Religion
and Politics in Aldo Capitini
Norberto Bobbio
1. In the history of Italian spirituality Aldo Capitini occupies a most singular place. So singular that I am led to speak of ‘spirituality’ and not, as one would expect, of ‘culture’. Whoever studies Croce or Gramsci has little difficulty in finding significant links between their thought and our cultural and civil past. For Capitini the search is more difficult, almost desperate.
He graduated in 1928 at the Scuola Normale di Pisa under the guidance of Attilio Momigliano, often remembered as the master in those years, studying the classics of our literature. But he was never a literary man. He knows his Dante, Foscolo, Leopardi, Manzoni well, and often draws inspiration and illuminating quotations from them. But when he tries to get a tight grip on their ideas on faith, humanity, the world, he expresses more dissent than assent. He quotes Dante: ‘faith without which good works are not enough’ and straight away he objects: ‘No, “good works” are enough [ ... ]; inmost active sincerity is the instrument of salvation, and Man with his “good works” frees himself in spirit, enters infinity, the intimate heaven which looks on reality’. He admires Foscolo’s man who ‘does not give way to vices, does not give in to tyrants, does not give way to the rabble, and becomes statue-like.’ But this is stoicism and in stoicism, in this looking for refuge in interior solitude, there is something sad: ‘How can one heal a society that would become decadent if the best should retire in order to save themselves?’ Of Manzoni he says that ‘he was the lovable, noble guide who led back to the bosom of domestic joys, to rediscover Mass, worship, Catholic festivities, moral tradition, coupled with the exercise of culture and literature’, and comments: ‘…and who does not love him and is not moved by this?’ But straight afterwards he points out that he should have been more rigorous and ‘suffer more intensely situations of deficiency. He should have understood what there was inside those churches at the sound of whose bells the tormented conscience of the Unnamed found comfort.’ Of them all the closest is Leopardi: in an autobiographical passage he says that from early on he was a Kantian-Leopardian. He reputes him a religious spirit, more religious he says, and rightly so, than Croce, since the protest against death is more religious than its acceptance. Croce is Greco-European, intent on values which are realized in the world; Leopardi is open, besides to values, to people, to the dead. Leopardi expresses the tension towards value that is always beyond mean reality (‘With my rambling imagery / well I know she is at variance’); he intuited in the splendid verses in which Leopardi re-evokes Nerina the feeling of ‘compresence’; he glimpsed in the unity of living beings (‘all allied together she deems mankind’) a way of fighting against cruel mother Nature. But Leopardi is a romantic and his limits are the limits of Romanticism, in which pain and death are, yes, present but not redeemed, shared but not rehabilitated, suffered but not resolved.
As regards philosophy, Capitini too, like all his contemporaries, went through Italian idealism. He accepts the contraposition of modern philosophy to ancient and medieval philosophy, typical of idealism. From his familiarity with the works of our idealists he draws a solid immanentistic conviction against the old transcendence of a God outside the world, to contemplate, adore and serve; from historicism he accepts the fundamental idea that history is the regnum hominis, and that reality, if it is history, is continual creation of Man; he goes along with the interpretation of modern philosophy as philosophy of the Subject, in contrast with the objectivistic philosophies of antiquity, and intends moving towards comprehension and transformation of reality placing himself at the Subject’s point of view; finally, he starts from the act rather than the event or facts, the act understood as absolute principle and initiative (from Gentile’s philosophy of the act). It is easy to tell from the frequent quotations that the works of Croce were among his best-loved texts: on several occasions he repeats that Croce inspired in him the doctrine of the values (even though he does not agree on the value of the economic or the vital). But he also read and assimilated Gentile, who is rarely quoted, however.
