Emanuele Severino 1929 – 2020
Emanuele Severino was an Italian philosopher and one of the most controversial and original metaphysicians of the late twentieth century. A pupil of Gustavo Bontadini and long-time professor at Brescia and Venice, he developed in his Returning to Parmenides and the magisterial The Essence of Nihilism the radical thesis that becoming, the passage from being to non-being and back, is impossible, and that the conviction that things truly come to be and pass away is the deepest error and the secret nihilism of Western thought. His theses led to his expulsion from the Catholic University of Milan in the 1970s but have continued to shape Italian philosophical debate.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Italian
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Continental
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Emanuele Severino:
“Becoming is impossible; what is, eternally is.”
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Attributed to Emanuele Severino:
“The West is the history of the conviction that things become; that conviction is nihilism.”
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Attributed to Emanuele Severino:
“Faith in non-being is the deepest error of metaphysics.”
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Attributed to Emanuele Severino:
“All beings are eternal; appearing and disappearing are themselves eternal facts.”
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Attributed to Emanuele Severino:
“Parmenides spoke the truth that the West has refused.”