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Emanuele Severino

69 quotes

“I am the first to recognise this. When I began to develop this way of thinking – but let's go back a long way – I was the first to realise that I should leave that university. Interviewer: However, you never broke off your personal relationship or esteem for your teacher, Gustavo Bontadini? Emanuele Severino: We loved each other, and I still get emotional when I think about it. I remember when he was in his last days... ah, what a dear man... I went to see him in Via Stradella – he lived in Via Stradella, near Corso Buenos Aires – and I said to him: “Maestro, I am Emanuele Severino”. He, who had not opened his eyes for days, gave a start and opened his arms to me. We embraced for a long time. Then he let go of my arms and I left him.”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: Do you watch football matches? Severino: I'm not a fan, but I'm passionate about the World Cup. And fencing, do you know why? My father was a fencing master and led his military team to victory before the First World War. It was the only sport I was any good at; until recently, I could have disembowelled someone. Interviewer: How should life be taken, with kisses or slaps? Severino: Giving me my wife was a big kiss, taking her away from me was a big slap. Interviewer: One last question: what is love? Severino: Ah, love is still a form of will, but it always leaves you dissatisfied: so ending a programme with this phrase leaves a slightly bitter taste in the mouth.”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: The piano as a percussion instrument. Are we right in thinking that your point of reference was Stravinsky? Severino: Yes, I was steeped in Stravinsky's phonics and formulas, but perhaps above all in Bartók's. Interviewer: But who introduced you to music? Severino: My brother, who was eight years older than me, was an excellent pianist. I loved listening to him, and then, when I could, I would sit down at the piano myself and “compose”. Ever since I was a boy, I have always been attracted to the world of sounds, to the combination of sound relationships. Maestro Guastalli, my brother's teacher, who disapproved of my way of playing and urged me to study regularly, but I stubbornly preferred to combine sounds. To tell the truth, in later years I did study with a certain regularity, but not always continuously. So I remained a modest pianist.”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: Can you explain, in the simplest way possible, what your philosophy consists of? Severino: We are kings who believe ourselves to be beggars. I question not only Christianity, but the whole of Western civilisation and its philosophy, according to which we come from nothing and end up in nothing. This is the essence of nihilism. No, each of us is a god with the conviction of being contingency, the shadow of a dream. Man is a poor thing: Pindar says so, Shakespeare and Leopardi say so, it is the climate created by Bertolt Brecht. In reality, we are the eternal appearance of destiny. Our dead await us as the stars in the sky await the passing of the night and our inability to see them except in the dark. We are destined for a Joy more intense than that promised by the religions and wisdoms of this world. The beggar is our conviction, for example, that I am raving, because real things are this world, Europe, Italy, economic, legal and sexual relationships. Whereas the essence of man consists in his absolute permanence. With death, we overcome the state of beggary: death allows us to transcend the sense of nothingness.”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most rigorous form of madness today is technology: we are living in a time of transition from tradition to this new god. Authentic globalisation is not economic, it is technological. We make the mistake of believing that capitalism and technology are the same thing: no, they have different purposes. Capitalism aims at the infinite increase of private profit, technology at the infinite increase of the ability to achieve goals, or power. Technology will kill democracy, starting with the weakest states such as Italy. This process will then also affect the US, Russia and China. At some point, the United States will prevail, but not as a nation, rather as the primary managers of technological power. We are now struggling to understand this because we are in an intermediate period. We are like a trapeze artist who has let go of one piece of equipment (tradition) and has not yet grabbed hold of the other (technology, the new god). We are suspended in mid-air and feel lost.”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the West over the last two hundred years, relativism – a term that is so widely used today thanks to the Church – is a phenomenon that runs deeper than we might think. It concerns the outcome of history. Let us consider two periods: the first, that of philosophical tradition tout court up to Hegel, is followed by that of the twilight of the gods, or rather the inevitable dismantling of this tradition. This is the era of relativism. Interviewer: Why is dismantling inevitable? Severino: Because it is not a change in taste, that God is dead because people have lost the taste for believing in him. That would mean he could be reborn. I am talking about inevitability, about incontrovertibility. The conferences will overturn a still prevalent way of thinking, attributable for example to Marx, which holds that it is the existence and life of man that transforms the world. As if to say that philosophy is only a superstructure placed on top of a basic reality. This is not the case. Contemporary philosophical discourse has its own invincibility.”