Yet he is neither idealist nor historicist; neither Crocian nor Gentilian. Indeed, his first work, Elementi di un’esperienza religiosa [Elements of a Religious Experience] (1937), where the main themes of his later works are clearly set out, is one of the first documents of the decline of idealism, which begins exactly in those years. ( La vita come ricerca [Life as Research] by Ugo Spirito was published in the same year, La struttura dell’esistenza [The Structure of Existence] by Nicola Abbagnano in 1939). Idealism, historicism, subjectivism, actualism offered him critical ammunition in order to free himself from philosophies incompatible with his own vision of the world. This, however, moves in another direction, which is not acceptance, but rather refusal of reality and history, not conciliation with the world, but rather a perpetual struggle against it; not justification in order to take up your place in it, but rather a continual doubting of it in order to change it. When he drew close to Croce, he confesses, he had been ‘for many years a free religious, implicitly a Kantian with a prevalent attention towards Man’s finitude’. Without doubt, the immanentistic position is superior to that of the philosophies of transcendence; but the immanence that he has in mind does not exclude God’s presence, but includes it. After having eliminated the old dualism, so as not to loosen the tension towards the infinite, it is necessary to ‘dualize immanence’. Historicism has eliminated Man’s false tension towards an external immobile Nature, but it risks slackening every tension, and becoming a philosophy of satisfaction. Romantic thought, from Fichte to Gentile, has moved the centre of philosophy from the object to the subject, but this subject is an enormous I, not the totality of subjects concretely working, to whose collaboration is due the creation of values. Finally, however important may be Gentile’s teaching, which brought ‘the All to gravitate on the Subject’s act’, exclusive of unity with others, with everyone, actualism risks continually falling into the arms of mysticism or solipsism, due to its individualistic orientation.
While Italian philosophy is dominated by Hegel, Capitini’s thought, from the early years and with ever greater awareness and force of conviction as time passes, looks to Kant. Hegel’s philosophy represents the celebration of the system closed in on itself. In Kant, instead, there is the primacy of the moral, tension towards the ideal, which is the real reality even though unreachable (the Sollen which Hegel derided), a pure and lofty, not mythical, concept of religion. With Hegel all scores are by now settled: what he gave, he gave. The dialogue with Kant, however, continues and is always instructive. Kant can be asked, though it is stretching things, even confirmation of positions reached from very different shores: in one of the most daring and arduous chapters of his last philosophical work, Capitini wishes to demonstrate that in Kant there is an anticipation of his theory of the ‘adjunction’. To conclude: ‘Notwithstanding so much Hegelism in the air, and in our blood, in the structures and history of today, we place ourselves in a situation which is more similar to Kant’s’. Hegel interpreted reality through the law of the dialectic, that is: of unfolding through opposites, birth takes the place of death in a process without end and without direction. But for he who wishes not just to contemplate reality, but to transform it, another law is needed, which is that of increment by adjunctions. It is the difference between simple presence and ‘compresence’. No longer will we say that: ‘liberated reality will necessarily come after Evil has unleashed itself and given vent as in a reign of the Antichrist, but that liberated reality shall be added from within.’
So Capitini passed through idealism but did not stop there. Already in his first work bloom, if anything, existentialistic patterns, like that of the ‘passionate awareness of finiteness’, from which he causes to spring the prime source of religious experience. Finitude, one of Capitini’s themes, cannot not draw our attention to the first existentialism, which was beginning to be talked about right at that time in Italy. But a direct influence is out of the question: the only author quoted in the Elements who could be included in the existential ranks is Berdiaeff. More than a meeting it is a matter of convergence, a harmony, a common perception and interpretation of the great spiritual and social crisis that is assailing Europe. Only some years later, when by then existentialism had spread and one could not but notice, will Capitini try to fix some particular characteristics of his own position in respect of Kierkergaard. But we must not neglect Carlo Michelstaedter, a source which has remained for the most part secret of a genuine branch of Italian existentialism, whom Capitini quotes for his exemplary experience right from the first pages of Elements, and from whom he draws one of the most pregnant expressions of his very personal philosophical-religious language (‘persuasione’ - see note at end of essay).
It would be out of place anyway to try and understand Capitini through philosophy (even less through literature). Capitini is not and does not want to be a philosopher. He uses philosophy but does not tend towards it. And he does not even start from philosophy: his master was not – as he had the occasion to say - this or that great philosopher, but practical existence, the attention given to the real, lived, suffered insufficiency of Man, not that which is described in books. He reads and discusses philosophers, but aims to change the world, not interpret it. Trying to define his own position he speaks of ‘practical mysticism’. The concept of ‘praxis’ is one of the fundamental elements of his more mature thought. He places the accent continually on the need for action, forming busy groups that are actively involved socially. He takes more pleasure in his work as an organizer than as a writer. Even his more apparently theoretical work is in reality a practical programme. One of his most important books, Religione aperta, ends with a chapter entitled What to do?, in which after saying that ‘all the book is practical’, he speaks about his own initiatives in social and religious issues.
