radical break with the entire past history of images: namely, its ability to render the intelligible sensible. This has nothing to do with rendering “the invisible visible.” On the contrary, it means that in a synthetic image, what truly appears and is given to be seen are the intellect’s logical-mathematical functions. This means that with synthetic images the ontological planes and topology are radically overturned. First of all, though, The Technological Sublime was an aesthetic theory aimed at thinking about the destiny of art in the epoch of new technologies. The Technological Sublime denies one of the basic tenets in traditional aesthetics: the principle that a fundamental difference exists between a first level having a material nature and a background having a spiritual nature and truly constituting the work of art. On the contrary, it claims that everything turns out to be sensible and only sensible; the invisible, that which remains hidden behind the sensible, is nonexistent; in the images, sounds, and space-time generated by the new technologies, everything rises to the surface, and the visible is deprived of all of the mysticism of depth. For the same reason, The Technological Sublime took distance from Lyotard’s sublime and its “representing the irrepresentable” or “making the invisible visible” because, as I have already said, The Technological Sublime claimed that everything is visible and there is no invisible that should be rendered visible. In other words, it claims that the age of “representation” is over and the age of “presentation” (epiphany withdrawn in itself or aselfhood) has just begun. The equivocation is still and always the same, namely, the wish

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to represent the immaterial through matter. In the technological sublime, the immaterial, that is, the immaterial of fluxes and energy fields, has no need to be represented because it presents itself flesh and bone, turning this theory into an aesthetics of the immaterial. The Technological Sublime maintains that Benjamin’s theories on aura and reproducibility now appear completely meaningless. Benjamin’s words regarding the famous question of reproducibility, which are still repeated like a broken record, were simply babblings having to do with photography and cinema. Already in those times, radio was itself capable of shuttering the very notion of reproducibility. Through the radio, the sound (for example, the live performance of a concert) is broadcast from afar and multiplied an infinite number of times, yet it is not “reproduced” because it happens in real time. Furthermore, nowadays a random program is capable of generating an infinite sequence of images that are not “unrepeatable originals”; rather, they are technologically produced and therefore void of any aura. The Technological Sublime situated itself radically beyond the symbolic. The origin of its aesthetics consisted precisely in the liquidation of the symbolic. Considering “meaning” as an obsolete and useless category, it advanced an aesthetics of pure “signifyings” without signifieds. In sum, the main features of the technological sublime as an aesthetic theory are as follows: 1. Production and “fruition” abandon spirit and appear as sensorial facts. 2. Interiority is bent externally and the limits between interiority and exteriority thin out to the point of disappearance. 3. From the notion of “artistic personality,” we move to the concept of “aesthetic-epistemological researcher.” 4. Productions are no longer marked by the “symbolic”; rather, they have a clearly cognitive essence. 5. From the expression of the “signified” we move to the predominance of “signifyings” and their activation as such. 6. The notion of the “subject” thins out until it disappears in favor of an aesthetic “hyper-subject” dependent on and constituted by the Internet. 7. “Flux” and “event” replace “form,” a strong category in traditional aesthetics.

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What has happened since the formulation of The Technological Sublime has not proved me wrong: ASCII art, digital art, glitch art, digital poetry, tradigital art, software art, telematic art, system art, generative art, virtual art, computing art, viral art, electronic literature, hacker art, computer poetry, pixel art, net art, codework art, and so on. All of this finds a place within the indications provided by The Technological Sublime, and can be understood by it. All these manifestations, and many others, consciously or not are inspired by and put to work an aesthetics of the immaterial which is asymbolic, made of pure signifyings void of signifieds, desubjectivized and alien to all expressiveness, made of fluxes and void of all will to preservation. The Technological Sublime was all this, and now all this best represents the technological sublime. The Technological Sublime has been the attempt to think about art, aesthetics, and anthropology within the situation that was then starting to delineate itself and that has increasingly become ours. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? The 1990 work titled Il sublime tecnologico (The Technological Sublime). SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? Starting with the 1980s, it seems all original to me. Media aesthetics and the methodology to build it were nonexistent; they are identified and developed in my 1990 L’estetica dei media (Media Aesthetics). Il sublime tecnologico appeared in the same year. It was followed by works that have thematized notions such as the “aesthetic of fluxes,” “photography without subject,” and “media ontology.” Currently, I am concerned with a work that is situated in between the philosophy of technology and philosophical anthropology. I think that the content and the ways in which these essays are argued for and elaborated can be considered original. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? Somewhere, in Who Is Nietzsche’s Zarathustra?, Heidegger writes that the task of thinking is to reveal the essence of modern technology. I started doing precisely that before I knew of Heidegger’s essay, and obviously I agree with him.

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For centuries now, I think that the most that philosophy can do is to think about the current times. This is what I have at least tried to do, and this constitutes the “timeliness” of my thought. I am however in total disagreement with Heidegger on two fundamental points. First, he stopped at modern technology, the technology of thermodynamics and electromagnetism. He should have made a greater effort and understood (he died in 1976) that another form of technology was arriving, and that it no longer had anything to do with modernity. This was the technology of widespread distance communication (which he barely mentions), cybernetics, electronics, and digital technology. The other point of disagreement concerns the essence of technology, which for him is not at all technological and for me is technology itself and nothing else. But I realize that all this requires additional explanation. It is as if we were facing an extension of the technological sublime, as if it no longer concerned only aesthetics or philosophy but the very fate of our world. I think that currently, technology is geared toward a state that I define as posttechnological. Ortega y Gasset defines the current stage of technology, of his times’ technology, as “the technology of the technician.” To my mind, what is now happening is exactly the opposite. The current stage of technology is the age of technology that escapes and defies technicians. It is the age of a technology that increasingly proceeds according to its own logic, evading those who set it to work and who are in charge of producing technology. With the creation of technology, which was initially meant for human survival, tied and responsive to human needs, human beings have actually initiated a process that has increasingly developed on its own, has made itself autonomous, and is geared toward establishing a new cosmic level of reality. It seems as if the hypotheses (by Schelling, Alexander, Boodin, Whitehead, de Chardin) concerning a new stage in the evolution of the world are being realized, yet without that dominating spiritualist value that had been attached to them. The proof that technology is working at a new evolutionary stage in comparison to those already attained by nature lies for example in the fact that technology is capable of generating elements that are not present in nature, of manipulating nature from the inside so as to achieve phenomena unheard of and alien to nature. The very notion of “matter” is under question—claytronics is aimed at creating synthetic matter. Technology is getting refined, becoming impalpable, implicit, invisible, saturated with scientific theories, and becoming so light that it approaches immateriality. In sum, technology is getting ready for the great leap—the overcoming of

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itself, the break with an all-too-human and rough history of technology, and the creation of a posttechnological level where development needs neither technicians nor technology. Technology is almost insidious in its construction of the world. It progresses through objective procedures that it develops by itself in various ways: (1) through the passage from the initial traumatic visibility of an innovation to its mere visibility and then to its becoming invisible because of its habitual and widespread operation; (2) it counts as the most material embodiment of Hegelian dialectics—it progresses and negates the achieved progress at the very moment when it uses it so as to progress further; (3) in the course of the technological evolution, there are sudden leaps when a function that preexists somewhere is taken up by a new function that grows and rapidly spreads because it utilizes the other’s already achieved evolution; (4) it increments and progressively unifies itself by using what has already been made as a step to make something new and then making the two converge and coalesce. In support of what I have said, I will analyze the mutation currently at work in the simple notion of “thing.” The “things” that the posttechnological age is putting to work—the iPad, the USB flashcard, those that will come from claytronics—are no longer things but rather “quasi-things.” Things have being. Thomas Aquinas speaks of it as that which, in things, is the most intimate and most deeply rooted. Heidegger must have had Aquinas’ statement on the being of the “thing” in mind in his own analysis of the jug in his essay “The Thing.” If we try to give a definition of the digital “thing” according to Heidegger’s lines with respect to the jug, we end up with some results that are quite different from the Fourfold of which he speaks. The matter is that of grasping what constitutes the most intimate and most deeply rooted element in the digital “thing.” The digital thing no longer has an identity. It is no longer an individual because the digital substance that constitutes it and makes it function is the same in all things. Not only does the digital annihilate media identity (photography, radio, cinema, television, etc., are no longer media), it also weakens the identity of all other technological levels (mechanical, electrochemical, and so on) by infiltrating everything and controlling the individuals that it infiltrates. Neotechnology already confronts us with new things capable of strongly perturbing all previous manners of thinking of the “thing.” What kind of “thing” is the television that lies in front of me but that truly starts being when it is no longer by me but rather in an elsewhere I do not know how to locate? Communication things (phone, radio, television, and so on) are not “things.” The “thing” exists in a hic et nunc, but the communication thing

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that exists in a hic et nunc is not the real “thing” because the real “thing” is that which starts being when it is situated in another hic et nunc, when another hic et nunc is evoked and becomes present. The communication “thing” is a paradoxical “thing.” It subverts the levels of ontology and requires a different ontology that is entirely to be invented. On the same line: What are the robots NASA operates that move on Mars and let us see Mars’ rocks? What “things” are we confronted with through telerobotics? What are “things” when they are acted upon by telepresence? Where is an ontology that accounts for all this? Furthermore, what kind of “things” are digital “things” such as a smartphone, an iPad, Google Glass, and so on? Not only is another spacetime evoked, but also many other “things” can go through them: a Smartphone that connects to the web is thrown into numerous and variable other perceptive possibilities of hic et nunc, and only in this way does it start being the digital “thing” that it in fact is. As for the subject, the events of technology have delimited and marginalized it on all sides, contrary to what one often hears. Technology has deprived it of its technological “home,” the home of Heidegger’s jug, and has thrown it into an ungraspable and incomprehensible “world.” Neotechnology has dissolved its identity and permanence, and has disseminated it into images of itself. Posttechnology takes interiority and intelligence away from it. Here, in the posttechnological, the roaring noise of the past (trains, cars, workshops, and everything that still is “heavy,” hard,” “opaque,” and so on), which survives and the subject cannot avoid perceiving, equates the subject to “an elephant tiring itself out while moving tree trunks.” What remains of the subject, beside its current fate as a pachyderm, floats on a filmy and protean media sea in which the present, any present, is perceived confusedly as a continuous and ubiquitous buzz that coincides with the banal passing of life itself. This present becomes stronger than all memory and future. The human being-to-come begins to take up its new “dwelling” within such a new present. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? Academic life is always the same, it does not change. It only becomes more or less unfair and wild. Fichte was among the first to learn about this. For such a life, there is no difference between philosophy and gastroenterology. With respect to life, here too nothing has changed: the task of philosophy is to justify what life puts itself up to. Since one’s life is not the other’s or even another’s life, philosophy fulfils its task poorly.

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SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? If the future is going to be as it could be, then I do not really know what kind of philosophy it could have. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? Kant woke up from the “dogmatic slumber.” Nietzsche woke up and woke us up a bit from everything. Foucault invites us to wake up from the sleepiness induced by the human sciences, the “anthropological slumber.” Perhaps the role of the philosopher is to suffer from insomnia. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. I would really not know what to say!

Freedom, Guilt, Nihilism, and Tragic Thought A Conversation with Sergio Givone (Buronzo, 1944)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? I am tempted to paraphrase Italian poet Eugenio Montale in his poem, “Non chiederci la parola” (Do Not Ask Us for the Word) and confess that “only this I know: who I am not. . . .” I am neither a historian of philosophy nor a historian of ideas. I am not a pure philosopher either, though; that is, to be clear, I am not a philosopher who thinks that he can do philosophy while ignoring its history. It is easier to indicate my philosophical interests and my disciplinary areas of belonging. I will start with the latter, and more specifically with the school where I received my education, in Turin, in the 1960s, where Luigi Pareyson professed a form of personalism of an existentialist nature. The themes developed at his school were those pertaining to a tragic thought geared especially toward deepening religious and artistic experience. In the background, and even as a guiding star, was the ontology of freedom, according to which philosophical discourse coincided in all ways with hermeneutics and the theory of interpretation. These themes have also been my own. I have tried to offer a contribution to each of them on the basis of my specific interests, which I have cultivated out of that horizon of thought. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical 137

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landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? In those years, the Italian philosophical panorama presented a rather rigid, double contraposition: the first between secular (laici) and Catholic thinkers, the second between historians of philosophy and “theoretical” philosophers. The first distinction was entirely irrelevant at the philosophical level but was decisive in terms of academic positions. It was in fact an unwritten law, yet still a law, that a certain number of positions were destined for secular thinkers and others destined instead for Catholic thinkers . . . The second opposition was instead rather important if one wishes to understand what doing philosophy meant at that time. The historians of philosophy looked with a lot of suspicion at the theoretical philosophers, and more or less openly accused them of “theoreticism.” The theoretical philosophers, for their part, considered the history of philosophy to be an essential presupposition, but simply and precisely as a presupposition. Furthermore, they endeavored to situate their own thinking within a specific historiographical context. Thus, at that time, philosophy often had the features of a retrieval and renewal of philosophical positions already established at the European level. Thus there developed a postidealistic neo-Marxism, a postexistentialist neo-existentialism, and even a postphilosophical neo-Enlightenment (in the sense that philosophy seemed to yield the way to the human sciences and disappear in them). In Turin, where I had graduated and started my university career, and where I would then teach between 1983 and 1991, the two schools that were in contraposition were those of Pareyson and Abbagnano, which made reference to neoexistentialism and neo-Enlightenment, respectively. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? In the post–World War II period and with the decline of neoidealism, Italian philosophy started looking beyond its borders not only toward Europe but also toward the United States. A new event characterizing Italian philosophy in the second part of the twentieth century occurred thereby—its opening up to international perspectives, to those philosophical viewpoints that represented the trends then dominating the world stage. Some scholars deeply committed themselves to the study of contemporary German philosophy—they engaged in an extensive study of

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Heidegger, and in Italy, Heidegger enjoyed a degree of success he had not even found in Germany. A lot of scholarly attention was devoted to Gadamer and hermeneutics, but also to Husserl and phenomenology, who were engaged in opposition to Heidegger and were even understood as ante litteram correctives to Heidegger. Some other scholars deepened the study of French philosophy—not so much Sartre, who in Italy was sort of a “flash in the pan,” but rather the structuralists, Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida, and others, who have very little to do with Sartre; Sartre’s philosophy was a philosophy of the subject and consciousness, whereas theirs was exactly the opposite. The turn toward Anglo-Saxon philosophy occurred a little later. All this work received varied evaluations. Some found in this a form of provincialism and an impoverishment of our own Italian tradition. Some regarded it as its enrichment. There were even some who claimed that the Italians excelled in translating and interpreting non-Italian philosophers to the point that what one could say of the Italians was that they helped foreigners to understand themselves better. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? I have been spurred to study philosophy at the university not, as it would seem natural, from the study of philosophy in high school but from the study of Greek. I was fortunate to have had the great classicist Dario Del Corno as a Greek teacher in high school. He was the one who awoke in me the passion for a form of questioning that I would call both philosophical and tragic. For our state exam at the end of high school, we prepared a project on the Antigone. Del Corno masterfully disclosed to us her problematic depth and incomparable appeal. Those lectures left a profound mark on me, even if I realized it only later. An important role was also played by the many elementary school teachers in my life—my mother, my grandmother, and my aunt, all of whom were teachers. They loved to read, and even with the scarce resources they had they were able to gather a very respectable small library. At home, we could find Russian authors such as Andreev, German authors such as Zweig, not to mention an agitator of ideas such as the Italian writer Fogazzaro. Thanks to them, in a little time I approached Dostoevsky, Thomas Mann,

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and Nietzsche. The way toward philosophy had been opened—opened by literature, which I afterward never forgot—but also by those good teachers. Later, comparing my biography with that of many of my colleagues, I noticed not without surprise and pleasure that whereas the great German philosophy is overall the child of Protestant ministers, the more modest Italian philosophy is at least in part the child of elementary-school women teachers. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? I will mention three authors, then, trying to summarize in broad strokes the reasons for my interest in them. During my first year of studying at the university, I prepared an initial presentation on Albert Camus, an author who still today is greatly important to me in terms of defining the tragic thought to which I constantly refer. Unfortunately, as a philosophically guiding figure in Italy, Camus has often been marginalized or cast aside. In my dissertation, I concerned myself with Pascal and the retrieval of his thought in twentieth-century philosophy. Pascal truly offers (or at least, he does for me) a genuine chance to exit the shallows of unidimensional thinking and rediscover the paradoxicality and multidimensionality of philosophical discourse. With respect to this, one could think of his theory of the triple order of reality, namely, the order of power, of science, and of charity. Later, I encountered Plotinus. I have never devoted a specific essay to Plotinus, but I have been reading him for decades. In Plotinus, I have found the remarkably profound expression of the idea that knowledge is essentially interpretation of the main forms of experience, that is, religious, moral, and aesthetic experience. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. My philosophy aspires to be a philosophy of freedom. We know, because Kant has taught this to us, that freedom is the most difficult notion to think about; it is even unthinkable. If we do not take into account and even postulate such an unthinkable idea, as Kant again makes us note, then everything becomes obscure, and we become even more incomprehensible

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to ourselves than we already are. How can we think of morality without freedom? How can we think of religious experience (starting with the concept of grace)? And of aesthetic experience (again, the notion of grace)? Would it make sense to erase all of this from the philosophical agenda? I think that it would be folly. Yet this is the outcome to which we are led by the philosophy of necessity, which is today very much widespread, both in its metaphysical form, which identifies being and thinking, and in the logical-linguistic form, which identifies language and world. I have tried to oppose the many philosophies of necessity with a philosophy of freedom that finds its privileged terrain in art and religion. It is there, in fact, that freedom emerges as something that ontologically precedes necessity. Even if A=A, this fact of reason nevertheless provides no reason for itself; on the contrary, it rests freely on itself. At this point, if one also (but not primarily) wants to take into consideration Plato’s lesson, then one has to address the following issues: the truth value of myth (the language capable of casting light on the above-mentioned dimension is in fact the language of myth, poetry, and great literature); the sense in which life’s enigmas challenge the principle of noncontradiction (the assertion that reality is intimately contradictory is in fact possible without contradiction); and the limits to which interpretation is allowed to extend before turning into affabulation (there is a risk of such a transformation, but it is also evident that interpretation that does not take the interpretandum as its own criterion is no longer interpretation but idle talk). In the perspective of thought in which I recognize myself, there is a Kantian moment and a Platonic moment. The Kantian moment is centered on the vindication of responsibility and freedom in the face of a world where everything is ruled by the principle of cause and effect (the world of the universal mechanism, as Kant used to call it). The Platonic moment in turn consists in the acknowledgement that truth is, first, a question of being (we in fact find truth in the eternal forms that guard it; this is the profound meaning of anamnesis); this is so much so that in fact there is no philosophy that does not presuppose and imply an ontology. This has led me to appropriate Heidegger’s answer to Sartre’s famous question: whether the human being or being is at the center of our domain. As Heidegger (against Sartre) has said, we are in a domain at the center of which is being. My Heideggerianism ends here, though. If the orientation of the kind of thought I am trying to describe, mindful of the teachings of my teacher, Luigi Pareyson, is an ontology of freedom, and if freedom must be found at the ontological level, that is, at a level that is certainly not that of psychology but not even that of morality, then freedom is a

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matter of being, exactly like the truth. This means that the responsibility to which freedom appeals is not only a matter of conscience but extends to processes that impinge on us and seem outside our control; yet, we must answer for them too. Briefly, to consider freedom at the ontological level means to advance, with Jaspers (and against Heidegger), the Schuldfrage, the question of guilt. This is exactly what I have done in one of my recent books, Metafisica della peste (Metaphysics of the Plague), to which I have added the subtitle Guilt and Destiny. These are two categories that obviously have to do with ethics, yet they find their fullest expression within the religious dimension, within which they originate and to which they must be related. One should also note, however, that these same categories, or at least the problematics connected to them, refer more to aesthetics than to ethics. This may appear paradoxical. Is the notion of tragic thought not, however, a proof of the correctness of such a reference? The tragic is certainly present within life independently of art. It is art, however, that let us know the tragic in its full depth. It is art that discloses the great cognitive value of the tragic, its ability to cast light on the most obscure and problematic aspects of life. This emphasizes, once again, the fact that the exploration of what religious experience on the one hand, and artistic experience on the other, have to tell us, constitutes a formidable atout (asset) for philosophy. At least for my philosophy. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? I would say Storia del nulla (History of Nothingness), a book published more than twenty years ago. Since then and up to now, this book has had an uninterrupted series of new reprints. I must say, though, that I have many hopes for a collection of philosophical dialogues that have not been published yet, but will be soon. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? If I consider the themes and questions I have tackled (philosophy of freedom, hermeneutics of artistic and religious experience, and nihilism as epiphenomenon of a wider and more remote history that ultimately is the history of metaphysics), I think that the element of originality in my studies resides in the places where I handle the genesis of nihilism.

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The current discourse is prone to think that nihilism originates with the dissolution of the idea of truth. According to such a view, nihilism would triumph where truth is no longer because everything is interpretation and nothing but interpretation. On the contrary, I think that nihilism originates with the empowerment and even the absolutization of the idea of truth for which the only knowledge is scientific knowledge and the object of this knowledge is the truth and nothing but the truth. Briefly, I retrace the origin of current nihilism to Dostoevsky (and to Turgenev, who was the first to depict the young nihilists of his own time as disenchanted representatives of only one thought) rather than to Nietzsche. It is not by chance that I see the birth of nihilism in the famous letter by Jacobi to Fichte, where nihilism appears as the perfectly legitimate heir of the Wissenschaftslehre, that is, of the theory of an entirely unfolded truth. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? Yes, there is a connection between my philosophy and the historical context, both in terms of the great history that concerns everyone and in terms of my small personal history. This link, of course, must be grasped at the philosophical, not at the biographical level. What do I mean by this? Simply that everyone’s life may appear as not much, as not at all the torment that tragedy seems to imply, as perhaps even a comedy at which others laugh. Likewise, history, even great history, can slide into meaninglessness and perhaps even farce. Yet at the core of both, there is an essential tragedy on which philosophy is called to cast light. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? During my academic career, which has spanned half a century (!), I have taken up many positions, at both the academic and the political level. I have not sought them but I have not refused them either. For example, I have been preside di facoltà (dean of faculty) at Florence University, vice president for international relations at the same university, and assessore for culture for the city of Florence. Even if many things have changed in the meanwhile, I have repeatedly had to confront the problem of the relation between the university and civil society or, more generally, between culture

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and polis, as if that had been the question of our epoch or, at least, of our generation. One could feel in the air, and not only in the air, some sort of reproach falling short of a real accusation—that the world of knowledge is disconnected from the real world, and thus must return to it by interpreting the needs of such a world and welcoming its demands. Now, I suspect that things stand in exactly the opposite relation. I am afraid that, to meet the requests coming from the world of production (increasingly ruled by technology) and the world of culture (conspicuously dominated by the media of mass communication), the academic world has lost at least part of its autonomy—that autonomy that enabled it to carry on research agendas free from all sorts of conditionings, perhaps risking isolation but certainly anticipating the future. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? One in particular is fundamental: the theme of complexity, to be understood in the sense of the multiplicity of the forms of knowledge and the plurality of languages through which we can interpret/elaborate/construct worlds. In the 1950s, the risk that was much feared was that of an irreducible break between two cultures, the techno-scientific and the humanistic. Today, the risk is that such a divide has vanished. It has vanished because the techno-scientific culture has levelled the field, whereas humanistic culture has been reduced to rhetoric. If one claims, as happens widely, that there is only one truth, scientific truth, whereas art and religion have nothing to do with truth, the conclusion that I mentioned becomes inevitable. Therefore, there is a lot of work to be done. We must find, at the heart of complexity, not only multiplicity and plurality but also the infinity of the true. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? Are we sure that philosophers must have a function? What if they had none? Should we then acknowledge their uselessness? Certainly the role of philosophers is not the one that is usually recognized to them, namely, teaching philosophy or the history of philosophy as one teaches any other

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subject matter or cultural content. If philosophy is something very similar to what once was astrology, then it is better to leave it alone . . . I think that being a philosopher is not so much a job as a lifestyle, an ideal, an aspiration. In a world like ours, which seems little prone to reflection and contemplation, this seems improbable. And yet . . . let us take a closer look at this world of ours. What do we see? We see that where there is philosophy, there is democracy and well-being. And vice versa. Let us consider the countries in whose universities philosophy is held in high esteem, and increasingly so: Germany, France, England, the United States, . . . These are the countries of democracy, where regardless of this or that economic crisis, prosperity is present as never before. Let us, on the contrary, consider those countries where there is no sign of philosophy, or where the signs are only too timid and weak. What do we see then? Fanaticism, obscurantism, and underdevelopment. This must mean something, do you not think so? SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. First, I would like to recall that, independently of all possible definitions, philosophy is a dynamic reality, that is, a reality that is, as it were, more liquid than solid. One should just think of the various philosophical figures and particularly of the various formats of writing they chose over the centuries. Some were poets, some naturalists and doctors, not to speak of those who left nothing in writing. It is only later that professors appeared. What do I mean to say by this? That before being an institution, philosophy is a vocation. One aspires to philosophy; one devotes oneself to philosophy; one lets oneself be tempted by philosophy. Briefly, the way of the philosopher is first of all an attitude, a way of being toward others and things, a way of living, as I have already said, that can be expressed in various ways and that in turn expresses inexhaustible human creativity. I would like to tell the young generations that just now enter the world scene that they should abandon themselves confidently to the pleasure of philosophy. This is like saying: they should abandon themselves confidently to life—not blindly but critically. Philosophy, after all, is nothing else than that.

Imagination, Rituality, and Transit A Conversation with Mario Perniola (Asti, 1941)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? My name is Ignazio Maverick. I am the representative for the person to whom the questions have been addressed. This person has charged me with answering in his place because he rejects the so-called autobiographical pact. As is well known, the pact consists in a contract made between the interviewee and the interviewer in which the former commits to telling the truth about himself or herself. Now, in the present case, the interviewee subscribes to aphorism 117 in the Oracúlo manual y arte de prudencia, written in 1647 and translated in 1892 by Joseph Jacobs as The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Such an aphorism says: “Never talk of yourself” because “You must either praise yourself, which is vain, or blame yourself, which is smallminded: it ill beseems him that speaks, and ill pleases him that hears.” Additionally, the interviewee agrees with the statement by another thinker of the Baroque period, Blaise Pascal, for whom “le moi est haïssable,” and with the expression by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, for whom “Je est un autre.” Finally, I have been told that Perniola’s reluctance to speak about himself is not unrelated to his familiarity with the Japanese frame of mind, in which the notion of the self does not exist. Two features strike me the most regarding this person I represent. First, his way of practicing philosophy seems to me to have always been a thinking style that I would unhesitatingly qualify as “baroque.” I understand this term in the same sense in which, in The Advancement of Learning, the

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British thinker Francis Bacon spoke of imagination, which he defined as making “unlawful matches and divorces of things.” Second, such a way of practicing philosophy posits itself as a pure site of transit, passage, and transmission between the past and the future. It is a very remote past that has two points of reference. The first is Plato’s mimetic rivalry with epic and tragedy; that is, philosophy’s claim to compete with and eclipse art. The second is the ancient Stoics’ thought, which has been transmitted from ancient Greece to Roman culture and from there to humanistic and Baroque culture, and which thus has decisively marked the mode of action of the Western ruling classes. Overall, I would define the person I am representing as a homme de lettres, as he used to portray himself on his business card when he was twenty. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? According to the person I am representing, the most original contribution made by Italian thinkers during the period 1968–2008 concerns the field of aesthetics. In this field, the sophistication of Renaissance and Mannerist origins has met with and added to the complexity of postindustrial society, and thus has produced high-quality conceptual figures and cultural products. This luminous side has however intertwined with a more tenebrous side that is rooted in the past but nourishes itself with the decomposition of bourgeois society and the disappearance of the middle class. Many factors have probably contributed to determine this situation. Moral philosophy has been too much influenced by religion—not only Catholic but also Protestant religion, especially if we think of the influence exerted by Kant’s rigorism and the hermeneutic tradition. This has prevented an unbiased and realistic vision of the moral condition of our epoch. As for political philosophy, it has been marked by a form of timidity that mainly derives from its dependence on ideologies. The theoretical reflection has not emancipated itself from traditional political categories and from adherence to this or that political party or faction. Sociological and historical ways of thinking have rarely been able to free themselves from the bind into which both academic and public opinion have forced them. Generally speaking, universities and journalism have not favored the birth of a form of theory capable of matching the profound economic, social, and human transformations occurring in Italy from 1968 on.

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The factors just mentioned have induced aesthetics to fill up the gaps of other disciplinary approaches. The fortune of Italian aesthetics, however, depends also on other, more substantial, general and particular reasons. It is well known that within the most developed Western societies, aesthetics has taken up a role of primary importance by encompassing fields traditionally occupied by other cultural forms and focusing on beauty, art, displays, and communication interests that earlier were oriented toward ethics and politics. Additionally, since its eighteenth-century foundation, aesthetics has played an essential role in bourgeois self-representation. In the specific case of Italy, one should keep in mind that the two most relevant philosophies of the first part of the twentieth century, those of Benedetto Croce (1866–1952) and Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), assigned to art a very important role within the economy of spiritual life. For Croce, art as expression serves both an introductory and a pervasive function within all human activities. For Gentile, there is no reality in which art is not present. Since World War II, the Italian aesthetic reflection no longer confronts itself polemically with neoidealist philosophies. Now the scene is occupied by the thought of Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), whose Prison Notebooks, written between 1929 and 1935, were published posthumously starting in 1948. Unlike other theories of Marxist descent, Gramsci attributes to art, in both its educated and popular manifestations, a highly relevant role in all transformative and innovative actions. Gramsci’s importance within the cultural climate of the 1950s lies in his still being profoundly permeated by an aesthetic tonality. It does not take much to realize that if foreign students wish to study philosophy, they go to Germany or France. If they want to study history, philosophy of art, or aesthetics, they come to Italy. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? According to the person I am representing, foreign influences have been superficial and no more than skin deep. The Italian philosophical tradition has produced, on the one side, a very great deal of erudition, very-highlevel philology, and an impressive number of great translations of most of the important works published abroad. On the other side, it has yielded a huge number of books and essays characterized by a strong and impetuous sociopolitical engagement, which are the expression of a kind of militancy, at times bordering on bias and fanaticism. All of this, however, has had very little influence on Italian culture, Italian political life, and even the most original philosophical products. Italian philosophy has developed long-lasting psychological-anthropological models deeply rooted within

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Italian history and culture. These models have resurfaced centuries apart, presenting themselves under new faces. In other words, there is an Italian difference to the understanding of which the author I am representing has greatly contributed. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? Additionally: which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects in them have interested you the most? As far as I know, two figures have played a very important role in the formation of the person I represent, and are still a constant source of devotion for him: Guy Debord (1931–1994), the founder of the avant-garde movement Situationist International, and the Italian philosopher Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991). These two conceptual characters stand at two opposite sites. Debord was the most subversive French icon and outsider in the cultural panorama at the end of the nineteenth century. Pareyson was the most institutionally legitimated philosopher within the Italian panorama of the 1960s. They both were men of a “grand style” and endless ambitions. Debord was totally alien to the world of academia, publishers, journalism, politics, and media. He felt the most profound disgust and most radical scorn against the whole cultural establishment. Nevertheless, fifteen years after his death, Debord was considered the heir of the greatest seventeenthcentury classics. His archives were proclaimed “a national treasure” by the then minister of culture of the French Republic and were welcomed in the French National Library! In the last twenty years of his life, Pareyson found himself completely at odds with his most famous students, Gianni Vattimo and Umberto Eco, whom he implicitly scolded for being “beautiful souls” in need of lightness of living and yearning after a soft, peaceful life with no trials or torment. They would live, according to Pareyson, under the sign of nihilism understood as comforting and consolatory atheism, void of sulfurous features, and empty of all opposition to society. Pareyson’s philosophy was a philosophy of freedom, rebellious against all forms of imposition. His claim became famous: “No one will seriously want to deny that a chosen evil is better than an imposed good.”

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The interviewee, for whom I am the spokesperson, has told me that Debord and Pareyson have taught him courage, dignity, seriousness in cultural activities, the need always to address a world audience, and two writing techniques—polemical in the case of Debord, scientific in the case of Pareyson. Yet the interviewee considers himself the heir neither of Debord’s irritating and aggressive attitude nor of Pareyson’s tragic and masochistic thinking. A greater influence on the person I am representing has been exercised by the various members of his family, friends, enemies, endless readings, many writers, professors, students, partners, and more-or-less occasional encounters in various parts of the world. One should also say that he has been and still is in a state of “permanent education and formation.” Therefore he thinks that an essential aspect of his attitude toward knowing and living is the constant disposition to learn and assimilate the most diverse experiences and thoughts from people from all social backgrounds and all parts of the world. Not by chance, every year, during his vacations, he reads and rereads a classic of American culture, The Education of Henry Adams, with whom he shares the bitter experience of degradation and scorn for the vulgar arrogance of the new rich. He has also learned a lot from observing the life of his cats, in whose psychology he recognizes traits of his own character. As for the determination of his “philosophical position,” I would say that it is neither easy nor correct to assign him a label. He has been defined as “unclassifiable,” a “different one,” an “irregular.” Some have said that he is like a kaleidoscope, in which every time one sees a different image even when the glass fragments are always the same, yet arranged in different symmetrical forms. If one keeps turning the kaleidoscope, the figures change while changing color and form. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. To my mind, his most representative work is Ritual Thinking: Sexuality, Death, World. This is due to Massimo Verdicchio’s ample and excellent introduction, which illustrates the various stages of the author’s thought. Of this book there exist a Brazilian (2000) and a Chinese (2006) translation. The three words that form the subtitle are undoubtedly constant themes in the author’s reflection. They have been dealt with in-depth in The Sex-Appeal of the Inorganic, The Egyptian Moment in Society and Art, and Art and Its Shadow. Ever since 2000, his work has widened to other fields of research, such as religion, politics, and mass-media communication. In the first area, his

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Del sentire cattolico. La forma culturale di una religione universale (On Catholic Feeling: The Cultural Form of a Universal Religion) is important; there are German and Arabic translations, and a French one is forthcoming. In the second area, the most significant works are L’avventura situazionista. Storia dell’ultima avanguardia (The Situationist Adventure: History of the Last AvantGarde) and Da Berlusconi a Monti (From Berlusconi to Monti). As for the third topic, Contro la comunicazione (Against Communication) and Miracoli e trauma della comunicazione (Miracles and Traumas of Communication), which have been translated into various languages but not English, have received great attention. After 2001, a very significant year because of the sequence of events surrounding 9/11, his reflection turned in a sociopolitical direction. He has no illusions, however, about the ability of intellectuals to exercise any influence on political life because he thinks that la République n’a pas besoin de savants. This is the sentence that was used during the French Revolution to condemn to death Lavoisier, the great chemist. Not even Confucius, who can be regarded as the first homme de lettres in history, succeeded in his intention to counsel the powerful in whose service he placed himself. We all know Plato’s misfortunes with the tyrants in Syracuse, not to speak of Cicero, Boetius, and Thomas More, who actively participated in political life and for this were killed. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? The interviewee would never answer such a question because he complies with aphorism 107 in the already-mentioned book by Baltazar Gracián, “Show no Self-satisfaction,” which asserts, “You must neither be discontented with yourself—which is poor-spirited—nor self-satisfied—which is folly. Self-satisfaction arises mostly from ignorance: it would be a happy ignorance not without its advantages if it did not injure our credit.” Nevertheless I can attest that the book that has cost him the most effort, time, and energies and has required a great amount of reading is Twentieth Century Aesthetics: Towards a Theory of Feeling. The English title does not correspond to the Italian original, which reads Estetica contemporanea. Un panorama globale (Contemporary Aesthetics: A Global Panorama). The book has been published also in Chinese, and will soon appear in Turkish, Spanish, German, and Portuguese. It is a work that has no precedents among similar volumes on the topic. Not only does it present Western aesthetic theories while considering also the contribution of authors who are less known because they belong either to less-spoken languages or to

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analytic philosophy; it also pays special attention to non-European aesthetics (Japanese, Chinese, Islamic, Korean, Brazilian, African, Southeast Asian, etc.). Those who have known the author since that period have told me that the work most theoretically engaging has been Dopo Heidegger. Filosofia ed organizzazione della cultura (After Heidegger: Philosophy and the Organization of Culture). This work had the least success and generated for the person I represent the greatest hostility. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? This question too is one the interviewee would not know how to answer. An essential aspect of his philosophy objects to the very notions of originality, novelty, and innovation and replaces them with the notions of different repetition, transit from the same to the same, simulacrum understood not as deceiving appearance but as something beyond true and false. From here comes the importance assigned, on the one hand, to rites without myth and meaning and yet appreciated because of their role in social cohesion in conformity with the most recent anthropological theories, and on the other hand, to the notion of network, understood as social interrelation among heterogeneous individuals, nonlocalizable in a space, territory, or center, and even less as a real or ideal community. From this perspective, one could say that his orientation is more premodern than postmodern. At the same time, he is closer to the logic of the World Wide Web than to the logic of mass-media communication. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? I have no doubts that his effort has always been to remain in a position of presa diretta (live recording or communication) between aesthetics and the present time. Presa diretta is the precise title of one of his most recently reprinted books. He has lived the events of the period from the 1960s to now with emotional participation and intellectual vigilance, paying constant attention to historical transformations and wondering about their meaning. Overall, his work proposes criteria for intelligibility that help grasp the substantial unity of the last fifty years. To his mind, during this period the possibility of real political, sexual, and literary actions has disappeared.

