Emanuele Severino
Emanuele Severino (26 February 1929 – 17 January 2020) was an Italian philosopher. Biography. Severino studied at the University of Brescia and graduated at the University of Pavia under Gustavo Bontadini with the first Italian dissertation on Martin Heidegger and the Metaphysics. Subsequently, Severino broke publicly from Bontadini in 1970 while both were members of faculty of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. A student of his as a young man at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore was Cardinal Angelo Scola, who later served as Archbishop of Milan. Severino spent a number of years on the  faculty of the University of Venice as well. Because of his original philosophical position, the so-called "neoparmenidism", Severino was claimed to be "a giant" and "the only philosopher who in the 20th century can be compared to Heidegger" (Massimo Cacciari). In 1970, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that Severino's ideas were not compatible with Christianity as the basis of Severino's belief in "the eternity of all being," a belief said to eliminate a Creator God. Severino received from the President of the Italian Republic the "Golden medal of the Republic for culture merits  (Medaglia d’oro della Repubblica per i Benemeriti della Cultura"). In April 2019, Severino was interviewed by the then Italian premier Giuseppe Conte who defined him a focal point of the theoretical philosophy at an international level. Severino died in January 2020 due to a lung disease. The eternity of all beings. Severino confronts an ancient problem, rooted in Plato and Aristotle and taken up in the modern era by Heidegger, that of Being. For Severino, all the philosophies which have been formed up to now are characterised by one fundamental error, faith in the Greek sense of becoming. Indeed, since  the ancient Greeks, a being (or anything which is) has been considered as coming from nothing, granted existence temporarily, and then returning into nothing. Severino, reflecting on the absolute opposition between Being and non-Being, given that between the two terms there is nothing in common, considers it evident that being can only remain constantly unchanging, not being changed by anything which is not itself. Thus, since Being is the totality of what exists, there can be nothing else besides it endowed with existence (Severino thereby refutes the concept of ontological difference as put forward by Heidegger). For Severino, therefore , the entire history of philosophy is based on the erroneous conviction that Being can become nothing. Notable alumni. Among his notable alumini there were the following Italian philosophers: Umberto Galimberti, Luigi Ruggiu (b. 1939), Carmelo Vigna (b. 1940), Mario Ruggenini (1940-2021), Salvatore Natoli (b. 1942), Italo Valent (1944-2003), Luigi Vero Tarca (b. 1947), Luigi Lentini, Giorgio Brianese (1958-2021), Massimo Donà (b. 1952). Bibliography. Not many of Severino's works have been translated. One of his crucial works has been translated into German: "Vom Wesen des Nihilismus", and into English as "The Essence of Nihilism".