In the same way that he writes books that are not on philosophy, though maintaining throughout his life a serried discussion with great philosophers of the past and present (from Plato to Dewey), he is a man of action, yes, but not a politician. He bustles about in perpetual motion in order to bring about and guide actions which have to do with politics and compromise politicians. He faces political problems, not only theoretically but also organising group actions, from administrative decentralization to school and army reform; from the crisis of representative democracy to world peace; he discusses passionately and unflaggingly the great themes of civil cohabitation, fascism and antifascism, Communism and anti-Communism, imperialism and pacifism, capitalism and socialism. But in the strict sense of the word he never does politics. Trying to understand Capitini’s personality starting from politics would be just as wrong as trying to interpret his thought starting from philosophy. This is also why it is rather arduous, as we said at the beginning, to find the right place for him in our national history. The usual philosophical labels – Idealism, Existentialism, Spiritualism – do not come to our aid, nor do the political ones – Liberalism, Socialism, Communism. He takes part in the antifascist struggle – indeed, he is one of the protagonists of the internal resistance. And he invents a new formula: Liberal-Socialism. However, the moment his companions merge with a new party (il Partito d’Azione), he does not adhere and prefers to stay on his own. Later he will explain that his liberal-socialism was the banner not of a party in nuce, but of an ethical-religious movement which aimed at a deeper renewal, not only social but moral, which would not have been suitable for a party. Without condemning parties at all, his utopia is the state without parties, a ‘new sociality’ in which the participation of citizens in discussion and decision-making regarding collective matters is so intense not to render necessary the intermediation of organised groups. Parties exist for power: the conquest of power is their absolute, the end of which they are the means. To the party he opposes the ‘centre’, which is not social but communitarian, does not line up against other parties but keeps itself open to initiatives from all sides, does not impose dogmas but discusses problems, does not have privileges for the card-carriers, nor power-wielding officials. Having clarified once for all the incompatibility of his aspirations with belonging to a party, he takes joy in calling himself by generic names which do not allow classification: ‘left-wing independent’ or ‘free religious’.
Are there ‘free religious’ in the history of Italy? In Capitini’s writings recur frequently two names whose coupling does not facilitate the interpretation of a work which, as we have seen, goes beyond philosophy and politics: Saint Francis and Mazzini. Often Capitini cites both the one and the other’s thoughts which have become part of his ideal heritage. Franciscan is considering as primary and more elementary form of religious love - the love ‘that moves towards things, which all are sisters to me as limited, natural individual’. Saint Francis, more modern than Dante and Saint Thomas, truly puts an end to feudalism. He reintroduces to Christian spirituality the theme of nonviolence: St. Francis’ method was that of ‘going to talk with the Saracens rather than exterminate them in the Crusades, when blood at times was knee deep’. To the church as institution he opposes a religiosity founded on ‘human interiorization of the divine tragedy’. The Mazzini that Capitini admires is more the religious spirit than the man of action, more the great educator than the politician – which explains why he is found in St. Francis’ company. He exalts ‘his missionary and messianic tension’, ‘ his courage in calling himself non-Christian, cleft from the dogma of the fall, deeply averse to traditional religious institution’. He speaks of Mazzinianism as ‘the greatest heresy in Italy in recent centuries’ (‘heresy’, note, not party or sect). To Mazzini the educator he dedicates a long essay in which, emphasising the prophetic aspect of his thought, he looks for the roots of his own ethical-religious inspiration. There he affirms: ‘After St. Francis, Italy had never had such a lofty reformer, and one, let it also be said, equally unfortunate.’
