Interview with Marcello Veneziani
In a rainy day in late February Marcello Veneziani, a philosopher, journalist, writer, especially thinker but I am staying right in the heart of Rome near the Pantheon, where every inch of the urban area oozes history, mythology, fate. Where Raphael and Vittorio Emanuele rest in a truly sacred. The theme of "Amor fati," his last literary effort. The passion with which civil answers to the questions are rare in this Italy which seems to have forgotten its origins and, therefore, of his destiny.
"The last trace of fate and superstition for a date: December 21, 2012, referred to as the end of the world, the end of the world is the only true and universal realization of communism." That's because today superstition has set a trend?
I believe that when we do not have significant religious and symbolic references, closed in on the phenomena that Oswald Spengler called second-religiosity, that is, forms of superstition, and is a typical phenomenon that catches the company in crisis, a decadent society, and that takes the sectors most fragile of these companies, because maybe others can answer while still maintaining a rational consistency in their responses. There are those who need irrational, and failing to have significant responses in terms of symbolic and mythological even if the factory through these forms of religious bricolage.
She says, in his essay: "We would like to recommend to the masses necrophilia and masochistic than to visit the Sistine Chapel, and enjoy the Last Judgement by Michelangelo. At least there is no art and there is also the divine comfort, you will die and there is beauty in and pick up the ladies in person. Do you believe in a God?
I I consider myself in the sense of Eliade, " religiosus homo" in the sense that I have a strong tendency to think of religion. Do not consider myself a believer tout court, not a practicing Catholic, I think, if you will, a Catholic in the doorway, in the sense that I'm there, I have many uncertainties, I think that was crucial to the encounter with European civilization, Christianity But from the standpoint of Catholic religious and I do not feel to call me a believer. Here, however, with respect to these phenomena of the second religion, I say: "Long live the Christian tradition."
Because today the family, patriotism and religious meaning have dissolved and, as you say, "are in free fall"?
Why are we focused on the individual, that is, we believe that a person can be autonomous and self-sufficient, that should be sufficient in itself and can regardless of any community context and transcendent, and thus could easily do without contexts such as family , home, and on the other hand, the sense of the sacred. E 'euphoric this form, which then became depressed, self-sufficiency total, which produces this effect, and so this crisis.
"Ours, she says, is a society that celebrates freedom as the termination of every human connection and transcendent." Historically, '68, has had an impact on this concept of "freedom from being released and the logos, which actually expresses a connection"?
Yes, I think '68 was the turning point in our time, in the sense that throughout history we can identify so many times when there was a turning point, then the advent of modernity, but about our past generations, I think '68 was the last revolution to nothing, the latest revolution than any connection with the sacred, with tradition, with responsibility, with everything that unites us to the world a bond of order and responsibility. And I must say, having written a book about the '68, so I do not consider the '68 limited movement in his historical, social. I consider it a kind of key to access, password, to indicate an era, an era that we call the '68 vintage, but that was in many ways prior to '68 and in other ways later. One way to shorten the passing of an era.
After the fall of the wall, he argues, globalization has taken place is a haunting, both the strengthening of identity. Do not you think that today our identity is seriously endangered, primarily by globalization, and secondly by the Islamic world?
Definitely. I have told about the possibility that identity because we recover endangered, and that is the danger of identity can sometimes give rise to a reactive device spiritually and intellectually, that may help to awaken and recover their identity. The identity of course is not an entity firm, fixed, static identity is always in the flow of change. For this I prefer to speak of tradition, which is an identity that is moving, evolving, while maintaining elements of constancy and fidelity. And I think certainly the identity today is crushed by a line from retching fundamentalism, which can then be localist in nature, in some ways, but especially of a religious nature in the sense of Islamic religious fanaticism on the other. And on the other hand, the great phenomenon of globalization, which will surely stifle depresses the identity, and thus arouses a desire to belong, which manufactures the predicament, what is called de-territorialization, de-localization, all phenomena related to eradication.
Another topic that addresses a very important progress. You say that "progress is inhumane and in its genesis and in its development as it reduces man to means of locomotion of the story to his appointment eternally postponed, with the progress. " What do you think of the relationship between faith and progress?
