Italian philosopher (1950- )
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
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
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
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
There are no forks in the road of history.
ERMANNO BENCIVENGA
Return from Exile: A Theory of Possibility
Any position that presents itself as specifying what knowledge is has to face the issue of self-referentiality.
ERMANNO BENCIVENGA
Exercises in Constructive Imagination
"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
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
Proving one's freedom will often mean insisting on the most arbitrary, odd, unrepeatable aspects of one's behavior.
ERMANNO BENCIVENGA
Freedom: A Dialogue
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
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
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
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
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