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“However, it is necessary to understand – and this is far from easy – what the reasons are behind technology and those behind the forces that attempt to resist it. But can we understand their reasons if we do not know what “reason” means and what constitutes the “power” that supports it? What support can we rely on to find out? Whether we should rely on science or religion or some other form of wisdom or experience cannot be determined by science, religion or anything else. Answering these kinds of questions has always been the task of philosophy. Those who would like to set it aside should remember that getting rid of it is and always has been a form of philosophy. And again: are we really sure that there is such an irreconcilable opposition between “spirituality” and “technology” and that, beneath their opposition, they do not have a common soul?”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: In May 1974, after the massacre in Piazza Loggia, you put your warning against fascism down on paper. Is this still a current danger? Severino: That opposition to Fascism has been replaced by that between democratic capitalism and communism. Which, in turn, has weakened over time. Communism is also coming to an end in China. A new protagonist has emerged, one that I believe is not given enough attention: it is called technology. The forms of power of the past are fading, and soon it will be technology that will make use of the forces in the field that delude themselves into thinking they control it.”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: Can philosophy and politics still walk hand in hand? Severino: A lofty question... If we go back to ancient Greece, politics arose as a desire to conform to the truth as discovered by philosophical thought. For the Catholic Church, politics cannot be an arbitrary invention, but must adhere to revealed truth, philosophical thought considered authentic. Therefore, even for the Church, politics must be based on philosophical competence. Then, however, a procedural democracy took hold that disregards the truth: laws are written and observed as the result of a majority vote, which decides and determines.”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Interviewer: When did you decide to study philosophy? Severino: My brother, who died in the Alpine Corps during the last war, was a student at the Normal School in Pisa and had Gentile, [Armando] Carlini, Russo and Calogero as teachers. At home, he talked about his studies, and I adored him. So I would say that my first contact with philosophy was through what my brother said about Gentile, which seemed extremely intelligent to me, even though I understood little. Interviewer: You were a child! Severino: Yes, yes, I was a child. I sensed that when I went to secondary school, I would understand more. But when I had to decide what to do, I was undecided between physics, mathematics and philosophy.”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The cry. It is at the beginning of the life of man on earth. The cry of hunting, of war, of love, of terror, of joy, of pain, of death. But animals also cry out; and for primitive man, the wind and the earth, the cloud and the sea, the tree, the stone, the river also cry out. But only man gathers around his own cry, in the absence of the events that provoked it. The decisive aspects of existence are linked to the cry, and in the evocation of the cry, the most ancient human communities not only see the fabric that forms them, but also permanently tie the threads of the fabric, that is, they establish and confirm themselves as human communities. The entire life of the most ancient peoples revolves around the evocation of the cry, that is, around song; and song envelops the living much more closely than the warmth of the fires around which they gather. (p. 41).”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The cry indicates in a simple and powerful way that the inflexibility of the world has yielded at one point. The enemy killed, the animal captured and devoured, the woman possessed, but also the looming death and the defeat suffered and the body and soul torn apart are, since mortals appeared on earth, the cardinal points where the inflexibility of the world gives way. Until that moment, the inflexible order of the world is a wall that cannot be scratched, or at least one hopes it cannot be scratched: the points where the inflexible is bent, flexed, are both outside and inside the screamer. The cry is the crash of the wall cracking, just as thunder is the crash of lightning cracking the crystal of the sky. The crack – the bending of the inflexible – tears the cry from the mortal, just as lightning tears thunder from the sky. Crack and cry are one and the same, in the sense that the cry is not the object of a decision. But the cracking of the inflexible is the becoming of the world. The bending is the “work” that generates the world. The points of bending are the various ways in which the world becomes. The cry indicates the becoming of the world, expresses it, mirrors it, just as thunder mirrors lightning. It is the primordial word. But it is also ambiguous. (p. 47)”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One can propose to control, modify, produce, or destroy the things of the world only if one has faith that they become, that is, that they can dissolve their bond with being and nothingness, that they can be and not be. Only if one believes that things are flexible, oscillating between being and nothingness, can one propose to bend them and control their oscillation. If the will to power is the will to dominate the world, the original form of the will to power is precisely the belief in the existence of the dominable, that is, the belief in the existence of becoming. The civilisation of technology is the most rigorous form of this belief. (chap. I, p. 17)”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“L“”'epistéme“” is [...] a contradiction in two senses. On the one hand, it is an affirmation of the infinite difference (or opposition) between being and nothingness, and