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Within such fields, the place of action has been taken by communication, with effects that are both comical and devastating. Traditional cultural and political categories are inadequate to understand what has happened. We have been faced with events such as the 1968 French May, the 1979 Iranian revolution, the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, and the 2001 Twin Towers, which have made everyone exclaim: “Impossible yet real!” These facts have had major consequences on all aspects of intellectual and collective life, radically destabilizing institutions, sexual habits, and the ways in which entire generations feel. A new regime of historicity has been born, namely, presentism, characterized by the experiences of phenomena that are perceived at times as miracles and at times as traumas because they are inaccessible to a rational explanation and a coherent narration. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? The interviewee has come to know very well fifty years of institutional academic life because he became a full professor at a young age, then chair of the department and of the degree program, and a member of the academic senate. He thinks he has witnessed the systematic demolition of the modern scientific-professional system that had been established at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the foundation of Berlin University, followed by University College London in the United Kingdom, and the reform of Paris University. The organization of such institutions had been planned by philosophers and, especially in Germany, it gave rise to an intense debate in which the major thinkers of the time took part. Jeremy Bentham was the spiritual father of University College London, and Victor Cousin contributed to the French high school reforms. The modern university system implies the close connection between teaching and research and is also the condition for entrance to the learned professions, thus ensuring vertical social mobility via academic study. This entire organization entered a period of crisis in the 1960s. After the glorious thirty year period (1945–1975), it has been progressively dismantled in the West with a specific goal, namely, the impoverishment and destruction of the middle class, the deculturization of society as a whole, the triumph of mass-media communication, and more recently, a new organization of knowledge via the Internet that aims at turning the individuals into free self-entrepreneurs, thus leading them to a condition

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similar to artists. What ensues is that the capital of notoriousness is more important than scientific capital. What has happened to “academic freedom” when, in some private universities, we ask professors to punch their time cards? I am not going to talk about impact factor and blind peer review. To remedy the depreciation of knowledge, we have erected an evaluation system that is very often arbitrary and manipulated so that today’s most important problem has become evaluating the rating agencies’ independence from interference by governments, industries, and lobbies. Overall, the relation between philosophy and life is, as in all other aspects of existence, characterized by social Darwinism, that is, by the fight for life and death and the survival of the fittest. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? The interviewee has told me the following. Behind itself, philosophy has twenty-five hundred years of uninterrupted activity and is thus the most ancient Western institution. It has survived criminalization (Socrates’ condemnation), Christianity, and the scientification of all branches of knowledge. Therefore, there is not much philosophy should fear if one abides by the Chinese principle that on ko ci shin, that is, one knows the new by studying the old. Philosophy overlaps with the survival of the West. If one abandons that principle, then the catastrophe is inevitable. The crucial philosophicalpolitical confrontation we will have to face will be the competition between the United States and China for world government. China is at an advantage both because its history proceeds like a spiral in which problems have always remained the same for twenty-five hundred years (Confucianismlegalism-pragmatism-Daoism) and because it is capable of assimilating and appropriating American technology and scientific inventions. The future of the United States depends on their willingness to present themselves as the heir of European civilization and to learn the strategic importance of moderation and self-control; in other words, of keeping their recklessness under control. The philosophical method constitutes the background of any consistent behavior. Without consistency, human beings are destined to be fools; that is, they are mercurial persons prey to constant turmoil; constantly in disagreement with themselves, they join ignorance with agitation; they

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precipitously rush with uncontrollable force toward the first target they encounter and are easily sorry for everything they do; incapable of listening, they speak and act inconclusively; unable to form stable evaluations, they jump here and there, claiming that they own everything, and taking it. Foolishness is not at all stupidity. Rather, it is a deviation and a distortion of rational ability. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? Functionalism (or the idea that there is a role or function) implies the existence of an organic society. Conversely, the interviewee on whose behalf I speak identifies himself with the figure of the ro¯nin, of the samurai with no master. He thinks that such has been the condition of many Italian intellectuals in the last decades. Nevertheless, he has always attributed great importance to cultural sociality and has in fact founded and directed several journals. The most recent is Ágalma, which has existed since 2000. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. One cannot be free if the most fundamental needs and necessities, those indicated in Abraham Maslow’s famous pyramid, are not satisfied. Yet the most important thing is the bliss that arises suddenly and without motivation in the most improbable situations. As Angelus Silesius says, die Rose ist ohne Warum (the rose is without why).

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Mathematics, Sciences, Objectivity, and System Theory A Conversation with Evandro Agazzi (Bergamo, 1934)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? From a strictly professional point of view, I am considered a philosopher of science. I have indeed spent most of my academic career in this domain, first with work on the foundations of logic and mathematics, then on the philosophy of physics and the empirical sciences, and finally developing my own original position in general philosophy of science. This specialized work, however, has always been inspired by and embedded in much broader philosophical interests that I would qualify as “theoretical philosophy.” Moreover, having always recognized the deep social and historical contextualization of science (and technology), I have devoted much attention to the ethics of techno-science and the issue of harmonizing freedom and responsibility. Due to the careful attention I pay to rigor and arguments in my writings, I have often been characterized as an analytic philosopher (and I am ready to accept this characterization), but the hermeneutic and historicist approaches are equally important aspects of my way of philosophizing. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? 159

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I started my philosophical education at the Catholic University in Milan in 1952, that is, shortly after the end of the World War II and in a cultural climate inspired by a reaction to Fascism but at the same time affected by the first manifestations of the Cold War. In Italy, the political force that supported the politics of the Soviet Union was the Communist Party. The Communist Party was unable to win power, however, thanks to the victory, in the 1948 elections, of the Christian Democracy party (strongly supported by the Catholic Church), which remained the major party of the country for forty-five years, leading several government coalitions. These political circumstances had notable consequences for Italian philosophy. The shared rejection of Fascism entailed the rejection of neoidealism. Neoidealism was the philosophical trend that had prevailed in Italy during the first half of the twentieth century thanks to the outstanding stature of Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile. Neoidealism was blamed for having been organically associated with Fascism in the last period of Gentile’s life. Hence, no declared idealist philosopher was to be found in the postwar Italian academic scene, and those who had received their education and made their first steps in that tradition converted to other schools (especially Marxism). The other political circumstance that was mentioned, that is, the rivalry between the Communist Party and Christian Democracy, entailed the struggle between the two respective ideologies, Marxism and Catholicism, in an effort to influence the cultural climate of the country. In this fight, the Communists found allies among those who followed certain trends of anticlericalism that had characterized leading political forces in prefascist Italy. As a consequence, a strong partition between “Catholics” and “laicists” (laici) deeply affected the cultural life of Italy for about four decades, with deplorable consequences of intolerance, mutual closure and ignorance, and academic hostility. This contrast slowly decreased its virulence and tacitly ended only as a consequence of the deep political crisis that, between 1992 and 1994, resulted in the disappearance of all traditional political parties and the transition to what is now called the “Second Republic.” Fortunately, the most eminent figures of Italian philosophy had sufficient personal authority to keep independence of thought and entertain correct and even cordial interpersonal relations. Yet one must recognize that such a generalized “partisan” atmosphere was not particularly favorable to the stimulation of creative and original thinking, since faithfulness to a given ideological line was often more rewarding than genuine philosophical quality. A philosophically more significant consequence of this partition was that the “theoretical” disciplines broadly construed (metaphysics, ontology, ethics, aesthetics, epistemology, philosophy of language) were mostly

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cultivated by “Catholic” philosophers, whereas the “laicists” oriented their work mostly in the direction of the history of philosophy (and when they had the possibility of influencing academic policy, they pushed it in the direction of increasing the presence and weight of the historical disciplines at the expense of the theoretical ones). Of course, notable exceptions to this general situation cannot be ignored. Moreover, a deep commitment to the historical approach is characteristic of contemporary Italian philosophy, including in the thought and production of those who were more oriented in a theoretical and systematic direction. The disappearance of a predominant philosophical school such as neoidealism stimulated the study and circulation of foreign traditions that had been scarcely approached in the prewar period. Existentialism, phenomenology, pragmatism, logical empiricism, analytic philosophy, and hermeneutics began to be seriously studied and also saw original developments and elaborations by Italian philosophers. This trend was greatly facilitated by an impressive increase in the work of translation (already started in the prewar period) undertaken by all major Italian publishers. Coming now to the leading figures present on the stage of Italian philosophy, one must recognize that they were professionally serious and solid, but only few of them showed creative and original thought, and even so, they did not attain the reputation of foreign thinkers such as, for instance, Sartre, Althusser, and Ricoeur in France, Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, and Horkheimer in Germany, the Viennese refugees Carnap and Popper, and Russell and the representatives of analytic philosophy in England and the United States. Nevertheless, original elaborations of existentialism must be credited to Nicola Abbagnano and Enzo Paci. From his original position of neoidealism, Augusto Guzzo developed an interesting form of Christian “spiritualism,” while a different form of spiritualism was proposed by Michele Federico Sciacca along the lines of a tradition going back to Saint Augustine, Pascal, and Rosmini. Gustavo Bontadini elaborated an extremely rigorous reconstruction of “classical” metaphysics promoting a creative renewal of neoscholastic philosophy. Ugo Spirito and Guido Calogero, who taught at the University of Rome, provided original philosophical positions through the proposal of “problematicist” and “dialogical” philosophies, respectively. Significant international recognition was enjoyed by at least two scholars: Norberto Bobbio, who brought valuable contributions to the philosophy of law and political philosophy, and Eugenio Garin, who did great historical work, especially (but not exclusively) regarding the history of Renaissance culture. Two factors must be taken into account to appreciate correctly the minor reputation of Italian philosophers. The first regards the linguistic

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barrier: Italian was not a language commonly learned by cultivated people abroad, so the production of Italian scholars was hardly accessible directly; on the contrary, educated Italians normally had studied at least one foreign language (mostly French, but also German and English), and in addition, as already mentioned, a great number of translations were available to Italian scholars. Thus the Italian philosophical community could live in a self-contained but also rather self-sufficient and nonparochial environment. The second factor is that no comparable translation policy was practiced in other linguistic regions, not only regarding Italian but also other languages (I remember that in 1977, while I was a visiting scholar at the University of Pittsburgh, I still noted a surprising, generalized ignorance of non-AngloAmerican philosophy even among the majority of teachers). SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? I implicitly answered this question above when I indicated a few names of the most important foreign authors who were active and influential at that time. It was they who were most studied and translated, and whose doctrines inspired further developments with different degrees of originality. I also note that the practice of spending long study-abroad periods through scholarships became increasingly usual among young Italian philosophers, who could acquire direct knowledge, and also make personal acquaintance, with the doctrines and figures of the most significant international schools. In addition to the names already mentioned, one must recall those of philosophers no longer alive in the second half of the twentieth century, but whose work was widely studied and became very influential also in Italy: Wittgenstein, Frege, and Husserl certainly deserve a special mention. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? After finishing high school, I was uncertain whether to study physics or philosophy in university. Finally, I decided for philosophy, which I understood as the quest for a solution to the “problem of Life,” that is, to the problem of how to give sense and value to our existence. Having been educated in a Catholic family, I already knew the religious answer to this question, but

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I wanted critically to check this answer. Therefore I went to the Catholic University in Milan. There, I found an environment of intellectual freedom and honesty, training in rigorous intellectual exercises, serious methodological discipline, and the opportunity (and obligation) to acquire a wide knowledge of authors and texts from the whole history of philosophy. The study of Aquinas was only a very limited part of our readings. I really enjoyed it as a splendid example of “analytic philosophy” due to the clarity of his conceptual precision and the stringent rigor of his arguments. When I had to choose works on which to write three short dissertations in connection with certain “fundamental” examinations, I selected works by Heidegger, Gramsci, and Bridgman. This is proof of the full openness of the intellectual environment of that university at that time. It reflected the intellectual and ethical attitude of the two leading figures of that philosophical school, that is, Gustavo Bontadini and Sofia Vanni Rovighi. The first was a creative thinker of exceptional philosophical acumen, always able to capture the core of a philosophical issue, pursue exact determinations of meanings, and submit arguments to the strictest logical control. For this reason, his teaching was a real school of critical thinking and constructive intellectual work. Vanni Rovighi was amazingly learned in almost all periods of the history of philosophy, from the Middle Ages to contemporary philosophy, and attained an admirable clarity in her teaching. Both of them abhorred the partition into “Catholic” and “laicist” philosophers, and considered the adoption of strict criteria of objective merit in evaluating scholars to be a moral duty for a member of the philosophical profession. My natural predisposition for the sciences oriented me toward specializing in philosophy of science. I also had an additional reason, though. Sharing (at least to a certain extent) Hegel’s characterization of philosophy as “one’s own time apprehended through thinking,” and considering that our present time is permeated by science and technology, I felt that an adequate understanding of our time needed a deep philosophical comprehension of the nature of science, capable of promoting it to the role of a genuine constituent of our “culture” and not limiting it to a simple repository of tools for useful applications. Who could be my tutor in that project? No teaching of philosophy of science existed in Italy at that time. Thus, I had to be totally self-taught, relying only on the helpful suggestions of Carlo Felice Manara, a professor of geometry at Milan State University who had also a teaching position in mathematics in the Faculty of Economics of the Catholic University and was interested in the epistemological issues of mathematics. I started a serious study of the authors of the Vienna Circle and of logical empiricism and decided to write my dissertation on the philosophy of probability. Bontadini was the advisor for my dissertation,

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though he admitted his ignorance of the technical aspects of this problem, and I spent two summer stays in Marburg to read all the writings of Reichenbach and von Mises on the topic while I was also acquiring, through the study of specialized textbooks, the necessary background in mathematical knowledge. Accepting the obvious maxim that one cannot do philosophy about what one does not know, and convinced that to do serious philosophy of science one must know the edifice of at least one science “from the inside,” I enrolled as a student of physics at Milan State University immediately after graduating in philosophy at the Catholic University in 1957. Two years later, I had the good fortune to obtain a scholarship for postgraduate study abroad, and went to Oxford to study philosophy of mathematics. There I started my contacts with British analytic philosophy, especially with Alfred Ayer, Michael Dummett, and David Pears. It was there that I could also advance in my technical preparation in mathematical logic. I remember that the reference book suggested to me for the proof theory course I was taking with Dick at Balliol College was a treatise on recursive functions (Rekursive Funktionen) written in German by the Hungarian scholar Rósza Péter. This may be indicative of the situation of such studies even at the beginning of the 1960s. My involvement in the philosophy of mathematics became really dominant when I came to terms with Gödel’s theorems. After having penetrated all the technicalities of his famous 1931 paper, I felt the impulse to write a wide introduction to that work. In this introduction, I offered an outline of the historical maturation of the formalistic perspective on mathematics as well as a gradual presentation of the logical-mathematical prerequisites that could enable students with no disciplinary background to read Gödel’s paper. I also provided a simplified but totally rigorous version of Gödel’s paper. This project resulted in the draft of a book that I took with me when I went to Münster in 1961 to spend the summer at the celebrated Institut für mathematische Logik und Grundlagenforschung. It is with some emotion that I remember having listened to a few classes given by Wilhelm Ackermann, one of the most direct disciples and collaborators of Hilbert (a few years later, I had the opportunity to also become acquainted with another equally famous collaborator of Hilbert, that is, Paul Bernays). The result of that fruitful stay in Germany was the 1961 publication of my first book, Introduzione ai problemi dell’assiomatica (Introduction to the Problems of Axiomatics). The book immediately enjoyed a great success and gained me a good reputation. As an appendix to the work, I published the Italian translation of Gödel’s original paper, which for many years remained the

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only available translation in a language other than German, and to which I had the privilege of adding a small footnote that Gödel himself requested. At that time, Gödel’s theorem was more famous than widely known, and I received various invitations to give talks on it. On the occasion of one of them at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Genoa, I received a proposal for a teaching position there in mathematical logic. Thanks to my first book, I could obtain the habilitation to teach philosophy of science in 1963 and, after the 1964 publication of an equally successful book, La logica simbolica (Symbolic Logic), a second habilitation in mathematical logic in 1966. Thus in 1964 I could start my teaching career: at the Catholic University of Milan (philosophy of science and mathematical logic from 1964 to 1979), at the Department of Mathematics of the University of Genoa (mathematical logic, advanced geometry, complementary mathematics from 1964 to 1975), and at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa (symbolic logic from 1966 to 1968). It is curious, in a way, that progress in my academic career seemed to become easier and quicker in mathematics than in philosophy. An important event occurred, though, that radically clarified my situation for me. The success of my lectures moved Ennio De Giorgi (a famous mathematician who was a full professor at the Scuola Normale Superiore) to offer me a tenured position as associate professor for symbolic logic in Pisa. After one week reflection—I was feeling very attracted by the perspective of becoming a professor at the most prestigious institution of higher learning in Italy—I came to the conclusion that my professional task in that position would be proving theorems, whereas my vocation was specifically philosophical. I was interested in philosophy of mathematics; the technical notions and skills I had acquired were for me only instrumental to investigate “foundational” issues of an epistemological and ontological nature. Therefore I declined that generous offer. I did not “dismiss” logic and philosophy of mathematics, but this remained the “first stage” of my philosophical development and no longer its central focus. A critical appraisal of the reasons, merits, and limitations of formalism can be considered my original contribution to the philosophy of logic and mathematics, which has been appreciated by the international community and whose results I have collected in a 2012 volume precisely titled Ragioni e limiti del formalismo. Saggi di filosofia della logica e della matematica (Reasons and Limits of Formalism: Essays in Philosophy of Logic and Mathematics). I turned then to physics, a field in which in the meantime I had also acquired a technical preparation. In 1969, I published the volume Temi e problemi di filosofia della fisica (Themes and Problems in the Philosophy

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of Physics). Philosophical papers on physics had been abundant since the beginning of the twentieth century, but no monographic work devoted to this topic existed at that time. Therefore my work was welcomed by the specialists and appreciated for several contributions to single issues, especially regarding quantum mechanics. From the point of view of my philosophical development, the book is very important because it already contains, especially in its final chapters, the core of my theory of scientific objectivity, which I deepened and expanded in the following decades and which I consider my major contribution to the philosophy of science (its full presentation is in my 2014 book Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts). The appreciation of that book was the fundamental basis for my becoming full professor of philosophy of science at the University of Genoa in 1970. For my progress in my academic career, I gladly recognize that I am indebted to two people. One is Ludovico Geymonat, who can be considered the “last positivist” in Italian philosophy and promoted knowledge of logical positivism and Frege through translations in the pre-war period. In 1956, he became full professor of philosophy of science at the State University of Milan and started a great work, promoting this discipline and logic, not only in Italian universities but also at a broader cultural level, by publishing (together with several students) a great history of philosophical and scientific thinking and by founding and directing several book series with important publishers. He appreciated very much my volume on axiomatics, which I had given him; he wrote a positive review and invited me to join a research group on mathematical logic that he was organizing. He was a committed Communist but also one of those rare personalities who were able to appreciate scientific merits independently of ideological affiliations. We became even sincere friends, and he gave me full support at crucial moments of my academic career. The other is Vittorio Mathieu, whom I visited after having read his book on objectivity while I was writing my book on the philosophy of physics, having found astonishing affinities between our perspectives. With him too, a sincere friendship soon developed and he joined Geymonat in those occasions when they helped my academic career. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects in them have interested you the most? I have nourished my philosophical reflections with readings of many philosophical works from Plato to contemporary philosophers. Aristotle and Kant are however probably the thinkers who have most inspired my philosophi-

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cal outlook, especially through their works Metaphysics and Critique of Pure Reason, respectively. Common to both is the wide horizon of philosophical reflection, which is articulated into different and autonomous, yet not disconnected, subdomains and also linked with the “problem of Life” I spoke of above. Of no less importance for me have been the work and teaching of my teacher Gustavo Bontadini, whose imprint is perceivable in the architecture of my philosophical investigations alongside specific doctrines of his, such as the construction of metaphysics and certain fundamental interpretations of the history of modern philosophy. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. In the first stage of my research (as I have already explained), I devoted my study to mathematical logic and the foundations of mathematics and developed a philosophical view centered on sharp criticism of extreme formalism. I then moved to the study of foundational problems in the empirical sciences, at the same time elaborating my own original philosophy of science, whose core is an articulated theory of scientific “objectivity” based on a distinction between common-sense “things” and scientific “objects.” These are structured sets of selected attributes corresponding to the specific “point of view” from which a given science considers reality. These attributes are expressed through specialized “predicates” and the “basic predicates” of an empirical science are equipped with standardized operational criteria of reference that allow for the empirical test of statements. In such a way, scientific objectivity has a “weak” sense, in which the intersubjective agreement among specialists is secured by the use of standardized criteria of referentiality, but also a “strong” sense, in which it has precise concrete referents, equally attained by means of the same operational criteria. This doctrine has far-reaching consequences. It vindicates the legitimacy of “scientific truth,” recognizing that it is “relative” to the actual referents of the scientific theory concerned. Thanks to this fact, it advocates a “realist” conception of science, including the admission of the existence also of theoretical (nonobservable) entities. In addition, this view presents an “analogical” concept of science that does not imply the reduction of scientificity to a single model. The awareness of the “partiality” of the point of view of any science opens the way to the consideration of broader points of view on reality and on science itself that fully legitimate the rationality of metaphysical inquiry (including the metaphysics of science) as well as the embedding of science into broader contexts of a moral, social, and political nature. Thanks to an original approach based on general systems

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theory, all these dimensions can be harmonized with a substantial respect for the freedom of science. The issues regarding the ethical dimensions of science and technology, their compatibility with the freedom of science, and the proposal of a system theoretic solution to this problem have been examined in many papers and book chapters, and were organically presented in the 1992 book Il bene, il male e la scienza. The English translation, Right, Wrong and Science, appeared in 2003 in the form of an “edited book” with comments by fourteen outstanding thinkers and my replies to them. My general philosophy of science has been developed in its multifaceted aspects concerning epistemology, ontology, semiotics, semantics, theory of language, historicity, hermeneutics, and metaphysics in a wide series of papers and book chapters during forty-five years and then organized in 2014 in my most recent book, titled Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? From what I have said, my most important book is Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts, though also Right, Wrong and Science is a work of which I feel proud. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? Originality in philosophy is often understood as the proposal of something that is opposite to currently accepted ideas. I believe, however, that originality does not consists in calling “white” what is black, but in offering good arguments in favor of a thesis that is new in certain respects in relation to a given problem. This novelty may reside in a skillful and pertinent use and “revival” of notions or approaches that already exist in the history of philosophy. Therefore, originality may consist, sometimes, of a precise and delimited contribution to an important issue, and sometimes of the elaboration of a more comprehensive and articulated perspective in which, again, conceptual and theoretical elements already present in the philosophical tradition are organized in a new outlook (let us note that this is true also for the most original thinkers we are used to admiring in the whole history of philosophy). I believe to have offered original contributions in both senses. An example of the first kind is my contribution to the philosophical discussion on artificial intelligence, which has important impacts on

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the philosophy of mind. In 1966, I participated in a “Wiener Memorial Meeting on the Idea of Control” in Genoa, where I presented a paper in English, “Some Reflections on the Problem of Artificial Intelligence.” In it, I advanced several critical remarks concerning the whole issue, introducing in particular the fundamental distinction between “actions” and “operations” of a given agent: actions cannot be characterized without reference to the nature of the agent and its way of behaving, whereas operations are defined objectively only with reference to the “state of affairs” existing before and after the operation, independently of the nature of the performing actor. Since actions often produce results in the state of affairs of the world, it is sometimes possible to express this transition in the explicit form of an operation that, as such, might be performed also by other agents, but this would not imply that the nature of those agents is the same as the nature of the first agent. A few human activities considered expressions of human “intelligence” (such as making numerical calculations or logical inferences) have been translated almost from time immemorial into operations consisting of the manipulation of material signs according to certain rules (arithmetic and formal logic are clear examples of this fact). Therefore, it is no wonder that such operations can be performed by a suitably designed and concretely realized machine, be it mechanical, electromagnetic, or electronic. The fact that a certain machine is able to perform one of these operations does not disclose to us, however, its nature and the way in which it performs the operation. What is already true for material machines also applies to human and artificial “intelligence”: machines that are able to calculate and deduce cannot be called “intelligent” in the same sense as humans and, conversely, an intelligent human way of acting and operating cannot be equated with that of a machine. But now arises the question: “What is the peculiar feature that accompanies intelligent human operations and is not implied in the corresponding machine operations?” The answer I gave in that Genoa paper was intentionality, which I characterized as a particular way of “internalizing” the world without ontologically destroying it and incorporating it into the subject. This characteristic is not identical to human “consciousness,” but consists rather in the capability of having “representations” of the world that many animals also have. Since the announced proceedings of the Genoa meeting were long in appearing, I published an Italian translation of that paper in Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica (59/1967, pp. 1–34), with reference to the original English text in a footnote. Unfortunately, the tapes containing the recordings of the Genoa meeting turned out to be in such a poor state from a technical standpoint that those proceedings were never published. I never cared about

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this because I considered as sufficient testimony of my original contribution its publication in an authoritative professional journal. In 1980, however, John Searle published a paper (“Mind, Brains and Programs,” in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3(3), pp. 417–57) in which he indicated precisely in intentionality the discriminating feature that distinguishes human intelligence from machine intelligence. From that time on, almost everywhere Searle is credited with this original contribution. Only a few specialists who had become acquainted with my article credit me with this priority. I have told here this rather detailed story not so much to vindicate a priority that is of very little importance to me, but because this is a small but significant example of many original and interesting contributions made by Italian philosophers that nevertheless have remained unknown or uninfluential because of the “linguistic barrier” of which I spoke above. It is obvious that, by mentioning this episode, I am far from ignoring the pivotal role that intentionality plays in Searle’s overall philosophy, before and after the publication of the mentioned article. This is rather a confirmation that a single philosophical concept can prove fruitful in several original applications and even in different philosophical approaches (in my case, too, intentionality has proven to be a valuable concept in various contexts). Coming now to original contributions of mine of a more general scope, I can mention the elaboration I have made of general system theory (a notion first elaborated by the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy) as a new conceptual model and method for approaching several philosophical issues. Thinking of objects as systems opens a constellation of relevant views: systems are identified through their specific properties, which are the observable novelty of the organized whole in relation to its parts; systems are influenced by continuous interchange with their environment; a system can change its parts but must preserve the scheme of its relations to keep its unity and individuality; systemic properties can be neither deduced nor foreseen but must be observed; systems, subsystems, and super-systems can be put into a hierarchical order, each having specific properties; systems’ behavior is a consequence of their history and their finality. All these views are expressed in intuitive terms, but can be made rigorous through a philosophical reflection that can open fruitful approaches in several domains. For example, the famous mind-body problem appears under a new light if, instead of conceiving mind and body as separate entities, one of which might possibly be “explained away” by reducing it to the other, one considers them as subsystems of the unique global system that is the human individual. Similarly, the debate on the “neutrality of science” is seen in a new light if one is aware that science is just a subsystem, along with many other

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subsystems, such as the economic, productive, sanitary, ethical, social, and political, which constitute the global social system. The condition for the best functioning of the global system is a good functioning of the single subsystems accompanied by a suitable interrelation among them. This intuitive idea can be made precise through a system theoretical model in which the notion of “optimization” means the attaining of a dynamic equilibrium in which no subsystem “maximizes” the value of its own specific functions, but at the same time attains a suitable level for them. This systemic solution to the problem of the freedom and responsibility of science, which I had proposed in a 1987 article and was later incorporated into my book Right, Wrong and Science, has been considered the best available by several scholars. Not to be too long, I shall not consider here my general theory of objectivity (of which I have already given some ideas above), whose originality has led scholars to qualify it with the special denomination of “objectualism.” I shall rather close by pointing out what gives originality to the form of “scientific realism” that I have been advocating during my entire philosophical career. This scientific realism of mine is noteworthy not only because it was, in the past, one of the rare defenses of realism in a wide landscape of antirealist positions, especially in the philosophy of science, but because it is peculiar in the present situation in which realism is again gaining respect and credit. To put it briefly, the core of the realismantirealism debate concerns the question of whether we can consider “real” those entities that are not observable but are admitted by well-confirmed scientific theories. My answer is that, if we have reasons for admitting that a theory is true (being carefully precise about this delicate idea), for the same reasons we must accept that the entities that it admits are real. This depends on the nature of truth, which I do not define as a vague “correspondence” to reality, but as a satisfactory relation of a sentence with its referents that can be tested operationally. This referential theory of truth enables us to recognize that truth is always “relative” to a given domain of referents yet without falling into “relativism,” according to which truth is relative to its appreciation by individual subjects. To give a solid foundation to this theory, I had to engage in a detailed and complex work so as to (systemically) embed objectivity in its proper “contexts” and attain in such a way also a plausible justification of such a general thesis as scientific realism. The fulfillment of this enterprise was the 2014 publication of my Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events?

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I believe that my philosophical position is timely because we live in a global society permeated by techno-science but unable to find a point of intersection between techno-science and the ethical values and perspectives that must orient our existence. Only an appropriate understanding of the nature of science, of what it can and cannot offer us, and of the directions different from science in which we must orient our inquiry, can help us solve this crucial problem of our epoch. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? In other historical epochs, philosophy had a more significant impact on public life. Today, the “professionalization” of philosophy and its consequent specialization into many sectors (or “philosophies of . . .”) have deprived philosophy of the possibility of being a significant factor in the orientation of our lives. This phenomenon is confirmed by the fact that “great thinkers” have practically disappeared in present-day philosophy, where good “professionals” can attain a deserved reputation by working within a thematically (but also intellectually) limited horizon. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? I believe that ethical concerns (taken in a broad sense) and the elaboration of an intercultural dialogue are among the most fundamental issues that philosophy should address. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? The philosopher’s role should consist in stimulating and helping the formation of a capacity for critical judgment in our citizens, in order to substantiate their real autonomy and their ability to make free decisions in the face of the conditioning originating in the media and various sources of propaganda and publicity, which usually stimulate only the most elementary perceptions and feelings and inhibit the exercise of reflection.

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SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. In a certain sense, philosophy has always been the self-consciousness of different cultures. Today, we are facing cultural pluralism as an inevitable consequence of the process of globalization. It is difficult, however, to envisage a real “global culture” of humankind. Therefore, we need a dialogical attitude that consists in the capability of discovering the reasons for our differences, so that we can avoid transforming them into conflicts. Philosophy, which is eminently the exercise of reason, can therefore offer a substantial contribution to this great and complex endeavor.

Mathematics, Freedom, and Conflictual Democracy A Conversation with Giulio Giorello (Milano, 1945)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? I was born in Milan on May 14, 1945, to Carlo, an insurance agent, and Wanda Guastella, a housewife. World War II had just ended. Antifascism was a family tradition; less so the Catholic religion. I have been regularly baptized, even if my education has remained typically secular. At home, an appreciation for literature and music, but also for scientific exposition was well rooted. I went to primary school and then to high school in Milan. Once I graduated from high school, a liceo classico, I went to the university to study philosophy. At that time, only those who had gone to a liceo classico could enroll in a Facoltà di Lettere, to which philosophy was affiliated. My first philosophical reading had been Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. Spurred by the presentations, at which Russell was a master, of the great philosophers of the past, I moved directly to the philosophers’ texts in the cases I found most interesting. Thus I read Descartes, Pascal, Hume, Kant, and also, strange as this may seem, Spinoza’s Ethics, which I devoured. It was perhaps reading this text that made me fall in love with the “geometrical style” and search for an increasingly close connection between mathematics and philosophy. At that time, this was a minority current within the Italian context. It had originally emerged in the first years of the twentieth century mainly thanks to some rather anomalous scientific masters, such as the mathematicians Giuseppe Peano and Federigo Enriques and the physicist Enrico 175

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Persico. Yet it had been soon wiped out by the “idealist reaction against the sciences,” to use the expression of the philosopher Antonio Alliotta. It is not surprising, then, that in my academic career I have sought interconnections between philosophy and scientific thinking, especially physical-mathematical thinking. At first, I tackled problems in the foundations of mathematics. Later, I turned to the increase of mathematical knowledge and to its applicability to physics, and then to the notion of a “mathematical model” of a real system. Finally, I realized that the answers to these various problems acquired their fullest sense within the context of a society capable of allowing free technical-scientific research and of learning from its best results. This is the exact opposite of the Heideggerian stereotype, which in Italy has been appropriated by not a few emulators on both the Left and the Right. According to this stereotype, science “does not think.” On the contrary, it thinks a lot. The same can also be said, with an elegant metaphor, about sufficiently sophisticated machines. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? Already during my high school years, I had the chance to meet the philosopher and mathematician Ludovico Geymonat. Geymonat had been one of the first to introduce into Italy themes and problems of the Vienna Circle’s neopositivism (Schlick, Carnap, Weismann, and so on) as well as one of its critics, Karl Popper. On the basis of these beginnings, enrolling in 1964 at the Università degli Studi in Milan, the so-called Statale, seemed natural to me. Since 1956, Geymonat had been teaching philosophy of science here in the only position in Italy devoted to that discipline. In any event, the philosophy curriculum at Milan State University was rich with approaches that were both original and open to the international scene. Geymonat, who was also the author of a good volume on Galileo Galilei, published in 1957, which was translated into many languages and was coeval with Kuhn’s The Copernican Revolution, was then working at unifying philosophy and history of science. Meanwhile his student, Ettore Casari, took up the tradition of mathematical logic; the historian of philosophy, Mario Dal Pra, was engaged in a critical dialogue with Norman Kemp Smith’s interpretation of Hume’s thought; and Enzo Paci, a scholar sensitive to the relations between phi-

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losophy and literature, aimed at a synthesis of Husserl’s phenomenology and critical Marxism. The philosophy courses at Milan State University offered a rather explosive twist compared to the rest of the Italian panorama, which was still permeated with idealistic “dogmas” even when they were sometimes translated into the jargon of historical materialism, especially by those intellectuals who militated in the Italian Communist Party or were close to that political group. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? Milan was in some ways a happy island, even though important, innovative motifs were also present in philosophy courses offered at other universities. Political philosophy, often linked to juridical studies, was powerfully reformed at that time in Turin by Norberto Bobbio thanks to his openminded reading of Hans Kelsen. Turin was also the center for the experiment led by the Centro di Studi Metodologici (Center for Methodological Studies), which, alongside mathematician-philosophers such as Geymonat, saw the involvement of philosophers of right such as Bobbio and also physicists and engineers. The distinctive feature of the Center was its critical and dispassionate approach to the most diverse issues, beyond disciplinary boundaries and moreover with no political prejudice. The fact remained, however, that in Italian universities, philosophy was usually tied to humanistic disciplines. This was the “perverse connection with philology,” as Antonio Labriola deplored already in 1896. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? Some of the reasons that spurred me to do philosophy are tied to the biographical elements I have mentioned in the previous answers. I will add that when I first enrolled in philosophy courses, I was quite uncertain whether I should instead study something more scientific such as physics, biology, or mathematics. I felt that philosophy’s connection with “philology” was a cage, and I thought of works of science and philosophy of science as instruments to escape it.

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It is difficult for me to indicate a specific school of thought. I would rather say that I had an area or a constellation of approaches in mind. More specifically, I thought of a liberalized empiricism in the sense that this expression took on with Quine’s reflections in the early 1950s. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? I have already spoken about Spinoza’s Ethics. With respect to the twentieth century, the encounter (and sometimes the conflict) with Karl Popper’s work, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, has been fundamental. I then realized that the greater part of the most interesting works in philosophy of science in the second half of the twentieth century had developed with and against Popper. I am thinking, for example, of Imre Lakatos, Paul Feyerabend, and Thomas Kuhn. With respect to these authors, I can say I have grown up with them. Since I am asked to indicate three works, I would like to add one that is seemingly a piece of literature, namely, Franz Kafka’s The Castle. I had read it in my high school years in an Italian translation that contained a beautiful preface by moral philosopher Remo Cantoni. In those years, Cantoni was working to open up Italy to the tradition of cultural anthropology. Cantoni understood The Castle as land surveyor K.’s desperate wrestling with a God that both attracts and rejects him, in an atmosphere of Angst that becomes increasingly obscure. I had instead started to suspect that Kafka’s tragic irony aimed (also) at a dramatic representation of the perverted attractiveness of bureaucracy, which fascinates the best individuals so as to kill all their individualistic inspirations in the labyrinths of a prolonged and omnipervasive power. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. I was particularly struck by Ludovico Geymonat’s mix of intellectual tolerance and partisan sentiment. A group of friends I have never forgotten (though, because of life’s circumstances, some of them later became opponents—yet always fair opponents) used to gather at his house, during evenings dense with smoke and the aroma of grappa (even though already at that time I preferred whiskey). I would like especially to recall Enrico Bellone, a historian of physics and author of the well-appreciated work A

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World on Paper, and Silvano Tagliagambe, an expert on science and society in the former USSR. Connected to the discussions that were held during those years is the publication, with Bellone, Tagliagambe, and Geymonat himself, of the short 1974 volume Attualità del materialismo dialettico (Timeliness of Dialectical Materialism). Reduced to pure “historical materialism,” Marxism appeared to us as “crippled” materialism, incapable of confronting scientific practice understood as one of the most powerful transformational historical factors. Moreover, at the level of actual reality, historical materialism disclosed itself as an “illiberal” obstacle (in the etymological sense, given that, as Geymonat used to say, freedom is, first of all, freedom to change). Very soon, however, even dialectical materialism appeared to me as a cage. The same occurred especially with respect to the option, supported by many militants in the Italian and European Left, of a national leader of “real socialism,” be it the Soviet Union or Mao’s China (depending on personal taste). I was more convinced by the “grafting of the forbidden fruit of dialectics” onto the trunk of Western philosophy of science that Imre Lakatos had achieved, at least according to Paul Feyerabend. With Feyerabend I was inclined to share the idea of a “free society” where every doctrine, including the doctrine that denies a free society, has the right to a public defendant. With respect to this, my positions started to diverge, at both the theoretical and the practical levels, from those of the so-called Geymonat school. Among those who were initially part of it, special mention goes to Marco Mondadori, to whom I was tied by deep agreement on the political and intellectual levels. This was so even before we co-wrote the preface to a new, 1981 Italian edition of John Stuart Mill’s Saggio sulla libertà (Essay on Liberty). We both considered the best exemplification of the dialectics of ideas to reside in the growth of science, and within civil society to reside in the competition of research programs or projects where what mattered was not so much their “synthesis” but rather the continuation of their reciprocal critique. The outcome was the model of a “conflictual democracy” that caused a number of objections on both the Right and (especially) the Left. These objections were however welcome by those who thought that research programs or projects in social engineering were not ideal structures to be imposed on society, but rather flexible discovery tools with which to better understand oneself and one’s opponents—without believing in them too much, yet with continuous advances in their methods of use. As the young Stephen Daedalus, parodying Mark’s Gospel (9:24), says in Joyce’s Ulysses, “I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other chap.” In scientific endeavors as well as in civil

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society, the adhesion to a constellation of ideas and values should never translate into the division between us and them, between those who believe and those who are labelled as dangerous skeptics. Finally, I had devoted my philosophy dissertation in 1968 to a problem in the theory of the transfinite created by Georg Cantor in the second half of the nineteenth century. More precisely, I had devoted it to the hypothesis of the continuum, which at the beginning of the 1960s had been tackled with innovative studies by the logician and mathematician Paul J. Cohen. On Geymonat’s advice and convinced that being a philosopher of science makes no sense without some immersion in scientific practice, I enrolled in the study of mathematics at the University of Pavia and graduated in 1971, having worked on a problem in the theory of distribution presented in the frame of nonstandard analysis invented by the logician Abraham Robinson. My partaking in the mathematicians’ environment was also the occasion to prove the groundlessness of a famous dismissive judgment by Horkheimer and Adorno in the Dialectics of the Enlightenment, according to which mathematics embodies only coercion and hierarchy. The exact opposite is true. Logical rigor goes hand in hand with intuitive creativity in pondering various relevant ways of approaching the same problem. As Cantor says, “the essence of mathematics lies in its freedom.” SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? Even today, the work about which I feel most affectionate is a short 2005 pamphlet titled Di nessuna Chiesa (Of No Church). The title comes from a remark by Samuel Johnson concerning the poet John Milton: “He was neither of the Church of Rome, nor of the Church of England . . . To be of no Church is dangerous.” This book of mine has been read as a manifesto of either militant atheism or cultural relativism. In truth, it is neither. Instead, it is the proposal of a “methodological atheism”—the state is atheistic, as Thomas Jefferson already claimed, because the state need not ground its laws on this or that theological tradition; and science is atheistic, because science does not need God for its explanations. Specific individuals should of course listen to all the monks, pastors, rabbis, imams, houngans, or mambos belonging to their preferred tradition as long as they abstain from injuring others. The first injury is that of wanting to impose on others, perhaps under the pretension of saving them, the dogmas and catechism of one’s specific “denomination.” This is also a terrible service to the God one claims to be worshipping.

