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Umberto Galimberti
133 quotes
“From being a centre of symbolic radiation in primitive communities, the body has become in the West the negative of every “value” that knowledge, with the faithful complicity of power, has accumulated.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In this fusion of “'magic and history”', and in the relationship between “'history”' and “'metahistory”' that every magic inaugurates, Ernesto de Martino grasped the essence of magic and offered a true explanation of its ineradicability. Existence, in fact, is always precarious and could not survive without the protective structures that mythology, religion, magic, astrology, palmistry and reason itself are responsible for inaugurating and sustaining.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“AIDS, by presenting us with this inextricable intertwining of life and death, and of love and death, reactivates the image of the vampire who, with his cleft lip, piercing canines, scarlet face, sharp tongue and single nostril, gruesomely represents that death which is never in its place and therefore haunts the unconscious of those who live striving to keep it as far away as possible.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The male-female sexual division is a very strict one, which serves society more than individuals... However, we all know - biologically and psychologically - that we are all male and female, but not in the proportions of 10% and 90%, but rather 40% and 60%. After that, society channels us into a strict sexual division, male and female ...which serves society to identify us, but does not serve our lives; and fluidity ... is an anthropological structure present in each of us. And a man who has a relationship with his femininity is much more interesting than a man with a square jaw.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The priority of Christians is to save the soul, and this has, on the one hand, placed the individual before the community and, on the other, eliminated death and awareness of the cyclical nature of time. For Christians, the future is always positive, it is progress, as it is for Western science. Whereas the past is ignorance, and the present is research. But this senseless hope that has replaced the awareness of death is dramatically passive.”
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“Self-realisation is therefore the decisive factor for happiness. But for self-realisation, it is necessary to exercise the virtue of enjoying what is obtainable and not desiring what is unattainable. Hence, the “right measure”. “Katà Métron” [...]. (from “Umberto Galimberti: That virtue so difficult to teach”.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have a continental philosophy that also speaks in a literary way, think of Heidegger, to name a philosopher of the last century. In reality, they [the British] have always been empiricists: Bacon, Locke and Hume were empiricists, then they had Stuart Mill in the 19th century, who was a positivist. In America, they have John Dewey and William James who are pragmatists. They need to see the concrete, so they are incapable of abstraction. Philosophy is abstraction... Eastern thought cannot enter into the abstract; we Westerners invented it.”
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“There is only one solution for raising children happily: loving relationships, whether between a heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple. Where there is love, children grow up well; where there is violence or emotional coldness, children grow up badly.”
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“So, perhaps a little hastily, I must tell you that males, at least in their imagination, are not monogamous. Their polygamous fantasies are perhaps the cultural legacy of animal behaviour where, with the exception of a few species, monogamy does not exist.”
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“Fidelity, if we want to strip it down a little, is the virtue of those who feel weaker in the couple and have the impression that, having lost the man or woman they live with, they have no other “chance” than the desert of loneliness. And so they cling to the other's indifference, if not hostility, immersing themselves in those exaggerated forms of love that are the flip side of their absolute need for the other.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the need to reassure one's own intrinsic insecurity generates fidelity, the need not to lose oneself in the other generates betrayal.”
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“All this to say that love is not possession, because possession does not tend towards the good of the other, nor towards loyalty to the other, but only towards the maintenance of the relationship, which, far from guaranteeing happiness, which is always in the search for and knowledge of oneself, sacrifices it in exchange for security.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By betraying them, the other person surrenders them to themselves, and nothing prevents us from saying to all those who feel betrayed that perhaps one day they chose who would betray them in order to find themselves, just as one day Jesus chose Judas to meet his destiny.”
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“We adults are responsible for this disillusionment, as we have unconditionally adhered to the “healthy realism” of a single mindset incapable of seeing beyond business, profit and individual interests, abandoning all bonds of solidarity, all compassion for those worse off than ourselves, and all emotional ties outside the narrow confines of the family. Furthermore, we have inaugurated a world view that looks at the earth and its inhabitants solely from a market perspective.”
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“I do not like the definition of “atheist” because it is applied to me by those who believe in God and view the world exclusively from their point of view, dividing it into those who believe and those who do not. This labelling reflects the arrogance of their mindset, which makes their faith the discriminating factor between people.”
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“Before the birth of reason, which is a recent phenomenon, having emerged 2500 years ago with philosophy (which, to distinguish itself from theology, has always reasoned ‘as if God did not exist’), religion was an attempt to find causal links to defend oneself from the unpredictable and the unknown, which has always terrified man and generated anguish.”
