Luigi Pareyson Quotes
Luigi Pareyson was an Italian philosopher of existence, hermeneutics, and aesthetics and the principal architect of Italian personalism in the second half of the twentieth century. Long-time professor at Turin, he taught and shaped a generation of Italian philosophers, including Gianni Vattimo and Umberto Eco. The quotes below are attributed to Luigi Pareyson, organized by topic.
Browse Luigi Pareyson by topic
Luigi Pareyson on Freedom
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Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:
“Freedom is what makes the person more than nature.”
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“God wants to exist and wants to be what he is, which means that he is free not only with regard to being in general, but above all with regard to his own being, in short, he is not bound either to his own existence or to his own essence.”
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“God himself, as absolute freedom and original will, contains, indeed is, the answer to the “fundamental question” [What is his name? (Ex. 3:13)], but he does not state it in explicit terms: he merely says “I am who I am, I am who I want to be”, which is a definitive statement. There is nothing more to say: it is an absolute act of will and freedom, by which God makes himself and declares himself master of his own being and of being in general.”
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“[Beauty] is always free and adherent: free because it does not adhere to conceptual knowledge, adherent because it adheres to an interpretation of nature.”
Wikiquote
Luigi Pareyson on God
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“God is master of his own essence, because in him act and essence, essence and will are one and the same.”
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“God is being, goodness, truth, or the positive in general, but insofar as it is willed and chosen, victory over possible nothingness.”
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“The primacy of reality is in itself a victory over nothingness, and the choice of good is always a judgement on evil, so that God has two aspects in himself: that by which “ab aeterno” good has been chosen by an irreversible act and evil is rejected as a rejected possibility; and that by which evil, as a discarded alternative, subsists forever as the backdrop of possibility and as a hidden but available possibility.”
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“Even those who do not believe in God cannot cease to be interested in what God represents for a believer, and only philosophy can show this.”
Ontologia della libertà -
“Only the awareness that God shares human suffering can prevent suffering from increasing human negativity.”
Ontologia della libertà -
“It is not without reason that religious experience focuses above all on the suffering and redeeming God, which confirms that the ultimate recourse to the problem of evil is religion, certainly not morality.”
Ontologia della libertà -
“Man awakens on the cosmic stage the evil that was dormant in God.”
Ontologia della libertà
Luigi Pareyson on Knowledge
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“(About Fëdor Michajlovič Dostoevskij ) He provided neither theology nor metaphysics, but today theology and metaphysics cannot do without him.”
Wikiquote
Luigi Pareyson on Love
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“To see nature as beautiful, it must be considered in its organic productivity, that is, interpreted. Wanting to interpret nature is already loving it: interpretation is already a vision in love with nature that highlights its beauty.”
Estetica dell'idealismo tedesco
Luigi Pareyson on Mind
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Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:
“Each person is a unique interpretation of being.”
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“Play is contemplation, removed from the seriousness of passivity as intuition and need, and of activity as intellect and reason.”
Wikiquote
Luigi Pareyson on Nature
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“The problem of evil has its roots in the dark depths of human nature and in the secret recesses of man's relationship with transcendence.”
Ontologia della libertà
Luigi Pareyson on Time
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“Evil must be distinguished as possible and real: in God it is present as possible, and there man finds it and realises it in history.”
Ontologia della libertà -
“The temporal dialectic as a struggle between good and evil is that which exists in human temporal history, in which positive and negative, good and evil are always in struggle, always in tension, always together.”
Ontologia della libertà
Luigi Pareyson on Truth
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Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:
“Aesthetics is the science of the formation of forms.”
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Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:
“Truth is given only in interpretation; interpretation is the form of truth.”
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Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:
“Tragic ontology grasps that being itself is given as gift.”
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“What is important is not reason for its own sake but truth : the value of reason depends on its connection to truth and its ontological roots.”
Ontologia della libertà
Luigi Pareyson on Virtue
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“The positive choice is itself a choice of goodness, and the negative choice is itself a choice of evil.”
Wikiquote