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SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? Among the books I have written, I do not dislike a short 2010 volume devoted to lust, Lussuria (Lust), which I wrote on Remo Bodei’s invitation in the context of a series of texts on the seven deadly sins. Except that for me lust is not exactly a vice but a form of virtue in the sense of the peerless remark that, in the first half of the nineteenth century, was directed to John Stuart Mill by Harriet Taylor, his lover and companion (and by Mill’s own admission, “the inspirer . . . of all that is best in my writings”): “Who enjoys most is most virtuous.” Harriet was notoriously not a proponent of the dualistic separation between mind and body. The problem is not only acknowledging the power of passions but also igniting passions with the spark of intelligence. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? Whether it is a matter of claims concerning the value of controversies in scientific research, or the value of eccentricity in conflictual democracy, or intolerance for all virtues imposed from the top down, I am becoming convinced that these opinions and sentiments of mine are increasingly becoming “untimely meditations.” In times of political correctness, of the culture of complaint (as Robert Hughes says), and the desire for normalization, I believe that those who take up a libertarian position like the one delineated in some of the previous answers run the risk of becoming a WWF protected species. This holds true also for atheism (albeit “methodological”) at times when fanatics of various beliefs jump with vehemence on Darwin, “blasphemous” cartoons, birth control, the freedom to choose how to live and die, and so on. There should be more resoluteness in defending those that we can call, following Jonathan Israel, the conquests of radical Enlightenment. Reason is certainly not a light that enlightens everything but rather a much more modest torch that casts some pale light on the darkness that surrounds us. In any event, woe betide us if we try to put it off! I have been educated in the years when Italy was beginning to come to terms with its own history, after having emerged, thanks to the partisans’ resistance, from the fogs of old-style fascism. Today there is a new form of fascism, which is often wrapped up in the colors of religious fanaticism. I do not think that verbally denouncing it is enough. In any event, this

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new fascism, which prostitutes even God to its own goals of domination, does not just come from outside our own “open societies.” It has its own fifth column within them. All those who are ready to sell what remains of their freedom for the illusion of greater security potentially belong to it. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? One of the greatest diseases in our current societies is their increasing bureaucratization. I see this first in the very institution in which I work, the academic and research environment. There are at least two aspects of this cancer. The first is the various external coercions that public and private administrations force on our way of teaching and doing scientific research by imposing rigid and inadequate modes of research evaluation and job candidate selection. I share many of the criticisms that my colleague Donald Gillies directed at the British system in his 2008 book How Should Research Be Organised? In various venues he subsequently extended his criticisms to the European evaluation system. With current standards, it would have been very difficult for Frege’s new mathematical logic to find institutional recognition at its time; or for Wittgenstein’s theory of linguistic games; or perhaps for Einstein’s discovery of the special relativity theory; or even for Fleming’s innovative intuition on the power of penicillin. The second aspect of bureaucratization is the self-defense usually adopted by the various philosophical schools to escape the external bureaucrats. That is, they create their own evaluation standards and abide by them, perhaps claiming that their practice is an “honest business” from which any too eccentric type remains excluded. Whether internal or external, ultimately the bureaucrat always asks the same question: what is philosophy for? The first answer that comes to my mind is that it is for nothing and no one. Philosophy is neither a business nor a filling out of paperwork to receive funding. Rather, I agree with what Gerd Gigerenzer has stressed with respect to a “maxim” that implicitly supports the research politics of the various Max Planck Institutes in Germany: hire those who are good and let them work. This rule adequately embodies the idea of an organization in which quality control goes together with a climate of trust, which is necessary for cutting-edge innovation.

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SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? It may seem odd that, when looking at the future, I insist on the ongoing defense of that constellation of ideas and practices that is usually labelled “Enlightenment.” I would like to stress, however, first of all that the Enlightenment was the catalyst for the democratic experiment leading to the formation of the United States (I am thinking especially but not only of Thomas Jefferson) and at the same time it has provided the conceptual framework for thinking Europe. I mention two names, both of which are very emblematic: Immanuel Kant and Carlo Cattaneo, who is very important for Enlightenment trends in Italy. The Enlightenment revolution—a “revolution of the mind,” as Jonathan Israel says—is something more than a historically specific movement of thought. Unbiased scientific analysis, the investigation of nature and the relevance of technology, the naturalistic reformulation of ethics, the liberation of politics from theological control, human rights and lack of discrimination, understanding of the role of human beings within nature, and so on—these are all themes that are alive today perhaps even more so than in the eighteenth century. This revolution is a “permanent revolution,” which motivates us to find the role of philosophy once again within the folds of scientific research as well as in the retrieval of political planning. This is a characterization that I used to share with my dear and brotherly friend Fernando Gil, a “Portuguese” philosopher born in Lourenço Marques (now Maputo), who entered philosophy without forgetting his role as a rebel against colonialism and a fighter for Africa’s freedoms. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? From the previous answer, one can understand how important the connection between philosophy and history is for me. Social thought is not the only field of inquiry for philosophy, though. To my mind, philosophy is first of all cosmology in the deepest sense of the term. That is, a way of ordering space and time without coercing the freedom of the knowing subject. The consideration, which comes from scientific knowledge, of the various kinds of relation together with the

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realization that philosophy can analyze the nature of the relations as well as their intrinsic possibilities raises anew the question of an ontology of freedom. René Thom, a friend and teacher of mine and the 1958 Fields Medal recipient, thought that such a question was one of the greatest challenges of a renewed “philosophy of nature.” SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. Philosophy is a box of intellectual tools to be used creatively for the defense and consolidation of our freedom in a world in which freedom is increasingly threatened. At this point, one could of course ask what freedom is. My answer is the same as the one provided by the Irish leader James Connolly, a republican and socialist who was executed by the British occupiers immediately after the Easter Rising (April 1916): freedom is nothing but a means to acquire greater freedom.

Science, Knowledge, Rationality, and Empirical Realism A Conversation with Paolo Parrini (Castell’Azzara, 1943)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? Ever since I began paying attention to philosophy, during my high school years, I have been attracted by the areas of ontology, metaphysics, and philosophy of knowledge. My distinct preference has been for the last one, given that I have always had strong scientific interests. Later, I approached logic and philosophy of science. Later still, close contact with logical empiricism and analytic philosophy led me to pay careful attention to philosophy of language. In recent years, the progress of my research on problems of truth and realism has led me to become involved with the theme of values and thus with issues of ethics and aesthetics. A new book of which I have been thinking for a while should allow me to offer an articulate explication of the common thread that holds all these diverse areas of inquiry together. Second to my theoretical interests, I have cultivated historical interests that I consider to be tightly connected with my primary concerns. At the historical level, I have studied logical empiricism, Kant’s philosophy of knowledge, the relations between physics and geometry, the beginnings of the philosophy of science, and twentieth-century Italian philosophy. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical

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landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? When I arrived at the university in Florence in the early 1960s, there was a still strongly perceivable distinction between trends of religious and Catholic inspiration on the one side and secular (laici) trends on the other. I identified with the secular area, and especially looked to philosophers and historians of philosophy such as Nicola Abbagnano, Norberto Bobbio, Mario Dal Pra, Eugenio Garin, Ludovico Geymonat, Enzo Paci, and Giulio Preti. Within this trend, the philosophical possibilities were many and well differentiated. One could bridge from Marxism, which after World War II was almost an area of its own, to phenomenology, pragmatism, logical empiricism, the increasingly extenuated prolongations of Gentile’s idealism and Croce’s historicism, and the first contacts with analytic philosophy. New disciplines, which were at first mistaken as movements of thought, were starting to affirm themselves. For example, symbolic logic and philosophy of science were often confused with logical empiricism, which in turn was understood so broadly as to include the representatives of the Vienna and Berlin Circles as well as Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and Popper. A similar story occurred with respect to philosophy of language, which was confused for years with analytic philosophy. These crude judgments were some of the many manifestations of the Italian philosophical delay in comparison with countries such as Great Britain and the United States, In these countries, symbolic logic, philosophy of science, and philosophy of language had already taken up a defined institutional character in ways that were distinct from the movements of thought that had favored their consolidation and diffusion. In Italy, the overlap with logical empiricism had generated the impression that the new disciplines contained an intrinsic antimetaphysical valence, placing them in a line of conflict with Catholic thought. Thus it is not surprising that many Catholic thinkers, especially those inspired by Aristotle, have experienced satisfaction at the “rehabilitation” of metaphysics and ontology that has occurred in recent times following the crisis of neopositivism. This “rehabilitation” has seemed to reaffirm the validity of a line of thinking that many considered to have been overcome in postwar Italy. Whether it was possible to continue doing metaphysics and ontology was one of my most heartfelt concerns at the time. It has continuously accompanied my reflections ever since. In those years, though, I worked on circumscribed topics of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and moreover, philosophy of knowledge, which to me appeared

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to be the royal way to access all other philosophical issues, in primis the relations between philosophy and science. The latter theme was also frequently debated. It required a rethinking of our entire intellectual tradition, which for many was conditioned by an underestimation of the cultural value of the sciences and an overestimation of the value of the humanistic disciplines. Frequently discussed were the consequences of the success, in the early 1900s, of Benedetto Croce’s and Giovanni Gentile’s philosophies (which were seen by the “innovators” as the umpteenth stop on a possible path of modernization along the lines of the “defeated” Federigo Enriques, Giovanni Vailati, and Mario Calderoni). Connected to this was the debate (crucial, given the strong cultural influence of the Italian Communist Party) on the validity of Marxism, and especially on what form of Marxism should be preferred. Some were inclined toward a Marxism close to the Italian historicist tradition and focused on the legacy of Antonio Gramsci (or at least a certain reading of him). Others underlined its relations with classic German philosophy (in either its Kantian or the dialectical-Hegelian versions). Still others, who at some point turned toward dialectical materialism, worked at a link between the Marxist vision and techno-scientific culture. I was very interested in these conversations, especially those concerning the relation between Marxism and the sciences. Even after the enrichment of the debate due to references to Popper’s philosophy, I could not find anything in it that would challenge my conviction that, if one wishes to go to the root of any philosophical issue, one should start with a serious theoretical discussion of epistemological and scientific matters. This approach gradually distanced me from the younger representatives of secular culture, including those who had lived firsthand the experience of the neo-Enlightenment. Some of these younger thinkers (Pietro Rossi, Carlo Augusto Viano) seemed novel when compared with previous historiography; some others (Paolo Rossi Monti) had widened their interests to include the history of science. Yet they were turning their investigations in a mainly historical direction that was both discouraged and discouraging with respect to theory. In this environment, which influenced my general orientation, being concerned with realism and antirealism, truth or the problem of knowledge—the kind of philosophical work that in the rest of the world was considered the usual activity for a philosopher—was regarded as a show of arrogance and treated with a lot of suspicion. Despite this, I continued to devote myself to theoretical issues. I studied their links with the philosophical repercussions of the “revolutionary” developments of twentieth-century physics (relativity and quantum theory), and explored their rootedness in some salient moments in the history of philosophical

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and scientific thought. I was not even “seduced” by the authors dominating the 1968 scene, particularly the representatives of the Frankfurt School. I appreciated the cultural renewal brought about by the “student revolution.” But I thought that the renewal was unbalanced and had very frail theoretical grounds, as subsequent cultural and political events revealed, at times unfortunately quite tragically. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? I could give a very short answer and say that all influences were present. During my educational years, it was widely thought that in Italy, after Croce’s and Gentile’s victory against Enriques, a sort of “dictatorship” of historicist idealism had been established (despite the different political associations of its two major representatives). The 1945 liberation from the Fascist regime was regarded as the opening of a surge of novelty, including in the cultural world. It was thought that only after that date could the philosophical world in particular know and appreciate foreign philosophies. Today, we know that this kind of vision was simplistic in many respects (in an essay on the Italian reception of logical empiricism I have indicated the first signs in the 1930s). What remains nevertheless incontrovertible is the hegemonic influence of Croce’s and Gentile’s ideas on Italian culture. Once Fascism was over, such influence decreased significantly among the intellectual elites. Yet it remained powerful in the school system, the newspapers, and the mentality of the average Italian. Equally uncontestable is the increase, after World War II, of translations and monographs aimed at “importing” authors and movements of thought that had previously been absent or at the margins of the Italian philosophical debate: Weber and German historicism; Husserl and phenomenology in its various inflections; Heidegger and other versions of the philosophy of existence and hermeneutics; Moore, Russell, and Wittgenstein; Carnap, Schlick, Neurath, and Reichenbach’s logical empiricism; Popper’s philosophy; AngloAmerican analytic philosophy; Peirce, Dewey, and American pragmatism. Meanwhile, as I have already mentioned, entire disciplinary fields such as logic, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and semiotics were born or becoming stronger. In the years after 1960, this work of “updating” would continue ensuring that there would not be a gap between what we were doing and what was done elsewhere. Thus, for example, the translation of works of the representatives of the Vienna and Berlin Circles went hand in hand with the translation of essays of their critics, such as Quine, Goodman, Kuhn, Feyerabend, and others.

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This cultural climate (perhaps vitiated by a “bit” of friendliness toward the foreign) was extremely stimulating for a student who was not yet twenty years old. Like many other young students, I tried to assimilate as much as possible of the “novelties” that were constantly introduced into the market of ideas. This task was in truth quite burdensome. It entailed a continuous waste of energies and could easily impede my concentration on circumscribed problems (typical of philosophical work in Anglo-American countries) necessary for fruitful creative work. In my case, I can say I found precious help in Giulio Preti’s teaching. When I first met him, Preti was still concerned with the attempt at finding a noneclectic synthesis of the trends that were most interesting to me, namely phenomenology, neo-Kantianism, pragmatism (including some aspects of Marxist philosophy), and logical empiricism. However, as then became clear through a deep historiographical inquiry, logical empiricism had already moved in the direction of an organic and original fusion of elements coming from those traditions of thought. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? Perhaps because ever since I was very young I had a complicated relation with religion, I felt the attraction of philosophy at the very moment I encountered it in high school. I started reading philosophical works on my own very soon. Almost immediately I distanced myself from Croce’s philosophy, which had helped my emancipation from all forms of positive religiosity, in favor of a “religion of freedom.” I had encountered Croce while looking for help to understand Hegel’s first volume of the Lectures on the Philosophy of History. At first, I thought Croce was clear and “captivating,” but then I realized that he could not satisfy what had become and has remained my primary interest, a philosophy that focuses on the question of knowledge and its relation with science. In the same years when I encountered Hegel, I also encountered the Italian pragmatists Giovanni Papini and Giuseppe Prezzolini. I also read some essays by Vailati, and I immediately had the feeling of being in the “home” I had been looking for. At this point, there arose in me a spontaneous interest in those Italian philosophers who were opposed to the idealistic tradition: Garin (who was then considered a critic of that tradition), Abbagnano, Bobbio, Dal Pra, and moreover Preti (I “discov-

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ered” Bruno de Finetti’s conception of probability only a few years later). Thus I discovered the so-called Italian neo-Enlightenment. This movement proposed a renewal of Italian society, culture, and philosophy through the defense of secular reason, a reason open to a critical knowledge similar to the one characterizing the scientific attitude. Loyalty to such an ideal would later place thinkers as diverse as Abbagnano, Preti, and Dal Pra in increasing conflict with Garin (whose attitude toward idealism was becoming progressively more ambiguous) and his successful “philosophy as historical knowledge” (which for me was merely a “transformational” operation) as well as with the “official” Marxism of the Italian Communist Party of Gramscian origin. For an inexperienced young man, however, the potential conflicts were not yet evident. The seemingly dominant (and unifying) element was the will to renewal, which was shared (at least verbally) by all those I just mentioned and their students (for example, the already-mentioned Rossi, Viano, and Rossi Monti). After taking many classes with Garin and especially with Preti, I graduated in 1968 with a dissertation written with Preti’s guidance on Quine’s philosophical thought. Preti, who had been educated in the Milan school of Antonio Banfi, was a rather isolated figure. He had distanced himself from the Italian Communist Party already before publishing his Praxis e empirismo (Praxis and Empiricism) in 1957. This is an important book that did not achieve its hoped-for outcome. Given the persistent link between politics and culture in Italy, Preti’s attempt to update Marxism by joining it with a scientifically inspired philosophy, nourished with an original reading of logical empiricism, and dense with pragmatist, neo-Kantian, and phenomenological motifs, was not understood. The book was opposed by most of the forms of Marxism that were fashionable at that time. It was dismissed as a philosophical expression of “advanced capitalism” in a manner that was too quick and ideological, and whose consequences we are still suffering. Even from a wider perspective, Preti was isolated. His goal, which I shared entirely, was to develop a form of philosophy capable of taking scientific outcomes into consideration and remaining at the level of universality while not giving up argumentative rigor. At that time when studies in logic (especially thanks to Ettore Casari), philosophy of science, and analytic philosophy of language were (finally!) consolidated, Preti appeared (using a rough dichotomy that became fashionable a few years later) as too “continental” for the “analysts” and too “analytical” for the “continentalists.” Then there were the rough relations with many historians of philosophy. Preti had participated as a protagonist in the debate over the renewal of Italian philosophical historiography and had sided for a while with Garin.

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But then he could not accept the erudite historicist and substantially rhetorical conclusions that Garin and his followers reached, thereby severely affecting the destiny of the history of science in Italy. The only friends that remained for Preti were Abbagnano and especially Dal Pra. Among all these contrasts, I tried to find my own personal voice by relying on Preti first (he died prematurely in 1972) and Dal Pra later. In my endeavor, the discussions with Preti and the human contact with him were of great help. Our discussions were often spirited because they were animated by significant differences. We were both entirely convinced that the lessons taught by logical empiricism could not be dismissed as easily as many thought. Yet we disagreed on how to ensure that these lessons were taken seriously. Preti rejected (almost with impatience) Quine’s refusal of analyticity because it was patently counterintuitive. On the contrary, I thought that the value of some logical empiricist notions and distinctions had to be retrieved with new modalities that took into account the criticisms of such notions and distinctions and that could “immunize” them. Precisely in those years, I conceived of the idea of a contextualized or relativized a priori that I formulated in a significant 1973 work on Quine and then in the 1976 book Linguaggio e teoria (Language and Theory). Those afternoons and Sunday evenings spent in discussions and confrontations with Preti (something quite unusual given Italian academic habits) were fundamentally important for me. They were a constant feature of my intellectual education and remain among the most beautiful memories of my youthful years. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? It is difficult for me to answer because I speak more easily of traditions of thought rather than authors. Three names, however, come to mind: Aristotle, Hume, and Kant. Aristotle has always fascinated me, for two reasons. First, because he stays as close as possible to common sense and to what one does and/or thinks one is doing both in everyday life and in scientific research. Aristotle was capable of explicating the consequences of this attitude with such lucidity, coherence, and depth that his claims continue reemerging even today after new philosophical and scientific discoveries seemed to archive them forever. The story of essentialism from antiquity to our contemporary times can be regarded as exemplary. I am not in favor of essentialism; I

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even think that the development of modern science brings with itself an antiessentialist teaching. Precisely because of this, I have been impressed with what has happened in recent decades with respect to the discussions of modal logic and the semantics of possible worlds. The other reason for my fascination with Aristotle’s thought has to do with a fundamental feature of philosophy as it has developed throughout the centuries—a feature endangered by the latest outcomes in analytic philosophy. Plato said that only the one who can have a general vision is a dialectician, that is, a philosopher, whereas the one who cannot is not. If this is true, (and certainly it has been considered true for the longest time), how can one not regard Aristotle as the prototype of the philosopher? The metaphysical clothing he gave to his system has been rejected by many. Not even the detractors of metaphysics, however, have given up the idea that philosophy must work in terms of general visions and orientations. Precisely for this reason, some of them (for example, the neoempiricists) have retrieved Aristotle positively on this. After Aristotle, I would place Hume. Hume has developed a criticism of causality (and of probability, which is too often neglected) that has undermined traditional metaphysics and has confronted philosophical inquiry with new tasks. The fact that the existence of such criticism would not influence our usual beliefs and the “normal” way of living and behaving in practical life was for me an almost upsetting fact. I could not consider it a sophism I could neglect and yet I could not see its practical relevance. I think that ever since then I felt the obscure need for a “metaphilosophical” perspective, or for a “philosophy of philosophy,” which then became a staple in my more “mature” reflections. As the third author I would like to name Kant, who together with Hume impressed me the most since my high school days. Kant’s gnoseology seemed to answer the problems posed by Hume. This answer also took scientific developments into consideration and could be discussed in light of later discoveries. At this time, I had also started to approach new physical theories thanks to the precise translations in those years of works by scientist-philosophers such as Einstein, Planck, and Heisenberg. I was especially interested in discussions of the philosophical consequences of their theories; these consequences concerned precisely Kant’s conception of knowledge. I avidly read and tried to understand something about relativity through Einstein’s presentation in his famous short volume, translated into Italian in 1960, Über die spezielle und allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (gemeinverständlich). At least for the moment, Croce, Hegel, and the Italian pragmatists had been set aside.

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SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. The leading thread in my philosophy has been the question of knowledge. I have been looking for two answers: one at the methodological (or metaphilosophical) level, the other at the substantial level. Methodologically, I have been looking for an outcome that would not be a sum of particular answers to specific epistemological questions but rather a general framework standing in a relation of reflective balance with answers of a more specific nature. Despite the fragmentations and specializations of our period (specializations that are in some sense useful and certainly unavoidable), I think that philosophy cannot give up some form of generality and of unity at least as regulative ideals. Philosophical problems cannot be confronted in isolation, neglecting their possible interactions and the previous attempts at their resolution. At the substantial level, my conception, which I have named “positive philosophy,” tries to preserve some objectivity and rationality of knowledge. Like other epistemologists, I have tried to show that neither the crisis of neopositivism with its accompanying neo-Enlightenment ideals nor an updated vision of scientific endeavors (calibrated by the history of science) entail the need to give up the objectivity and rationality of knowledge. At the historical level, I have rethought the meaning of the neoempiricist movement; at the theoretical level, I have advanced a conception of truth, objectivity, and rationality as empty regulative ideals. These regulative ideals are empty in the sense that truth, objectivity, and rationality are loosely tied to the principles directing scientists’ choices (namely, simplicity, systematicity, comprehensiveness, familiarity, elegance, etc.); they cannot be rigidly defined though through criteria of application that are definable once and forever. Their function is to guide cognitive activities toward increasingly systematic, comprehensive, and unified syntheses. I distance myself from the perspective, characterizing common sense but also scientists’ nonreflective sentiments, that considers knowledge as an operation geared toward mirroring “reality as it is in itself” and truth as the successful outcome of this operation. Nevertheless, my conception “mirrors” (that is, adheres to) what really happens when we assert the truth of our affirmations or distinguish between reality and appearance. In all such circumstances, the so-called reality-in-itself is of no help. What we truly do is try to realize a synthesis as unitary as possible (knowing is unifying) between our rationality and what experience attests (empirical reality). Thus I support an empirical realism that, in conformity with our cognitive

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practices and procedures, interprets our spontaneous “realist instinct” not as the (unobtainable) tendency to grasp “reality-in-itself” (metaphysical realism), but as the fruitful effort (at least up to now) to come increasingly close to an epistemically optimal integration between empirical givenness and the rational elements interacting in the activity of knowledge. For me, objectivity is a task that realizes itself in partial and constantly revisable achievements. Truth with a capital “T,” constituted as the definitively accomplished integration of the conceptual and the empirical moments, can only be a regulative ideal, unattainable in principle given the inexhaustibility of experience and perhaps also of our inventive abilities. On the contrary, what we can count on are (more or less partial) syntheses that we trust with more or less certainty, that is, with the more-or-less firm conviction that we have attained beliefs unlikely to be affected by further cognitive developments. I would like to add that my proposal neither coincides with a purely algorithmic vision of scientific rationality (for me, pace Heidegger, “thinking reason” is not only philosophy but also science) nor translates into a form of scientism that in principle recognizes cognitive value only in scientific activities. I entirely acknowledge the debt we owe Kant. Therefore, I still think that a critical metaphysics is possible, understood as an analytic reconstruction of the presuppositions of knowledge. To my mind, though, besides not being reducible to purely linguistic frameworks (as for Carnap and “mature” neopositivism), such presuppositions cannot even be considered as universally and necessarily valid principles of the objects of experience (as they are in Kant). They are historically mutable assumptions, void of apodictic certainty, and are the structures of reference within which cognitive activity unfolds. As I once heard Robert Nozick say, the presuppositions of knowledge (and their overcoming) are not an obstacle but a means for the achievement of objectivity. Thus, I agree on the importance that the hermeneuticians and especially Gadamer place on our “prejudices.” Yet I do not sacrifice beyond need the chances we have to attain objective knowledge. To conclude, I would like to express some “disenchanted” perplexity with respect to the retrieval of metaphysical and ontological discourse within the analytic field after Quine’s critique of Carnap. The metaphysics and ontology that have recently become fashionable are “epistemologically weak,” as some have acknowledged. They certainly share with traditional metaphysics the fact that they aspire to the greatest generality. Unlike traditional metaphysics, however, they come very close to scientific theories, especially those with a wider and more general character such as relativistic physics and quantum mechanics. They are not doctrines that can be

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grounded apodictically, independent of experience. They retain empirical, hypothetical, revisable, (partially) conventional, and instrumental features. Since a 1990s work of mine of which I am very fond, I have not been much convinced by the so-called Quinean revaluation of metaphysics and I have been happy to see that today even some Anglophone philosophers consider such “revaluation” no less “deflationary” than Carnap’s conception of the reduction of ontological questions to issues of linguistic choice. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? Certainly the 1995 volume Conoscenza e realtà. Saggio di filosofia positiva, which appeared, revised, in English in 1998 with the title Knowledge and Reality. An Essay in Positive Philosophy. Conoscenza e realtà was conceived as the explication of the general philosophical framework for my more specific, previous (and perhaps even future) analyses. We live in a philosophical climate that is “conversational,” fragmentary, plural, and characterized by the almost general conviction (which I share) that “coercively” (that is, demonstratively) justifiable philosophies are no longer possible. Because of the advance of this current conception, for this book I adopted a writing style that mirrors its partly subjective and personal nature—hence the choice of omitting, in the Italian edition (the English is different for editorial reasons), notes, references, bibliography, and the subdivision of chapters into sections, paragraphs, and subparagraphs. I think that one main reason for philosophy’s continued existence is the analysis of the dyscrasias and tensions present in our conceptual and cultural system. The goal of the book has thus been some form of reelaboration of concepts (in my case, truth, reality, and objectivity) that would yield to a philosophical “reading” as organic, plausible, and consistent as possible. In these kinds of operations, however, as in that named “explication,” there are no incontrovertible answers. The philosopher’s choice depends on balancing various factors and on the greater or lesser weight that he or she decides to assign to some rather than others. In this holistic game, in which locally based considerations intertwine with globally based ones, reducing subjective preferences to nothing will not be possible. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? This is a question I am tempted not to answer. Too many philosophical positions circulating today qualify themselves as new and employ the prefix

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neo-. In fact, they are born out of the desire to make for themselves a hopefully advantageous place in the marketplace of ideas. The only thing I am comfortable saying is that my philosophy is rooted in demanding historical work, which I hope has produced some fruitful results, on the traditions of thought that I have entered as a theoretician and especially on logical empiricism. As I have already said, ever since the early 1970s, I have reconsidered the neopositivist position by contesting a purely linguistic conception of the a priori and speaking instead of a contextualized or relativized a priori of both an analytic and a synthetic nature. This reappraisal was motivated by the idea that Quine’s criticism demanded not so much the rejection of the a priori/a posteriori dichotomy (as he wanted) as the search for its legitimation on new grounds capable of casting light on the issues of objectivity and truth. Besides some content like the one just mentioned, one element of originality in my position lies perhaps precisely in the welding of historical and theoretical work, given also that my scholarly activity began long before people started talking of a “historical turn” in epistemology and philosophy of science. I leave to others, though, the task of evaluating the originality of my overall theoretical proposal. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? This is also a difficult question for me to answer. I belong to a generation almost obsessed with the problem of the timeliness of our doings. For the most part, I have not shared this preoccupation despite the fact that I had and have political passions that have changed with time. I would like to add a brief consideration. A philosopher’s reflections are nourished by all that happens in the philosopher’s experience; that is, both that which happens in the world of culture and ideas and that which happens in everyday life at the economic, social, political, and, obviously, personal levels. I also think, though, that the philosopher’s “professional” task is to move at such a level of abstraction that, in the end, it is thinking that enlightens events more than events that generate thinking. Thus, at least after the famous year 1968, it was not primarily the historical events accompanying my scholarly life that affected the evaluations I gave of them. Rather, it was my reflections on the philosophical problems that thrilled me that changed the way in which I looked at them. For example, it was the answer I gave myself on the problem of objectivity that enabled me to understand better why the Italian media system suffered such a deep and pernicious degeneration.

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I add that, at the general level, in a time like the present, characterized by violent irrationalist and antiobjectivist impulses, it is fundamentally important to develop an antirelativist conception that preserves notions with a markedly intersubjective value as best as we are able (and also as much as is possible). The current and potentially destructive cultural, religious, and even racial conflicts have a deep need for similar attempts. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? Many things have changed also because of significant changes in the social status of those operating in the field of university and para-university research as well as their internal relations to one another. Scholars’ activity increasingly takes up the features of teamwork in which, besides traditional intellectual and scientific abilities, what increasingly matters are one’s organizational skills. With respect to philosophy, I would like to draw attention to the problems of the specialization and compartmentalization of knowledge. In scientific disciplines, one can seemingly take care of these problems through the formation of large, integrated research groups like the ones already at work in the so-called hard sciences. In philosophy too one aims at similar solutions. One of the merits of the logical empiricists was their theorizing this need ever since the first decades of the twentieth century. An integration process capable of producing satisfying results will presumably be slower. Furthermore, mass society requires cultural and intellectual “mediations” for which journalists, publicists, and popularizers seem more apt than philosophers who do their job seriously. I do not regard as true philosophers the many who write to satisfy the larger public’s expectations or who use philosophical language and terminology to give the appearance of “technicism” to considerations that remain (when everything goes well) banal or commonsensical and that in truth have nothing genuinely and deeply philosophical about them. I am sorry to say that Italy is a country particularly rich with this kind of “philosophers,” quite able to keep one foot in the academy and one in mass communications. I think that this can bring great damage to future perspectives of our work. I would also like to call attention to the famous theme of intellectuals’ engagement. In Italy, we went from a period in which a “person of culture” had almost the obligation to be engaged at the political or social level to a period of greater distance or even, in some cases, of declared disengagement. With respect to philosophy, there are some good reasons

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for this change. There is more awareness that, because of their abstractness, philosophical questions do not lend themselves either to being read by nonexperts (why should a philosophical essay not use a technical language as essays in physics or mathematics do?) or to being easily and immediately translated into practice. One should also be cautious about the opposite excess. Even when it treats particularly “abstruse” issues, a philosophical conception can have practical implications and help deal with concrete problems. Denying that philosophy has a practical dimension is as unilateral as all attitudes of disdain toward those who are concerned with questions that are not immediately linked to the plane of life. Moreover, we should not confuse practical disengagement and the denial of responsibility tout court. We live in a period when responsibility is not fashionable. In philosophy too, many consider the end of the intellectual’s practical engagement as the license for intellectually irresponsible behavior. I say this with no intention to resurrect the philosopher with a capital “P” à la Gentile or Heidegger. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? As a philosopher with an empiricist inclination, I am not too fond of solemn pronouncements of any kind, not even on the topic of philosophy. Having said this, I think that what were once called “the eternal problems of philosophy,” which focused around values such as the True, the Good, the Beautiful, as Plato reminds us, continue to hold a place in the current debate (even if we talk of them without capitalizing them). Presumably, they will hold it also in the future. At least they should do so given that they touch on one of the most serious and urgent questions that historical events have placed in front of today’s generations and of those immediately following—namely, the problem of intercultural and interreligious, which also means interracial, dialogue and integration. A satisfying answer to this crucial problem develops through the construction of increasingly comprehensive and sophisticated axiological theories. The mystery and charm of philosophy is precisely this: the philosophical problems are always the same (for example, What is truth? What is good? What is just? And so on) and yet they are also always different. Philosophical problems are born out of life, philosophical answers go back to life and contribute (at least partly) to transform it; and the cycle begins again. It has always been like this, and I do not see signs that it will not be like this in the future. As for the very distant future, well, an empiricist like me cannot provide an answer.

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SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? I will offer a tautological answer that says everything and nothing, as is appropriate for all answers with a regulative value. The philosopher’s role is always and in any event that of doing the philosopher’s job in the best possible way, or at least in the best way of which he or she is capable. The important thing is that philosophers devote themselves to their job with conviction, seriousness, and intellectual probity. Philosophy is such a fragile thing that if philosophers do not practice it in an intellectually honest and responsible manner, they will take all credibility away from it. Science is strong; it can defend itself and survive even if among its practitioners there are some who are incompetent or not very fair. It would be better if they were not there, but for science these presences are less dangerous. Unfortunately, in the Italian philosophical world in the last decades, there have been many (within both the media and the academic field) who have pursued easy and remunerative success at the expenses of the discipline. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. I am a secular philosopher, a supporter of a positive philosophy based on experience and a form of rationality that is nondogmatic and open to the values of pluralism and tolerance. As such a person, I will answer the question with two verses from one of the Lieder, “Mut,” from Franz Schubert’s Winterreise, which I have also placed as epigraph to my book, Conoscenza e realtà (Knowledge and Reality): “Will kein Gott auf Erden sein, Sind wir selber Götter” (If there is no God on earth, then we will be gods ourselves). This statement is exactly the opposite of the famous saying “If God is dead, then everything is allowed.” The end of certainties, whether metaphysically or religiously founded, does not mean that we cannot count on a form of knowledge and a morality that we have built over time and that we should constantly test while always being ready to introduce revisions or correctives that perfect them. In the thoughts involved in these two verses, I do not see an excessive ambition and even less an arrogant attitude. On the contrary, I see the— renewed—invitation to serious, constant, and responsible commitment.

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Metaphysics, Experience, and Transcendence A Conversation with Enrico Berti (Valeggio sul Mincio, 1935)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? I have been a history of philosophy professor in various universities (Perugia, Padua, Geneva, Brussels, Lugano) for forty-five years. During this time, I have been concerned with many authors, such as Parmenides, Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Croce, Gentile, Heidegger, and Maritain. First and foremost, though, I have worked on Aristotle and his influence on Western culture. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? In the early 1950s, when I studied philosophy at the university in Padua, the Italian philosophical horizon was dominated by trends that, with few exceptions, shared the rejection of metaphysics: variations of neoidealism (Ugo Spirito and Guido Calogero), historicism (Carlo Antoni and Eugenio Garin), existentialism (Nicola Abbagnano and Luigi Pareyson), Marxism (Antonio Banfi, Cesare Luporini, and Nicola Badaloni), neopositivism (Ludovico Geymonat, Alberto Pasquinelli, and Norberto Bobbio), and

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Christian spiritualism (Augusto Guzzo, Luigi Stefanini, and Michele Federico Sciacca). In favor of a form of metaphysics, called “classical metaphysics,” were the philosophical schools at the Università Cattolica in Milan (with Francesco Olgiati, Gustavo Bontadini, and Sofia Vanni Rovighi) and at the University of Padua (with Umberto Padovani and Marino Gentile). SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? French existentialism exercised its influence through Sartre and Marcel and German existentialism through Heidegger and Jaspers. In addition, the personalism of Mounier and Maritain was also influential on Italian philosophy from the 1950s, but only within the Catholic area. Neopositivism was known through the works of the first Wittgenstein (the Tractatus), Carnap, and the Vienna Circle at large. British analytic philosophy started becoming known through Austin and Ryle, although the latter was understood as a behaviorist through the translation of his work by Ferruccio Rossi-Landi. In the 1960s, the influences of structuralism (Lévy-Strauss and Foucault), Karl Popper, German (Gadamer) and French (Ricoeur) hermeneutic philosophy, and the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse) became widespread. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? What spurred me to do philosophy was mainly the desire to test whether human problems—that is, those having a theoretical or epistemological character—could all be solved by the sciences or whether they required solutions of a transcendent nature, that is, solutions that open a space for a possible religious faith. At the time, even a rather superficial knowledge of ancient (Aristotle) and medieval (Aquinas) metaphysics convinced me of the necessity for a transcendent solution. This also enabled me to adhere to the Christian faith. I did not choose metaphysics to make room for faith, though. On the contrary, I opened myself up to faith as a consequence of my subscription to metaphysics. This is, I think, a rather rare path, which is generally rejected by both believers and nonbelievers.