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“As for reason without faith, it seems to me that this falls within the scope of reason, which, as Kant reminds us, is a tiny island in the ocean of the irrational. Given its size, allow me to be among those who are committed to its defence.”
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“In this sense, it is possible to say that science, utopia and revolution are all animated by a deeply religious view of time and history, where what was announced at the beginning is ultimately realised.”
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“The Church already realised this at the time of Galileo and, without being deceived by the religious vision of history underlying both science and utopia and revolution, it came into conflict with these secularised versions of eschatological time, because it understood that they corrode it from within to the point of losing track of it, with irreversible damage to the institutions (the Churches) that have their foundation and justification in the eschatological vision of time and history. This is what history teaches us, and the facts confirm it.”
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“No historical era, however absolutist or dictatorial, has ever experienced such a process of massification, because no absolute ruler or dictator was capable of creating a system of conditions of existence in which conformity was the only possibility of life.”
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“We are in the age of technology, where it is impossible to live except at the price of complete standardisation to the world of products that surrounds us, and on which we depend as producers and consumers, to the world of technical and administrative tools that we serve and use, to the world of our fellow human beings relegated to second place, because we relate to them as representatives of their functions.”
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“The very fact that we talk about human beings as “capital” or refer to them as “resources” (so-called “human resources”) speaks volumes about the way we view people today. With the decline of the principle that governed Kantian ethics, according to which: ‘Man must always be treated as an end and never as a means’, today we see that not only immigrants, but each and every one of us has the right to citizenship not because we exist, not because we are human beings, but only as a ‘means’ of production and profit.”
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“It is clear that the more technological society becomes, the more jobs are lost. Paradoxically, what has always been man's oldest dream: liberation from work is turning into a nightmare.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are the goals of the economy also our goals? Or have we become mere instruments of the economic apparatus, which employs us as cogs in its organisation, insignificant links in its chain or, if we prefer, indispensable but also among the most interchangeable of all means within an economic-productive apparatus that has become an end in itself?”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I deal with religious issues because religions, all religions, with their commandments and rules of conduct, represented the greatest educational process that humanity, as a whole, experienced before reason established itself as the regulator of human relations.”
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“As for the relationship between faith and morality, I believe that in order to establish a proper coexistence among human beings, reason is capable of establishing a morality (see Kant) independently of faith, which, as our times and past times demonstrate, contributes more to hostility and ferocity among human beings than to their peaceful coexistence.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Due to a few incidents of medical malpractice, which are widely reported in the news, we risk forgetting that Italy has one of the best national health systems in the world, as certified by the World Health Organisation in August 2007. In the rest of the world, people die either because of a lack of facilities and medicines, as in poor countries, or because healthcare, like all other activities, is a profit-making business, as in rich countries overseas.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And in fact, Christians do not know how to die. A comparison between the death of Socrates and the death of Jesus suffices in this regard. [...] Unlike Socrates, Jesus is afraid, not of the men who will kill him, nor of the pain that will precede death, Jesus is afraid of death itself, and therefore truly trembles before the “great enemy of God” and has none of the serenity of Socrates, who calmly faces his “great friend”.”
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“We live within the Jewish Christian tradition and do not know how to face death except by entrusting ourselves to otherworldly hope. We have a very high opinion of ourselves, deserving of immortality. But does this belief reveal a truth or a disproportionate love of self? Because, in the latter case, it might be worth surrendering to our limitations well in advance, following the Greek wisdom that teaches: ‘Those who know their limits do not fear fate’.”
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“After Ernesto De Martino, Carlo Tullio-Altan, who passed away yesterday at the age of 89, was the greatest Italian anthropologist in two senses: as a significant exponent of cultural anthropology, a discipline so little cultivated in Italy, and as a ruthless investigator of the anthropology of Italians.”
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“Perhaps there is nothing behind life as a couple, and this hidden nothingness arouses that infinite curiosity that makes each of us tireless seekers of love, almost always oblivious to the fact that every event of love is always decreed by heaven.”
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“Every love story lays bare the nature of our soul, which relies on language to express malice, envy, jealousy, kisses poisoned by hatred, tenderness feigned to the point of seeming real, the awareness of knowing each other's secrets: all links in that heavy chain that twists our soul into plots that only language can weave.”
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“And so each of us feels the thrill of zero growth, not knowing how to react, especially if we suspect that zero growth will increasingly be our future, not only because we cannot continue to think that four-fifths of humanity will continue to sacrifice themselves for our growth, but because when growth has no other purpose than to continue growing, it is the people of the privileged world themselves who become mere “functionary” of this fixed idea which, if it becomes the collective purpose of everyone's life, buries and destroys the “meaning” of life, its flavour, its significance for us.”