Yet both St. Francis and Mazzini were too tied to their times in order for their message to be accepted without reserve also today. St. Francis was not, could not be, a modern man: he is obsequious to authority even to obeying an iniquitous order, he naively believes in dogmas and evangelical legends which historical criticism has discredited. Mazzini glimpses the possibility of a religious reform not disjoined from a political reform but does not grasp the deep meaning – the creation of a new man –, and the means suggested (the cooperative, the nation, the federation) are inadequate. The hero of our times, for Aldo Capitini, as we shall see better further on, is Gandhi. Well then, neither St. Francis nor Mazzini stand up to comparison with the liberator of India. In the aperture of the middle ages towards a new civilization, the position of St. Francis is similar to Gandhi’s, who is ‘the religious go-between from the old India to democratic India’. But Gandhi is ‘more modern’; in Gandhi, and not in St. Francis ‘who was more medieval’, there is the spirit of tolerance towards other religions and, more importantly, the feeling that each struggle for freedom is also a religious struggle. Gandhi shook and freed the whole country; Mazzini only managed to form small groups of conspirators, and was beaten. The peculiar character of Capitini’s work is in the union, better the fusion, of religion and politics. On the one hand his politics are always animated by a religious afflatus: he never limits himself to only political action; even when he enters the field traditionally cultivated by politicians his action is always more than political, and the ‘extra’ is of religious origin and inspiration. On the other hand, his religiosity is never so detached from questions of civil cohabitation not to continually pass through the dominion reserved to politicians. In a Lettera di religione he deals with the theme of the rapport between religion and public life. He maintains that ‘to be truly religious we have to pass through public life’ and comments: ‘if you go from private life to religious life without passing through public life, there is the danger of living religion in a utilitarian fashion as superstition’. And there where he reaffirms the concept that only ‘on participation in public life rises authentic religious life’ he quotes Gandhi’s thoughts adding ‘in this more modern than Mazzini’. It is exactly because he is a religious politician, or a political religious, that Capitini can draw inspiration from St. Francis and from Mazzini, but he can not identify himself either with one or the other (while he identifies himself with Gandhi). Perhaps one could say that for him St. Francis is more religious than political, Mazzini more political than religious. Or otherwise, the religious-politician, exactly because he is religious in political life and political in religious life, is no longer religious nor political in the traditional sense. But St. Francis is still too much a liegeman of the church to be a new religious, and Mazzini too loyal to the state and the means the state uses to reach its aims (including violence) to be a new politician.
2. The key for disclosing the profound meaning of Capitini’s spirituality should be looked for in some pages of L’atto di educare, where to the figure of the traditional schoolmaster, whose office is to fill the gap between the adult and adolescent generations, is opposed that of the figure of the prophetic master, who, instead of passing on attained knowledge, is in open controversy with the surrounding reality and announces a new reality. They are two ways of understanding the solution to the educative rapport, understood as the relationship through which comes about the transformation, for better or worse, of the human world. While the first solution looks with distinct sympathy on the work of the scientist,
the solution of the prophet is centred on the tension which is characteristic of religion towards the supreme destination, towards liberation from the limits which impede the fullness of value… [and] counters with, or adds, an energetic and dramatic dualism between authentic reality and immediate reality, between eternal and contingent, a gives a jolt to vitality and to conformism.
In the chapter in which he describes prophetic attitude, Capitini draws the ideal model of the religious reformer towards whom all his oeuvre moves passionately; to describe it he uses the same emblematic words which help him every time he expounds his own programme of religious reform. The prophet is ‘the revealer of an absolute, liberating reality’; in him vigorous ethical incitation joins together ‘with the persuasion of a reality which opens up, of a transmutation, of a something better which establishes itself to eternal comfort’. The prophet does not present himself as legislator, if anything as destroyer of written laws in the name of those unwritten. Diversely from the priest who defends traditional religion, the prophet ‘is born with himself and dies with himself, and wants to die, disappear, to entrust all to those who are liberated and to the festive state of liberation.’ While the priest looks to the past, is a conserver, the prophet looks to the future, is an innovator. The prophetic moment of history corresponds to the age of great religious innovation in which, the crust of the ossified institutions being broken, new spiritual forms burst into traditional society. Is the age of the prophets over? In the face of the devastating crisis of the institutions – church and state – of our time, and of the threat of universal extermination, and of the tragic insufficiency of solutions which are only political, shouldn’t a radically new solution be sought? And what can this solution consist in if not in exerting all one’s force for the advent of a new prophetic age?