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Given this orientation, I found myself at home at the University of Padua, especially within the current of “classical metaphysics.” This current was headed by Umberto Padovani in its Thomistic component and by Marino Gentile in its Aristotelian one. I wanted to write my undergraduate thesis on the relations between metaphysics and contemporary philosophy. Marino Gentile, though, whom I had asked to be my thesis director, pushed me to study Aristotle. So I wrote my thesis on the genesis of the doctrine of potency and act. At that time in Italy, studying Aristotle was considered an entirely uninteresting choice due to the dominant historicism. From the historicist perspective, Aristotle appeared as a philosopher who had been rendered entirely obsolete by science and modern philosophy. As a matter of fact, people ignored that the greatest German philosopher of the time, that is, Heidegger, had formed himself mainly through the study of Aristotle, and that the best British philosophy, that of Austin and Ryle, was nothing other than an application of Aristotle’s methods to the analysis of language. Thus, the relations between my “school” and the rest of the Italian philosophical field were of total opposition, and my school’s opposition was completely in the minority. My studies on Aristotle, which found their first expression in the 1962 book La filosofia del primo Aristotele (Aristotle’s Early Philosophy), were fundamental in my obtaining a university position and opened the way to many international contacts. For example, they enabled me to become part of the prestigious circle of the Symposia Aristotelica, to which I have been invited for more than forty years ever since 1966. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? I have continuously concerned myself with Aristotle and his Metaphysics. Even currently, I am working at a new translation of the Metaphysics, which is a fundamental work not only for me but for many others. Beside Aristotle, the three philosophers who have been most influential for the elaboration of my philosophical position are Marino Gentile with his 1946 book Filosofia e umanesimo (Philosophy and Humanism), Gustavo Bontadini with his 1953 volume Dal problematicismo alla metafisica (From Problematicism to Metaphysics), and, in terms of political thinking that also has interested me, Jacques Maritain with his 1951 L’uomo e lo stato (Man and the State),

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the Italian translation of which was published in 1960. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. The first, central element that emerged in my philosophical position has been the concept of experience as pure problematicity. I learned the notion of problematicism from my teacher Marino Gentile, but in its historical genesis the concept can be retraced to Aristotle’s metaphysics. It consists in questioning or problematizing everything of which we have experience— object, subject, nature, history, individual, society. This concretizes what Marino Gentile used to describe as “an all-questioning which is wholly questioning” (un domandare tutto che è tutto un domandare). It perfectly corresponds to the “wonder” that, according to Plato and Aristotle, is at the origin of philosophy. It is what we could call “wonder in the third degree.” That is, a wonder that concerns itself neither with everyday life’s problems nor with the phenomena that occupy science, but rather with the “why?” of all, the ultimate reason for the totality of reality. I have found the first rigorous formulation of this attitude in Aristotle, in his conception of metaphysics as the search for the first causes, some of which transcend the world of experience. Aside from the historical conditioning of Aristotle’s metaphysics, that is, its dependence on the scientific-cosmological knowledge of its time, its classical feature consists on the one hand, in its being construed out of entirely human resources with no presupposition of any religious faith (unlike the subsequent medieval philosophers), and on the other, in its being open to monotheism, as the Muslim (Avicenna and Averroes), Jewish (Maimonides), and Christian (Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas) philosophers understood well. A second element that is central for me has been the discovery, in Aristotle, of the dialectical method as the main structure of philosophical discourse. Such a method is to be understood in the ancient sense of the term, that is, as dialogical-oppositional. In antiquity, this method was practiced by Plato and Aristotle and was then retrieved, in twentiethcentury philosophy, by Gadamer’s hermeneutics, Popper’s fallibilism, Apel’s and Habermas’ discursive ethics, Perelman’s argumentative theory, and also by Ryle—in sum, by the most critical and open among contemporary philosophers. A third element, tied to the second, has been for me the critique of dialectics understood in the modern sense, that is, the Hegelian-Marxian sense, and in particular the critique of the reality of contradiction carried out in light of the Aristotelian principle of noncontradiction. In my case,

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this critique has been occasioned by the debate inaugurated with the 1975 philosophical-political interview with Lucio Colletti, in which I actively participated through dialogues with Colletti himself, with Emanuele Severino, with Ludovico Geymonat, with Franco Chiereghin, and, abroad and more recently, with the representatives of dialetheism such as Graham Priest, for whom there are sentences in which both A and its opposite, non-A, are true. A fourth element, which is more recent and probably the last, is the elaboration of a form of metaphysics that is poor, humble, “weak” in terms of information yet “strong” from the perspective of argumentation. This consists in the reduction of “classical metaphysics” to being the simple recognition of the problematicity of experience and the consequent need for a transcendent principle. Yet this need is accompanied by no further indication of what can be attained rationally with respect to the nature of such a principle, its relations with the world, human beings, and history—all themes that are considered as subjects for faith. Of course I also have some ideas of a political nature, or pertaining to a philosophy of politics, which concern the timeliness of the classic notion of polis understood as self-sufficient political society, the consequent overcoming of the modern sovereign State, the need for a political society having global dimensions, and some other similar ideas. For them I can however claim no originality. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? It is difficult for me to say which is my most representative book because I leave to others the evaluation of my books. It is also difficult to indicate the one for which I am the proudest because I think of my books as my children; so, I do not differentiate between the one and the other. I can say, though, which of my books has been the most fortunate, and not only thanks to myself. It is the 2007 volume, In principio era la meraviglia: Le grandi questioni della filosofia antica (In the Beginning It Was Wonder: The Great Questions of Ancient Philosophy), published by Laterza. It has been a fortunate book because it has won some prizes (Santa Marinella, Castiglioncello), has had numerous reprints, is also in paperback, has been translated into various languages (Spanish, Portuguese), and has sold thousands of copies. That fortunate outcome, to my mind, is due to the title, which was not conceived by me but by a smart editor at Laterza and which I immediately approved with enthusiasm. Its content is mainly historical. That is, as the subtitle reveals, it concerns the great questions

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of ancient philosophy: Does the universe have an origin? What is being? Who are the gods? What is the human being? Why does one do this? How does poetry make us feel? What is happiness? What is the human fate after death? In addressing these themes from a historical perspective, I have nevertheless taken advantage of the opportunity to present many of my own philosophical ideas, for example, regarding the conception of being and the way of thinking about God, the soul, happiness, and philosophy. From the viewpoint of international prestige, my most representative book is perhaps the French collection of essays titled Dialectique, physique et métaphysique. Études sur Aristote, which was published in the prestigious series Aristote. Traductions et études, by the University of Louvain-la Neuve in 2008. I was also very pleased by the volume of essays in my honor, Aristotle: Metaphysics and Practical Philosophy, edited by Carlo Natali and published in 2011. Obviously the volume is not written by me but rather by prestigious colleagues such as Pierre Aubenque, Jonathan Barnes, Tomás Calvo-Martínez, Terence H. Irwin, Alejandro Vigo, Gerhard Seel, Jaap Mansfeld, and Pierre Pellegrin. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? With respect to this, I would like to distinguish between my general philosophical position and my work on Aristotle, which I still consider to be part of my philosophy. As for my philosophical position, I have never claimed it to be original. More than in being original, I am interested in being in the truth, that is, in knowing how things truly are. For this reason, I have subscribed to “classical metaphysics,” especially in its formulation by Marino Gentile. With respect to this, I think I have contributed to the deepening, or the specifying, of some of its aspects. For example, in collaboration with friends such as Romano Bacchin and Franco Chiereghin, who were also, like me, students of Marino Gentile, we have clarified how pure problematicity is not an introduction to metaphysics, as Marino Gentile perhaps thought; rather, it is its entire corpus. We have also clarified that metaphysical discourse is a dialectical discourse, in the ancient sense of the term, that is, in its dialogical-oppositional sense. At first this was not clear in Marino Gentile, but it became clearer later, and he recognized our contribution with respect to it. I also think I have carried Marino Gentile’s metaphysical discourse to its essential core by reducing it to what I have named poor, or humble, or weak metaphysics from the perspective of information.

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In terms of my work on Aristotle, I think I have contributed to the presentation of his thought in a more authentic manner, that is, in a manner more faithful to the texts. I have liberated it from the various sediments that had built up over the centuries and were due especially to the various forms of scholasticism. Through this activity, Aristotle’s thought has turned out to be more current than previously accepted, a merit which has often been recognized in my work. Even more specifically, I think I have shown that Aristotle’s metaphysics is neither theology, as was believed in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, nor ontology, as was believed in modern philosophy. On the contrary, it is a search for the first causes. This search is continued for the most part in modern science (the search for the first material cause and the first formal cause) and partly in contemporary philosophy (the ethics of happiness in its search for the first final cause, and “classical metaphysics” in its search for the first efficient cause). Finally, I think I have advanced some original interpretations with respect to the causality of the immovable mover, which I have shown to be of an efficient kind, and the vexata quaestio of the active intellect, which I have shown to be not a mind but rather a compound of knowledge already acquired by humankind (namely, the scientific principles). SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? To clarify the timeliness of my philosophical position, I will first address the second question, that is, if there is a connection between my philosophy and specific historical events. At the beginning, I mentioned the untimeliness of studying Aristotle and metaphysics in general in the 1950s, at least in Italy. In the course of the 1960s, the Western world lost its ability to trust the social sciences (scienze umane), especially sociology, as capable of solving all problems. This loss of confidence, or crisis of the social sciences, led to the birth of the “critical theory of society,” that is, the philosophical sociology of the Frankfurt School. This ended up in the student protests, which shook the entire Western world with the revolts in Berkeley (1964–65), Berlin (1967), and, in Italy, Turin, Rome, and almost all the other universities. It caused the so-called rebirth of practical philosophy, that is, a rational modality of confrontation with ethical and political issues. This modality is neither ideological nor religious nor simply scientific, but rather philosophical. It

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consists essentially in the rediscovery of Aristotle’s practical philosophy thanks to Gadamer, Ritter, Apel, and Habermas in Germany; Arendt, MacIntyre, and Nussbaum in the United States; Aubenque and his school in France; and Franco Volpi in Italy. Suddenly, Aristotle became very current, much more than he was in the 1950s. This led to a renewal of interest in Aristotelian philosophy in the last decades of the twentieth century, to which I think I have contributed with my essays. At the same time, several historical events of various kinds took place in the West, such as the increasing awareness of human rights, the Second Vatican Council, the papacy of some important popes (John XXIII, Paul VI, and John Paul II), and the discovery and development of information technology. Together with others, these factors have contributed to the fall of the Soviet empire and the defeat of “realized” communism. This has also determined the crisis of Marxism as a philosophy, and especially of dialectical materialism, which had dominated European philosophy (including the Frankfurt School) in the 1960s and 1970s. Within this landscape, my studies on contradiction and modern dialectics proved entirely current and led to the success of my 1987 book, Contraddizione e dialettica negli antichi e nei moderni (Contradiction and Dialectics in the Ancients and the Moderns). This book was publicly praised, for example, by a former dialectic materialist such as Ludovico Geymonat. Finally, the discovery and diffusion, in Western Europe and in Italy, of Anglo-American analytic philosophy, which went beyond the neopositivist stage and thus set aside its antimetaphysical prejudice, has provoked a renewed interest in metaphysics in Europe too. This has made Aristotle-inspired metaphysics seem more timely or less untimely. Therefore my philosophical position has become less isolated than in the past, and it has been often in line with the most recent debates (on personal identity, individuation, substance, and form). I am thinking of positions such as those of Strawson and Wiggins in England, Chisolm and van Inwagen in the United States, and Ricoeur in France, with whom I have had encounters and conversations in recent years. All this has afforded a certain timeliness to my philosophical position. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? I can answer this question by referring mainly to the Italian situation, which I know best. In my travels around the world, though, participating in world congresses (organized by FISP, the Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie, of which I have been vice president) and presiding

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over international institutes (the Institut International de Philosophie), I got the impression that elsewhere the situation is not much different. In Italy, already in the 1960s and 1970s, philosophy had expanded out of the academic, that is, the university environment to involve itself in the political arena. An emblematic example is Toni Negri. In recent years, academic philosophy has entered mass media (daily and weekly magazines, television), has been present in various philosophical festivals, has made itself known in theaters and squares. Yet it has lost its polemical aggressiveness and also the political influence it had in the 1970s, and has become a form of intelligent entertainment or pastime. Many philosophers have been involved in debates, especially on bioethics, and have become part of consulting committees at the local and national levels. Few have become involved in political parties’ activities, because of the crisis that has affected political parties. My impression is that in the relations among philosophers there is less ideology and more tolerance than in the past. In terms of my ideas and my studies, I, at least, feel more respected than I felt at the beginning of my activity (undoubtedly this is so also because of my current age). SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? A theme of perennial and thus also of future importance for philosophy is its relation with the sciences. With their development, whether it is physics, biology, economics, or psychology, they continuously raise new problems, which philosophy cannot ignore and must confront, albeit with respect for individual competencies. Then there are issues due to globalization, that is, economic crises, population migrations, ethnic and religious conflicts, and the opportunities offered by new technologies—these are all important themes for philosophy, especially for practical and political philosophy. Of course professional philosophers, who are generally high school or university professors, can do very little to influence the solutions of such problems. Yet they can provide information and direction to those who are not professional philosophers, that is, to the politicians, administrators, economists, and scientists. It would be ideal if all educated individuals, regardless of their profession (doctors, lawyers, computer scientists, journalists, artists, and so on) had a minimal philosophical education so as to be able to reflect in a general way on specific problems, compare different opinions, and argue correctly.

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SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? According to Hegel, the role of the philosopher is to understand his or her own time. To his mind, this is possible only at the end of an epoch, when the historical events have been completed and the space opens up for reflection or, better, for rational understanding with no further possibility of intervention. For Marx, on the contrary, the role of the philosopher is to transform the world, that is, to make it more rational and humane, even if the price of this is violence, for example, in a revolution. I think it is difficult, today, for a philosopher to fulfill either role even if today philosophers have more information than in the past and much more effective means of influencing people’s ways of thinking than in the past. The difficulty lies in understanding how things truly are, given the enormous complexity of global situations. It is also difficult to know exactly what one must do, that is, to be certain of being able to do something good. One thing I think professional philosophers must do—exercise their own profession with honesty. I want to recall here what Max Weber said in his famous conference “Science as a Vocation.” The philosopher should not be a prophet, a preacher, or a crowd agitator; moreover, the philosopher should not use his or her position to impose ideas on the students and avoid an open confrontation with others. The philosopher must argue honestly, that is, correctly from the logical standpoint, subjecting his or her ideas to examination by others and examining in turns others’ ideas. That is, philosophers must debate. The figure of Socrates can paradoxically still be timely, though in the sphere of public debate. In their professional activities, philosophers must search for the truth honestly, possibly providing contributions in terms of new knowledge, and must teach something precise and definite, not vague, murky, or superficial. With respect to this, I would like to refer to what I have written in my 2014 book, La ricerca della verità in filosofia (The Search for Truth in Philosophy). SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. To the young, I would like to say: I do not encourage you to choose philosophy as a profession because you risk not being able to survive. However, I encourage you to occupy yourselves with philosophy while engaging in other professions, in your free time, on Sundays, during holidays. You will

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see how much satisfaction philosophy can offer. Perhaps it will even give you some indication in terms of what you should do, or some consolation for what you have already done. To those who choose philosophy as a profession, I hope that they have very strong motivations, and I urge them to philosophize not in a superficial way but rather with seriousness. That is, do not waste time in chatting, do not occupy yourselves with everything, specialize in something specific while keeping yourselves informed about everything.

The Absolute, Finite Beings, and Symbolic Language A Conversation with Virgilio Melchiorre (Chieti, 1931)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? My interests focus on the relation between the metaphysical question and the constitution of anthropology. This nexus is constitutive of the symbolic dimension at the pinnacles of language and ethics. Metaphysical reflections originate in the question of the conditions of possibility of what exists. The outcome of this question constitutes the ground on the basis of which we can articulate the Absolute and its participation in the finite being. This participation finds its most concrete expressions in the modes proper to symbolic language. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? Initially, my education occurred within the movement of the renewal of metaphysics understood as an answer to, on the one hand, positivism, and on the other, twentieth-century idealism. It should be noted that the return and renewal of metaphysics within contemporary philosophy has assumed the forms of a criticism but also of

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an acquisition of the opposite demands advanced by idealism and existentialism, respectively. That is, the renewal and return of metaphysics has configured itself both as a reference to being as absolute foundation and at the same time, as an inflection of the first ontological principles within the realm of finitude and the limits of what exists. In Italy, the confrontation with idealism found its source in the teachings of Gustavo Bontadini. Bontadini’s position developed through a critical confrontation with Giovanni Gentile’s philosophy but also with the scholastic tradition and the neo-scholastic movement. The scholastic and neoscholastic movements contributed the originary evidence of an absolute Principle of being as the crucial presupposition for the possibility of the essential relevance of all finite determinations. In classical terminology, Bontadini spoke of this as a reference to “Parmenides’ principle.” Within this perspective, one had to acknowledge, among other items, the methodological gains of idealism. One certainly had to realize, however, that the characteristic features of finite existence with their contradictions and wanderings, which are phenomenologically retraceable, presuppose an ontological difference, a metaphysical alterity and transcendence of the absolute Principle. This certainly constitutes the theoretical gain of Bontadini’s thought over idealism. It also had to be acknowledged, though, that such a theoretical gain had to be translated into an enhanced attention to finite existence, attention that is inflected according to phenomenological and analogical modalities. That is, one had to recognize the importance of the existentialist teachings. Ever since my first philosophical beginnings, I thus considered Kierkegaard’s work to be fundamental. To Kierkegaard I have devoted a great number of my research projects, from the 1950s up to now. In particular, I have studied Kierkegaard’s works devoted to aesthetics, to the phenomenology of aestheticized seduction, to religious experience, and to tragic conscience. With respect to this, my encounter with, and repeated return to, the works of Luigi Pareyson and Cornelio Fabro, to whom so much is due regarding Kierkegaard historiography in Italy, have been fundamental. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? Even today, due to Croce’s and Gentile’s teachings, references to the idealist tradition are still quite relevant in Italy. Even more significant are the works focusing on the phenomenological tradition, especially in the form practiced by Husserl. References to French philosophy have also been important, along the lines of the orientations given to it by Sartre and, even

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more, by Merleau-Ponty. The presence of Maritain too has had an impact, especially within speculative areas of Christian lineage. More recently, the thought of Paul Ricoeur has also become quite relevant; he was hosted in various universities all over Italy before his death in 2005. The Tübingen School also attained particular importance thanks to the work of Giovanni Reale, who followed up on it and updated it with reference to Thomas Kuhn’s epistemological doctrines. I now come to myself. Beside works on Kierkegaard, the viewpoints of twentieth-century French personalism have been crucial for me. It is not by accident that one of my first historiographic essays was devoted to Emmanuel Mounier’s work. The encounter with Husserl’s thought has also been important, and before that, with Kant’s philosophy, to which I devoted an extensive essay. My familiarity with Kant’s criticism and Husserl’s phenomenological rigor has led me to reread from a new perspective the great themes of classical thought, those of Heraclitus, Plato, and Aristotle, but also the most crucial theoretical texts from the medieval period. On this account, the analytic and argumentative rigor of Thomas Aquinas has been highly formative for me. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? My school was initially the one shaped by the revival of metaphysics. Such a revival was promoted in Italy on various sides and in particular, with methodological originality, by Gustavo Bontadini. I must at this point note that, within the field of Italian philosophy, Bontadini established himself with his ability to understand the meaning and value of a retrieval of classic (Greek-medieval) metaphysics within contemporary thought. For Bontadini, classic metaphysics, considered in its essential structure, is not abstractly opposed to the unfolding of modern thought; on the contrary, in Bontadini’s perspective, precisely the unfolding of modern philosophy leads, through the historical-theoretical period of contemporary philosophy, to a completely original retrieval of classic metaphysics. Bontadini’s metaphysical analysis and conclusions gave rise to one of the liveliest debates after World War II in Italy. Starting in 1964, this debate took place mainly in the journal Rivista di Filosofia Neo-Scolastica (Review of Neo-Scholastic Philosophy) but also in other philosophy or general

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culture journals, within conference discussions, and through essays and books of various lengths. As I already mentioned, the encounter with French personalism and existentialism was equally essential for me, from Kierkegaard to twentiethcentury developments such as Gabriel Marcel, Luigi Pareyson, Karl Jaspers, and especially Martin Heidegger. As I have already recalled, the encounter with Husserl’s phenomenology has also been central for me, especially with respect to the critical revision of metaphysics and the religious tradition. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? Besides the classic thinkers of the Greek and medieval periods, Kierkegaard with his Philosophical Fragments and the related Concluding Unscientific Postscript, Emmanuel Mounier with his various works on personalism, and Gustavo Bontadini, the posthumous edition of whose works I have edited, have been fundamental. From Bontadini, I have inherited the demand for demonstrative rigor, the reference to the first principles of being, and the related unfolding of a fundamental ontology. From Mounier’s personalism, I have learned the way to unfold, at the very core of anthropology, the principles of ontology and metaphysics. This way is essential to the configuration of a renewed humanism. From Kierkegaard’s thought, with which I have repeatedly been concerned ever since the 1950s, I have learned the principles and ways for unfolding a correct relation between the various modes of existence and the ultimate principles of being. I must acknowledge that studying both French personalism and Kierkegaard’s existential analysis has enabled me to unfold the ultimate principles of metaphysics within the existential horizon. Within this perspective, I have dared to retrace, in the essential modalities of the pulchrum, that is, of beauty, the horizon within which the principles of the verum (the true) and the bonum (the good) converge and intertwine. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. As I have already noted, the study of classical philosophy, from the Greek tradition to the core of Thomistic thought, strongly stimulated me to walk

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rigorously the path of a metaphysical foundation of thought. Additionally, the encounter with personalism and existentialism has led me to reflect on the combinability of the high points of metaphysics with the existential possibilities of being human. With respect to this, my research has developed within the lines of the relation between the fundamental themes of metaphysics and anthropology and the themes of language. What has ensued is, among other things, a continuous intertwining of the fields of ontology and aesthetics. In this sense, writing the 1998 book, L’immaginazione simbolica (The Symbolic Imagination) was crucial for me. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? It is my 1996 book, La via analogica (The Analogical Way), which was followed by a debate with a number of Italian colleagues. With respect to the analogical inflection of metaphysics, I especially recall the ensuing conversations with thinkers such as Claudio Ciancio, Francesco Moiso, Ugo Perone, Mario Ruggenini, and Carlo Sini. The confrontation with them has been published as an appendix to the 2002 volume, Dialettica del senso (Dialectics of Sense). To my mind, the theme of analogy constitutes the essential condition for a metaphysically concrete understanding of and within what exists. Once one has posited the reference to an absolute Principle of being as foundational, then one must also inflect it, within the realm of finite experience, in terms of participation as well as transcendence. Consequently, the possible ways of saying these two notions can be translated and concretely articulated only within the modes of symbolic language. It is symbolic language that, within each being, can in fact express the finite’s belonging to and participation in the infinite. This belonging and participation can only occur in the modes of a determinate, specular, and thus never self-exhaustive immanence. This entails a form of presence that is always, at the same time, also absence and referral. The possible validity of symbolic language is constituted in this way. Symbolic language is in itself the expression of both belonging and differing, participation and difference, intimacy of being-with and absence, referral. It should be clear that here I understand the symbolic in a strong sense: not as a vague allusion but as the lived experience (il vissuto) of ontological participation. I have stressed this aspect especially in the volume L’immaginazione simbolica (The Symbolic Imagination). SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy?

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There are basically two. The first, at the foundational level, is the possible combination of transcendental phenomenology and the classic themes of metaphysics. In its recurrences and ultimate evidence, the phenomenological exercise on the one hand founds the very principles of theology, but on the other hand exposes its limits—its power and, at the same time, metaphysical character, the transparency of all theological saying. The second, at the level of the aesthetic inflection of metaphysics, is my discourse on the foundations of symbolism. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? The historical condition of our culture is marked by the declared end of ideologies. What underlies such a negation is actually the ideological uniqueness of economic primacy. I have understood the revival and development of a metaphysics of the person, in which I have engaged, as an alternative and an essential condition for a new humanism, for a critical consciousness of what is. My first works in the direction of a philosophy of history have been fundamental for structuring such a perspective. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? As the science that grounds ultimate values, philosophy should occupy a central position within the cultural context and in the very structure of academic curricula and life. The actual primacy of the economic dimension as it is in fact imposed on us within the concrete practice of political life constitutes a condition for permanent conflict and a distortion of our civilization. As a consequence, we have lost the organic character, understood in a humanistic sense, even of scientific research . . . SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? The practice of philosophy should be gathered around the original vocation inscribed in the name itself, namely, “love of wisdom.” Philosophy should again focus on the foundations of being and of the moral life, and it should constitute itself as a hermeneutic aimed at understanding and evaluating

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our historical times. Its essential presence within the entire educational system would become an important contribution also for those who are not philosophers. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? What I said in response to the previous question brings up again the need for a general revision of our current cultural strategy. Philosophy should be rediscovered and retrieved as the constitutive field for developing a critical consciousness of social life and as a relentless exercise with a view toward the foundation of a new humanism. From this perspective, philosophy should be understood as an essential point of reference for all sectors of education, as the constitutive ground for a critical consciousness in the practice and hierarchy of values. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. At a time of widespread globalization like ours, I think that we need serious debates and conversations among the different cultural traditions, so that we can establish a shared ground of reference and a convergence of values in view of the creation of a new humanism.

Being, Memory, and the Present A Conversation with Ugo Perone (Turin, 1945)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? In my teaching activities, I have always moved between theoretical and moral philosophy, that is, within a distinct interest for the theoretical dimension of philosophy. Of course, the hermeneutic community from which I come practices such a theoretical dimension in close dialogue with historically established models of philosophical thinking; that is, in dialogue with major authors—to name some of those who are closest to me, Descartes, Schiller, Feuerbach, Benjamin, and also some theologians, such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer. From a thematic perspective, the questions on which I have focused concern the attempt to define modernity, the issue of secularization, the question of the subject, and also the themes of time, public space, the relation between reason and feelings, the relation between philosophy and theology, and issues of secular thought and religious inspiration. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? I graduated from the University of Turin in 1967, that is, on the eve of that cultural subversion that was 1968. In those years, the Italian university

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system was emerging from the shadows of the long influence of Fascism and the domination of idealism (in both its versions, namely, as criticism and as apology for the fascist regime). With the end of World War II, that compact world split into two halves: one, with a secular (laica) orientation, was inclined in a Marxist direction but also showed phenomenological and existentialist leanings; the other, of Catholic derivation, featured neoThomist or spiritualist characters with strong personalist traces. A thinker such as my teacher, Luigi Pareyson, nourished the latter traits with a very solid relationship to classical German culture and a strong foundation in existentialism, first Jaspers’ and then Heidegger’s. I had my first chance to hear his hermeneutical approach when, at Turin University, he moved from a position in aesthetics to the chair in theoretical philosophy. For me, his approach immediately resonated as something in which I could recognize myself. The events of 1968, however, interrupted the linear course I have been delineating and brought to the fore new interests, focused mainly around political issues (in differing variations of neo-Marxism) and religious questions (with unexpected attention to various theologies and the philosophy of religion). SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? The existentialists were certainly a dominant influence, with special reference to Heidegger, but also phenomenology, the Frankfurt School, some French and German retrievals of Marxism, and Wittgenstein. Some classics were also rediscovered, such as Nietzsche. As I have already mentioned, the Turin school was dominated by the presence of German classical philosophy. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? At the beginning of a vocation there is always a role model, whether real or imaginary. At first, I thought I would study law, following the model of a TV character, Perry Mason, who always successfully defended the innocent. Then I met a high school philosophy teacher, Giovanni Guastavigna, who had studied philosophy in Turin with Augusto Guzzo. He was able to

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awaken in me the enthusiasm for thinking as thinking, as the place where the quest for truth joins forces with the need for justice and the search for the good. Briefly, philosophy is a way of thinking in which a life worth living finds its expression. As for the rest of the question, I already partly answered it when I referred to my teacher, Pareyson. What was impressive in him was the seriousness and depth of his thought, a “priestly” yet not prejudiced conception of philosophy, capable of satisfying those expectations for meaning that had nourished my choice. In comparison, the other great teacher among our Turin faculty members, that is, Nicola Abbagnano, revealed mundane aspects less capable of attracting me, despite the extreme elegance and clarity of his lectures. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? I will give a short answer: Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” and Bonhoeffer’s “Resistance and Submission.” SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. For me, a fundamental first element is the experience, both personal and historical, of an interruption, a break, such as that disclosed by the death of a loved one. We can express it in completely different yet convergent ways. Anchoring it in the biblical text, the fascinating and mysterious tale of Jacob’s struggle with the angel suggests the idea of a structural tension between finite and infinite, human and divine. One should be careful to note that, in the biblical narration, the tension is not a prelude to a dialectical overcoming or to an insoluble conflictuality. Rather, without either winners or losers, the tension culminates in a blessing. This suggests that one should understand it in terms of its productive unsurmountability. Between human beings and God there flows the unsurpassable course of the Jabbok, the little stream that is the theater of the struggle. Now, the break, which we can consider as simultaneously existential, ontological, and, in some sense, atemporal, finds a conscious and even intentional retrieval in modernity, that is, after Descartes. Descartes’ hyperbolic doubt completely clears away all past certainties and truths.

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From existential experience, the break becomes the cultural turning point enabling a comprehension of one’s own time. One could counter that every new philosophy contains such a pars destruens (destructive component) and that therefore what I am here claiming about Descartes and the modernity he initiates is not specific at all. Such a reading would however neglect precisely the essential point of Descartes’ move, namely, the fact that in him, the break with the past occurs not on behalf of a new content but rather in advance of all content determination. It is the break as such that, in Descartes, is posited as the condition for truth. The new is good not by virtue of some special constitutive trait but through the simple fact that it is no longer the old. That is, the new is good merely because it is new, before any other specific determination. A second element that follows from what I just said is a rereading of the modern and of secularization according to categories of discontinuity. What secularization and the modern have transmitted to us is precisely the end of our belonging to an inclusive and presupposed tradition. What has happened is irreversible. The irreversibility does not however automatically produce the dissolution of the contents of tradition. Let us consider, for example, the debate on secularization, which is stuck in the sterile alternative between the immanentistic dissolution of religious contents and the religious vindication of the resulting consequences. Secularization’s primary concern is not content, however; rather, secularization destroys the possibility of a cultural order that is hierarchized in an ultimately religious perspective. What has been lost is this specific form of cultural unification of society. Despite this, content can endure and continue to be decisive for single individuals. That other forms of cultural unification assert themselves of course produces the relocation and, at times, even the dissolution of specific content. As a perhaps trivial example, we can think of the festivity of Sunday. As content, Sunday endures in our society, but it is inscribed in a prevailing paradigm of meaning that accentuates free time more than devotion to God. From this general vision, there ensues the conviction of the impossibility of all return backward toward a nonsecular premodernity. The conviction also ensues, though, that secularization cannot be confined within the framework of sacred and profane. Secularization contains within itself a significant mechanism of self-reproduction that turns not only against religion but also against all claims to totalization. We still need, nevertheless, some form of totality of meaning. The modern contains an immanent uneasiness, which is difficult to sustain. We still need some form of tradition. Benjamin is helpful here in his remark

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that the tradition is made of some form of discontinuity with which we wish nevertheless to reconnect. Many other themes of my research are rooted in this perspective. I can offer a brief overview of them, starting with the question of the subject, which I think is fundamental. The matter is obviously not to propose the subject, again, as the ground of knowledge but rather to advance it as a nondismissible remainder that cannot be avoided, especially when we wish to think of a political and collective dimension. I think that through this path, which I have explored in Nonostante il soggetto (Despite the Subject), we can approach the theme of alterity through a via difficilior (a more difficult way), which to me appears both safer and closer to common experience than the presupposition of an originary (and ultimately too peaceful) I-You relation or the abrupt introduction of the Other’s pure alterity. Another theme that is important to me is that of memory understood as an organ capable of gathering punctual experiences but also capable, through forgetfulness, of selecting and thus formulating a project of sense. In particular, the dialectics between meanings (which are punctual) and sense (as the ordering of meanings in a basically unitary horizon) let us better understand the distinction between memories (ricordi), which are punctual, and recollection (memoria) as the experience of unification. Both meanings and memories contain their own meaningfulness as well as their own stubborn closure within themselves. They are a force but not a plan. Only if they project themselves forward as sense or recollection can they test their own consistency and thus either get lost in their own insufficiency or be tested for their ability to provide orientation for themselves and others. It is a very delicate and risky passage, yet it is decisive so that punctual experiences (Erlebnisse), which in themselves are private and incommunicable, may become experience (Erfahrung) able to be transmitted and even criticized. Within this context, time and especially the present as a threshold event, which expands temporality by retaining the past and anticipating the future, become unavoidable questions. Time is never something that I have; rather, it is always something that is “to me” (a me), that is, that affects me decisively. Time flows and disappears but also unfolds and connotes. Time is instant but also plot and intertwining. Time is present that disappears but also present that retains. It can be nothing else than a meaning (albeit a meaningful meaning) or it can aspire to become sense, which retains, in the threshold that the present itself is, a past that one does not wish to lose and a future for which one works. Next to these are the most recent themes of my research: rethinking the role of feelings and their meaning in view of a hermeneutic expansion

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of rationality according to a schema I have tested through historiographic reconstruction (the way in which an epoch understands feelings discloses the underlying concept of reason); the question of public space as the transcendental condition of a possible politics and thus as an “invention” that discloses an order of possibilities that are unheard of and distinct from morality; and the retrieval of a metaphysical dimension, even in the time of modernity, through a redefinition of essence as the provocation of that which resists consumption rather than as the possession of a positive and atemporal determination. It would take too long to illustrate all these questions here. In their whole, they mean to generate a hermeneutic philosophy meant not only as a method or primary condition of philosophizing but as a practice that discloses through the explication of specific themes how they can find a deeper and more adequate understanding precisely through the hermeneutic paradigm. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? I do not know, and perhaps I do not wish to know. On the one hand, it is my first theoretical book, Modernità e memoria (Modernity and Memory), because it is the first. On the other, it is Nonostante il soggetto (Despite the Subject) or Il presente possibile (The Possible Present), because they have both been translated, respectively, into German and English. It is also L’essenza della religione (The Essence of Religion) because it is the most recent. At this moment though, the gift that was recently offered me of a German translation of my Le passioni del finito (The Passions of Finitude), a booklet of philosophical meditations, makes this work incredibly dear to me. As one can tell, I am only pointing to extrinsic reasons. Books are like children. We must forbid ourselves preferences. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? Here too, I hesitate to answer. Everything in a philosophy is original, even what one develops following up on others. Were it otherwise, it would simply be a case of historical overview. To turn something into being an element of a philosophical project, one must make it a part of one’s own vocabulary. Yes, exactly as for words—all or almost all words already exist as part of a collective and ideal vocabulary; the inflection and the implicit and explicit knots through which I connect them, however, belong only to me. This is what in one’s own philosophy one must try to create. Beyond what

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one’s philosophy says, there is the absolutely specific way in which such a philosophy is capable of saying it. And one must assess how much discursive length, depth, and width such a mode of diction enables and allows. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? In philosophy, in a good philosophy (and all of us at least try to produce a good philosophy), timeliness is present; yet the answer to timeliness does not assume the features of immediacy. What I mean is that philosophy is not militant. If it were, or if it is militant (and sometimes it is), it would find its own dissolution precisely at the moment of its success. By answering the urgency coming from immediacy, philosophy would exhaust its task at precisely the moment in which it would find the adequate answer. On the contrary, great philosophies continue to live centuries after they were formulated. This means that, certainly committed to the problems of their times, they have gone a step beyond immediacy and have found indications that are still valid even when the specific immediacy has completely changed. As far as I am concerned, at both the existential and the political and religious levels, what I write has a direct and recognizable connection with the uneasiness of the modernity in which we find ourselves living. But what I write does not mean to provide an answer to such problems. Immodestly, my position is more ambitious. Or, modestly, it is aware of not being capable of providing the answer. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? A fundamental axiom for me is being aware of the distinction between life and philosophy. There is much more in life than in philosophy (in this sense, philosophy always draws from the inexhaustibility of the living) and there is much more in philosophy than in life (because philosophy thinks also about what is not). The relation is, as it were, crooked, characterized by a structural unbalance, yet an unbalance that is productive for both—for life as well as for philosophy. I have had a personal experience of this through a repeated political commitment at the local level (as assessore for culture first for the town, and then for the province of Turin). When one participates in politics, one

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does not translate into practice a certain philosophy; rather, one inserts oneself into a paradigm with its own specific and precise rules. Nevertheless, the philosophical cypher remains definitive and, I would say, even quite productive. It has a freshness that comes to it from its own autonomy and strangeness. When one then returns to philosophy, one does not simply include into it the experiences that one has had. Having had the experience in another life world constitutes a conspicuous enrichment (I would certainly not have approached themes such as feelings and public space had I not had this existential maturation). Today, philosophy is threatened. This is the outcome of the event of secularization, which affects not only religious content but also the content of politics and philosophy. The traditional primacy assigned to theoretical (theological and philosophical) knowledge has turned into widespread indifference. Philosophers as intellectuals are indeed still much sought after because they are often capable of offering more significant contributions than the alleged experts. But this occurs only on condition that philosophers do not do philosophy or do weak philosophy, prêt-à-porter philosophy (ready-to-use philosophy). The betrayal of the intellectuals (as the title of Julien Benda’s famous book goes), which often took place in an ambitious retreat, today has the form of an exhibitionism void of truth. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? Also, what do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? I would like to answer these questions by referring to what I have just said. To say it explicitly and abruptly, truth is an invention of philosophy. Plato won against the sophists who, in place of truth, were looking for efficaciousness and practical usefulness. Ever since that moment, philosophy established itself by asserting that its own vocation is truth. In our times, the truth no longer appears as decisive. Truth does not help us live better at the personal level (it is better to entrust oneself to certainties). It has no currency in political propaganda (it is better to resort to appearances). It is irrelevant at the economic and scientific levels (where it is replaced by other goals such as exactness or efficiency). Even at the religious level, truth does not seem important, since faith seems to be sufficient. Philosophy will become increasingly marginal and irrelevant if it is not able to show, once again, how in all fields the question of truth precedes and determines all

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other questions. Truth alone in fact contains the complexity and plasticity that are not exhaustible in the existential certainties that can suddenly collapse from one day to the next. At the political level, only the truth has enough temporal breath to become a project. At the economic and scientific levels, only the search for the truth is capable of comparing punctual certainties and producing an overall theory that accounts for long-term outcomes as well as immediate efficiency. Only the confrontation with the truth preserves faith from being intolerant. Only philosophy has such a critical and transversal function. The crisis of philosophy is the crisis of our entire Western culture in both its nonidentical versions, namely the European and transatlantic ones. If philosophy recoils into the search for logical certainties, formal correctness, and purely procedural analyses, it relinquishes by itself its own invention, namely, the truth. By doing so, philosophy destines itself to a form of success that amounts to self-annihilation. One should also recognize, though, that all problems incumbent on current human beings (the environment, welcoming refugees, creating new political institutions such as a united Europe, social inequalities, individual freedoms, the need for a shared ethos—the list goes on) must become questions for philosophy. This should be so not in the sense that philosophy can find a recipe for immediate application, but rather in the sense that, solicited by the challenges, philosophy must be capable of recalibrating its notion of truth in such a way as to offer an indication that is operatively enlightening for all those (ultimately, for all of us) who must find a creative solution to problems. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. I would like to offer a hopeful thought. Avoiding the impression that we live in a time of crisis is difficult. History has shown to us, though, that major crises have stimulated new energies. In human beings there is, I think, an ultimate resistance that holds onto the essential, onto what is truly valid, onto the good and the true. I can offer a small and trivial example that anyone can verify. Today, there are no commercials for new technological instruments that do not make reference to the environment. One can say that these are simply words spoken to increase sales and not true principles orienting production. For the most part, this is probably the case. And yet, if one does not forever relinquish the claim to truth, resorting to such words on the one hand attests to the extent to which certain

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values are rooted, profound, and widespread. On the other hand, resorting to them will certainly have à rebours (backwards) effects on the very modes of production. Both in education and in philosophy, one should rely on this human element that does not dwindle. Relying on it, and knowing that it goes on existing, improves all of us.

