ERMANNO BENCIVENGA QUOTES

Italian philosopher (1950- )

Every event has a cause--that is ... for every event e1 there exists an event e2 (or a class of events e2, e3 ...) which precedes e1 and of which e1 is a necessary consequence.... If we assent to this statement then your "choice" to do A rather than B, whatever may have been at the time your sensation of freedom from any constraint, was entirely necessitated. You could not have done otherwise and hence, according to this conception of freedom, were not free.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Freedom: A Dialogue


The essence of beauty is in variety and surprise, in richness, ambiguity, and intricacy of detail.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Return from Exile: A Theory of Possibility


Death is the end of time, of individual time at least, and the switching to an eternal instant where differences no longer hold, choices no longer need to be made, and before and after are no longer relevant.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

The Discipline of Subjectivity

Tags: death


More tough love is needed, of the sort that makes one throw a child in the pool, hoping that she will swim; the sort that makes one get her a car, later in life, after enough practice at the simulator, and cross one's fingers as she attempts to transfer her skills from the lab to the battlefield.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Exercises in Constructive Imagination


The meaning of a work of art is what the artist wants to communicate to his public through the work, by using a specific language. Since every language has its limitations and its problems of expression, there will be obstacles to communicating certain contents: a work's value is to be found in the ingenuity, the originality, and perhaps the economy of the solutions the artist finds to overcome these obstacles.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Philosophy in Play

Tags: art


There are no forks in the road of history.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Return from Exile: A Theory of Possibility

Tags: history


"I hope" is used in order to voice a bunch of trivial alibis that express (or deserve) no commitment or future--that ally themselves with the acceptance of the most awful present. People "hope to" win the lottery, or the slots, or to be the ninth caller to a radio station; and pretty soon this caricature is too much of a burden to carry. The delicate fabric of hope is easy to tear; then all we are left with is a tic, we have gone to the opposite extreme from the firmness of faith--and extremes often touch, we know: there are those who go straight from a church service to a bingo game.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Dancing Souls

Tags: hope


A thin present issues from a thin, sketchy, rudimentary relation with the future--one that has not much structure to it.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Dancing Souls

Tags: present


Any position that presents itself as specifying what knowledge is has to face the issue of self-referentiality.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Exercises in Constructive Imagination


Proving one's freedom will often mean insisting on the most arbitrary, odd, unrepeatable aspects of one's behavior.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Freedom: A Dialogue

Tags: freedom


The essence of morality must be found in a careful attention to, and an attentive care for, others.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Return from Exile: A Theory of Possibility

Tags: morality


How can you say that your life is miserable, your pay is too low, your back is broken, or that this guy's life is happy and privileged? It's only one way to put it, the one you've chosen right now. But the data could be read in so many other ways, and none is truer than any other. All you can say is that now it looks to you as if things are thus and so, which doesn't mean that tomorrow they might not look different to you or that even now, just as legitimately, they couldn't look different to others.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Philosophy in Play


Ambiguity is telling you something important, if only you took it seriously. If you did not quickly dispatch it as a pathology.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

A Theory of Language and Mind


Beauty is a symbol of goodness; the admiration we feel for it is a symbol of the reverence inspired by the moral law.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Exercises in Constructive Imagination

Tags: beauty


Fear is, as Freud would say, nothing but a signal--the more effective the more acute and unpleasant it is.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Philosophy in Play


Philosophy is unruliness, it is exploring both sides of the issue, it is defending a position and then destroying it, it is looking for hidden contradictions, it is wondering what you will, how you will, or that you will.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

The Discipline of Subjectivity

Tags: philosophy


What we see of madness is mostly a set of defense mechanisms against it, against the void and the anxiety that are madness. We see the obsessive ceremonies, the phobias, the hysterical symptoms, but all that is already part of a solution of the problem, unsatisfactory as it may be.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

Freedom: A Dialogue

Tags: madness


Death is the end of the struggle to make things work, to keep them together, to show a consistency of plan and action, a directionality of will.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

The Discipline of Subjectivity

Tags: death