I believe that progress, if applied to related areas, namely technology, science, development, welfare, is a fact. They are not to condemn the idea. Critical to the belief that progress is a kind of theological scheme, metaphysical, by which we are inserted, and then we are a sort of experiment for the man who will, we are still imperfections that should be sent to the pulp, or at the slaughterhouse of history as Hegel said, to enable a generation even better. From this point of view I think it is a perversion of the theological design. The design speaks to a theological metanoia, a renewal, and then a path to God, but does not believe that the generations are a means to the end of progress and believes that every man is an end in itself, and then each person carries in itself this progress. In other words, there is a fundamental difference between religious progress, which could be defined with St. Bonaventure 's " itinerarium mentis in Deum", that is the way to God, which is a journey of the mind, and spirit; and on the other hand, the conviction that history will produce God, that God will do through history. This idea is profoundly anti-human because it treats men only the pieces before reaching the later stages.
In the essay, she links the disappearance of God from our time with the disappearance of the community. In what sense?
First we must go back to the etymological meaning of religion, which is a bond. A bond not only with the transcendent, but also with others, that is a community marked by love of God or the fear of God, depending on your point of view. There is a close link between faith in God and the perception of a common destiny with others. This is all part of a tradition, a civilization. Certainly one can imagine a relationship between the ego and God alone, but certainly in our solitude in the heart of our solitude, still vibrates a strong relationship with what came before us, with whom it has generated, with those who follow. We inevitably, when we dialogue with God, not alone but with others. So there is a community that for Christians is the ecclesia, that is the real religious community that gave rise to this encounter with the divine. In other words, one can not ignore the three dimensions that characterize us, that is personal, community law and transcendent.
The amor fati is "not only love what is happening and what we assign life, but royal detachment, with events and the results of our actions, Lord of life than the dependencies of the world, attention without apprehension for the coming day. " This seems to be a hindrance to modern man than his willingness to take place as a man.
sure you consider the creation of human beings through a kind of continuous decoupling from what binds us, what characterizes us, what belongs to us, in the belief that perfection is infinite, non-finiteness, the break with everything that defines us in a body, in a place, in a civilization, in a family. Do not you feel a freedom is the absolute negation of freedom, because freedom is as if a reference point the limits of a person, the boundaries of a person, what a person by his characterization is phenomenal, historic, positive, is transformed into its opposite: freedom like dispersion in an uncertain light, and the loss of the ego in full, and then nihilism.
Just coming to nihilism, you have already identified as the internal enemy of society as a previous essay "Against the Barbarians" today in forms that occurs? And the younger generation is really nihilistic?
I believe that not only the younger generation, but also more mature ones are based on nihilism. What is known, and is the only element of comfort in this vision of reality is that however desperate, despite this sense of meaninglessness, of anything that characterizes the life we \u200b\u200bhave the same ordinary acts we perform, we are passionate about things too fleeting, but knowing that they are insignificant, because obviously there is an ontological device within us that leads us to imagine not only paid in nothing but lead us to consider that in us there is a trace of something that survives, something that remains, and then I believe that new generations have more sense of nothingness, nihilism, but even in them there is this instinctive reaction to going into nothingness, into space. We can not think if not ordering, connecting, and we fail to act only hope. So we have within us a device that brings us to live in spite of nihilism. And then sometimes I would say that the real antagonist is the reality of nihilism, that is the sense of reality. And this also explains the deeper meaning of amor fati: Amor fati is the love of reality, reality as it is to love, what we are, and then build on that acceptance of reality, we place ourselves in a position which already tends to overcome nihilism, because the reality is that the things we are fragrant, there are watching us, inspire us, feed us, and therefore in this link with the world, in this connection with the world, we confer meaning to the world and then we turn away from nihilism.
What are the remedies?
must start from the ontology and the reality of things, not values, because values \u200b\u200bare a consequence of reality. At a time when we look at reality, we assign meaning to reality, to give a concrete example and elementary: if we believe it is significant that I was born to two people, which are those of my parents and I assign a value to that point, the relationship with my parents, I do as a result that I recognized this reality, this ontological fact, biological, spiritual, by which I derived from those two people. And then starting from the reality that we groped to overcome nihilism. Starting from the reality and then giving way to reality and therefore value.