Being, Becoming, and the Destiny of Truth A Conversation with Emanuele Severino (Brescia, 1929)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? My work challenges the forms of knowledge and action that have appeared in the course of the whole history of humankind and attempts to indicate a sense of truth that constantly escapes such forms. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? Between the 1940s and the 1950s, it was mainly the neoidealism of Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile that still had a remarkable influence in Italy. Yet this position was already the target of lively criticisms, such as those present in Ugo Spirito’s and Antonio Banfi’s problematicism. The Catholic University in Milan, especially Gustavo Bontadini, was the center for those interested in classic metaphysics and its relation with modern and contemporary philosophy. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends?

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The interest in Husserl, Jaspers, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, neopositivism (Carnap, Schlick, etc.), empiricism, pragmatism, and then Nietzsche was on the rise. In general, I would say that already then, the knowledge of non-Italian philosophy that we had in Italy was superior to the knowledge of Italian philosophy that people had and still have abroad. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? My brother, who died in World War II, was eight years older than myself. Although I was little more than a child, he often talked with me about philosophy, and especially about Gentile’s philosophy. He was in fact a student of his. The opposition between ungrounded knowledge and the foundations of knowledge appeared increasingly important to me. The need to clarify the authentic meaning of “ground” was therefore also growing. At the University of Pavia, my teacher was Gustavo Bontadini, who considered Gentile to be a bridge capable of leading to the retrieval and promotion of classic metaphysics. In my undergraduate thesis, which was titled “Heidegger and Metaphysics” and was published in 1950, I especially emphasized the neutral character (the epoché) of Heidegger’s thinking with respect to all great metaphysical problems and his intent to prepare the ground for their possible solution. My interest in ancient and modern classic thought was also accompanied by an interest in the conceptual rigor of neopositivism (later, I wrote an essay on Carnap’s Der logische Aufbau der Welt, which I had translated into Italian together with Schlick’s Das Fundament der Erkenntnis). SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects in them have interested you the most? Among the philosophers, I would name Parmenides, Aristotle, and Hegel. Among the works, I would indicate Plato’s Sophist, Descartes’ Meditations, and Gentile’s Logic. The philosophers as well as the texts I have indicated are not, however, all that more fundamental than some others. With some and, in any event, limited reservations for Parmenides, they are certainly

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“fundamental” for me, yet not so in the sense that my philosophical discourse acknowledges a greater proximity to them. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. When philosophy starts, the intent is to identify knowledge that in no way can be denied—the incontrovertible, definitive truth. After two and a half millennia, it looks as if philosophy has renounced this task and has increasingly adopted the hypothetical-experimental methods proper to scientific knowledge. Yet if one is able to reach the essential core shared by all contemporary philosophies, then one realizes that philosophy is not proposing naïve skepticism, once again and after a long detour. Ever since its beginning, philosophy has thought that becoming, that is, the temporality and caducity of the things of the world, constitutes immediate, indubitable evidence and truth. On the ground of faith in such evidence, philosophy thinks that it can assert the existence of a perfect, immutable, and eternal Being (or Order) and thus an immutable truth beyond the indubitable truth of becoming. This is the case from the Greeks up to Hegel. In its essential core, contemporary philosophy shows that if that perfect Being and further truth existed, then the becoming of things could not exist—yet the becoming of things constitutes the most immediate and undebatable evidence even for metaphysics. In fact, in becoming, that which still is not (that is, is still nothing) begins to be, and when it is no longer, it becomes nothing. Therefore, an immutable Being or truth would be the Law of all future and past. Such a Law would anticipate (and preserve) within itself all that becomes and that thus, to the extent that it is anticipated (and preserved), could not be nothing. On the ground of faith in becoming, this outcome becomes inevitable. This is what I show in many ways in my writings, for example in the 1978 Gli abitatori del tempo (Time Dwellers), in the 1990 Il nulla e la poesia (Nothing and Poetry), in the 1997 Cosa arcana e stupenda (Arcane and Amazing Thing), and in the 1999 L’anello del ritorno (The Ring of Return). Yet, my writings first and foremost indicate the dimension that essentially lies beyond the path leading to such an inevitable outcome. I call such a dimension “the destiny of truth.” Within it, the conviction that becoming is an immediate and indubitable evidence appears as merely a form of faith. This is not all, though; what also appears within it is the fact that believing that things become other than what they are, and that they become from an other, means believing in the deepest contradiction—in the deepest madness

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in fact dominating the history of human beings. Philosophical-ontological thought expresses this contradiction most rigorously because, within it, the other (from which things come and to which they go) is understood as the absolutely other, that is, the nonbeing (the nothing) of that-which-becomesother and becomes-from-other. Within the destiny of truth, what appears is the radical inconsistency of that faith on whose ground contemporary philosophy is inevitably led to deny all incontrovertible truth and all eternal Being. One can understand why, by indicating the destiny of truth, my works can again refer to the absolutely incontrovertible truth and name it de-stiny, that is, the unmovable stay of the content of consciousness. This content is radically different from everything that, in human history, has been considered as “truth.” In fact, if believing that a being (that which is) was nothing and returns to be nothing is tantamount to believing in the most radical contradiction, then it is necessary that all beings (all stages of the world and that which is not world) be eternal. All beings are eternal. Eternity does not apply solely to a Being, privileged in comparison to all others that, because they are different from such a Being, are therefore relinquished to nothingness. The originary structure of destiny is the appearing of beings qua beings as being-themselves-and-not-other-than-themselves. That is, it is the appearing of any being (that is, also of that being that is the appearing of beings), whatever “world” such a being belongs to. The theses that support “ontological relativism” (à la Quine) are either forms of naïve skepticism, which pretends to save itself from “relativity,” or absolute ontologies that presume themselves capable of indicating the relative character of all other ontologies. The being-itself-and-not-other-than-itself that appears within the originary structure of destiny is also radically different from the principles of identity and noncontradiction that are present in the history of philosophy and of the natural and logical-mathematical sciences. Such principles are almost always present with a claim to absolute value. These “principles” in fact state that a being (qua being) is itself and is not other than itself only when and as long as it is. When it is not, that is, when it is nothing, a being is not even itself and not-other than itself. Within the destiny of truth, though, it appears that believing in the existence of a time where a(ny) being is not yet and is no longer means believing in the existence of a time in which a being that has become nothing, is nothing (that is, in which a thing is no-thing). The statement “yesterday has become nothing” differs from the statement “nothing has become nothing.” Both statements are contradictions, but they are different contradictions because yesterday is not nothing. The principles of identity and noncontradiction that have appeared within the history of Western culture are contradic-

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tory statements. The authentic meaning of nihilism (which is essentially more radical than the way in which Nietzsche and Heidegger understand it) lies in the faith that beings become other by protruding provisionally from nothing. The impossibility that a being be nothing implies by necessity the eternity of all beings. It also implies an essentially new sense of time and thus of the changing of the world. The conviction that becoming, understood as the passage from nonbeing to being and vice versa, is an immediate and indubitable evidence (a content of experience, a phenomenological content) is simply a faith. If one in fact believes that things and events become nothing, at the same time one believes that such things and events do not continue to appear within experience in the same way as they appeared before they became nothing. Thus, one believes that they exit experience to the extent to which they annihilate themselves. This means that experience cannot be the ground on the basis of which one asserts that they have become nothing. Not only is such an affirmation simply a faith, it is also a contradictory faith. It is the originary structure that shows all this. “Human beings,” to whom the various historical forms of civilization refer, are such a faith, which presents itself at first in its preontological configuration, later in the ontological configuration proper first to philosophical thinking, then to the entire Western civilization, and by now to the planet. Given that all beings are eternal and it is impossible that the exit from nothing and the annihilation of beings appear within experience, the changes within experience are the appearing and disappearing of eternals. That is, it is their entering and exiting the (eternal) circle of appearing. This circle is not in time but it includes time. It is the appearing of everything we call “past,” “present,” and “future.” For the most part, the conviction is that human consciousness appears only at a certain point in evolution and fades away much before the end of the universe. This conviction can subsist, though, only because it is based on the appearing of those times within which one places human consciousness. Such appearing includes not only time but also all things considered to exist beyond appearing—we can in fact say that they exist beyond appearing only if in some manner they do appear. This appearing is precisely the eternal circle that the eternals enter and exit, modifying the circle’s content. Variations are not the becomingother of beings. Such a circle constitutes human beings’ deepest essence, which is opposed and marginalized by the faith that things and events are a becoming other (and a becoming nothing). So far, we have maintained that (a) a being is not the-other-than-itself (there is no identity between a being and its other; thus, it cannot become other), and (b) that which appears exists. Within the originary structure

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of destiny, these two features are not a dogma because they appear as that the negation of which denies itself. In fact, the identity of this lamp and of this book is a negation of the originary structure only if their difference appears. Therefore, the negation entailed in their difference is based on the appearing of their difference: such a negation denies itself. The same can be said with respect to the negation of the existence of this lamp. (This reasoning is not a “foundation” of (a) and (b). As shown in my writings, the fact that the negation of (a) and (b) is a self-negation is an individuation or a set of individuations of (a). That is, it is a specific way in which the not-being-other-than-itself reveals itself. The latter is thus incontrovertible only to the extent that it appears as inclusive of such a specific way of self-revelation.) Faith that things become other (that is, that they have a history) enters the circle of appearing in a dominant position. I call “Earth” the set of beings (nature, human beings, gods) that enter the circle. Faith is, first and foremost, the conviction that the history of becoming-other is the region with which human beings surely have to deal. This conviction isolates Earth from the truth of destiny. Isolated Earth thus opposes, marginalizes destiny. It cannot succeed in annihilating destiny, yet it attracts language upon itself and does not let language give testimony to the truth of destiny. What I have suggested so far concerning destiny is specifically considered in my writings from the 1950s and 1960s, especially in the 1958 La struttura originaria (The Originary Structure), the 1962 Studi di filosofia della prassi (Essays in the Philosophy of Praxis), and the 1971 Essenza del nichilismo (Essence of Nihilism). Besides deepening these themes, subsequent works, for example, the 1995 Tautotes (The Identical) and the 2013 Intorno al senso del nulla (On the Sense of Nothing), have highlighted some decisive implications of my initial path. First of all, the genuine sense of the will. Since all beings are eternal, becoming-other is impossible. Not only this, though; impossible is also the will as it is understood within isolated Earth (that is, as a power capable of making things become other). The will wants the impossible. What happens (appears) when the will thinks it has obtained what it willed is thus necessarily other from what the will believes it has obtained. Additionally, since all beings are eternal, there exists a necessary relation between any being and every other being. If the will could decide differently from the way it actually decided (if so-called free will existed), there could be no necessary relation between that being that is the-chosen-decision and all other beings. Everything that happens, happens by necessity; it is necessary that it happen. That is shown is my 1980 Destino della necessità (The Destiny of Necessity), which also leads to the themes addressed in my next theoretical works,

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such as the 2001 La Gloria (Glory), the 2007 Oltrepassare (Overcoming), and the 2011 La morte e la terra (Death and Earth). The contrast between destiny and isolated Earth is destined to be overcome (but also preserved because all beings, and thus also their appearing, is eternal). Properly speaking, none of the arriving beings—the isolation of Earth is a being of such a kind—can permanently halt the arrival. In fact, the appearing of the originary structure of destiny and of all the determinations implied by it (the appearing that constitutes human beings’ essence) is the truth of beings as beings. Therefore, it is the necessary “predicate” of all beings; that is, it is that without which no being (thus, not even Earth) could appear within the circle of the originary structure. Such appearing is the eternal background that welcomes Earth. If, through its own arrival, a being were to permanently halt the arrival of Earth, then a necessary nexus between such a being and the eternal background would begin to appear. Yet it is impossible that a necessary nexus begins to appear, let alone begins to be. Therefore, no arriving being can permanently halt the arrival, and thus it is itself overcome. Since the overcoming being is, in turn, an arriving being, then the arriving is infinite. The isolation of Earth—which is the ground for faith in becomingother and becoming-nothing, that is, for faith in the existence of pain and death—is also necessarily overcome. It is overcome by an Earth that saves from the isolation; an Earth in which everything that arrives manifests salvation in an increasingly concrete manner. Authentic “Glory” is, within the gaze of destiny, this infinite unfolding of the saving Earth. The unfolding can be infinite only because it is necessary that destiny be not only the infinite constellation of circles welcoming the Earth but also the appearing, always already, of the totality of beings. Along the infinite path of Glory, this totality appears in the circles and nevertheless keeps transcending everything that, of itself, appears in such circles. The themes addressed in La Gloria (Glory) are developed in Oltrepassare (Overcoming) and La morte e la terra (Death and Earth). Here, I would like to recall only two themes: first, the theme of the necessity that the circles of destiny be an infinite multiplicity and be matched by what, within isolated Earth, is understood as the multiplicity of human beings; and second, the theme of the necessity that death (which cannot be annihilation) be the event that, within each circle (that is, within the essence of all human beings), may be the completion of isolated Earth and the infinite unfolding of saving Earth. Each human being dies within itself. As will, each dies within itself as a circle of the appearing of destiny. Overcoming isolated Earth means overcoming the structure of error that I mentioned earlier. At the climax of the structure of error technics,

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now guided by modern science, is the most coherent counterpart for faith in the existence of becoming-nothing and exiting-from-nothing as well as making-something-become-nothing and making-it-come-out-of-nothing. Today, we understand that the power of technics exists only to the extent that it is accompanied by public recognition of its existence. Yet we do not realize that such recognition is, in turn, the content of a form of faith. Within such faith, the goal of technics is destined to become also the goal of all traditional powers that today wish to use technics as a means (capitalism, communism, Christianity, Islam, totalitarianism, democracy, and so on). Tradition is destined to decline. The goal of technics is the indefinite increase in the ability to accomplish tasks. Tradition blames technics for wanting to do everything that can be done, forgetting that there are inviolable (“divine”) limits. Technics can reply to this only if it relies not simply on scientific knowledge (which today acknowledges its own hypothetical character) but rather on the essential underground of contemporary philosophy, which shows the impossibility of all limits and immutable orders. On this topic, I refer to my 1988 La tendenza fondamentale del nostro tempo (The Fundamental Trend of Our Time), the 1988 Il destino della tecnica (The Destiny of Technics), the 1989 La filosofia futura (Future Philosophy), the 1993 Il declino del capitalismo (The Decline of Capitalism), and the 2012 Capitalismo senza futuro (Capitalism Without Future). The essence of contemporary philosophy confers technics the power that is due to it within faith in becoming-other. Yet even within isolated Earth, technics does not have the last word. On the basis of an implication that I cannot develop here because of its complexity, but that I address in Oltrepassare (Overcoming), the language that gives testimony to the truth of destiny is destined to become the language of the people. Before the decline of the isolation of Earth, an awareness is destined to appear in them—the awareness that their actions (which are in any event inevitable before such a decline) are the deepest alienation of the truth. Language is, then again, a form of wanting to make things become other. Even the language that gives testimony to the truth of destiny is of this kind. Language wants that some events (especially visible and audible events) become signs for things, that is, become other than what they are; and that things become signified, that is again, other than what they are. Within the language that gives testimony to destiny, the thing that such a language wants to turn into (has faith that it turns into) a signified, that is, other than itself, is destiny itself. The decline of isolated Earth is the decline of language. In the time of conflict between destiny and isolated Earth, destiny appears as wrapped up in speech. In this case, however, the historicity of speech does not imply the historicity, and hence the deni-

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ability, of its content, because destiny is the only word whose negation is self-negation—it is the only undeniable word, as argued in my 1992 Oltre il linguaggio (Beyond Language). SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? What I have written is one single book whose parts have been published at different times. Believing that the will is productive of things is an illusion. Thus there are no things one can claim to be proud of or unsatisfied with. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? My writings try to indicate the destiny of truth. This destiny, which is not an attempt, is not “someone’s philosophy” (whether “mine” or “others’ ”). Because this destiny is opposed by isolated Earth, it remains within Earth’s unconscious. With respect to what Earth knows, the destiny of truth is the absolutely “original.” SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? The Earth’s isolation from destiny is the history of that which, within the isolation, is called “human being.” Such a history is the preparation and the manifestation of nihilism, that is, of the conviction that beings are nothing. The authentic meaning of nihilism reaches its climax in the civilization of technics. Here, insofar as it hears the voice of the essential core of contemporary philosophy (see what I have said earlier in my answer to question 6), techno-science substitutes the omnipotent God of the tradition and considers the totality of beings as subject to creation and annihilation. Destiny discloses the authentic meaning of “timeliness” by displaying this path; destiny itself remains however the highly untimely (because of the prevailing of isolated Earth). All attempts at understanding “timeliness” while turning one’s back to the authentic meaning of nihilism are destined to failure. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life?

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The relation between life and philosophy changes constantly, not because, as Marx thought, life determines consciousness, however. Rather, because changes in philosophical consciousness ultimately determine variations in the ways of life. This is to be understood in the sense that with respect to life and works, philosophy is like blood circulation—if there were none, one would die, yet only a few pay attention to it. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? Given the forms of wisdom that are dominant today, what is fundamental for a philosophy of the future are the themes I have already discussed when answering the question concerning the central points of my philosophy. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. Someone’s “viewpoints” are forms of errancy, negations of the originary structure of destiny. Analogously, the claim to be able to say how things “should be” is also errancy—things are eternally the way they are by necessity. In our times, philosophy is destined to bring tradition to a conclusion and carry the nihilism of human history to its climax. Future philosophy is destined to let emerge the essence of nihilism and the necessity of the advent of the saving Earth.

Topology, Nothingness, and the Possible God A Conversation with Vincenzo Vitiello (Naples, 1935)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? My interest in philosophy, and especially in political philosophy, awoke during my high school years. In college, I enrolled in law studies (Facoltà di Giurisprudenza) at the Università Federico II in Naples. After studying the philosophy of right, I graduated, having written a dissertation titled “Freedom and Justice in Benedetto Croce.” In the following years, my interests focused on theoretical philosophy. My first “theoretical” essay, Il carattere discorsivo del conoscere (The Discursive Character of Knowledge), appeared in 1964. It is a radical critique of intuition, that is, of the very possibility of our having immediate knowledge. Later, my philosophical interests expanded to art and religion. At the universities of L’Aquila and Salerno, beyond theoretical philosophy (the discipline in which I am a full professor), I have also taught aesthetics and hermeneutics for many years. For several years now, I have been teaching alternatively political theology and philosophy of history at the Università San Raffaele in Milan. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the themes, problems, and trends that predominated? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene?

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Also, what were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? When, at the end of 1950s, I graduated after studying the philosophy of right, the prevailing orientation in the Italian philosophical culture was “historicism.” From its initial idealist approach in Croce and Gentile, historicism was turning into “historiographism,” mainly because of the historical-political influence of Marxism in the specifically Italian variation provided by Antonio Gramsci. It will suffice to mention here the name of Eugenio Garin, a historian of thought, whose book La filosofia come sapere storico (Philosophy as Historic Knowledge) was an immense success. Fortunately, starting in the second half of the 1950s, Italian philosophy began to open up to non-Italian philosophical currents, especially Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger’s Daseinsanalyse. The opening happened thanks to restless philosophers such as Enzo Paci, whose merit was that of broadening the thematic horizon of Italian philosophy as well as changing the way of doing philosophy and history of philosophy. The classics were read, or better, questioned in a “different” way. Philosophy was done by engaging with architecture, music, literature, and psychoanalysis. Other trends of thought entered the Italian philosophical landscape of those years. They had a smaller group of followers, though, and were influential within a limited environment—among them, logical positivism (Bertrand Russell and the Vienna school: Carnap and Popper more than Wittgenstein initially, but then the situation turned in favor of the latter), philosophy of mathematics (Frege), and cybernetics. Besides Paci, among the Italians I would like to name are Giulio Preti, Luigi Pareyson, and Ludovico Geymonat. Compared to Paci’s, though, their influence was certainly less. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? Also, which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects of them have interested you the most? As I mentioned earlier, my interest in philosophy was born in high school. I remember as if it were yesterday that during my penultimate year in high school, I read an anthology of essays by Spinoza that stirred me. Attracted

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and repulsed at the same time, I kept telling myself: “No, it cannot be like this. What happens to my person, to my singularity within the calm ocean of substance, of which I am merely a ‘meager’ mode? No, it cannot be like that.” Saying that I had understood nothing is superfluous. My confusion spurred me to think further. I decided to study “right” (diritto) at the university so that I could remain with my feet on the earth. Politics seemed to me to be the real destiny of the philosopher. Not politics that is “done,” however, but politics that is “thought.” I used to tell myself that I was not interested in whether I am a mode or a substance. I was interested in how I should act with others, for others and for myself. At that time, the first half of the 1950s, my native town, Naples, was going through one of the worst periods in its history. At least that is what many of us thought. Of course, we could not even imagine what would then happen to our hometown in the transition to the next century. The political question was fundamental. In my “historicism” of those years, which placed me between Croce and Gramsci, and being already strongly influenced by Gentile’s idea of the unity of theory and praxis, I retrieved Piero Gobetti’s question: “If philosophy is history, why still do philosophy?” Yet I modified that question into this one: “If philosophy is politics, why still do philosophy?” And where, if not where one studies the law, can one learn politics as the practice of justice, as an exercise in “the good life,” eu zen (as Plato, whom I had started studying with increasing passion, would say)? The subtleties of right and the laws refined my logical abilities. Yet they also quickly tired me because of their abstractness. Even penal right, which was my favorite subject matter, disappointed me. Authors in these disciplines would never go deep enough into the questions. The analyses would always stop at the most interesting moments. Freedom and responsibility were chasing each other. I had been convinced that insofar as we are free we are also responsible, and I would learn from Kelsen the opposite, namely, that only insofar as the law makes us responsible can we be free. And his reasoning was compelling. I was thus led back to philosophy, to the logic of philosophy. Before I decided to take that path, though, I spent a summer reading Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature. I was still looking for the earth before venturing into the sky of philosophical logic. I came across philosophical logic already in Hume’s Treatise. I wrote a short essay on the problem of causation in the Treatise on Human Nature. I mention this only to indicate my move to Kant and soon, very soon, to Hegel. Hegel is certainly the most important philosopher in terms of my philosophical education. With him, I began a hard struggle. I studied the Science of Logic for two consecutive years. The only two “distractions” I

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allowed myself were reading Thomas Mann and Freud. I went through moments of authentic despair. Yet the reward for so much work has been incommensurable. Hegel freed me from Croce and Gentile—they are both Hegelians in the same way in which, to mention an example from Spinoza, the latrans dog resembles the constellation with the same name. Hegel also opened me up to understanding Heidegger, the second philosopher who has left a deep mark on me and to whom I devoted my first book in philosophy, Heidegger. Il Nulla e la fondazione della storicità (Heidegger: Nothingness and the Foundation of Historicity), published in 1976 (the preceding 1968 volume on Storiografia e storia nel pensiero di Benedetto Croce (Historiography and History in the Thought of Benedetto Croce) was merely an exercise in philosophical writing). Before studying Hegel and Heidegger, I was an aspiration, a desire, perhaps a vocation, and nothing more. It is only with the passing of the years that I have realized that in philosophy one is never anything more than this. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. After the book on Heidegger and the subsequent one, titled, Dialettica ed ermeneutica. Hegel e Heidegger (Dialectics and Hermeneutics: Hegel and Heidegger), I was invited by Pierre-Jean Labarrière to speak at the conference “Kant oder Hegel?,” which had been organized by the Hegel-Vereinigung in Stuttgart in 1981. I delivered a paper, “Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit in der Kantischen und Hegelschen Logik.” This paper marks my self-distancing from Hegel and the beginning of reflections on Kant that, over the course of ten years, brought me to the theoretical formulation of the notion of “topology.” Topology is how I mean to define my philosophical “praxis.” I insist on this expression, “philosophical praxis,” because before being a “theory,” for me topology has been an exercise in thinking, a practice of interpretation of texts—and not only philosophical texts. To explain the main concept of topology I would have to engage in subtle and complex analyses of the concepts of “time,” “space,” “syllogism,” judgment,” and some other notions, which would require too long a discourse for us now. I prefer to offer the bottom line of topology—its “central” knots and junctions—by narrating a fabula (tale). This is a trick to which I have resorted at other times and with success, at least according to the readers (or the audience, depending on the circumstances). Here is the fabula. In a big and wealthy Castle there are salons, corridors, rooms, stairways, attics, and basements. Likewise, in the space of history, there are different places within which one can move freely, like the Master within his

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Castle. This is Topology—an ethos, a particular way of inhabiting time and history. Spatial metaphors are here “real” metaphors, true transpositions: from time to space. One cannot understand time if not starting from space. This is so not because time presupposes movement, as Aristotle claims. Rather, this is so because time is in itself “space,” that is, the permanent horizon within which events flow. It is permanent because if it itself were to change, as Kant remarks, we would still have to resort to time to measure its changes. Movement does not belong to the Castle but to its Master and the guests that the Master invites and hosts on different occasions. One could think that the permanence of the temporal horizon, of timethat-is-space, reduces or even annihilates the variety of the historical world into an “eternal present” that erases time movement. The truth is just the opposite, however. In the universal horizon of time-that-is-space, times are multiplied. Analogously, the relations between the places of the imaginary Castle are multiplied. Everything depends on the guest to the Castle and on the guest’s movements. If the guest leaves the council room and goes into the ballroom, the guest will see a different kind of furniture and tapestry. The Master’s private rooms are different from the rooms reserved for the servants. The attics are still different; even more different is the basement because of its light, colors, and furnishings. Metaphor (which is here only rhetorical) aside, if one studies Hegel within the perspective of truth as disclosure of Depth (Offenbarung der Tiefe), then Hegel’s system of philosophy appears as more contemporary to Augustine’s theory of Trinity than to Schelling’s thought, and Schelling’s philosophy as more contemporary to Plotinus’ thought than to Hegel’s system, because Schelling’s eternal past is closer to Plotinus’ One that withdraws within itself than to Hegel’s Vernunft (Reason) that unfolds itself in world and time or even in worlds and times. If one’s perspective changes, though, the vision of their relation changes, too. When they were young, both Schelling and Hegel danced around the tree of freedom, both celebrating, because of the news arriving from nearby France; they shared the same “political orientation.” Topology is that kind of philosophical hermeneutics that loves difference and multiplicity and that finds itself at home wherever it turns because it does not consider anything as alien to itself. The lack of alienation is not due to the fact that topology appropriates everything in subjective arbitrariness. Rather, it is owed to the fact that topology is appealed, questioned, and even stirred by any thought, action, and feeling. In topology there are no “subjective thoughts.” What “one” thinks, what is thought time after time, does not belong to the subject any more than to the object. Hegel and Schelling, Plato’s Republic and

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Aristotle’s Ethics, Kant’s Critiques and Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations, are not objects of “my” thinking but themes, inexhaustible sources of thoughts, questions, provocations, and restlessness. Going back to our Castle—the rooms, the salons, the corridors, the stairways, the basement, and the attic are not inert sites (unless one is an unfocused and uninterested guest). They are active places that attract, provoke, challenge, even repel, and in any event stir us up from all quiet. Without them there would be no thinking. They are defined as topoi because what is indicated with such a term is “the centers of power,” the monads from which there flow the time and space of our historical world, the forms of our culture, and the “sites” of our dwelling. They do not expand, all of them, into one single surface; on the contrary, like the floors of the imaginary and imagined Castle, they dis-locate themselves at various levels. In the present of topology, various times intersect on a same level; but also, various times occur at various levels. The space of topology is a stratified time. One can represent or know it never in its totality but always only from one perspective. The plurality of strata is itself a perspective—one and only one. One can only see the Castle from the inside, within the changing perspectives that it offers about itself. In the very place where he claims that time endures and does not change (die Zeit bleibt und wechselt nicht), Kant, who is the main modern source of inspiration for topology, also understands that time in itself cannot be perceived (nun kann die Zeit für sich nicht wahrgenommen warden). Permanence itself is only a perspective on movement. Therefore, it lasts only as long as movement lasts. What, then, is the time, the “true”’ of topology? It is the exaíphnes, the moment, the Augenblick, he rhipé toû ophtalmoû, the blink of an eye. It is the instant within which the magic Castle might even disappear. That is, the instant within which the eternal present might even vanish. It might. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? It should be clear, after what I have said, that I think my most representative book is the 1992 Topologia del moderno (Topology of the Modern). I would also like to add the 2002 Il Dio possibile (The Possible God), for reasons I will illustrate later. As for the book of which I am the proudest, I have no doubts: it is the one I have not yet written. I would be happy to finish the book on Kant on which I have been working for years. I am very sure, though, that

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if I succeed in completing it, I will be more proud of the subsequent one that is still to be written. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? The most original aspects of my philosophy? Those that have received the greatest objections or that, when they have been well received, have often been misunderstood. Which ones, then? The concept of time that is proper to topology, that is, its “being brought back” to space, as I have explained earlier, and the concept of “the possible,” on which I need to speak now because it constitutes the central core of my thinking at least since the 1976 book on Heidegger I mentioned earlier. Ever since that time, I focused on the affirmation that one reads in the “Introduction” to Being and Time, namely, that “Höher als Wirklichkeit steht die Möglichkeit,” higher than reality is possibility. This statement overturns the fundamental claim of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the claim that is at the foundation of the entirety of Western knowledge: próteron enérgheia dynámeos, actuality precedes potentiality. Aristotle’s claim is a necessary statement if one wants to give a stable foundation to the world and to the knowledge of the world. In fact, given that potentiality has within itself the possibility of being as well as not being, how else could one explain the “reality” of the world except by presupposing a cause that separates being from nonbeing and makes potentiality turn into actuality? It is evident that such a cause is actuality and not potentiality; it is actuality that grounds the reality of the universe and at the same time the knowledge of it. When he overturns Aristotle’s fundamental claim, Heidegger eliminates certainty from knowledge, stability from the world. In this overturning of Aristotle by Heidegger, I found the true reply to Spinoza—to that Spinoza who had troubled me in high school. The reply was, however, even more troubling than the thesis that it answered. The possibility that is higher than “reality” is, properly speaking, Nothingness. Hence the title of my book, Il nulla e la fondazione della storicità (Nothingness and the Foundation of Historicity), which is the first step in the itinerary that led me to topology. Main steps in this itinerary focusing on the theme of the possible are the 1981 Stuttgart conference I already mentioned, and then some works on Nietzsche, namely, the 1982 Utopia del nichilismo (Utopia of Nihilism) and the 1983 Ethos and Eros in Hegel and Kant (Ethos and Eros in Hegel and Kant). It is with Il Dio possibile. Esperienze di cristianesimo (The Possible God: Experiences of Christianity) that my reflection on “the possible” has reached full maturity because it has been enriched

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with studies of Christianity in its relation to the philosophical tradition “from Ionia to Jena” and beyond (see, for example, the 1995 Cristianesimo senza redenzione, [Christianity Without Redemption]). From “ontological” category next to the “real” and the “necessary,” the “possible” has appeared to me as a “subjective” category not in Kant’s sense, where “subjective” defines a kind of relation to the object, but in the opposite sense where the “subjective” posits no relation, not even the negative relation of scission. The limit of “the possible” consists paradoxically in the fact that it does not know its limit. The critique of the absolute cannot claim to be itself absolute. It is clear that the finiteness of not-knowing involves the “I-think” first of all. Is this radical nihilism? No, it is possible nihilism. It is the nihilism of the finite that does not venture any absolute claim, least of all about itself and its own root or roots. This notion of the “possible” constitutes a great opening to religious experience, that is, to the experience of alterity. It is a great and new opening because by prohibiting itself any absolute claim, it does not bend God to human beings, not even for their own salvation. It is an experience of love that is beyond love because it forbids itself even the claim that “God is.” God is not; God is-possible. God can not-be. God can even not be possible. In fact, if the possible were not in itself impossible, then it would be necessary—because forced to be possible and only possible. The possible God is Anselm of Canterbury’s God, who is not only that of which nothing greater can be thought but is also greater than anything that can be thought (Proslogion, XV). SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? The timeliness of my philosophical position lies in its untimeliness. In the terrible time of absolute religions, which exhort to war, a philosophy of religion that does not bend God to human needs but rather bends human beings to God and forbids itself even the claim that God is love constitutes a total opening to the alterity of the other. At the same time, such philosophy of religion also recognizes that even this opening, like all human “things,” is limited and finite. The religion proper to this philosophy still dares to be called “Christian” only because it refers to that Jesus who, after having admonished us to behave like the Father who is in Heaven, who has the rain fall on both the just and the unjust and the sun shine on both the good and the bad, that is, after He has called for welcoming everyone without distinction, asserts that He has not come to bring peace

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but division. Thus He also recognizes the limit of universal love. The one who speaks as Truth, Life, and the Way, the Son of the Living God, is also the one who asks: “And you, whom do you say that I am?” This kind of Christianity, that is, the Christianity of the invisible Church that is beyond all visible churches in which it actualizes itself time after time and always imperfectly, deserves respect from all religions and also from those who have no religion because it itself respects everyone and considers itself a participant in the imperfection of all. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? Also, which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? Furthermore, what do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? What has changed today (but timewise, this “today” is rather wide) is the relation between philosophy and politics. Ours are times when the communitarian horizon has revealed itself as a source of contrasts more than aggregation. In this time, philosophy, which was born as a reflection on the polis, the community and what is in common, must turn its gaze elsewhere— not to the town but to nature. It must learn that wider than being-with, Mitdasein, is being-beside, Nebensein, and being-nearby, Dabeisein. It must learn to respect “things” as well as, if not even ahead of, human beings. To respect them means first of all this: to let oneself be questioned by them in advance of questioning them. In which way? In the following: “On a morning like many others, somewhat early, a woman goes to the medical center of the university where she teaches. Like every morning, she crosses the alley that leads to the Analysis Department. Her pace is quick. At a certain point, she seems to want to stop but in fact she simply slows down her pace—enough to enable her to lightly touch a plant with her hand. Softly, as if to caress it. From the small door of the ‘now’ (Jetzt), the Messiah has entered. Not in order to proclaim the centrality of human beings, their dignity, their superior hierarchy in the order, in the orders of the Universe. On the contrary, simply to remind us of the incomplete incompleteness of the Adam that we all are, who lightly touches the ‘nearby’ with meek hands, aware that the distance between such hands and what is next to them, what happens to be next to them, can never

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be eliminated. Tomorrow, this woman will pray to her God with her own words next to others who will pray with their own words each to their own God. And she will pray next to the many who are silent when it comes to words of prayer and yet are capable of experiencing the Sacred by rejoicing at a child’s smile or by partaking in the suffering of the one who is about to die. Sometimes prayers are tears—‘sunt lacrimae rerum’ (there are tears for things), as Virgil writes in the Aeneid—testimony of a ‘nearby’ that surpasses and holds within itself—and guards—all human ‘community.’ ” SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. The conclusive word? An ancient and yet always new word: in the language in which it is pronounced, Lo Tirzah; in our language, “thou shalt not kill.”

SIX

HUMAN BEINGS, EVIL, TRANSCENDENCE

Religious Experience, Philosophy, and Theology A Conversation with Giovanni Ferretti (Brusasco, 1933)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? I am essentially a philosopher of religion yet with wide general interests especially in theory of knowledge, anthropology, metaphysics, and theology. I have in fact learned that no critical reflection on religion is possible without a philosophical elaboration of the theoretical presuppositions affecting the study and evaluation of religion and without considering what religious individuals say about themselves and the faith they profess through a theology. Academically, I taught philosophy of religion from 1968 to 1977 at the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy at its central site in Milan and theoretical philosophy at the Università di Macerata from 1976 to 2008. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? I consider 1957 as the actual beginning of my philosophical journey. This is the year of my enrollment as a philosophy major at the Università Cattolica

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del Sacro Cuore (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart) in Milan. At that time, Italy was critically overcoming idealism in the forms given to it by Giovanni Gentile and Benedetto Croce. In that overcoming, two basic philosophical orientations confronted each other: a “Christian-Catholic”–inspired one and a secular (laico) one. The two orientations somewhat paralleled the two prevailing political alignments in postwar Italy. Within the Catholic-inspired orientation, overcoming idealism mainly meant criticism of immanentism in gnoseological and historical matters. It also meant a retrieval of the human mind’s ability to know reality effectively and reach divine transcendence through reasoning. With respect to the latter theme, two distinct schools existed: the school of “classic metaphysicians,” which was centered at the Università Cattolica in Milan, and the school of “Christian spiritualists,” which had various representatives in different academic sites, such as Armando Carlini in Pisa, Augusto Guzzo in Turin, and Michele Federico Sciacca in Genoa. Classic metaphysicians thought that one should reach God’s transcendence through arguments from the classical (especially Aristotelian and Thomist) tradition, which start with the experience of the objective reality of being. The Christian spiritualist school thought that one should start with the human spirit’s interior experience and follow its immanent dynamism up to the disclosure of its movement of self-transcendence. Within the “secular” thought, the overcoming of idealism unfolded in various directions. I experienced mainly three. The first was the Marxist direction, which transformed idealist historicism into materialist historicism. Marxism shared an immanentist character with idealism, though, by accentuating its aversion to religious transcendence to the point of atheism. The second was the existentialist direction, which criticized idealism by making reference to the structure of existence as open to being. For the most part, though, as in the case of Nicola Abbagnano in Turin, it conceived of being as essentially finite. The third was the problematicist direction, which was called this because, in reaction to great past philosophical systems, it thought that philosophy should only critically analyze philosophical problems with the awareness that it will never solve them definitively. As a matter of fact, this position favored those who thought that the only objectively valid knowledge is scientific knowledge and that philosophy should be limited to being a “theory of science.” SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends?