at the same time (insofar as it is an affirmation of the existence of becoming) it is an affirmation of the identity of being and nothingness. On the other hand, it is an affirmation of the infinite difference between being and nothingness, and at the same time (insofar as it is the Law of the Whole, to which even that which does not yet exist must conform) it is the entification of nothingness, that is, it transforms that which does not yet exist into something that exists. [...] In its own subsoil, “episteme” is the violation and denial of what it itself affirms on its own surface: the infinite difference between being and nothingness. (chap. VI, pp. 56-57)”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[...] there, where prediction is intended to be incontrovertible – as is the case in “episteme” and in the epistemic residues of modern science – prediction cancels out the becoming from which it seeks to defend – treating as unreal the danger against which it seeks to provide shelter – and it is therefore inevitable that the shelter itself will prove to be unreal and illusory. If one believes that the danger exists, but prepares a shelter that makes one lose sight of the danger, the shelter is illusory. Sooner or later, it is dismantled by the danger in whose existence, despite everything, one has faith. If the epistemic evocation of the Immutables causes one to lose sight of becoming (making it impossible and apparent), it is inevitable that faith in the existence of becoming will unleash forces that escape the dominion of the Immutables and thus make it apparent and illusory. (chap. VII, p. 69)”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every individual believes and doubts; they are a tangle of faith and doubt. But the truth is not only not what individuals think of the world, it is a doubt infinitely more radical than those of which they are capable, because it questions all of man's convictions – and yet its content remains unchanged. And again: since truth is the negation of error, without error there would be no truth. Error is irreplaceable; it has the greatness, power and even beauty of the irreplaceable. And it takes the great geniuses of the West to bring it to light. “Our” civilisation has brought error to light. The “madness” of the West is therefore precious, and it is impossible to propose to “annihilate” error and act to annihilate it. Error is also eternal. It is therefore a question of understanding – beyond all our cultural habits – what it means to “go beyond error” [...]. (chap. XXX, p. 295)”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In its essential meaning, “ontological difference” is the way in which Heidegger's thesis of Kant's synthetic character of existential judgements [...] and, in general, the fundamental principle of Western thought that the unity of being and existing has an accidental character, is presented. For Heidegger, “being” (unlike the absolute, divine “Being” of the metaphysical tradition) “has no power over entities”; it is a letting-be of entities. But both traditional “Being”, which has power over entities, and allowing entities to be have the same foundation: faith in becoming; and becoming is that with respect to which one can take a position either through the power of metaphysical Being (or the scientific-technological apparatus) or by allowing it to be in its freedom and “naivety”. Even the “impotence” with which “being”, according to Heidegger, lets being be is based on the absolute will to power, that is, on the will that wants the existence of becoming. (chap. XXXIII, p. 318)”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our entire past is an eternal lamp that appears in relation to that eternal will to turn on and off the eternal lights of being – that is, the belief that we have the power to turn them on and off. Concomitant with this will – when this will wants to extinguish the lamp of being – appear the darkness of pain and anguish. The pain of the world is the darkness that appears when one believes one has the power to extinguish the lamp of being: it is the eternal star of the night with which destiny responds to the provocation of Madness. [...] In the affairs of peoples, no force can extinguish the lamps of the past, it does not have the power to extinguish them: the darkness of the pain of the world is destiny's response to the provocation of mortals. Provocation wants the impossible [...] and obtains ambiguous answers [...]. Destiny always sends something other than what mortals want and delude themselves into obtaining. [.. .] The sending is not a “choice” or a “decision”; it is the inevitable passing, in the vault of appearance, of the eternal constellations of being. However, it is possible that fate will bring the madness of the will to power to an end and that, after the constellations of Night, the constellations of Day and Joy will arrive. (chap. XXXIX, pp. 361-362)”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nihilism, that is, the belief in the existence of becoming – and therefore the entire history of the West – is not the only possible form of negation of destiny, and yet it is the dominant negation. In its unconscious, this belief is the persuasion that being is nothing. This persuasion is the essence of nihilism. By denying the non-nothingness of being, it is therefore a denial of itself. But in the Western belief, destiny does not appear; it does not stand before it, but behind it. Western philosophy “sees” (that is, believes it sees) the becoming of being. Behind it is destiny, which “sees” that the affirmation of the becoming of being is, in its own unexpressed unconscious, the affirmation that being is nothing. It is in the eyes of destiny that Western faith appears as a denial of destiny and as nihilism, that is, as a denial of itself. (chap. XXXIX, pp. 363-364)”
Emanuele Severino (1929–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source