When he expounds his thoughts and describes his activity, Capitini never uses expressions like ‘prophet’. But there seems no doubt that, introducing into his own discourse the idea of ‘prophetic tension’ he looked for a historical category to help him to become more conscious of his own mission. When he speaks about himself, his work, he speaks more soberly of ‘religious persuasion’, which, in his language, stands for ‘faith’ or ‘belief’. A person who lives with religious persuasion is a ‘persuaso’. This person is to prophetic religion as the believer to traditional religion. But this persuaso is something more than the believer because his religious attitude is active, not passive; and the prophetic moment is not outside but inside him. The persuaso is he who helps keep alive the prophetic tension. The most complete description of this person can be read in Capitini’s speech at the first congress for religious reform in Italy (1948):
I have present the sort of man, who is no longer the priest of dogma and of the transcendent sacrament, nor the intellectual detached from the many: he is the persuaso, convinced of compresence in value; who refers continually to the openness of the one-everyone, and he feels it his own authentic reality. The persuaso who lives in the midst of the tragedy of the world like Christ, and who feels continuously the shadow that stifles life, happiness, pleasure; but he populates the shadow with a superior presence, that of those far-away, of the afflicted, the dead. The persuaso who, in a tight corner, feels mother to others and gives without wanting anything in return. The persuaso is priest in that he opens up presence, he is intellectual in that he reveres values, but he is man-many, too.
The prophetic attitude of Capitini’s persuasion is revealed first of all in the first step, which is refusal of reality as it is: ‘They tell me reality is so, but I don’t accept it.’ Capitini goes beyond the ‘great refusal’ which is talked about nowadays (and for this his action is not only political but religious, too). He refuses not only social reality but also natural reality; ‘Who says that the reality where the big fish eats the sprat is immutable?’ This attitude of refusal stems from looking at the affairs of the world from the point of view of those who suffer. In the world there are, have always been, the wretched, the sick, the dying, the weary, the weak, the overburdened, the languid, the exhausted, the afflicted, the paralysed, the mutilated, the fools, the mad, the oppressed, the exploited, the vanquished, the overcome, the annihilated, those that ‘had never truly lived’. And there are the dead, too. All Capitini’s considerations always start from the representation of evil, pain, death. From the start it is always a meditatio mortis. However, it does not finish in resignation or in hope postponed. It ends in refusal. Do not those that accept this world become responsible for it? The radical refusal of reality can have but one conclusion, through which the prophetic moment at its apex is realised: transmutation. If by religion one means prophetic religion and not priestly religion, the essence of religion is transmutation. Only through the concept of religion as transmutation are two imperfect replies to the problem of evil overcome: the traditional one of God’s transcendence, or the modern one of immanence without God. Religious transmutation cannot be confused qualitatively with social or political change: any change which is merely social or political in reality leaves everything as it is, it shuffles, not transforms. You can not expect to change the old by means of the old, the law by means of the law, violence by means of violence, power by means of power. We have to get away from the vicious circle of politics which is wrapped up in itself. Religion transmutes because, not accepting reality, it adds something which does not appertain to reality and indeed anticipates a new reality. The theme of transmutation is closely linked to that of the adjunction. From the very first pages of ‘Elementi di un’esperienza religiosa’: ‘Religion takes nothing away, but adds.’ Elsewhere:
Religion is drawing infinitely near to people’s struggles, interiorising. It is spontaneous adjunction, a giving of oneself from within and thus gratuitous increment and pure offer, not violent substitution that I might want to make to the infinite capacity for decision that consciences have.
With poetical imagery: ‘This persuasion, omnipotence added to history where temples decline.’ Capitini’s insistence on the theme of the adjunction signifies uneasiness when faced with the insufficiency of the solutions to human drama different from the religious one. That religion consists in a gratuitous adjunction means that without the ‘extra’ which a religious attitude brings to the struggle against the world, the world is destined to remain what it has always been.
To see more closely what the religious adjunction consists in (more a metaphor than a concept), one has to be aware of the eminent position in Capitini’s thought occupied by the theme of values. Regarding the concept of value Capitini said he was indebted to Croce’s thought. In fact, in his never-systematic thought values correspond to the great categories of Croce: the beautiful, the true, the good (with an explicit reserve as regards the equivalence of the useful and the vital). In a passage from L’atto di educare he numbers eight without apparent order but also without any pretext of producing an exhaustive list: non-mendacity, art, the ‘thou’, sociality, religiosity, liberation, education, philosophy. In a Lettera di religione he analyses in particular the four fundamental values, which are: the true, the beautiful, the just, the good. The theme of values serves to let us understand the contraposition between negative reality (which must be refused) and positive reality (towards which moves the religious act of transmutation). The world, as it is, is formed of a tragic blend of values and negative values. Transmutation consists in reaching out to a reality in which there aren’t but acts realising values, and that every negative value should pass away. This new reality shall be the liberated reality, and each act which stretches out towards it and eases its coming is an act of liberation. Liberation will come about only when everyone takes part in the realisation of values. Ethics considers the realisation of values as an individual matter; religion considers it as a collective – or, to use a more incisive term, a choral matter.