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They were mainly existentialism, Marxism, phenomenology, and logical neopositivism. In terms of existentialism, Heidegger and Sartre stood out. There was also, however, a revival of Kierkegaard, considered as a precursor to existentialism. As for Heidegger, people were struck by his analysis of fundamental moods such as anxiety, described in Being and Time. Such moods reveal that the human being is always already in relation with being and not simply with beings. Heidegger’s temporal conception of being caused much debate. Was it the retrieval of the human being’s essential historicity or was it tragic finitude? Sartre was of interest especially because of his appeal to freedom as a feature of human existence that disjoins it from all connections to a predefined “essence.” With respect to Marxism, Marx was obviously widely present, first of all because of historical materialism’s roots in that Hegelian dialectic so dear to Italian idealists. Attention to the young Marx’s humanist aspects, which were more in line with the Italian humanist tradition, was becoming increasingly widespread as well. People also began to read the works by peculiar neo-Marxists such as Horkheimer, Adorno, and Lukács. As for phenomenology, which was discovered to be in the background of Heidegger’s and Sartre’s philosophies, the author of reference was mainly Husserl. “Secular” thinkers, such as Enzo Paci at Milan State University, were interested in Husserl because, through rigorous analyses, Husserl brought all knowledge, including scientific knowledge, back to the originary immediate experiences of consciousness, to which he assigned a function constitutive of the very objects of knowledge. “Catholic” thinkers such as Sofia Vanni Rovighi at the Catholic University in Milan were interested instead in Husserl for his retrieval of the medieval claim of the objective “intentionality” of consciousness. This seemed to offer a precious contribution to overcoming idealistic subjectivism and posing the ontological question anew. Logical neopositivism was becoming of interest with reference to Frege, Russell, and the first Wittgenstein as the author of the 1920 Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which the authors of the Vienna Circle (Schlick, Neurath, Carnap, and others) interpreted in a positivist direction. “Secular” thinkers saw in neopositivism a valid criticism of metaphysical positions, which were declared not simply wrong or unproved but meaningless. This encouraged secular thinkers to a more rigorous study of the formal and symbolic logic seen as a necessary tool for scientific as well as philosophical discourse. Thus they laid the foundations for analytic philosophy’s first steps in Italy. Although appreciative of the contributions to the field of

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logic, “Catholic” thinkers were involved in contrasting what they considered to be the contemporary, most radical rejection of metaphysics in all its forms, even the forms still present in existentialist and phenomenological discourses. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? My encounter with philosophy began before my enrollment at the Università Cattolica. In the years 1949 to 1957, I attended the courses in philosophy and theology routinely offered in the Catholic seminaries that prepared candidates for priestly ordination. I attended these courses in the seminary of the Turin diocese. Philosophy was taught as introductory to the study of theology. What we studied was neoscholastic philosophy of an Aristotelian-Thomist nature, which was sharply critical of all modern philosophy. The teaching of it was very “scholastic,” and scarcely critical or scientific. We followed handbooks, with no direct confrontation or dialogue with classical texts. Despite these limitations, of which I became aware only later, philosophical questions thrilled me. Therefore, when, after my ordination as a Catholic priest in 1957, I was asked to continue my philosophical studies at the Università Cattolica in Milan, so that I could then teach philosophy in the seminaries, I accepted with enthusiasm. Philosophy seemed to me to be a very important field of study not only as an aid for the apologetics of religious faith and theological reflection but also and furthermore as the search for the truth of the human being and the world. At the Università Cattolica in Milan, I suddenly found myself part of a great cultural project, namely, a global dialogical confrontation between Christian and modern thought. Modern thought was to be studied not simply to criticize it, but also to grasp its elements of truth and its provocations to deeper thinking. I remember that one of my older and more famous professors, Francesco Olgiati, used to invite us to study modern philosophers to grasp what he called their “spirit of truth.” He himself had done so with great competency and originality. My main teachers at the Università Cattolica were Gustavo Bontadini and Sofia Vanni Rovighi. Bontadini was a real metaphysician, committed especially to an original “rigorization,” as he called it, or rendering rigorous the proofs for God’s

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existence. He thought that their essential core lay in the acknowledgment that the becoming that belongs to the beings of experience is contradictory if such beings are not considered in reference to an absolute, nonbecoming being. Bontadini also critically examined modern philosophy and showed it to be originarily “phenomenalist” because it relied on the presupposition that beyond what we know there exist “things in themselves.” What we know would in fact be only the “ideas,” that is, the “phenomena” or “appearances” of things, and not the things themselves. If, however, one realizes that this is an ungrounded presupposition (as, according to Bontadini, idealism has done by elevating ideas to the status of true reality), then our knowledge goes back to being what it truly is, namely, originary knowledge of what “is given,” that is, of being as it presents itself to our experience. For Bontadini, this allows us to approach correctly the proofs for the existence of God on the basis of our actual and undeniable experience of beings that become. Although partial, the revaluation of idealism advanced by Bontadini incurred sharp criticisms by a Thomist scholar, Cornelio Fabbro, who openly accused Bontadini of “immanentism.” These polemics rendered the critical confrontation very lively, even inside the Università Cattolica, and they stimulated us to think, debate, and take sides. I must say that Bontadini’s position has always appeared to me as the more convincing of the two. As for Sofia Vanni Rovighi, whom I chose as my dissertation director, she was basically a convinced Thomist. Her Thomism had unfolded, however, in light of a direct reading of Thomas Aquinas’s texts within their historical context and under the provocation of their critique by modern philosophy. She was a major expert on medieval and modern thought, and she introduced us to the direct reading not only of Thomas but also of Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, Ockham, and then Spinoza, Hume, Kant (on whom she had written a thorough and valuable introduction), Hegel, and, among others, Husserl (with her 1939 volume on him, she was among the first to make Husserl known in Italy). In her lectures, she taught us first to penetrate to the authors’ genuine thought and forms of argumentation before moving to their critical evaluation. She used to say that, as one learns to play music by playing classical music, likewise one learns philosophy by reading the texts of classical philosophers. Her courses on Husserl’s phenomenology were fundamental to my evolution from being a student to being a scholar; that is, for the beginning of my “scientific” path. With its rediscovery of the intentionality of the various (not only representational but also emotional and willful) acts of consciousness, phenomenology appeared to me as a new way of doing philosophy—a way that is simultaneously rigorous and open to the vast world of human experience.

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The metaphysical road, made rigorous by Bontadini in a “short” onto-theological discourse, was thus replaced with the long and patient way of the phenomenological analyses of various aspects of reality—analyses pushed, when possible, up to their border with ultraphenomenal and theological ulteriorness or transcendence. The interest in new paths of comprehension of the religious phenomenon (paths opened up by the phenomenological method) brought me to study Max Scheler. I graduated with a dissertation on him under the direction of Vanni Rovighi in 1962, and continued to study his works up to the publication, in 1972, of two volumes on his thought. Among the various aspects of Scheler’s thought, at that time I was mainly interested in his philosophical-religious viewpoints. I was also quite taken with his anthropological analyses. Additionally, I was especially convinced by his “objectivistic” conception of intentionality, which he deployed to oppose what was considered Husserl’s “idealistic turn.” SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects in them have interested you the most? I choose three authors, with three related works, which have marked three turns, or better, three subsequent broadenings of the horizon of my thought after its initial formation. For the phenomenological turn, the author is undoubtedly Max Scheler, especially with his 1921 work on the philosophy of religion, On the Eternal in Man. For the hermeneutic turn, I choose the Turin philosopher Luigi Pareyson, especially for his 1971 Truth and Interpretation. In it, he argues for the presence and inexhaustibility of the truth in the multiple interpretations or formulations that are given of it; thus, he radically opposes dogmatism and relativism. For what I would call the ethical turn, the author is Emmanuel Levinas and especially his 1961 work, Totality and Infinity. In it, he argues that not ontology but ethics constitutes the ultimate horizon of sense and thus also the place of the originary saying of theological transcendence. Over the years though, many other thinkers and works have inspired and nourished the unfolding of my thought. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. A first decisive point concerns the elaboration of the methodological configuration of the philosophy of religion, following up on Scheler.

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At the time of my studies, philosophy of religion was not taught even at the Università Cattolica because its approach was considered “rationalistic.” What people had in mind were the founders of the discipline, especially Kant and Hegel. It was thought that studying religion in the light of reason inevitably would end up bringing Christian religion in its entirety “within the limits of reason alone,” and this would imply renouncing the superrational feature that is a product of revelation. Philosophy of religion was absent in all Italian universities. What prevailed in them was the idealist-Hegelian approach belonging to Giovanni Gentile. For Gentile, the study of religion (which presents truth in symbolic representations) may be helpful in middle and high schools but not at the university level, where it must be replaced with philosophy’s critical and conceptual thinking. The only exception was the University of Rome, where Enrico Castelli, in complete isolation, had succeeded in introducing philosophy of religion as an academic discipline already in 1940. He then taught it until 1970. Scheler enabled me to give full philosophical dignity to the study of the religious phenomenon without distorting it. The phenomenological analysis in fact highlights the truth-bearing intentionality that belongs specifically to the religious act—an intentionality that is sharply distinct from the intentionality of metaphysical thought and yet not impenetrable to philosophical reflection. Philosophical reflection may in fact receive its truth content from various historical forms of human experience such as the aesthetic, ethical, and indeed religious experience; it then analyzes such content phenomenologically in its essential meaning and reflects on it critically. The issue of reflecting critically on religious experience, which is grasped phenomenologically in its essential elements, became for me the crucial point for a “philosophy of religion” on phenomenological grounds. This implied, however, a more precise determination of the relations between philosophy and religion. With respect to this, Scheler simply proposed the so-called method of conformity between religion and metaphysics. Religion and metaphysics are distinct in terms of the phenomenological diversity and autonomy of their respective intentional acts and objects. Yet there must be conformity between their claims because they all refer to the unique reality of the absolute and holy Ens a se (Being from itself). In Scheler, however, I also noticed two important indications that I later discovered to be pivotal points for the move from an exclusively phenomenological approach to a hermeneutic or phenomenological-hermeneutic formulation of philosophy of religion. First is the indication that the method of conformity should be understood not in the sense of a simple parallelism between metaphysics and religion but rather in the sense of

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a reciprocal correction and mutual enrichment according to the form of encounter that Gadamer calls a “fusion of horizons.” Second, I perceived the indication that, already in Scheler, the phenomenological analysis is not without precomprehensions (even if Scheler does not yet use this term) and among the precomprehensions affecting the phenomenological analysis of religion is, first of all, the anthropological precomprehension. Among the authors who best grasped and developed Scheler’s second indication is the theologian Karl Rahner. I read Rahner’s famous work, Hearer of the Word, with avidity. Not without influences from Maurice Blondel, Karl Barth, Martin Heidegger, and even Gabriel Marcel, Rahner advanced the grounding of the philosophy of religion on an anthropology originarily open to the mystery of being. He correctly noticed, though, that philosophy is not capable of knowing such a mystery, and thus of elaborating on its own a conception of the philosophy of religion, unless the mystery reveals itself within history through a word that human beings are capable of hearing precisely because of their originary being open to it. Philosophy of religion’s task is not to construct religion rationally but rather to highlight the anthropological conditions of its possibility and meaning. At this point, I was in a position to tune in to the new approaches to the philosophy of religion that in Italy were being proposed by admirable pioneers of the discipline, such as Alberto Caracciolo and Italo Mancini. In his 1966 book, La religione come struttura e modo autonomo della coscienza (Religion as Autonomous Structure and Mode of Consciousness), Caracciolo worked within Rahner’s line of transcendental reflection. With his 1968 masterpiece, Filosofia della religione (Philosophy of Religion), Mancini advanced a more clearly hermeneutic configuration of the philosophy of religion. According to Mancini, the various moments of such a configuration were on the one hand, listening to what is religion, namely, the kerygma or God’s word (the phenomenological moment), and on the other hand, the analysis of the various precomprehensions (metaphysical, existential, and practical) that enable its recognition (the more properly hermeneutic moment). I was widely in agreement with Mancini’s methodological formulation of the discipline, as manifested also by my programmatic essay, “Filosofia della religione” (Philosophy of Religion), which I wrote for the Dizionario teologico interdisciplinare (Interdisciplinary Theological Dictionary). On the one hand, Mancini’s formulation enabled a confrontation with contemporary philosophical reflections in terms of religious themes; on the other hand, it demanded that one not stay at the margin of theology but rather confront it directly in its contents. As Mancini understood it, the object of the philosophy of religion is the same as that of theology; philosophy of reli-

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gion in fact presents itself as the “epistemology” of theology. It differs from theology, though, because it approaches such an object only as “presumably revealed” and not according to the model of orthodoxy or heterodoxy, that is, from the formal point of its possible recognition. I was progressively led to rethink and overcome such a configuration through various research paths: (1) a deeper study of hermeneutic philosophers such as Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Pareyson. (2) A wider familiarity with the great masters of twentieth-century theology (beside Rahner, Barth, Bultmann, Balthasar, Bonhoeffer, Pannenberg, Metz, Moltmann, Schillebeeckx, and so on); these theologians went beyond neoscholasticism and renovated Christian theology in various ways through a wise confrontation with contemporary philosophy, which they knew and discussed with competence and rigor. (3) The encounter with Ernst Bloch’s thought, which I passionately studied in the 1970s mainly because of his attempt to reinterpret Marxism in a utopian-humanistic key on the basis of a philosophical appropriation of the Messianic-eschatological aspects of the Christian legacy. What interested me was first of all the new face of Christianity that emerged in such authors—a Christianity less tied to a metaphysics of theocratic transcendence and more geared toward eschatological transcendence, less dogmatic and more open to a plurality of interpretations with respect to the concrete meaning of existence, and so on. No less important were the methodological consequences of such a rethinking. Hermeneutic philosophies enabled me to realize that what was de facto happening in the current confrontation between twentieth-century philosophy and theology was also what de jure should and could happen; that is, not just a philosophy of religion that methodologically stays at the margin of theology and limits itself to a critical examination of the formal conditions of possibility of an alleged revelation, but rather a true confrontation between two hermeneutic traditions that do not avoid an even confrontation on the truth and meaning of their respective content and their implications for human existential experience. The encounter with Luigi Pareyson’s thought was of great help in that methodological turn. Pareyson had been engaged in developing a very original “philosophical hermeneutics of the Christian religious experience.” As he thought of it, this hermeneutic cannot be mistaken for theology because its goal is not the community of believers but rather a universalizing function, that is, the ability to respond to the great questions of freedom and evil and clarify the meaning of human existence as such. Pareyson’s residual distinction between the hermeneutics of religious experience and theology immediately appeared insufficient to me, though. According to the most widely recognized acquisitions of twentieth-century

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theological reflection, as a “critical conscience of faith” theology speaks in fact not only to believers but to “those who have eyes to see” (as Pannenberg says), that is, “all human beings of good will.” It thus became necessary for me to move from “philosophy of religion” and also from “philosophy of revelation” or “philosophy of the Christian fact” to a more explicit activity of hermeneutic confrontation between the theological tradition, based on its foundational texts, and the philosophical tradition, based in turn on its own classical texts. Also, it cannot be forgotten that in the West, neither tradition exists in a pure form; rather, they are widely and mutually contaminated. I have explicated and argued for this new methodological-hermeneutic consciousness in the essays collected in the two 2002 volumes, Filosofia e teologia cristiana. Saggi di epistemologia teologica (Philosophy and Christian Theology: Essays in Theological Epistemology). Such a consciousness has also been tested in the series of international colloquia on philosophy and religion that I organized in Macerata between 1984 and 2006 with the collaboration of various colleagues and the participation of famous philosophers such as Levinas, Ricoeur, Pareyson, and Greisch and illustrious theologians such as Pannenberg, Metz, and others. It also motivated me to cofound the journal Filosofia e teologia (Philosophy and Theology) in collaboration with philosophers and theologians of various religious denominations, believers and nonbelievers. This journal has offered and still offers an open forum for discussing religious themes. Furthermore, in Italy, it has opened a real and exceptional field of studies at the confluence of two disciplines, philosophy and theology, which have been traditionally separated in the Italian academic tradition. My interest in gnoseological, ontological, and anthropological precomprehensions has led me to deepen those topics from a strictly theoretical perspective. In this respect, the encounter with Emmanuel Levinas’s thought, which I began studying in the early 1980s, has been an important source of reflection, if not even a turn in my thinking. According to the Levinasian mode of thinking, the aim of phenomenological intention is not an “object-phenomenon” but rather the ethical “signification” that the Other, the face of the Other, addresses to me as a countertendency (or counterintentionality) to my very theoretical intentionality. This way, I discover myself no longer as a cognitively intentional subject but rather, more radically, as a “passive” subject of ethical responsibility. The consequences of this turn soon appeared relevant to me not only in terms of a radical challenge to Husserl’s transcendental subject but also with respect to a related rethinking of the meaning of the ontological horizon, which most Western philosophy, including Heidegger, considers

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as totally identical with the horizon of thought and which Bontadini had taught me to regard as nontranscendable. The consequences for my theological reflections were equally relevant given that up to that point, following up on Heidegger together with Rahner and Mancini, I too had considered ontology as the ultimate precomprehension for theological discourse. Levinas’s philosophical work, which “translates” the Jewish prophets’ message and in general the spirit of the Jewish-Talmudic religious tradition into Greek, that is, into the language of philosophy and with a renewed phenomenological method, confirmed the possibility of a hermeneutic interweaving, which I was developing at the epistemological level, between the Judeo-Christian religious tradition and the Western philosophical tradition. I nevertheless remained convinced that not even by accepting Levinas’ provocation could ontology and the transcendental horizon of consciousness be eliminated from philosophical thought. For this reason, I resumed a confrontation with Husserl in the 1997 volume Soggettività e intersoggettività. Le Meditazioni cartesiane di Husserl (Subjectivity and Intersubjectivity: Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations). I then turned especially to Kant with the aim of interrogating him on the relation between ontology and theology against the background of Heidegger’s and Levinas’ opposed positions: Heidegger in search of an adequate ontology for theological discourse, and Levinas with the goal of going beyond all ontology for an adequate theological discourse. The first chapter of the 1997 volume I published on this theme, Ontologia e teologia in Kant (Ontology and Theology in Kant), is significantly titled “Rereading Kant After Heidegger and Levinas.” What I especially emphasized in Kant is the presence of two forms of ontology, one of a phenomenal, object-based kind, not apt to provide the background for theology, and one of a noumenal, transobjectual kind, which not only opens to theology but also provides it with an essential critical side. At the “limit” of ethics, under the spur of the problem of radical evil, through the doctrine of the parerga of a purely natural religion, Kant also opens some space for a superior supernatural source such as Christian positive religion; in this manner he actually moves beyond Enlightenment-style rationalism. To widen Kant’s perspective, I thought it helpful to explore other directions of “approximating” transcendence, such as, for example, the mysterious ulteriorness of the other human being, one’s own living flesh (Leib), the “that” (dass) of the world. Following up on the most recent French phenomenology, I characterized them as “events of donation.” In dialogue with such phenomenology, I have developed a passion for these questions. To my mind, they are no longer approachable at the level of traditional ontology but only at that of an “ontology of gratuitousness and

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donation.” In the end, like others, I have ended up considering the ethics of responsibility toward others and, ultimately, the experience of love toward others in their uniqueness as the ultimate source of access to the Other’s irreducible transcendence and the disclosure of the ultimate theological meaning of being itself. My recent 2014 volume, La trascendenza dell’amore. Saggi su Max Scheler (The Transcendence of Love: Essays on Max Scheler) is the retrieval, in this new perspective, of the phenomenology of love described by Max Scheler. SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? I cannot ignore the feeling of constraint I perceive in the question. It is like being invited to say which child one is more proud of. I do not wish to avoid the question, though; thus, I opt for my book on Kant. The reason is not only that it has been translated into French and has been welcomed internationally, but also that in some way it presents my most mature theoretical thinking regarding the relation between philosophy and theology, and more specifically, the intertwining of ontology, ethics, and theology. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? As it should be clear from what I have said so far, the most original aspects can be considered as (1) the phenomenological-hermeneutic formulation of the relation between philosophy and theology, and (2) the clarification of the relation between ontology and ethics in the constitution of the ultimate horizon of sense and in the opening to theological transcendence. Given the cultural debts I described above, the meaning of my originality should be understood more as the originality of the path I followed than as the invention of specific novelties. With respect to the first point, such originality implies a rethinking of both philosophy and theology. Philosophy must overcome the rationalistic vision that thinks that truth can only be gained from reason, and move to the phenomenological-hermeneutic vision, attentive to all the manifestations of truth that emerge from the human historical experience in its various arenas. Only in this way can philosophy take into account the content of the religious or specifically Christian experience and reflect critically on it in order to interpret its universally human elements of sense. As for theology, it must think of itself radically as “critical consciousness of faith”; it must not avoid meditating on the contents of faith and

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interpreting them in such a way that they speak to the human conscience in the various historical and linguistic contexts in which such conscience finds itself. To accomplish this, theology must revise the epistemological status of faith and overcome the idea that it is a simple adhesion to revelation as an act of authority completely alien to its object. To this task, I have advanced a rethinking of the three elements traditionally constitutive of the act of faith, namely, the gift, intelligence, and freedom. God’s gift or grace should be understood not as a mysterious reality granted to some but not to others, but rather, phenomenologically, as potentially offered to everyone’s sight. The intelligence operative within faith is not practiced by showing faith’s reasonableness from an external perspective. Rather, its main task is the phenomenological understanding of faith’s content and, at the same time, its interpretation within various concrete cultural contexts so as to grasp and communicate widely their meaning for human existence as such. The freedom present in the act of faith should be understood not as an arbitrary intervention forcing the intellect to assert as true that which does not appear as such; rather, freedom should be conceived as a free opening up to truth, an opening up that is essential if one wishes to “see” the truth. When understood in this manner, philosophy and theology can—and, to my mind, must—meet and have a dialogue for mutual enrichment as different forms of interpretation of the single human truth. This has actually occurred in the West despite the academic separation between the two disciplines. In my two books, Essere cristiani oggi. Il “nostro” cristianesimo nel moderno mondo secolare (Being Christians Today: “Our” Christianity in the Secular Modern World) and Il grande compito. Tradurre la fede nello spazio pubblico secolare (Our Great Task: Translating Faith in the Public Secular Space), I have tried to enact such a conception of the dialogue between philosophy and theology within the current context of increasing secularization. As for the relation between ontology and ethics, my originality lies essentially in the recognition that, as Levinas claims, the ethical standpoint constitutes the ultimate horizon of sense and thus the most apt background from which to think of theological transcendence; but at the same time, that ontology maintains a relevant place. Ontology is relevant not only as a field of reflected linguistic objectification (the move from the Saying to the Said, as Levinas claims) but also as a critical check for solutions offered to ethical problems (which today require great cultural confrontation and willingness to engage in dialogue) and for discerning the theological content of the various religions (which is so important today in view of a correct formulation of the interreligious dialogue).

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SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? I think that the timeliness of a philosophy of religion like the one I support emerges mainly due to the new public relevance that the religious question is assuming with increasing evidence. In the West, we observe the decline of theories of secularization. Religions have not disappeared, nor have they accepted being confined to the private sphere. We can then correctly speak, as Habermas does, of having entered into “a post-secular era.” This is not due to a return to the hegemony of religious institutions over society. Christianity has accepted the autonomy of various social spheres such as the state, politics, economy, and so on from religion. This does not mean that religion has given up public relevance. Meanwhile, the secularized society increasingly realizes that mere scientific and technological rationality cannot provide those horizons of meaning that are needed to preserve its foundational values. Such horizons of meaning have to be taken from other sources; religion and philosophy (the former for its life experience and the latter for its critical reflection) have a fundamental importance for this. At the global level, the event of globalization has put us in close contact with other forms of religion that have not experienced the critical attitude of Western philosophy and are tempted by fundamentalism, even in a violent form. A philosophy of religion that is not rationalistic but is strictly connected with theological-critical reflection can undoubtedly help interreligious dialogue. It can also facilitate religion’s contribution to the construction of a more just and peaceful global world. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? I think that academic philosophy has lost the impact it had fifty years ago on political praxis and on society in general. What affects public opinion and consequently political life today is the media industry and, structurally, the technologically based economy. We truly risk the disastrous hegemony of technology and the loss of a meaning of existence worthy of human dignity. Beyond ancient rivalries, today philosophy and theology are equally interested in opening ethical and anthropological horizons that surpass scientific-technological and economic rationality. The current global eco-

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nomic crisis, with the worldwide tensions it produces, demands further critical reflection capable of reaching the ideological roots of the current cultural situation and of identifying alternative paths and, especially, authentic sources of human potential and meaning. Not everything is lost as long as there survives a critical attitude toward the sociocultural situation and even toward religious fundamentalisms. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? I consider the anthropological theme central today. The idea of the human being developed by the West and foundational for the current economicsocial system, which is deeply individualistic and utilitarian, is not adequate to rethink and transform the distortions of the current situation with its real and potential conflicts, injustices, exclusions, and violence. It is necessary to rethink the human being through a dialogue with the various forms of wisdom of other world cultures, which are often expressed not in philosophical but rather in religious terms. We should also not forget about the critical spirit belonging to philosophy, which is an important achievement of the West despite all the historical limitations of which we are increasingly aware today. Future philosophy will have to return to being love of wisdom. It will have to look for such wisdom anywhere it has manifested and is manifesting itself. Ultimately, philosophy should help nonphilosophers to discover maieutically, à la Socrates, the hidden wisdom that each carries hidden within oneself, in one’s life experience, and in one’s cultural and religious tradition. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? The current time risks losing the sense for the essentially relational dimension of human beings. As such, human beings are open to transcend the empirical, object-based world that is studied by the sciences and that is technologically manipulable. Human beings are open to spiritual values: aesthetic, ethical-juridical, and religious. We must use this vision to contrast the tendency to consider human beings as mere objects for scientific analysis and technological manipulation, which today reach even our biological and

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psychological makeup. Philosophers should be on the forefront in evaluating this situation critically and recalling us to the absolute dignity of each human being, who has equal fundamental dignity and should be treated “always as an end and never merely as a means,” as Kant puts it. This absolute dignity can be justified, to my mind, only in relation to the absoluteness of God, creator of human beings in his image and likeness and guarantor of the absoluteness of the ethical imperative. Such a dignity should be recognized and defended by all philosophers at least as the outcome of an irreversible historical conquest attained by the ethical conscience of humanity, in a spirit of dialogue grounded on the shared humanity of and between believers and nonbelievers. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. Despite all, we should not lose our trust in the human trait that pulses in each of us and has been interpreted in various ways through the historical path of humanity. The great treasures of our different cultures are the legacy that such a path has left us. That the past tradition must be rethought and interpreted originally by every new generation is undoubtedly true; it is even an unavoidable task. Thinking that one can begin everything from zero would be complete foolishness. Intercultural and interreligious dialogue, which today is so important for the future of humanity, cannot avoid making reference to this if it wishes to establish its possibility and be effective.

Person, Evil, and Eschatology A Conversation with Giuseppe Riconda (Turin, 1931)

Silvia Benso: Please provide us with a brief self-presentation. How would you describe yourself in terms of your philosophical interests and the disciplinary areas in which you work? The issues that have concerned me regard the historiographic visions of modern philosophy and the themes of evil and the negative within the history of modern and contemporary philosophy. I have called my overall speculative position antinomical, eschatological, ontological personalism. The method I have employed consists in philosophizing through the history of philosophy. This means that I let my theoretical results emerge through a constant dialogue with classic modern and contemporary philosophers. SB: Let us start with the beginning of your thinking by asking a general question. Please describe for us the Italian philosophical landscape at the start of your philosophical path. What were the predominant themes, problems, and trends? And which figures were most present on the Italian philosophical scene? The environment in which I received my education was that of the immediate postwar period. Its predominant elements were Marxism in its various forms, especially Gramsci’s version, neopositivism, problematicism, existentialism, the so-called Christian spiritualism, and the renewed proposal of classic metaphysics. For problematicism, the dominating figures were Antonio Banfi and Nicola Abbagnano. Banfi’s thought had some Marxist tones. Abbagnano’s problematicism had existentialist nuances but soon faded into a form of

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neo-Enlightenment that was open to issues concerning the methodology of the sciences; this approach found supporters in Ludovico Geymonat and Giulio Preti, who harbored Marxist sympathies. The Marxist, nonGramscian philosopher Galvano Della Volpe was also somewhat relevant. Existentialism was represented, on the religious side, by Luigi Pareyson, who aimed at dissolving it into a form of personalism while at the same time advancing an alternative to Croce’s aesthetic theory; and on the secular side, by Enzo Paci, who soon arrived at a relationalism inspired by Whitehead. Paci also developed Husserl’s phenomenology with originality through openings to Lukács’ Marxism. Christian spiritualism was represented by Michele Federico Sciacca, Armando Carlini, who bent Gentile’s actualism in the spiritualist direction, and Augusto Guzzo, who in truth never accepted such a denomination and presented his philosophy as a sort of Platonic and Augustinian idealism updated through a constant conversation with the classics of modern philosophy (mainly Bruno, Spinoza, Kant, and Hegel) and with major representatives of contemporary philosophy. Classic metaphysics, of a Platonic-Aristotelian nature and retrieved on the basis of idealist and problematicist positions within the history of modern philosophy, was proposed anew by Gustavo Bontadini and Marino Gentile. Benedetto Croce’s and Giovanni Gentile’s philosophies continued to be present in the background, but interest in them was limited. When they did not merge into spiritualism, Croce’s and Gentile’s students ended up replacing their teachers with Gramsci. Some of them also developed original positions, such as Ugo Spirito with his problematicism (he called it “situational problematicism” because, unlike Banfi’s and Abbagnano’s transcendental problematicism, it problematized itself with an opening to a possible self-transcendence that nevertheless could not be indicated) and Guido Calogero with his philosophy of dialogue, which had political results in the liberal-socialism of the Partito d’azione (Action Party), an Italian political party founded in 1942 with the goal of fighting Mussolini’s Fascism. SB: What were the major foreign influences in terms of both thinkers and trends? First, there were the American thinkers Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey. There was interest in Peirce because of his logics and his proposal of a philosophy particularly close to science; Dewey was very much read for the very same reasons, but also for his political and pedagogical positions. From the United States, people also welcomed the focus on the methodol-

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ogy of the sciences, especially the social sciences. Analytic philosophy was less studied. Then there were phenomenology in its Husserlian more than Scheler’s version; existentialism in its German (Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers), French (Gabriel Marcel), and Russian (Nikolai Berdyaev) variations; Jean Paul Sartre between existentialism, phenomenology, and Marxism; and Maurice Merleau-Ponty between phenomenology and Marxism. Wilhelm Dilthey also had some relevance, especially for those, of whom there were many, who had interests in the methodology of the historical sciences and generally in historicism. SB: Please tell us about your philosophical formation. What inspired you to take up philosophy? What “school of thought” did you identify with, if any? Who were the figures and what were the themes that inspired this school? And what was the relation between this “school” and the rest of the philosophical Italian and foreign environment? I was driven to philosophy by the need to clarify and justify my ethicalpolitical and religious choices. My formation occurred in Turin at the school of Augusto Guzzo and his student, Luigi Pareyson. Guzzo taught me the tight unity between philosophy and the history of philosophy. He used to say that on the one hand, it is not possible to do history of philosophy without being involved in a dialogue that yields to one’s own personal position (he called this “the poietic moment” of philosophy); on the other, it is not possible to philosophize without philosophizing-with (confilosofare), without one’s self-opening to the history of philosophy. He used to say that in the very act through which one enunciates a philosophical position, concurrent hypotheses besiege our mind with their demand for examination; in the end, the hypothesis that one wishes to advance can only be unfolded within such a historical context. As he concluded, a history of philosophy with no theoretical interest is pure doxography, whereas a philosophizing that does not open up to history is purely mental babbling. Pareyson taught me the revelatory and expressive character of philosophical thinking, that is, revelatory of truth and expressive of the person (which means the ineradicable historicity of philosophy and its opening to the inexhaustible truth in its metahistoricity). He also taught me the unity and multiplicity of philosophy (which means unity of truth and multiplicity of its interpretation), and, in a single statement, “the inexhaustible infinity of the truth and the freedom of those who, driven by it, begin to search for it.”

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From Guzzo, I also learned much in terms of religious themes, including the critique of metaphysical rationalism and the reflection on the ambiguity of the human situation, which can be overcome only through a daring wager (what Guzzo considered as the Pascalian moment in his own philosophy). From Pareyson, I drew the conviction of the necessity to confront what is generally called the “problem of evil.” Within the Turin philosophical environment were two other philosophical personalities from whom I learned a lot: Carlo Mazzantini, who offered a brilliant interpretation of the fundamental claims of Thomism, and his student Augusto Del Noce, who advanced an original interpretation of modern philosophy and engaged in a broad meditation on “historical timeliness” by confronting Marxist themes and what was then called “opulent society.” Guzzo was the “dean” of Italian philosophy and maintained contacts with all Italian philosophers, whom he invited to speak with non-Italian philosophers at his Biblioteca Filosofica. Furthermore, he committed his students to the study of non-Italian philosophies: Pareyson to the study of existentialism, Francesco Barone to neo-positivism, Vittorio Mathieu to Bergson, Nynfa Bosco to Peirce, and Valerio Verra to Dewey. I myself was solicited to study James. As for Pareyson, the European and extra-European perspective of his books is evident. He also had a profound knowledge of German classical philosophy, which he cultivated during his entire life and toward which he also directed his students’ research projects. I owe my introduction to such a world to him. SB: Which philosophers and what philosophical works have been fundamental in the elaboration of your philosophical position? Please mention no more than three. Which aspects in them have interested you the most? First of all is Jean Wahl’s 1932 book, Vers le concret. In it, Wahl studied Marcel’s, James’, and Whitehead’s philosophies and highlighted the unity of their inspirations and speculative intentionalities beyond their differences. I read this book as soon as I graduated. Out of it, I developed my research program, which consisted in showing the possible confluence of nonreductionistic empiricism and the philosophy of existence. My studies on James and Whitehead find their motivation here. Second is Augusto Del Noce’s 1946 volume, Il problema dell’ateismo (The Problem of Atheism). In it, I found the perspective on atheism as a problem and not as the destiny of the West, and the thought of the bipolarity of modern philosophy. That is, there is a line geared toward immanence and atheism (from Descartes to Nietzsche) and a line parallel

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to it, reactive, and capable of reaffirming transcendence while clarifying in an increasingly deep manner the meaning and conditions of such a reaffirmation: the cypher of contemporary human beings is Pascal’s wager much more than Nietzsche’s “God is dead.” Del Noce called the second line (from Descartes to Pascal, Malebranche, Vico, and Rosmini) “ontologism.” Its constant theme is, according to Del Noce, the idea of human participation in being within a horizon of mystery. My question became whether, besides the merging of nonreductionistic empiricism and philosophy of existence, a convergence was also possible with ontologism. Third is Luigi Pareyson’s 1971 work, Verità e interpretazione (Truth and Interpretation). It contains not only a complete theory of interpretation but also the lines of an ontological personalism or ontology of the inexhaustible. At its center is the idea of the person as a problematic relation with being and with truth in its inexhaustibility, so that truth can be present in every historical manifestation without exhausting itself in it. The relation is problematic because it is filtered through freedom and therefore always subject to forgetfulness, betrayal, acceptance, or refusal. The entire book is traversed by a sharp polemic against relativism and the focus on praxis; instead, it celebrates the speculative character of philosophy against its reduction to ideology or methodology; it also contains suggestions for the bipolar consideration of the modern theorized by Del Noce. SB: Please describe for us the central points of your philosophy as it has developed over the years. My research activities have unfolded basically in two areas. The first concerns philosophical historiography, the second my personalist position. While writing my dissertation on Ugo Spirito, I realized that most contemporary philosophy assumed a historiographical approach that was accepted nonproblematically. According to it, the philosophical process of modernity appears to be geared toward a radical immanentism. Even Spirito, who had presented his philosophy as radical problematicism, did not problematize such an assumption. Problematizing it brought me to accept the bipolar version of modernity advanced by Del Noce and, to a certain extent, also by Pareyson. I analyzed the line alternative to immanentism, and defined it as the line of traditional thought. I thus elaborated the concept of traditional or religious thought. This thought intentionally posits itself as philosophizing that moves within the horizon of Christian faith and assumes Revelation as the ground for comprehending the human being; but it also aims at explicating the rationality that is implicit in faith, though without exhausting it. Because of these features, it receives the external “challenges” that are made to

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Revelation’s claims without avoiding a continuous confrontation with them, and with the persuasion that the truth owns us much more than we own the truth; truth needs to be continuously reaffirmed, and it cannot be granted except through constantly seizing it. The matter is thus a Tradition that has constituted itself in the wake of Revelation. The principles on whose grounds Tradition is defined are metahistorical, transmitted from generation to generation. Yet they are such that they can be attained only on the basis of history, and with respect to history, they reveal their own infinite inexhaustibility. The issue is how solutions to the new problems presented by history may emerge from such principles. Such an emergence is not automatic. It is the outcome of a thinking that is committed to their constant clarification and is exposed to confusion and betrayal. In this way, Tradition is tested and must secure its own confirmation. Traditional thinkers are “adventurers” of Tradition; in it, they do not see something wherein they can rest from life’s fatigues but rather a bequest that is to be made to bear fruits and that coincides with life and its fatigue. As for the content of this conception of tradition, I thought that, keeping in mind its retrievals and developments within modernity, such content could be found in an anthropological conception that defines human beings in terms of their relation with being within a horizon of mystery and a situation of sinfulness. The reference to sin imports into my philosophy the idea of a profound interconnection of theology and philosophy. I have tried to justify such an idea on the ground that we are necessarily forced to choose whether our situation in a world where there is evil is natural or the consequence of natura lapsa (corrupted nature); such a choice takes on the features of a Pascal-like wager. The two possibilities of choice are not equipollent. By presupposing the transparency of being and its history, which is however contradicted by experience, the former neglects the features of choice and wager and leans toward a certain trivialization of evil. On the contrary, the latter yields to clear awareness of our moving within an indefinite deepening of the problem; it results in the effort to motivate as responsible and enlightened a choice as possible, and produces a dialogical opening to the Other in the explicit recognition of the genuineness of a humanly irredeemable evil. I have attempted a clarification of the problem through a history of the main treatments of the problem of evil within modernity. I have considered especially Kant, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Horkheimer, and the Russian thinkers (particularly Dostoevsky, Solovyov, and Berdyaev), and I have directed ample studies, which resulted in a collected volume, on the theme of original sin within the history of modern philosophy.

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As for the content of the historiographical alternative to the immanentistic one, I have tried to show how pessimism (for example, Schopenhauer’s), which I have claimed as a genuine philosophical position, is irreducible to immanentism because it implies an irremovable reference to transcendence. I have found another meeting point between modern thought and the tradition in Schelling, in his move from the idealist position that understands the Absolute as subjectivity and life to the idea of the Absolute as freedom, which implies a problematization of Hegel’s metaphysical rationalism. I think that on the one hand, Schelling must be read within the framework of the crisis of Hegel’s dialectics, next to Feuerbach and Kierkegaard as a third, more valid alternative and as a reply to Hegel. This alternative nevertheless is not subject to Hegel because, in its opposition, it nevertheless goes beyond all fideistic or irrationalist temptations. On the other hand, Schelling must also be read in connection with his developments in nineteenth-century Russian thought and in religious existentialism (Marcel and Berdyaev), where the encounter with the tradition is explicitly addressed. To my mind, the affirmation of traditional thought in terms of the anthropological aspect I have mentioned must take the form of personalism. I have qualified such personalism as “ontological” to distinguish it from those forms of personalism that, while reclaiming the person against a totality understood naturalistically or idealistically, exhaust the person in its interiority. Great philosophers of existence such as Marcel, Berdyaev, and Pareyson have been my guide here. What I have said above regarding Pareyson’s personalism holds true for all of them. I argued for a confluence between the line that Del Noce calls “ontologism” and existentialism through a strengthening of the former’s existential motifs and of the latter’s ontological aspects. Such a confluence would be able to avoid the dangers of pantheism and atheism that ontologism and existentialism respectively incur when they are taken with no reciprocal correctives. At times, ontologism and existentialism have been opposed on the ground that the former presents itself as a philosophy of God’s presence whereas the latter speaks of a hidden God. Such contraposition can be overcome when one considers that ontologism cannot emphasize the presence of the divine to the point of neglecting its mystery and that existentialism cannot push the motif of God’s hiddenness to the point of negating the ontological relation. Whether this position allows me to avoid eclecticism is a question that here I must leave open. I wish to emphasize some aspects of my position that regard the person as a living perspective on being and the person’s life as an indefinite deepening of such a perspective—a deepening that goes through freedom.