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“Despite what advertising would have us believe, happiness does not come from the latest generation of mobile phones or computers, or more generally from “products”, but from a shred of “extra relationship”.”
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“All this will lead, as economists say, to a slowdown in growth, if not zero growth. And here we come to that insidious word: “growth”, which economists apply both to the dispossessed countries that account for four-fifths of humanity, and to the already developed countries that nevertheless “must grow”. How far? And at whose expense? And at what environmental cost? Here, the economy remains silent because the problem is not within its remit, and with the economy, the voices of the people who must bow to the laws of the economy also remain silent.”
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“And so, by giving nothingness a semantic power that radiates at a distance to mean anything, fashion cheaply solves identity problems that put an end to the agonising question: “Who am I?”.”
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“If old age no longer shows its vulnerability, where can we find the reasons for “pietas”, the need for sincerity, the demand for answers on which social cohesion is based?”
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“Since we were born, we have been taught that appearing is more important than being. And to this terrible dogma we have sacrificed our bodies, charging them with representing what we are not, or even what we have avoided knowing.”
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“The stroke of genius of Christianity”, which exorcises death by guaranteeing immortality to every human being, has become a common belief that even science has failed to undermine; indeed, in a certain sense, it has contributed to definitively rooting this conviction.”
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“I am not a theologian, but a philosopher of history who follows Nietzsche's “genealogical” method, which, unlike Plato's, does not ask, for example, “what is the soul?”, but rather: “How did this concept come into being, what is its history, what meanings has it taken on, what effects has it had on reality?”, convinced as I am that the essence of a thing, its meaning, lies in its history.”
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“The importance of Heidegger lies in the fact that he describes his philosophy as “going beyond metaphysics”. Given that metaphysics refers to all philosophical thought from Plato onwards, this means placing oneself in a pivotal position, of which Heidegger is fully aware. What does metaphysics mean? Nothing more than the philosophical version of the religious view of the world. (p. 59)”
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“The more temporal power is separated from spiritual power, the more correct the relationship between the two is.”
Umberto Galimberti (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes I wonder if the Church still believes in God. This is certainly a paradoxical and provocative statement, but it has its justification: when the Church intervenes massively to promote legislation favourable to its ethics, then we may wonder whether those who wield ecclesiastical power believe more in the instruments of the world or in the work of God.”
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“This is how philosophy was born: philosophy meant going into the square and teaching people how to govern well, how to lead the soul well, how to respect nature. Philosophy was born for this: to teach men these things. Socrates did this, he went to the square and talked to people. Then it became entrenched, it became an academic, self-referential thing, a doctrine. Something that now closely resembles a sort of daughter of theology.”
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“Crossed by sexuality, the ego yields its limit in order to reaffirm it at a higher level. By coming into contact with the other part of itself, the ego goes beyond fascination and desire to reach that “immense void” where the ontological decision is made, where being reaches its limit and where the limit defines being. (p. 233)”
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“The explicit transition from the interiority to the exteriority of the soul, to which Christian practice had contributed, takes place with Descartes who, in radicalising Platonic dualism, ends up “abolishing” it, resolving the body and the world into representations of the soul, which thus becomes the absolute horizon of presence.”
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“Philosophy loves disagreements, because disagreements produce, generate, feed, and create thematic variations, heuristic games, and absolute novelties. (p. 88)”
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“Brothels have been closed down, not by the Merlin law but by a shift in demand, which no longer seeks sexual exchange but the buying and selling of the imaginary. In large cities, prostitutes have been almost entirely replaced by “'veados”', mostly Brazilian transvestites, imported for a season and then sent back to their “'favelas”'. This is a sign that what is sold on the streets is not sex and even less sexual exchange, but rather the “'representation”' of sex and the glitz of the images it produces.”
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“The meditations on Nietzsche by Heidegger and Jaspers have highlighted with the utmost rigour the metaphysical essence of nihilism and its profound traces in all aspects of the Western soul. (Introduction to Book Two: “'Western Thought”', p. 279)”
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“The tragic conclusion of the Second World War, with the atomic destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, is not just a historical fact for Jaspers, but an indicator of the nihilistic outcomes to which technical and scientific development left to its own devices can lead. (Chapter 58, “False Consciousness and the Claim of the Technical-Scientific Apparatus to be Beyond Comparison”, p. 422)”
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