"Man, freed from the sacred, believed to gain greater freedom to transfer assets from heaven to earth, but the meaning of his life was put out by itself, passed on to others and even on other objects, tracing reversing the path from religion to idolatry. " Here, he means that those who reject the sacred is the slave of his freedom, remaining hetero-directed from material goods, which for him are the means for self-realization?
Yes, in some ways yes, in other respects you can say something else, that you do not accept this significant link with the sacred, in the end suffers other ties with the humblest things that are ultimately sanctify and become the subject of a totem, and then the same technique, then all that makes up the emptiness of the sacred plays a sacred for us. So is the one that is not limited to: relatives are two phenomena that are, perhaps, even the lights of our need to still make sense of things, and when we can not give it, we cling to the naked mathematical certainty of some technical data to make up for the absence of meaning.
An essay published in these days, titled "Crucifixion of state", Sergio Luzzatto, raises again the issue of crucifixes in public places, and resurface is the conflicting relationship between civilization and tradition on the one hand, constitution formal and non-discrimination principle on the other. What do you like to say?
I believe that the crucifix in a public place is not a confessional note, is the recognition of a tradition. E 'approval, a public space, something that has characterized our civilization. When it comes to religion civil, and he speaks from a secular perspective, because the civil religion was in vogue at the time the pagan era, that of Romania, became a source of reference to Machiavelli, who was a pagan himself has referred ROUSSEAU the civil religion. But the civil religion that is it but the translation into a common language, civil in fact, historically, shared traditions, beliefs, symbols, myths, rituals, which also derive from religious traditions. So the crucifix to be seen as a sign of civilization. We were steeped in 2000 years for that symbol, and that's a reason we can identify. Then who is a believer to recognize that symbol a value much more important, to bind us to God, give us a perspective half-human, half-historical, and instead those who did not recognize this religious perspective, however, in the crucified his father, his ancestors, the epochs that preceded it The fact that most of our art is born in the shadow of that symbol, the fact that Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, have painted great things in the name of that faith. It seems to me a sign of hypocrisy, or even Nicodemus, as theologians would say, that is going to find Christ at night, this idea of \u200b\u200bhiding the symbols religiosi.Sono the language of our community, so I think that should be accepted. This does not prevent others to grow other symbols, but in public space is good to have that for millennia has characterized our community.
And to those who object to the revision of the Concordat in 1984, Christianity is no longer the state religion do you respond?
I'm not the idea of \u200b\u200brestoring the state religion. I speak just dell'dea the civil tradition of our country is also imbued with religious symbols, and then, in the name of this ancient tradition, which regards our collective imagination, the generations that preceded us, history is just that is the crucifix in public places. We think that for example the act more secular in our history, the reemergence, he leads religious: the very word comes from the resurrection, the first essay on the revival wrote a Jesuit, Bettarini, the first theory is the revival of Gioberti. That is to say that even a historical event, a layman, with a footprint anti-clerical and Masonic had a religious derivation. So why should we withdraw in the face of this symbol? It 'an important and significant symbol of a civil point of view, and not a purely sectarian point of view.
During this time, for obvious reasons, there is much talk of the Unification of Italy. In his view, the unit has weakened further from our traditions, already under threat from the outside?
I believe that the drive has been mutual accountability: whether the church and Catholics on the one hand, both supporters of the Risorgimento, the rulers, leaders of this segregation, this divorce. And it was a bit 'the limit of our unification, because if we had tried to put together the tradition that has permeated Italy with the process unit would probably now a more mature, we also shared ethics of the Renaissance who attempted to put the Catholic tradition on the edge and on the other hand, there was a Catholic reaction clerical intended to diminish the value of national identity. It 'was a mistake, because national unity was the culmination of a process that ancient historical roots derived from deeply religious and secular at the same time. We would not be Italian if not to our origins concepissimo a father and a mother who is the Roman Empire and the Christian church. Those are the parents of Italy. It 's the Christian Middle Ages that has its roots in the history of Italy. Gioacchino Volpe explained it: the Italian language is permeated with these moods. And throughout history, the art of religious configuration I think is the most obvious representation, "The Betrothed" the work that coincides with the process of the Risorgimento, it is imbued with religious values. Then groped so disenchanted, secular, suitable to our time, a meeting between these two sensibilities I believe it is a treasure, both for the civil aspect of the unification of Italy, but for the religious aspect.
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