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First of all, this position implies a theory of interpretation. I do not think that one can coherently affirm personalism without a theory of interpretation. No matter how varied the theories of interpretation, there is certainly the possibility of a theory of interpretation in a personalist sense. Such a personalist development is even required by the very notion of interpretation as long as one maintains it in its originality and does not mistake it with other aspects of spiritual life, whether alleged or real. In interpretation, the schema subject-object is transposed into the schema person-truth; the person cannot be reduced to pure subjectivity because its fundamental trait is intentionality, openness to being; the truth cannot be reduced to pure objectivity because it is the source and origin that offers itself to the infinite, interpretative processes it generates with no self-exhaustion in any or all of them. As I mentioned, the relation to being goes through freedom and the possibilities of oblivion and betrayal that freedom carries with itself. Persons fortify themselves when they distinguish between good and evil and are capable of limiting evil. When it is lived through in its extension and depth, the experience of evil for which persons are responsible jointly with others seems to challenge a person’s essential ability to pursue the truth. We live authentic personal lives and authentic personal relations in which truth transpires only fragmentarily. One can think, as an example, of the difficulty of recognizing a face in the Other. Perhaps the essence of saintliness lies in the ability to see a face in any human being. The recognition of such a situation of fragmentation, which for traditional thought is the mark of our situation as fallen nature, does not eliminate our commitment to the realization of our openness to being and truth. Such a commitment, however, assumes an eschatological character because it presents itself supported by a hope that ultimately can only be eschatological. We have no other way of witnessing our openness to truth except by committing to it, and witnessing is the only reply to betrayal. No matter how poor, limited, fragmentary, and episodic human attainments of the good are, nevertheless they are incredibly precious for those who practice such a commitment, because they appear as anticipations of the fullness of life that will be given—anticipations that keep alive the hope for it. Authentic personalism cannot be simply ontological (defining human beings in terms of an essential openness to truth) and antinomical (experience of freedom as faculty of good and evil). To affirm itself, personalism must become eschatological (openness and reference to an otherworldly life). The experience of evil opens up to invocation and hope. The philosophical hermeneutics of religious experience can only be the hermeneutics of the eschaton.

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SB: In your opinion, what is your most representative work, the one of which you are proudest? The book that I think gathers all motifs of my thought is the 2001 volume Tradizione e avventura (Tradition and Adventure), which I consider my most successful work. SB: What do you consider the most original or significant aspects of your philosophy? The contribution I gave to the clarification of philosophical motifs that occur within modernity but are irreducible to immanentism, and the emphasis I placed on the antinomical and eschatological character of ontological personalism. Recently, I have also attempted a personalistic reading of family life. SB: What do you consider to be the timeliness of your philosophical position? Is there a connection between your philosophy and specific historical events? After the collapse of old certainties such as progress and revolution that were still present in the first half of the last century, our current society may be called “technocratic society” not only because of the evident development of technology on a grand scale and in every sector of life, but because of the domination of the instrumental technological thinking that considers the Other either as an occasion for its own self-realization or as an obstacle to it. A critique of such a society can only be carried out from a religious standpoint. The religious motif that seems timely to me is the definition of human beings as being in God’s image. This is another way of asserting human beings’ participation in the divine, their relation with being and truth. The opposite of an instrumental relation is a relation of respect. The minimum that an ethics requires is respect for oneself and others as ends in themselves. Two great modern ethics, Kant’s and Rosmini’s, are centered on the idea of respect. How can one assert such an idea if not by connecting it to the notion that in human beings, there is something that cannot be made use of, a dimension that is a reflection of the divine in them, and that therefore deserves infinite respect? I think that this principle is present in all religions: in Christianity certainly, but also in some way in all religions. On its ground, religions can purify themselves of all temptations toward fundamentalism but also find a meeting point toward a new ecumenism.

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A new totalitarianism, that is, technocratic totalitarianism, threatens us. I do not see how resistance to it can occur outside this reference to a conception of human beings as God’s image, which makes humans worthy of infinite respect against all tendencies to manipulate their being, against all tendencies that dissolve their dignity. SB: What, if anything, do you think has changed today in the relation between philosophy and life—academic but also political and collective life? As for academic life, I do not think much has changed in its virtuous aspects (such as freedom of expression) or in its vicious ones (such as academism and the tendency to escape from current problems). As for the effectiveness of philosophy on public and collective life, I think that today philosophy must reclaim its autonomy against the increasingly invasive rule of “only one thought,” which aims at creating a climate of homologation in accordance with technocratic totalitarianism. SB: Which themes do you think are fundamental today for a philosophy of the future? What contributions can philosophy bring to those who are nonphilosophers? Escaping the technocratic society is possible only through a religious awakening that reasserts human beings’ ethical-religious dimension. To my mind, reasserting ethics without religion is not sufficient because autonomous morality (in the sense of an admission of the disjunction) has not been able to resist (and I do not see how it could resist) the criticisms that could and actually have been launched against it by sociologism and nihilism. The latter two in fact coexist with the technocratic society without being able to contest it. As many have argued, technocratic society is destined to catastrophe (ecological crisis, increasingly widespread access to atomic weapons, to which the dangers of biotechnology with respect to human beings should be added, and so on). The contemporary world can be saved from such a catastrophe only by the religious awakening I mentioned, not by sociological or economic techniques or by some form of thought postulating human self-sufficiency. Such an awakening, which appears as a radical spiritual revolution, a transformation of the hearts, and a change of conscience, is in no way guaranteed. The task of philosophy is conceptually to develop awareness, to show that without the suggested correction, the process of domination by pure

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force can only continue up to catastrophe; and to remove at the intellectual level, which is the only one that properly belongs to philosophy, the causes obstructing the awakening (among such causes are the many commonplaces through which technocratic society seeks self-justification, such as the arbitrary connection of permissiveness and democracy, the necessity of the historical process, and the identity of modernity and progress). Philosophy must also be aware, though, that the end of human beings is neither contradictory nor impossible. SB: What do you think is the philosopher’s role in relation to the current time? More generally speaking, in your opinion what is, or should be, the relation between philosophy and historical time? The role of philosophers is the same today as it has always been, I think; namely, to aim at a nonconformist education and to habituate people to critical thought. SB: Please offer some conclusive thoughts for those living in the twenty-first century, both philosophers and nonphilosophers. The message that the elders of my generation left us was to improve our world as much as we could. This message still holds true, but we have lost all the naiveté that accompanied it. Today, the message, already indicated by Camus as “perhaps the greatest” message, that we can leave our children is first of all to prevent the world’s destruction—to let life germinate in the shadow of mystery; not to consign to meaninglessness the ethical demands and the passions for justice, solidarity, and love that, despite all, still continue to surface as testimony that evil has not yet won; and to try progressively to expand the sense of concrete human kinship by considering evil as a reason not for defeat but for renewed commitment, with the awareness that this is the only way to keep hope alive and to prevent the world from closing on itself in the silence of despair and death.

Select Bibliography

This bibliography lists the contributors’ works published in their original language, mostly Italian. Only books are included, so the list is not exhaustive. English translations have been reported when available.

AGAZZI, EVANDRO Introduzione ai problemi dell’assiomatica. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1961. La logica simbolica. Brescia: La Scuola, 1964 Temi e problemi di filosofia della fisica. Milan: Manfredi, 1969. A ciencia e os valores. São Paulo: Ediçoes Loyola, 1977. Le geometrie non euclidee e i fondamenti della geometria (with D. Palladino). Milan: Mondadori, 1978. Science et foi. Perspectives nouvelles sur un vieux problème/Scienza e fede. Nuove prospettive su un vecchio problema. Milan: Massimo, 1983. Il tempo nella scienza e nella filosofia. Genoa: ECIG, 1985. Weisheit im Technischen. Luzern: Verlag Hans Erni-Stiftung, 1986. Linguaggio comune e linguaggio scientifico (with M. Buzzoni and G. Servalli). Milan: Angeli, 1987. Philosophie, Science, Métaphysique. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1987. Filosofia, Scienza e Verità (with F. Minazzi and L. Geymonat). Milan: Rusconi, 1989. Il bene, il male e la scienza. Milan: Rusconi, 1992. Cultura scientifica e interdisciplinarità. Brescia: La Scuola, 1994. Filosofia della natura. Scienza e cosmologia. Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1995. La techno-science et l’identité de l’homme contemporain. Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1997. Le geometrie non euclidee e i fondamenti della geometria dal punto di vista elementare (with Dario Palladino). Brescia: La Scuola, 1988. Paidéia, verità, educazione. Brescia: La Scuola, 1999. Filosofía de la naturaleza. Ciencia y cosmología. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000. Etica y manipulación genética. Córdoba (Argentina): Secretaría de ciencia y tecnología, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, 2000.

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Complexity and Emergence (with Luisa Montecucco). New Jersey/London/Singapore/ Hong Kong: World Scientific Publisher, 2002. A Short History of the International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP). Ankara: Philosophical Society of Turkey, 2003. Le rivoluzioni scientifiche e il mondo moderno. Milan: Fondazione Achille e Giulia Boroli, 2008. La ciencia y el alma de Occidente. Madrid: Tecnos, 2011. Scientific Objectivity and Its Contexts. Heidelberg: Springer, 2014.

BERTI, ENRICO La filosofia del primo Aristotele. Padua: CEDAM, 1962. Le vie della ragione. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987. Contraddizione e dialettica negli antichi e nei moderni. Palermo: L’Epos, 1987. Le ragioni di Aristotele. Rome-Bari: Laterza,1989. Aristotele nel Novecento. Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1992. La politica e l’amicizia (with Salvatore Veca). Milan: Edizioni Lavoro, 1998. Filosofia pratica. Naples: Guida, 2004. Aristotele: dalla dialettica alla filosofia prima. Milan: Bompiani, 2004. Incontri con la filosofia contemporanea. Pistoia: Petite Plaisance, 2006. Storia della filosofia dall’antichità ad oggi (with Franco Volpi). Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2007. Introduzione alla metafisica. Turin: UTET, 2007. In principio era la meraviglia. Le grandi questioni della filosofia antica. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2007. Dialectique, physique et métaphysique. Études sur Aristote. Louvain-la-Neuve: Éditions Peeters, 2008. Struttura e significato della Metafisica di Aristotele. Rome: EDUSC, 2008. A partire dai filosofi antichi (with Luca Grecchi). Padua: Il Prato, 2009. Nuovi studi aristotelici, IV 1–2: L’influenza di Aristotele. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2009– 2010. Sumphilosophein. La vita nell’Accademia di Platone. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010. Ser y tempo en Aristóteles. Buenos Aires: Editorial Biblos, 2011. Invito alla filosofia. Brescia: La Scuola, 2011. Aristotele. Brescia: La Scuola, 2013. La ricerca della verità in filosofia. Rome: Studium, 2014. Il bene di chi? Bene pubblico e bene privato nella storia. Genoa: Marietti, 2014. È bene definire il bene? Naples: Orthotes Editrice, 2015.

BODEI, REMO Sistema ed epoca in Hegel. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1975.

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285

Hegel e Weber. Egemonia e legittimazione (with Franco Cassano). Bari: De Donato, 1977. Multiversum. Tempo e storia in Ernst Bloch. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1979. Scomposizioni. Forme dell’individuo moderno. Turin: Einaudi, 1987. Hölderlin: la filosofia y lo trágico. Madrid: Visor, 1990. Ordo amoris. Conflitti terreni e felicità celeste. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1991. Geometria delle passioni. Paura, speranza e felicità: filosofia e uso politico. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1991. Le prix de la liberté. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1995. Le forme del bello. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1995. La filosofia nel Novecento. Rome: Donzelli, 1997. Se la storia ha un senso. Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 1997. La politica e la felicità (with Luigi Franco Pizzolato). Rome: Edizioni Lavoro, 1997. Il noi diviso. Ethos e idee dell’Italia repubblicana. Turin: Einaudi, 1998. Eng. trans. by Jeremy Parzen and Aaron Thomas. We, the Divided: Politics and Culture in Post-War Italy, 1943–2006. New York: Agincourt Press, 2006. Le logiche del delirio. Ragione, affetti, follia. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2000. Eng. trans. by Giacomo Donis. The Logics of Delusion. Aurora, CO: Davies Group Publishers, 2007. I senza Dio. Figure e momenti dell’ateismo. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2001. Il dottor Freud e i nervi dell’anima. Filosofia e società a un secolo dalla nascita della psicoanalisi. Rome: Donzelli, 2001. Destini personali. L’età della colonizzazione delle coscienze. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2002. Una scintilla di fuoco. Invito alla filosofia. Bologna: Zanichelli, 2005. Piramidi di tempo. Storie e teoria del déjà vu. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2006. Paesaggi sublimi. Gli uomini davanti alla natura selvaggia. Milan: Bompiani, 2008. Il sapere della follia. Modena: Fondazione Collegio San Carlo per Festival Filosofia, 2008. La vita delle cose. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2009. Eng. trans. by Murtha Baca. The Life of Things, the Love of Things. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. Ira. La passione furente. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011. Beati i miti, perché avranno in eredità la terra (with Sergio Givone). Turin: Lindau, 2013. Immaginare altre vite. Realtà, progetti, desideri. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2013. Sconfinamenti della verità. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2015. Generazioni. Età della vita, età delle cose. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2015.

CAVARERO, ADRIANA Dialettica e politica in Platone. Padua: CEDAM, 1974. Platone: il filosofo e il problema politico. La Lettera VII e l’epistolario. Turin: SEI, 1976. La teoria politica di John Locke. Padua: Ed. Universitarie, 1984. L’interpretazione hegeliana di Parmenide. Trento: Quaderni di Verifiche, 1984.

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Nonostante Platone. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1990. Eng. trans. by Serena Anderlini D’Onofrio and Áine O’Healy. In Spite of Plato: Feminist Rewriting of Ancient Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 1995. Corpo in figure. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1995. Eng. trans. by Robert de Lucca. Stately Bodies: Literature, Philosophy, and the Question of Gender. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Platone. Lettera VII, Repubblica: libro VI. Turin: SEI, 1995. Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1997. Eng. trans. by Paul Kottman. Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood. London: Routledge, 2000. A più voci. Filosofia dell’espressione vocale. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2003. Eng. trans. by Paul Kottman. For More than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. Orrorismo ovvero della violenza sull’inerme. Feltrinelli, Milano 2007. Eng. trans. by William McCuaig. Horrorism: Naming Contemporary Violence. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Non uccidere (with Angelo Scola). Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011. Eng. trans. by Margaret Adams Groesbeck and Adam Sitze. Thou Shalt Not Kill: A Political and Theological Dialogue. New York: Fordham University Press, 2015. Inclinazioni. Critica della rettitudine. Milan: Cortina, 2013.

COSTA, MARIO Arte come soprastruttura. Naples: CIDED, 1972. Teoria e Sociologia dell’arte. Naples: Guida Editori, 1974. Sulle funzioni della critica d’arte e una messa a punto a proposito di Marcel Duchamp. Naples: Ricciardi Editore, 1976. Il ‘lettrismo’ di Isidore Isou. Creatività e Soggetto nell’avanguardia artistica parigina posteriore al 1945. Rome: Carucci Editore, 1980. Le immagini, la folla e il resto. Il dominio dell’immagine nella società contemporanea. Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1982. Il sublime tecnologico. Salerno: Edisud, 1990. L’estetica dei media. Tecnologie e produzione artistica. Lecce: Capone Editore, 1990. Il ‘lettrismo.’ Storia e Senso di un’avanguardia. Naples: Morra, 1991. La televisione e le passioni. Naples: Guida, 1992. Lo ‘schematismo.’ Avanguardia e psicologia. Naples: Morra, 1994. Lo ‘schématisme parisien.’ Tra post-informale ed estetica della comunicazione. Piazzola sul Brenta: Fondazione G. E. Ghirardi, 1995. Sentimento del sublime e strategie del simbolico. Salerno: Edisud, 1996. Della fotografia senza soggetto. Per una teoria dell’oggetto tecnologico. Genoa/Milan: Costa & Nolan, 1997. Il sublime tecnologico. Piccolo trattato di estetica della tecnologia. Rome: Castelvecchi, 1998.

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287

Tecnologie e costruzione del testo. Naples: L’Orientale, 1998. L’estetica dei media. Avanguardie e tecnologia. Rome: Castelvecchi, 1999. L’estetica della comunicazione. Come il medium ha polverizzato il messaggio. Sull’uso estetico della simultaneità a distanza. Rome: Castelvecchi, 1999. Dall’estetica dell’ornamento alla computerart. Naples: Tempo Lungo, 2000. Internet e globalizzazione estetica. Naples: Tempo Lungo, 2002. New Technologies. Artmedia–Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Sannio, 23–31 Ottobre, 2003. Dimenticare l’arte. Nuovi orientamenti nella teoria e nella sperimentazione estetica. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2005. Phenomenology of New Tech Arts. Salerno: University of Salerno, 2005. L’oggetto estetico e la critica. Salerno: Edisud, 2007. La disumanizzazione tecnologica. Il destino dell’arte nell’epoca delle nuove tecnologie. Milan: Costa & Nolan, 2007. Della fotografia senza soggetto. Per una teoria dell’oggetto estetico tecnologico. Milan: Costa & Nolan, 2008. Arte contemporanea ed estetica del flusso. Vercelli: Mercurio Edizioni, 2010. Ontologia dei media. Milan: Postmedia Books, 2012. Dopo la tecnica. Dal chopper alle similcose. Naples: Liguori, 2015.

FERRETTI, GIOVANNI Max Scheler. I. Fenomenologia e antropologia personalistica. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1972. Max Scheler. II. Filosofia della religione. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1972. Introduzione alla teologia contemporanea. Profilo storico e antologia (with Franco Ardusso, Annamaria Pastore Perone, Ugo Perone). Turin: SEI, 1972. Storia del pensiero filosofico (with Ugo Perone, Annamaria Pastore Perone, Claudio Ciancio). 3 vols. Turin: SEI, 1975. Filosofia e pedagogia. Profilo storico e analisi delle istituzioni educative (with B. Bellerate, Claudio Ciancio, Annamaria Perone, Ugo Perone). 3 vols. Turin: SEI, 1978. In lotta con l’angelo. La filosofia degli ultimi due secoli di fronte al Cristianesimo (with Ugo Perone, Annamaria Pastore Perone, Claudio Ciancio, Maurizio Pagano). Turin: SEI, 1989. Filosofia: i testi, la storia (with Claudio Ciancio, Ugo Perone, Annamaria Pastore). Turin: SEI, 1991. La filosofia di Levinas. Alterità e trascendenza. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1996. Soggettività e intersoggettività. Le Meditazioni cartesiane di Husserl. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1997. Ontologia e teologia in Kant. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1997. Identità cristiana e filosofia. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 2002. Filosofia e teologia cristiana. Saggi di epistemologia ermeneutica. Naples: ESI, 2002. Il bene al di là dell’essere. Temi e problemi levinassiani. Naples: ESI, 2003.

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Il «grande compito». Tradurre la fede nello spazio pubblico secolare. Assisi: Cittadella, 2013. La trascendenza dell’amore. Milan: Mimesis, 2014.

GIORELLO, GIULIO Saggi di storia della matematica. Bergamo: FER, 1974. Il pensiero matematico e l’infinito. Milan: Unicopli, 1982. Lo spettro e il libertino. Milan: Mondadori, 1985. Le ragioni della scienza (with Ludovico Geymonat). Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1986. La filosofia della Scienza nel XX secolo (with Donald Gillies). Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1998. Filosofia della scienza. Milan: Jaca Book, 1992. Europa universitas (with Tullio Regge and Salvatore Veca). Milan: Feltrinelli, 1993. Introduzione alla filosofia della scienza. Milan: Bompiani, 1994. Quale Dio per la sinistra? Note su democrazia e violenza (with Pietro Adamo). Milan: Unicopli, 1994. Lo specchio del reame. Riflessioni su potere e comunicazione (with Roberto Esposito and Carlo Sini). Ravenna: Angelo Longo Editore, 1997. La filosofia della scienza nel XX secolo (with Donald Gillies). Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2002. Prometeo, Ulisse, Gilgamesh. Figure del mito. Milan: Raffaello Cortina, 2004. Di nessuna Chiesa. La libertà del laico. Milan: Raffaello Cortina, 2005. Introduzione alla filosofia della scienza. Milan: Bompiani, 2006. Dove fede e ragione si incontrano? Cinisello Balsamo: San Paolo Edizioni, 2006. La libertà della vita (with Umberto Veronesi). Milan: Raffaello Cortina, 2006. La scienza fra le nuvole, da Pippo Newton a Mr. Fantastic (with Luigi Gaspa). Milan: Raffaello Cortina, 2007. Libertà. Un manifesto per credenti e non credenti (with Dario Antiseri). Milan: Bompiani, 2008. Lo scimmione intelligente. Dio, natura, libertà (with Edoardo Boncinelli). Milan: Rizzoli, 2009. Lussuria. La passione della conoscenza. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2010. Senza Dio. Del buon uso dell’ateismo. Milan: Longanesi, 2010. Il tradimento. In politica, in amore e non solo. Milan: Longanesi, 2012. Lutero e Calvino: coscienza e istituzione. Milan: Book Time, 2012. La lezione di Martini. Quello che da ateo ho imparato da un cardinale. Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 2013. I grandi maestri del pensiero laico (with Michelangelo Bovero and Piero Calamandrei). Turin: Claudiana, 2014. Scienza, religione e modernità (with Paolo Vineis). Turin: Giappichelli, 2014. Noi che abbiamo l’animo libero. Quando Amleto incontra Cleopatra (with Edoardo Boncinelli). Milan: Longanesi, 2014.

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La filosofia di Topolino (with Ilaria Cozzaglia). Milan: Guanda, 2014. Con intelligenza e amore. Ricerca e carità (with Carlo Maria Martini). Milan: Longanesi, 2015. Il fantasma e il desiderio. Milan: Mondadori, 2015. Libertà. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2015.

GIVONE, SERGIO La storia della filosofia secondo Kant. Milan: Mursia, 1972. Hybris e melancholia. Studi sulle poetiche del Novecento. Milan: Mursia, 1974. William Blake. Arte e religione. Milan: Mursia, 1978. Ermeneutica e romanticismo. Milan: Mursia, 1983. Dostoevskij e la filosofia. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1984. Storia dell’estetica. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1988. Disincanto del mondo e pensiero tragico. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1988. La questione romantica. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1992. Storia del nulla. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1995. Favola delle cose ultime. Turin: Einaudi, 1998. Eros/ethos. Turin: Einaudi, 2000. Nel nome di un dio barbaro. Turin: Einaudi, 2002. Prima lezione di estetica. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2003. Il bibliotecario di Leibniz. Filosofia e romanzo. Turin: Einaudi, 2005. Non c’è più tempo. Turin: Einaudi, 2008. Il bene di vivere. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2011. Metafisica della peste. Colpa e destino. Turin: Einaudi, 2012.

LECALDANO, EUGENIO Le analisi del linguaggio morale. “Buono” e “dovere” nella filosofia inglese dal 1903 al 1965. Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1970. Introduzione a Moore. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1972. L’Illuminismo inglese. Turin: Loescher, 1985. Hume e la nascita dell’etica contemporanea. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1991. Etica. Turin: UTET, 1995. Bioetica. Le scelte morali. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1999. Saggi di storia e teoria dell’etica. Gaeta: Bibliotheca, 2000. Dizionario di bioetica. Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2002. Un’etica senza Dio. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2006. Prima lezione di filosofia morale. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010. Simpatia. Milan: Raffaello Cortina, 2013. Senza Dio. Storie di atei e di ateismo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015.

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MARRAMAO, GIACOMO Marxismo e revisionismo. Bari: De Donato, 1971. Austromarxismo e socialismo di sinistra tra le due guerre. Milan: La Pietra, 1977. Il politico e le Trasformazioni. Bari: De Donato, 1979. Potere e secolarizzazione. Le categorie del tempo. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1983. L’ordine disincantato. Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1985. Minima temporalia. Tempo, spazio, esperienza. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1990. Kairos. Apologia del tempo debito. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1992. Eng. trans. by Philip Larrey and Silvia Cattaneo. Kairós: Towards an Ontology of “Due Time.” Aurora, CO: Davies Group Publishers, 2007. Cielo e terra. Genealogia della secolarizzazione. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1994. Dopo il Leviatano. Individuo e comunità nella filosofia politica. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2000. Frammento e sistema. Il conflitto-mondo da Sarajevo a Manhattan (with Angelo Bolaffi). Rome: Donzelli, 2001. Passaggio a Occidente. Filosofia e globalizzazione. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2003. Eng. trans. by Matteo Mandarini. The Passage West: Philosophy After the Age of the Nation State. New York: Verso, 2012. Globalizzazione e politica. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2005. L’Europa alla prova del consenso. Rome: Donzelli, 2006. La passione del presente. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2008. Contro il potere. Filosofia e scrittura. Milan: Bompiani, 2011.

MELCHIORRE, VIRGILIO Arte ed esistenza. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1956. Il metodo di Mounier e altri saggi. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1960. Il sapere storico. Brescia: La Scuola, 1963. La coscienza utopica. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1970. L’immaginazione simbolica, Bologna: Il Mulino, 1972. Metacritica dell’eros. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1977. Ideologia, utopia, religione. Milan: Rusconi, 1980. Essere e parola: Idee per una antropologia metafisica. Milan: Vita e Pensiero,1982. Corpo e persona. Genoa: Marietti, 1987. Saggi su Kierkegaard. Genoa: Marietti, 1998. Analogia e analisi trascendentale. Linee per una nuova lettura di Kant. Milan: Mursia, 1991. Figure del sapere. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1994. La via analogica. Metafisica e storia della metafisica. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1996. Creazione, creatività, ermeneutica. Brescia: Morcelliana, 1997. I segni della storia. Studio su Kant. Ghezzano La Fontina: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici, 1998.

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Al di là dell’ultimo. Filosofie della morte e filosofie della vita. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1998. Ethica. Genoa: Il Melangolo, 2000. Sulla speranza. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2002. Dialettica del senso. Percorsi di fenomenologia ontologica. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2002. L’ontologia e la questione del fondamento. Milan: EduCatt università cattolica, 2003. Forme di mondo. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2004. L’immaginario simbolico. Milan: ISU Università Cattolica, 2005. Qohelet, o la serenità del vivere. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2006. Essere persona. Natura e struttura. Milan: Fondazione Achille e Giulia Boroli, 2007. Breviario di metafisica. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2011. Il nome impossibile. Saggi di metafisica e filosofia della religione. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2011.

NATOLI, SALVATORE Soggetto e fondamento: studi su Aristotele e Cartesio. Padua: Antenore, 1979. Ermeneutica e genealogia: filosofia e metodo in Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1981. L’esperienza del dolore. Le forme del patire nella cultura occidentale. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1986. Giovanni Gentile filosofo europeo. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 1989. Vita buona vita felice: scritti di etica e politica. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1990. Teatro filosofico: gli scenari del sapere tra linguaggio e storia. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1991. L’incessante meraviglia: filosofia, espressione, verità. Milan: Lanfranchi, 1993. La felicità. Saggio di teoria degli affetti. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1994. I nuovi pagani. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1995. Dizionario dei vizi e delle virtù. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1996. La politica e il dolore (with Leonardo Verga). Rome: EL, 1996. Soggetto e fondamento: il sapere dell’origine e la scientificità della filosofia. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1996. Delle cose ultime e penultime: un dialogo (with Bruno Forte). Milan: Mondadori, 1997. Dialogo su Leopardi: natura, poesia, filosofia (with Antonio Prete). Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 1998. Progresso e catastrofe: dinamiche della modernità. Milan: Marinotti, 1999. Dio e il divino: confronto con il cristianesimo. Brescia: Morcelliana, 1999. La politica e la virtù (with Luigi Franco Pizzolato). Rome: Lavoro, 1999. La felicità di questa vita. Esperienza del mondo e stagioni dell’esistenza. Milan: Mondadori, 2001. L’attimo fuggente o della felicità. Rome: Edup, 2001. Stare al mondo: escursioni nel tempo presente. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2002. Il cristianesimo di un non credente. Magnano: Qiqajon, 2002. Libertà e destino nella tragedia greca. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2002.

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Parole della filosofia o dell’arte di meditare. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2004. La verità in gioco. Scritti su Foucault. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2005. Guida alla formazione del carattere. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2006. Sul male assoluto. Nichilismo e idoli nel Novecento. Brescia, Morcelliana, 2006 I dilemmi della speranza: un dialogo (with Nichi Vendola). Molfetta: La Meridiana, 2006. La salvezza senza fede. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2006. La mia filosofia: forme del mondo e saggezza del vivere. Pisa: Ets, 2007. L’attimo fuggente e la stabilità del bene. Rome: Edup, 2007. Stare al mondo. Escursioni nel tempo presente. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2008. Edipo e Giobbe: contraddizione e paradosso. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2009. Dialogo sui novissimi (with Francesco Brancato). Troina: Città Aperta, 2009. Il crollo del mondo. Apocalisse ed escatologia. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2009. L’edificazione di sé. Istruzioni sulla vita interiore. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010. Il buon uso del mondo. Agire nell’età del rischio. Milan: Mondadori, 2010. Soggetto e fondamento. Il sapere dell’origine e la scientificità della filosofia. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2010. Figure d’Occidente. Platone, Nietzsche e Heidegger (with Massimo Donà and Carlo Sini). Milan: AlboVersorio, 2011. Eros e Philia. Milan: AlboVersorio, 2011. Nietzsche e il teatro della filosofia. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2011. Le parole ultime. Dialogo sui problemi del «fine vita» (with Ivan Cavicchi and Piero Coda). Milan: Dedalo, 2011. I comandamenti. Non ti farai idolo né immagine (with Pierangelo Sequeri). Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011. Le verità del corpo. Milan: AlboVersorio, 2012. Sperare oggi (with Franco Mosconi). Trento: Il Margine, 2012. Perseveranza. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2014.

PARRINI, PAOLO Linguaggio e teoria. Due saggi di analisi filosofica. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1976. Una filosofia senza dogmi. Materiali per un bilancio dell’empirismo contemporaneo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1980. Empirismo logico e convenzionalismo. Saggio di storia della filosofia della scienza. Milan: Franco Angeli, 1983. Conoscenza e realtà. Saggio di filosofia positiva. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1995. Eng. trans. by Paolo Baracchi. Knowledge and Reality: An Essay in Positive Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2010. Sapere e interpretare. Per una filosofia e un’oggettività senza fondamenti. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2002. L’empirismo logico. Aspetti storici e prospettive teoriche. Rome: Carocci, 2002.

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Filosofia e scienza nell’Italia del Novecento. Figure, correnti, battaglie. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2004. Il valore della verità. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2011.

PERNIOLA, MARIO Il metaromanzo. Milan: Silva, 1966. Tiresia. Milan: Silva, 1968. L’alienazione artistica. Milan: Mursia, 1971. Bataille e il negativo. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1977. La società dei simulacri. Bologna: Cappelli, 1980. Eng. trans. by Massimo Verdicchio. Ritual Thinking: Sexuality, Death, World. New York: Humanity Books, 2001. Dopo Heidegger. Filosofia e organizzazione della cultura. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1982. Transiti. Come si va dallo stesso allo stesso. Bologna: Cappelli, 1985. Eng. trans. by Massimo Verdicchio. In Ritual Thinking: Sexuality, Death, World. New York: Humanity Books, 2001. Presa diretta. Estetica e politica. Venice: Cluva, 1986. Enigmi. Il momento egizio nella società e nell’arte. Genoa: Costa & Nolan, 1990. Eng. trans. by Christopher Woodall. Enigmas: The Egyptian Moment in Art and Society. London: Verso, 1995. Del sentire. Turin: Einaudi, 1991. Più che sacro, più che profano. Milan: Mimesis, 1992. Il sex appeal dell’inorganico. Turin: Einaudi 1994. Eng. trans. by Massimo Verdicchio. The Sex Appeal of the Inorganic: Philosophies of Desire in the Modern World. London: Bloomsbury, 2004. L’estetica del Novecento. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997. I situazionisti. Rome: Castelvecchi, 1998. Disgusti. Nuove tendenze estetiche. Milan: Costa & Nolan, 1999. L’arte e la sua ombra. Turin: Einaudi, 2000. Eng. trans. by Massimo Verdicchio. Art and Its Shadow. New York: Continuum, 2004. Del sentire cattolico. La forma culturale di una religione universale. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2001. Contro la comunicazione. Turin: Einaudi, 2004. Miracoli e traumi della comunicazione. Turin: Einaudi, 2009. Strategie del bello. Quarant’anni di estetica italiana (1968–2008). Milan: Mimesis, 2010. Estetica contemporanea. Una visione globale. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011. Eng. trans. by Massimo Verdicchio. 20th Century Aesthetics: Towards a Theory of Feeling. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. La società dei simulacri. Milan: Mimesis, 2011. Berlusconi o il ’68 realizzato. Milan: Mimesis, 2011. Presa diretta. Estetica e politica. Milan: Mimesis, 2012.

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Da Berlusconi a Monti. Disaccordi imperfetti. Milan: Mimesis, 2013. L’avventura situazionista. Storia critica dell’ultima avanguardia del XX secolo. Milan: Mimesis, 2013. L’arte espansa. Turin: Einaudi, 2015.

PERONE, UGO Teologia ed esperienza religiosa in Feuerbach. Milan: Mursia, 1972. Storia e ontologia. Saggi sulla teologia di Bonhoeffer. Rome: Studium, 1976. Schiller: la totalità interrotta. Milan: Mursia, 1982. Modernità e memoria. Turin: SEI, 1987. In lotta con l’angelo. La filosofia degli ultimi due secoli di fronte al Cristianesimo (with Giovanni Ferretti, Annamaria Pastore Perone, Claudio Ciancio, and Maurizio Pagano). Turin: SEI, 1989. Invito al pensiero di Feuerbach. Milan: Mursia, 1992. Le passioni del finito. Bologna: EDB, 1994. Cartesio o Pascal? Un dialogo sulla modernità (with Claudio Ciancio). Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1995. Nonostante il soggetto. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1995. Il presente possibile. Naples: Guida, 2005. Eng. trans. by Silvia Benso with Brian Schroeder. The Possible Present. Albany: SUNY Press, 2012. La verità del sentimento. Naples: Guida, 2008. Ripensare il sentimento. Assisi: Cittadella Editrice, 2014. L’essenza della religione. Nuove provocazioni e compiti decisivi. Brescia: Queriniana, 2015.

RICONDA, GIUSEPPE Ugo Spirito. Turin: Edizioni di Filosofia, 1955. La filosofia di William James. Turin: Edizioni di Filosofia, 1962. Schopenhauer interprete dell’Occidente. Milan: Mursia, 1969. L’etica di Max Scheler. Turin: Giapichelli, 1971. La filosofia speculativa di Alfred North Whitehead. Turin: Edizioni di Filosofia, 1977. Schelling storico della filosofia. Milan: Mursia, 1990. Invito al pensiero di James. Milan: Mursia, 1999. Tradizione e avventura. Turin: SEI, 2001. Del male e del bene (con Xavier Tilliette). Rome: Città Nuova, 2001. Tradizione e pensiero. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 2009. Invito al pensiero di Kant. Milan: Mursia, 2011. Bene/male. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011. Filosofia della famiglia. Brescia: La Scuola, 2014.

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SEVERINO, EMANUELE La struttura originaria. Brescia: La Scuola, 1958. Per un rinnovamento nella interpretazione della filosofia fichtiana. Brescia: La Scuola, 1960. Studi di filosofia della prassi. Milan: Vita e pensiero, 1963. Essenza del nichilismo. Saggi. Brescia: Paideia, 1972. Gli abitatori del tempo. Cristianesimo, marxismo, tecnica. Rome: Armando, 1978. Téchne. Le radici della violenza. Milan: Rusconi, 1979. Legge e caso. Milan: Adelphi, 1979. Destino della necessità. Katà tò chreòn. Milan: Adelphi, 1980. A Cesare e a Dio. Milan: Rizzoli, 1983. La strada. Milan: Rizzoli, 1983. La filosofia antica. Milan: Rizzoli, 1984. La filosofia moderna. Milan: Rizzoli, 1984. Il parricidio mancato. Milan: Adelphi, 1985. La filosofia contemporanea. Milan: Rizzoli, 1986. Traduzione e interpretazione dell’«Orestea» di Eschilo. Milan: Rizzoli, 1985. La tendenza fondamentale del nostro tempo. Milan: Adelphi, 1988. Il giogo. Alle origini della ragione: Eschilo. Milan: Adelphi, 1989. La filosofia futura. Milan: Rizzoli, 1989. Il nulla e la poesia. Alla fine dell’età della tecnica: Leopardi. Milan: Rizzoli, 1990. Filosofia. Lo sviluppo storico e le fonti. 3 vols. Florence: Sansoni, 1992. Oltre il linguaggio. Milan: Adelphi, 1992. La Guerra. Milan: Rizzoli, 1992. La bilancia. Pensieri sul nostro tempo. Milan: Rizzoli, 1992. Il declino del capitalismo. Milan: Rizzoli, 1993. Sortite. Piccoli scritti sui rimedi (e la gioia). Milan: Rizzoli, 1994. Pensieri sul Cristianesimo. Milan: Rizzoli, 1995. Tautóte¯s. Milan: Adelphi, 1995. La filosofia dai Greci al nostro tempo. Milan: Rizzoli, 1996. La follia dell’angelo. Milan: Rizzoli, 1997. Cosa arcana e stupenda. L’Occidente e Leopardi. Milan: Rizzoli, 1998. Il destino della tecnica. Milan: Rizzoli, 1998. La buona fede. Milan: Rizzoli, 1999. L’anello del ritorno. Milan: Adelphi, 1999. Crisi della tradizione occidentale. Milan: Marinotti, 1999. La legna e la cenere. Discussioni sul significato dell’esistenza. Milan: Rizzoli, 2000. Il mio scontro con la Chiesa. Milan: Rizzoli, 2001. La Gloria. Milan: Adelphi, 2001. Oltre l’uomo e oltre Dio. Genoa: Il Melangolo, 2002. Lezioni sulla politica. Milan: Marinotti, 2002. Tecnica e architettura. Milan: Cortina, 2003.

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Dall’Islam a Prometeo. Milan: Rizzoli, 2003. Fondamento della contraddizione. Milan: Adelphi, 2005. Nascere, e altri problemi della coscienza religiosa. Milan: Rizzoli, 2005. Sull’embrione. Milan: Rizzoli, 2005. Il muro di pietra. Sul tramonto della tradizione filosofica. Milan: Rizzoli, 2006. Oltrepassare. Milan: Adelphi, 2007. Dialogo su Etica e Scienza (with Edoardo Boncinelli). Milan: Editrice San Raffaele, 2008. Immortalità e destino. Milan: Rizzoli, 2008. La buona fede. Milan: Rizzoli, 2008. L’etica del capitalismo. Milan: AlboVersorio, 2008. Verità, volontà, destino. Milan-Udine: Mimesis, 2008. L’identità del destino. Milan: Rizzoli, 2009. Il diverso come icona del male. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2009. Democrazia, tecnica, capitalismo. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2009. Discussioni intorno al senso della verità. Pisa: ETS, 2009. Macigni e spirito di gravità. Milan: Rizzoli, 2010. L’intima mano. Milan: Adelphi, 2010. Il mio ricordo degli eterni. Milan: Rizzoli, 2011. La morte e la terra. Milan: Adelphi, 2011. Intorno al senso del nulla. Milan: Adelphi, 2013. La potenza dell’errare. Storia dell’Occidente. Milan: Rizzoli, 2013. In viaggio con Leopardi. La partita sul destino dell’uomo. Milan: Rizzoli, 2015. Dike. Milan: Adelphi, 2015.

SINI, CARLO I Greci e noi, (with Giovanni Emanuele Barié). Milan: Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, 1959. Whitehead e la funzione della filosofia. Padua: Marsilio Editore, 1965. Introduzione alla fenomenologia come scienza. Milan: Lampugnani Nigri, 1965. Storia della filosofia. 3 vols. Naples: Morano Editore, 1968. Il pragmatismo americano. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1972. Semiotica e filosofia. Segno e linguaggio in Peirce, Nietzsche, Heidegger e Foucault. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1978. Passare il segno. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1981. Kinesis. Saggio d’interpretazione. Milan: Spirali, 1982. Immagini di verità. Dal segno al simbolo. Milan: Spirali, 1985. Eng. trans. by Massimo Verdicchio. Images of Truth: From Sign to Symbol. Humanities Press, 1993. Metodo e filosofia. Milan: Unicopli, 1986. Il silenzio e la parola. Luoghi e confine del sapere per un uomo planetario. Genoa: Marietti, 1989. I segni dell’anima. Saggio sull’immagine. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1989. Il simbolo e l’uomo. Milan: Egea, 1991.

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L’espressione e il profondo. Milan: Lanfranchi, 1991. Etica della scrittura. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1992. Eng. trans. by Silvia Benso with Brian Schroeder. Ethics of Writing. Albany: SUNY Press, 2009. Pensare il progetto. Milan: Tranchida, 1992. Filosofia teoretica. Milan: Jaca Book, 1992. Variazioni sul foglio-mondo. Peirce, Wittgenstein, la scrittura (with Rossella Fabbrichesi Leo). Como: Hestia, 1993. L’incanto del ritmo. Milan: Tranchida, 1993. Filosofia e scrittura. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1994. Scrivere il silenzio: Wittgenstein e il problema del linguaggio. Milan: Egea, 1994. Teoria e pratica del foglio-mondo. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1997. Gli abiti, le pratiche, i saperi. Milan: Jaca Book, 1996. Scrivere il fenomeno: fenomenologia e pratica del sapere. Naples: Morano, 1999. Ragione. Bologna: Clueb, 2000. Idoli della conoscenza. Milan: Cortina, 2000. La libertà, la finanza, la comunicazione. Milan: Spirali, 2001. La scrittura e il debito: conflitto tra culture e antropologia. Milan: Jaca Book, 2002. Il comico e la vita. Milan: Jaca Book, 2003. Figure dell’enciclopedia filosofica. Transito verità. 6 vols. Milan: Jaca Book, 2004–2005. La materia delle cose: filosofia e scienza dei materiali. Milan: Cuem, 2004. Archivio Spinoza. La verità e la vita. Milan: Edizioni Ghibli, 2005. Del viver bene: filosofia ed economia. Milan: Cuem, 2005. Distanza un segno: filosofia e semiotica. Milan: Cuem, 2006. Il gioco del silenzio. Milan: Mondadori, 2006. Il segreto di Alice e altri saggi. Milan: AlboVersorio, 2006. Eracle al bivio. Semiotica e filosofia. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2007. Da parte a parte. Apologia del relativo. Pisa: ETS, 2008. L’uomo, la macchina, l’automa: lavoro e conoscenza tra futuro prossimo e passato remoto. Turin: Bollati Boringhieri, 2009. L’Eros dionisiaco. Milan: AlboVersorio, 2011. Figure d’Occidente. Platone, Nietzsche e Heidegger (with Massimo Donà and Salvatore Natoli). Milan: AlboVersorio, 2011. Il sapere dei segni. Filosofia e semiotica. Milan: Jaca Book, 2012. La nascita di Eros. Milan: AlboVersorio, 2012. Scrivere il silenzio: Wittgenstein e il problema del linguaggio. Rome: Castelvecchi, 2013. Spinoza. Milan: Book Time, 2013. Il metodo e la via. Milan: Mimesis, 2013. Reale, più-che-reale, virtuale. Milan: AlboVersorio, 2014.

TESSITORE, FULVIO Lo storicismo giuridico-politico di Vincenzo Cuoco. Turin: Edizioni di Filosofia, 1961. Aspetti del pensiero neoguelfo napoletano dopo il 1860. Naples: Morano, 1962.

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Crisi e trasformazione dello Stato. Ricerche sul pensiero giuspubblicistico italiano tra 800 e 900. Naples: Morano, 1963. Lo storicismo di Vincenzo Cuoco. Naples: Guida, 1965. I fondamenti della filosofia politica di Humboldt. Naples: Morano, 1965. Friedrich Meinecke storico delle idee. Florence: Le Monnier, 1969. Dimensioni dello storicismo. Naples: Morano, 1971. Tra esistenzialismo e storicismo. La filosofia morale di Pietro Piovani. Naples: Morano, 1974. Storicismo e pensiero politico. Milan-Naples: Ricciardi, 1974. Comprensione storica e cultura. Revisioni storicistiche. Naples: Guida, 1979. Profilo dello storicismo politico. Turin: UTET, 1981. Filosofia e storiografia. Naples: Morano, 1985. Il senso della storia universale. Milan: Garzanti, 1987. Dal Cuoco a De Sanctis. Studi sulla filosofia napoletana nel primo Ottocento. Naples: ESI, 1989. Letture quotidiane (I e II serie). Naples: Bibliopolis, 1989. Storiografia e storia della cultura. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1990. Introduzione allo Storicismo. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1991. Schizzi e schegge di storiografia arabo-islamica italiana. Bari: Palomar, 1995. Letture quotidiane terze. Naples: ESI, 1996. Letture quotidiane quarte. Naples: ESI, 1997. Introduzione a Meinecke. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1998. Storicismo e storia della cultura. Rome: Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 2003. Interpretazione dello storicismo. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2006. Contributi alla storia e alla teoria dello storicismo. 7 vols. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1995–2008. Contributi alla storiografia arabo-islamica in Italia tra Otto e Novecento. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2008. Ultimi contributi alla storia e alla teoria dello storicismo. 3 vols. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2010. La “religione dello storicismo.” Brescia: Morcelliana, 2010. Letture quotidiane quinte. Naples: ESI, 2010. Letture quotidiane seste. Naples: ESI, 2010. La ricerca dello storicismo. Studi su Benedetto Croce. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012. Stato e nazione. L’anomalia italiana. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2014.

VATTIMO, GIANNI Il concetto di fare in Aristotele. Turin: Giappichelli, 1961. Essere, storia e linguaggio in Heidegger. Turin: Filosofia, 1963. Ipotesi su Nietzsche. Turin: Giappichelli, 1967. Poesia e ontologia. Milan: Mursia, 1968. Eng. trans. by Luca D’Isanto. Art’s Claim to Truth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

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Schleiermacher, filosofo dell’interpretazione. Milan: Mursia, 1968. Introduzione ad Heidegger. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1971. Il soggetto e la maschera. Milan: Bompiani, 1974. Le avventure della differenza. Milan: Garzanti, 1980. Eng. trans. by Cyprian Blamires and Thomas Harrison. The Adventure of Difference: Philosophy after Nietzsche and Heidegger. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Al di là del soggetto. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1981. Il pensiero debole (with Pier Aldo Rovatti). Milan: Feltrinelli, 1983. Eng. trans. by Peter Carravetta. Weak Thought. Albany: SUNY Press, 2013. La fine della modernità. Milan: Garzanti, 1985. Eng. trans. by Jon R. Snyder. The End of Modernity: Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Postmodern Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991. Introduzione a Nietzsche. Rome-Bari, Laterza, 1985. Eng. trans. by Nicholas Martin. Nietzsche: An Introduction. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. La società trasparente. Milan: Garzanti, 1989. Eng. trans. by David Webb. The Transparent Society. Oxford, UK: Polity Press, 1992. Etica dell’interpretazione. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier, 1989. Filosofia al presente. Milan: Garzanti, 1990. Oltre l’interpretazione. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1994. Eng. trans. by David Webb. Beyond Interpretation: The Meaning of Hermeneutics for Philosophy. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 1997. Credere di credere. Milan: Garzanti, 1996. Eng. trans. by Luca D’Isanto and David Webb. Belief. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 1999. Vocazione e responsabilità del filosofo. Genoa: Il Melangolo, 2000. Eng. trans. by William McCuaig. The Responsibility of the Philosopher. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Dialogo con Nietzsche. Saggi 1961–2000. Milan: Garzanti, 2000. Tecnica ed esistenza. Una mappa filosofica del Novecento. Milan: Bruno Mondadori, 2002. Dopo la cristianità. Per un cristianesimo non religioso. Milan: Garzanti, 2002. Eng. trans. by Luca D’Isanto. After Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Nichilismo ed emancipazione. Etica, politica e diritto. Milan: Garzanti, 2003. Eng. trans. by William McCuaig. Nihilism and Emancipation: Ethics, Politics, & Law. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004. Il socialismo ossia l’Europa. Turin: Trauben, 2004. Il futuro della religione (with Richard Rorty). Milan: Garzanti, 2005. Eng trans. The Future of Religion. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. Verità o fede debole? Dialogo su cristianesimo e relativismo (with René Girard). Massa: Transeuropa Edizioni, 2006. Eng. trans. by William McCuaig. Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith: A Dialogue. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Non essere Dio. Un’autobiografia a quattro mani (with Piergiorgio Paterlini). Reggio Emilia: Aliberti Editore, 2006. Eng. trans. by William McCuaig. Not Being

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God: A Collaborative Autobiography. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Ecce comu. Come si ri-diventa ciò che si era. Rome: Fazi, 2007. After the Death of God (with John D. Caputo). New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Addio alla Verità. Rome: Meltemi, 2009. Eng. trans. by William McCuaig. A Farewell to Truth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. Introduzione all’estetica. Pisa: ETS, 2010. Magnificat. Un’idea di montagna. Turin: CDA & Vivalda, 2011. Hermeneutic Communism: From Heidegger to Marx (with Santiago Zabala). New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. Della realtà. Fini della filosofia. Milan: Garzanti, 2012. Eng. trans. by Robert Valgenti. Of Reality. The Purposes of Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Le mezze verità. Naples: Orthotes, 2015.

VECA, SALVATORE Fondazione e modalità in Kant. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1969. Marx e la critica dell’economia politica. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1973. Saggio sul programma scientifico di Marx, Milan: Mondadori Bruno, 1977. Le mosse della ragione. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1980. La società giusta. Argomenti per il contrattualismo. Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1982. Una filosofia pubblica. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1986. L’altruismo e la morale (with Francesco Alberoni). Milan: Garzanti, 1988. Etica e politica. Milan: Garzanti, 1989. Progetto Ottantanove (with Alberto Martinelli and Michele Salvati). Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1989. Cittadinanza. Riflessioni filosofiche sull’idea di emancipazione. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1990. Questioni di vita e conversazioni filosofiche. Milan: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 1991. Questioni di giustizia. Corso di filosofia politica. Turin: Einaudi, 1991. Europa Universitas. Tre saggi sull’impresa scientifica europea (with Giulio Giorello and Tullio Regge). Milan: Feltrinelli, 1993. Filosofia, politica, società. Annali di etica pubblica (with Sebastiano Maffettone). Rome: Donzelli, 1995. L’idea di giustizia da Platone a Rawls (with Sebastiano Maffettone). Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1997. Dell’incertezza. Tre meditazioni filosofiche. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1997. La politica e l’amicizia (with Enrico Berti). Milan: Edizioni Lavoro, 1998. Della lealtà civile. Saggi e messaggi nella bottiglia. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1998. La penultima parola e altri enigma. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2001. La filosofia politica. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2002. La bellezza e gli oppressi. Dieci lezioni sull’idea di giustizia. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2002.

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Il giardino delle idee. Quattro passi nel mondo della filosofia. Milan: Frassinelli, 2004. La priorità del male e l’offerta filosofica. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2005. Le cose della vita. Congetture, conversazioni e lezioni personali. Milan: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 2006. Dizionario minimo. Le parole della filosofia per una convivenza democratica. Milan: Frassinelli, 2009. Quattro lezioni sull’idea di incompletezza. Milan: La Scuola di Pitagora, 2009. Etica e verità. Saggi brevi. Milan: Giampiero Casagrande editore, 2009. L’idea di incompletezza. Quattro lezioni. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2011. Sarabanda. Oratorio in tre tempi per voce sola. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2011. Kant. Milan: Book Time, 2012. Tolleranza. Le virtù civili. Milan: ASMEPA, 2012. L’immaginazione filosofica e altri saggi. Milan: Feltrinelli, 2012. Un’idea di laicità. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2013. Omnia Mutantur. La scoperta filosofica del pluralismo culturale (with Richard J. Bernstein and Mario Ricciardi). Milan: Marsilio, 2014. Non c’è alternativa. Falso! Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2014. La gran città del genere umano. Dieci conversazioni filosofiche. Milan: Mursia, 2014. La barca di Neurath. Sette saggi brevi. Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 2015. Laboratorio Expo. The Many Faces of Sustainability. Milan: Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, 2015. Il giardino di Camilla. Milan: Mursia, 2015.

VIGNA, CARMELO Ragione e religione. Milan: CELUC, 1971. Filosofia e marxismo. Milan: CELUC, 1974. Le origini del marxismo teorico in Italia. Il dibattito tra Labriola, Croce, Gentile e Sorel sui rapporti tra marxismo e filosofia. Rome: Città Nuova, 1977. Antonio Gramsci. Il pensiero teorico e politico. La “questione leninista” (with V. Melchiorre and G. de Rosa). Rome: Città Nuova, 1979 Invito al pensiero di Aristotele. Mursia: Milano 1992. L’enigma del desiderio (with L. Ancona and Pier Angelo Sequeri). Cinisello Balsamo: Edizioni San Paolo, 1999. La politica e la speranza (with Virgilio Melchiorre). Rome: Edizioni Lavoro, 1999. Il frammento e l’Intero. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2000. Sulla verità e sul bene (with L. Grecchi). Pistoia: Petite Plaisance, 2001. Etica trascendentale e intersoggettività. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2002. Multiculturalismo e identità (with Stefano Zamagni). Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2002. Libertà, giustizia e bene in una società plurale. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2003. Etiche e politiche della post-modernità. Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2003. Etica del plurale (with Egle Bonan). Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2004.

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La Regola d’oro come etica universale (with Susy Zanardo). Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2005. Etica di frontiera (with Susy Zanardo). Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2008. Multiculturalismo e interculturalità (with Egle Bonan). Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2011.

VITIELLO, VINCENZO Storiografia e storia nel pensiero di Benedetto Croce. Naples: Libreria Scientifica Editrice, 1968. Feeling e relation nella filosofia del conoscere di David Hume. Naples: Libreria Scientifica Editrice, 1968. Heidegger: il nulla e la fondazione della storicità. Urbino: Argalia, 1976. Utopia del nichilismo. Tra Nietzsche e Heidegger. Naples: Guida, 1982. Ethos ed Eros tra Hegel e Kant. Naples: ESI, 1984. Bertrando Spaventa ed il problema del cominciamento. Naples: Guida, 1990. Topologia del moderno. Genoa: Marietti, 1992. La voce riflessa. Logica ed etica della contraddizione. Milan: Lanfranchi, 1994. Elogio dello spazio. Ermeneutica e topologia. Milan: Bompiani, 1994. Cristianesimo senza redenzione. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1995. Non dividere il sì dal no. Tra filosofia e letteratura. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1996. Filosofia teoretica. Le domande fondamentali: percorsi e interpretazioni. Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 1997. La favola di Cadmo. Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1998. Vico e la topologia. Naples: Cronopio, 2000. La vita e il suo oltre. Dialogo sulla morte (with Bruno Forte). Rome: Città Nuova, 2001. Il Dio possibile. Rome: Città Nuova, 2002. Hegel in Italia. Dalla storia alla logica. Milan: Guerini e Associati, 2003. Dire Dio in segreto. Rome: Città Nuova, 2005. Cristianesimo e nichilismo. Dostoevskij-Heidegger. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2005. Estetica e ascesi. Modena: Festival Filosofia, 2006. E pose la tenda in mezzo a noi. Milan: AlboVersorio, 2007. I tempi della poesia. Ieri/Oggi. Milan: Mimesis, 2007. Ripensare il cristianesimo. De Europa. Turin: Ananke, 2008. Vico. Storia–Linguaggio–Natura. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2008. Oblio e memoria del Sacro. Bergamo: Moretti & Vitali, 2008. Grammatiche del pensiero. Dalla kenosi dell’io alla logica della seconda persona. Pisa: ETS, 2009. Celan Heidegger (with Félix Duque). Milan: Mimesis, 2011. I comandamenti. Non dire falsa testimonianza. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011. L’ethos della topologia. Un itinerario di pensiero. Florence: Le Lettere, 2013. Paolo e l’Europa. Cristianesimo e filosofia (with Gérard Rossé). Rome: Città Nuova, 2014. L’immagine infranta. Linguaggio e mondo da Vico a Pollock. Milan: Bompiani, 2014.

Index

Abbagnano, Nicola, 11, 29, 30, 138, 161, 186, 189, 190, 191, 203, 225, 256, 271, 272 Action, 28, 37, 44, 45, 57, 60, 65, 96, 99, 129, 148, 149, 153, 154, 169, 233, 240, 247, 272 Actualism, 65, 95, 100, 272 Adorno, Theodor W., 19, 20, 23, 39, 64, 73, 84, 91, 110, 114, 161, 180, 204, 257 Alliotta, Antonio, 176 Althusser, Louis, 19, 82, 161 Analytic philosophy, 12, 29, 64, 114, 115, 153, 161, 163, 164, 185, 186, 188, 190, 192, 204, 210, 257, 273 Anselm of Canterbury, 250, 259 Apel, Karl-Otto, 84, 206, 210 Aquinas, Thomas, 40, 66, 69, 73, 108, 134, 163, 203, 204, 206, 217, 259 Arendt, Hannah, 73, 76, 77, 85, 119, 210 Aristotle, 24, 30, 41, 47, 66, 68, 73, 75, 83, 88, 108, 166, 186, 191, 192, 203–210, 217, 234, 247–249 Atheism, 32, 150, 180, 181, 256, 274, 277 Austin, John, 29, 31, 204, 205 Ayer, Alfred, 31, 114, 164, 252 Bacon, Francis, 148 Banfi, Antonio, 53, 190, 203, 233, 271, 272

Barth, Karl, 39, 52, 262, 263 Benjamin, Walter, 39, 40, 83, 85, 88, 131, 223, 225, 226 Berdyaev, Nikolai, 273, 276, 277 Bergson, Henri, 64, 88 Bioethics, 25–28, 32–34, 63, 66, 68, 211 Biopolitics, 91 Blondel, Maurice, 64, 262 Bobbio, Norberto, 1, 18, 20, 26, 29–31, 161, 177, 186, 189, 203 Bodei, Remo, 12, 181, 284 Body, ix, 25, 39, 46, 48, 84, 125, 170, 181 Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, 223, 225, 263, 294 Bontadini, Gustavo, 38, 40, 64–66, 161, 163, 167, 204, 205, 216–218, 233, 234, 258–260, 265, 272 Braidotti, Rosi, 74 Bruno, Giordano, 60, 272 Bubner, Rüdiger, 84 Butler, Judith, 74, 76 Cacciari, Massimo, 10 Camus, Albert, 20, 52, 140, 281 Cantoni, Remo, 178 Cantor, Georg, 180 Capograssi, Giuseppe, 96, 97 Caracciolo, Alberto, 262 Carnap, Rudolf, 114, 176, 188, 194, 195, 204, 234, 244, 257

303

304

Index

Cassirer, Ernst, 85 Castelli, Enrico, 261 Chiereghin, Franco, 207, 208 Christianity, 45, 155, 240, 249–251, 263, 267, 268, 279, 299 Colletti, Lucio, 11, 207 Colli, Giorgio, 18, 19, 20, 82 Communication, 36, 68, 97, 104, 125, 127–129, 133–135, 144, 149, 151–154, 197 Communism, 40, 110, 111, 210, 240, 300 Communist Party, 102, 160, 177, 187, 190 Community, 46, 74, 75, 77, 153, 162, 223, 251, 252, 263 Complexity, 11, 47, 144, 148, 212, 231, 240, 284 Contingency, 48, 77, 83, 89–92, 120 Critical theory, 84, 114, 209 Croce, Benedetto, 1, 4, 19, 28, 52, 63, 64, 95–98, 100, 107, 108, 126, 149, 160, 186–189, 192, 203, 216, 233, 244–246, 256, 272, 298, 301, 302 Dal Pra, Mario, 31, 176, 189–191 Darwin, Charles, 60, 127, 155, 181 Darwinism, 155 De Beauvoir, Simone, 73 Debord, Guy, 150, 151 Deconstruction, 7, 91, 112, 125 Del Noce, Augusto, 274, 275, 277 Deleuze, Gilles, 86, 90, 139 Della Volpe, Galvano, 82, 272 Democracy, 84, 90, 97, 113, 117, 145, 160, 175, 179, 181, 240, 281 Derrida, Jacques, 117, 139 Descartes, René, 5, 13, 83, 119, 175, 203, 223, 225, 226, 234, 274, 275 Desire, 12, 18, 19, 23, 34, 44, 49, 60, 63, 64, 66, 77, 110, 111, 181, 196, 204, 246, 293 Dewey, John, 19, 30, 52, 108, 114, 188, 272, 274

Dialectic, 53, 84, 104, 134, 179, 180, 206, 210, 219, 227, 246, 277 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 98, 99, 273 Diotima, 74, 75 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 82, 139, 143, 276 Dummett, Michael, 164 Earth, 59, 61, 87, 199, 238–242, 245 Eco, Umberto, 10, 82, 150 Empiricism, 161, 163, 178, 185, 186, 188–191, 196, 234, 274, 275 Enlightenment, 29, 30, 34, 84, 108, 138, 180, 181, 183, 187, 190, 193, 265, 272 Evil, 11, 46, 68, 119, 150, 253, 263, 265, 271, 274, 276, 278, 281 Existentialism, 52, 53, 82, 95, 108, 113, 115, 138, 161, 203, 204, 216, 218, 219, 224, 257, 271–274, 277 Fabro, Cornelio, 216 Fascism, 94, 107, 160, 181, 182, 188, 224, 272 Feminism, 74 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 112, 223, 277, 294 Feyerabend, Paul, 178, 179, 188 Ficino, Marsilio, 1 Finitude, 45, 49, 216, 228, 257 Formalism, 165, 167 Foucault, Michel, 73, 82, 86, 88, 89, 136, 139, 204, 291, 292, 296 Frankfurt School, 19, 20, 29, 40, 64, 73, 82–86, 110, 188, 204, 209, 210, 224 Frege, Gottlob, 114, 119, 162, 166, 182, 244, 257 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 84, 100, 139, 161, 194, 204, 206, 210, 262, 263 Galilei, Galileo, 1, 57, 60, 176 Garin, Eugenio, 11, 30, 82, 161, 186, 189–191, 203, 244 Genealogy, 42, 86, 116, 120

Index Gentile, Giovanni, 1, 4, 19, 28, 52, 63–66, 83, 94, 95, 100, 107, 108, 149, 160, 186–188, 198, 203, 216, 233, 234, 244–246, 256, 261, 272, 291, 301 Gentile, Marino, 65, 66, 204–206, 208, 272 Geymonat, Ludovico, 29–31, 40, 115, 166, 176–180, 186, 203, 207, 210, 244, 272, 283, 288 Girard, René, 109, 299 Globalization, 3, 34, 57, 60, 91, 106, 110, 111, 129, 173, 211, 268 God, 33, 38, 40, 41, 43, 106, 109, 111, 178, 180, 182, 199, 208, 225, 226, 238, 241, 243, 248–252, 256, 258, 259, 262, 267, 270, 275, 277, 279, 280, 300 Gödel, Kurt, 164, 165 Gramsci, Antonio, 19, 20, 40, 52, 63, 74, 83, 114, 149, 163, 187, 190, 244, 245, 271, 272, 301 Ground, 38, 41, 42, 56, 59, 68, 109, 221, 227, 234, 236, 237, 239, 275 Guattari, Félix, 86 Guzzo, Augusto, 28, 161, 204, 224, 256, 272–274 Habermas, Jürgen, 19, 20, 39, 67, 84, 206, 210, 268 Happiness, 17, 26, 37, 43, 44, 46, 48–50, 68, 208, 209 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 18, 20, 24, 28, 51, 53–55, 73, 82, 83, 89, 94, 105, 122, 134, 163, 187, 192, 203, 206, 212, 234, 235, 246, 247, 249, 257, 259, 261, 272, 277, 284, 285, 302 Heidegger, Martin, 18, 39, 41, 51, 52, 54, 57, 64, 73, 85, 87, 88, 92, 100, 107, 109, 110, 114, 125, 127, 132–135, 138, 139, 141, 142, 153, 161, 163, 188, 194, 198, 203–205, 218, 224, 234, 237, 244, 246,

305

249, 257, 262–265, 273, 291–293, 296–300, 302 Heraclitus, 217 Hermeneutics, 7, 37, 42, 54, 84, 91, 100, 107, 137, 139, 142, 161, 168, 188, 206, 243, 246, 247, 263, 278, 299 Historicism, 7, 12, 18, 19, 28, 30, 82, 93, 95, 98, 100–102, 108, 186, 188, 203, 205, 244, 245, 256, 273 Historicity, 24, 154, 168, 240, 246, 249, 257, 273 Historismus, 93, 98–100 Hobbes, Thomas, 28, 30, 73, 77, 86 Honneth, Axel, 67, 84 Horkheimer, Max, 19, 39, 64, 84, 114, 161, 180, 204, 257, 276 Humanism, 18, 127, 205, 218, 220, 221 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 98, 99, 101, 298 Husserl, Edmund, 38, 39, 41, 51, 53, 54, 61, 64, 94, 114, 115, 120, 139, 162, 177, 188, 216–218, 234, 244, 248, 257, 259, 260, 264, 265, 272, 273, 287 Hyper-subject(ivity), 130, 131 Idealism, 12, 18, 28, 53, 65, 94–96, 100, 107, 138, 160, 161, 186, 188, 190, 203, 215, 216, 224, 233, 256, 259, 272 Idealistic hegemony, 94 Immanentism, 65, 256, 259, 275, 277, 279 Incompleteness, 113, 120, 251 Individuality, 3, 5, 93, 99, 170 Innis, Harold, 127 Instinct, 4, 42, 194 Intentionality, 67, 169, 170, 257, 259–261, 264, 278 Irigaray, Luce, 74 Jaspers, Karl, 52, 64, 142, 204, 218, 224, 234, 273

306

Index

Justice, 8, 11, 34, 59, 113, 116–119, 225, 243, 245, 281 Kafka, Franz, 82, 178 Kant, Immanuel, 3, 30, 51, 53, 73, 82, 87, 89, 90, 96, 99, 105, 109, 115, 116, 118, 136, 140, 141, 148, 166, 175, 183, 185, 187, 189–192, 194, 203, 217, 245–250, 259, 261, 265, 266, 270, 272, 276, 279, 287, 289, 290, 294, 300–302 Kelsen, Hans, 84, 85, 177, 245 Kierkegaard, Søren, 64, 108, 216–228, 257, 277, 290 Kuhn, Thomas, 176, 178, 188, 217 Labriola, Antonio, 63, 177, 301 Lakatos, Imre, 178, 179 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 6, 68, 83, 88, 119, 289 Levinas, Emmanuel, 76, 260, 264, 265, 267, 287 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 23, 40, 82 Locke, John, 28, 30, 73, 285 Logical positivism, 166, 244 Luhmann, Niklas, 48, 84 Lukács, György, 74, 82, 114, 257, 272 Luporini, Cesare, 20, 82, 203 Lyotard, Jean-François, 130 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 1, 24, 40 Mancini, Italo, 38, 40, 65, 262, 265 Marcel, Gabriel, 52, 64, 204, 218, 262, 273, 274, 277 Marcuse, Herbert, 53, 64, 73, 204 Maritain, Jacques, 64, 203–205, 217 Martinetti, Piero, 53 Marx, Karl, 38, 39, 64, 82–85, 112, 114, 116, 117, 203, 212, 242, 257, 300 Marxism, 18, 19, 38–40, 52, 53, 64, 82–85, 94, 95, 108, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 138, 160, 177, 179, 186, 187, 190, 203, 210, 224, 244, 256, 257, 263, 271–273, 290, 295, 301

Materialism, 177, 179, 187, 210, 257 Mathematical logic, 164–167, 176, 182 Mathematics, 115, 159, 163–165, 167, 175–177, 180, 198, 244 Mathieu, Vittorio, 166, 274 Meinecke, Friedrich, 98, 99, 298 Melchiorre, Virgilio, 65, 301 Memory, 9, 17, 21, 22, 52, 119, 122, 129, 135, 223, 227, 228 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 39, 52, 64, 82, 114, 126, 217, 273 Mill, John Stuart, 28, 32, 35, 179, 181 Modernity, 3, 5, 46, 64, 87–90, 128, 133, 223, 225, 226, 228, 229, 275, 276, 279, 281, 299 Montinari, Mazzino, 19, 82 Mortality, 76 Mounier, Emmanuel, 39, 40, 204, 217, 218, 290 Muraro, Luisa, 74 Musil, Robert, 82, 122 Myth, 75, 88, 141, 153 Natality, 76 Negri, Antonio, 1, 10, 65, 211 Neoempiricism, 113, 114 Neoidealism, 53, 95, 138, 160, 161, 203, 233 Neopositivism, 18, 52, 176, 186, 193, 194, 203, 204, 234, 257, 271 Neo-Enlightenment, 29, 30, 138, 187, 193, 272 Neo-Thomism, 95, 224 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 6, 18, 19, 39, 42, 54, 56, 64, 73, 75, 82, 88, 89, 108, 109, 111, 114, 126, 127, 132, 136, 140, 143, 224, 234, 237, 249, 274, 275, 281, 292, 296–299, 302 Nihilism, 55, 87, 88, 109, 137, 142, 143, 150, 237, 238, 241, 242, 249, 250, 280, 299 Nozick, Robert, 194

Index Objectivity, 33, 109, 159, 166–168, 171, 193–196, 278, 284 Objectualism, 171 Olgiati, Francesco, 204, 258 Paci, Enzo, 18, 38, 40, 53, 65, 82, 115, 161, 176, 186, 244, 257, 272 Padovani, Umberto, 204, 205 Pareyson, Luigi, 65, 108, 137, 138, 141, 150, 151, 203, 216, 218, 224, 225, 244, 260, 263, 264, 272–275, 277 Parmenides, 203, 216, 234 Pascal, Blaise, 140, 147, 161, 175, 275, 276, 294 Passion, 11, 15, 17, 20–23, 25, 33, 35, 43, 45, 65, 88–90, 92, 111, 114, 139, 181, 196, 228, 245, 265, 281, 285, 286, 288, 290, 294 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 53, 54, 56, 188, 272, 274, 296, 297 Personalism, 18, 40, 137, 204, 217– 219, 271, 272, 275, 277–279 Phenomenology, 18, 20, 53, 54, 65, 82, 94–96, 113, 115, 139, 161, 177, 186, 188, 189, 216, 218, 220, 224, 244, 257, 259, 265, 266, 272, 273, 287 Physics, 20, 51, 56, 88, 115, 159, 162, 164–166, 176–178, 185, 187, 194, 198, 211 Piovani, Pietro, 96, 97, 100, 298 Plato, 20, 59, 65, 66, 73–76, 88, 89, 119, 141, 148, 152, 166, 192, 198, 203, 206, 217, 230, 234, 245, 247, 284–286, 292, 297, 300 Plotinus, 22, 140, 247 Politics, 1, 2, 12, 26, 32, 38, 46, 74–78, 84, 91, 107, 109, 112, 118, 149–151, 160, 182, 183, 190, 207, 228–230, 245, 251, 268, 285, 299 Popper, Karl, 116, 161, 176, 178, 186–188, 204, 206, 244 Postmodernism, 87

307

Postmodernity, 88, 108 Power, 4, 13, 26, 42, 43, 46, 48, 55, 56, 60, 77, 81, 85, 86, 88, 90, 140, 160, 178, 181, 182, 220, 238, 240, 248 Practice, 3, 7, 11, 12, 32, 33, 38, 41–43, 51, 53–57, 60, 76, 77, 86, 96, 115, 117, 119, 121, 162, 179, 180, 182, 183, 194, 198, 220, 221, 228, 245, 246 Pragmatism, 52, 54, 155, 161, 186, 188, 189, 234, 296 Preti, Giulio, 29, 30, 186, 189–191, 244, 272 Priest, Graham, 207 Problematicism, 95, 205, 206, 233, 271, 272, 275 Proust, Marcel, 82 Queer theory, 75 Quine, Willard Van Orman, 39, 114, 121, 178, 188, 190, 191, 194, 196, 236 Rahner, Karl, 262, 263, 265 Rationalism, 18, 86, 87, 265, 277 Rawls, John, 116, 117, 300 Realism, 100, 118, 171, 185, 187, 193, 194 Recognition (ethics of), 63, 67 Religion, 1, 12, 24, 57, 61, 99, 141, 144, 148, 151, 152, 175, 189, 224, 226, 228, 243, 250, 251, 255, 260– 265, 267, 268, 279, 280, 287–291, 293, 294, 298, 299, 301 Renaissance, 18, 82, 148, 161 Revolution, 39, 54, 57, 58, 60, 61, 85, 87, 98, 104, 122, 152, 154, 176, 183, 188, 212, 279, 280 Ricoeur, Paul, 39, 64, 161, 204, 210, 217, 263, 264 Rorty, Richard, 19, 119, 299 Rosmini, Antonio, 96, 161, 275, 279 Rossi Landi, Ferruccio, 30, 204

308

Index

Rossi Monti, Paolo, 65, 187, 190 Rossi, Pietro, 187, 190 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 26 Russell, Bertrand, 114, 161, 175, 186, 188, 244, 257 Ryle, Gilbert, 29, 31, 204–206 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 39–41, 52, 64, 82, 114, 126, 139, 141, 161, 204, 216, 257, 273 Scheler, Max, 26, 64, 260–262, 266, 273, 287, 294 Schiller, Friedrich, 223, 294 Schlick, Moritz, 176, 188, 234, 257 Schmitt, Carl, 18, 19, 84–87 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 276, 277, 294 Sciacca, Michele Federico, 28, 65, 161, 204, 256, 272 Scotus, Duns, 83 Searle, John, 170 Second Vatican Council, 38, 41, 95, 210 Secularization, 38, 45, 86–88, 90, 91, 223, 226, 230, 267, 268 Semanticization, 66, 67 Semerari, Giuseppe, 82 Semiotics, 54, 56, 82, 168, 188 Severino, Emanuele, 10, 38, 40, 41, 65, 66, 207, 233, 295 Sexual difference, 63, 66, 68, 73–75 Socrates, 65, 155, 212, 260 Spinoza, Baruch, 83, 127, 175, 178, 244, 259, 272, 297 Spirito, Ugo, 28, 30, 65, 161, 203, 233, 272, 275, 294 Spiritualism, 108, 161, 204, 271, 272 Strawson, Peter, 29, 31, 115, 210 Structuralism, 19, 40, 82, 94, 95, 204 Subjectivity, 5, 13, 41, 66, 67, 76, 77, 84, 89, 128, 265, 277, 278 Sublime, 19, 125, 127–133, 286 Suffering, 23, 33, 34, 37, 38, 43, 44, 49, 190, 252 System theory, 159, 170 Taylor, Harriet, 181

Technology, 11, 25, 43, 46, 48, 58, 68, 110, 123, 125, 127–129, 132–135, 144, 155, 159, 163, 168, 183, 210, 268, 279, 280 Theology, 41, 52, 81, 87, 95, 209, 220, 223, 243, 255, 258, 262–268, 276 Thomism, 18, 95, 259, 274 Togliatti, Palmiro, 19 Topology, 43, 130, 243, 246–249 Totalitarianism, 48, 110, 240, 280 Tragic thought, 137, 140, 142 Transit, 55, 59, 147, 148, 153, 293, 297 Uncertainty, 46, 99, 113, 118, 120, 121 Universalism, 89, 90 Utilitarianism, 32 Utopia(n), 106, 119, 249, 263, 290, 302 Vanni Rovighi, Sofia, 65, 163, 204, 257–260 Vattimo, Gianni, 1, 65, 107, 150, 298 Viano, Carlo Augusto, 187, 190 Vico, Giambattista, 1, 24, 60, 96, 97, 103, 105, 121, 275, 302 Vienna Circle, 108, 163, 176, 204, 257 Violence, 35, 58, 79, 90, 109, 212, 269, 286 Virtue, 28, 32–34, 37, 38, 43, 44, 47–49, 68, 181, 226 Vulnerability, 76, 78 Wahl, Jean, 52, 274 Weak thought, 65, 109, 299 Weber, Max, 82, 84, 86, 87, 98–100, 188, 212, 285 Whitehead, Alfred North, 53, 133, 272, 274, 294, 296 Williams, Bernard, 20, 32, 34, 116 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 19, 29–31, 39, 52, 54, 64, 87, 108, 114, 119, 162, 182, 186, 188, 204, 224, 234, 244, 257, 297 Writing, 54, 56, 59, 75, 76, 110, 118, 129, 145, 151, 159, 181, 195, 246, 297