So this is how the religious act of liberation – inasmuch as it goes beyond the ethical act – begins with openness towards others, in saying ‘thou’, the ‘divine thou’, to all beings, human and non-human (though with different degrees of intensity) – living and dead. It is religious act because in this communion with everyone lives God: ‘Improving the thou, I live God more’. The new God, of course; the old God – Capitini could repeat with Nietzsche - is dead. The God of traditional religion is the One without everyone; the God of the immanentistic philosophies is all-is-One. The new god is The One of everyone or in everyone: Capitini says ‘ The One-everyone’ The One-everyone is the God ‘that is at the intimate meeting-point of the eternal presence of everyone and of the infinite creation of value’. The category for thinking of this new God is no longer that of objectivity, but of subjectivity: God is not object, but subject, the sum of all the subjects intent on the creation of values. God is not to contemplate, but to live, to do together. God close, not far away, deep within not external. The attributes of this new God are intimacy and closeness:
…things much more important than is commonly understood. One thing next to another, a light touch, a tangency of finite on another finite, and the things remain two: intimacy and closeness is God infinitely open, God that gives itself.
Again, God not as totality of the world, of things, God the creator; but as totality of people, of subjects, of ‘thous’, and so God-love. If the religious act is tension towards value, the value of values in a religion in which God is the unity of everyone is love; through love comes about the participation of everyone in the creation of values, the values become a collective or community creation, also of those that have died, also of those who abandoned to themselves would have been inert or even recalcitrant. Often Capitini uses the expression ‘loving unity’ in order to let us understand that love is the vehicle of unity:
This loving unity is the actual form of adoration for concrete people, before us, far away, dead, but always concrete.
And further on:
This unity is possible equally with those near, those far away and the dead; by living single concrete individualities, not killing them even in thought, adoring them, loving them unlimitedly.
So little by little, from book to book, the theme which is destined to predominate over all, which comprises and summarizes all of them advances till it becomes the topic of his last and philosophically most-complete work: compresence. Capitini’s religion is the religion of compresence. In the concept of compresence are included and grasped, as it were, and taken to a higher stage of understanding all the prior concepts. Compresence is the presence of everyone, or choral presence, in the creation of values, the way which leads to the transmutation of the reality of everything (objective, passive, external, closed) into the ‘reality of everyone’. How this transmutation comes about is often said indirectly, by analogy, through a musical metaphor:
Value rises from a choral presence. Not only I am present to the music I am listening to, but we are all of us present: it is our choir.
Compresence unites the living with the dead; compresence belongs to everyone, in it everybody has a part. The law of compresence is the development of the best, the growth of value, not in a dialectic of mors tua vita mea, but in an increase. Compresence is eternal because it is growing; if we say that the spirit is incarnated in the individual, an august presence that however passes and goes beyond, and the individual is no more, there is presence (living Reason), not compresence; compresence exerts pressure on reality just as it is, the reality of nature, of vitality and power, and can bring about total changes. Between the individual and the movement of compresence there is an immense community which constrains no-one and enriches everyone. The individual receives decisive help from this immense community, though being a single centre which can freely give; compresence always brings an adjunction, which is dynamic, pro-movement; it weakens bad by adding good; happiness belongs to the individual, beatitude to compresence. Theoretically inconceivable, compresence is an abyss which is filled by opening up practically and placing oneself as a centre.
Refusal and transmutation, universality of values and religious adjunction, One-everyone and loving unity, compresence, are the principal themes of the ‘religious experience’ that Capitini, in opposition to traditional religions, calls ‘open religion’. If the theme of compresence is, as we have said, conclusive, that of openness is, with respect to all the other themes, inclusive, in the sense that each opposition is brought back in Capitini’s language to the fundamental and founding opposition between what is open and what is closed, with the same pregnancy with which one time one would have said ‘light and darkness’. Opening and closing are symbols, respectively of the positive act par excellence and the negative act par excellence. Thus not only open religion but also open presence, society, community, organisation, revolution, education, universe, spirit, opening up to others, to nature and history, to the thou, to a liberated reality, opening up to everything and everyone, opening up as a prayer:
Opening up is life, it is greater life, better life: even better, because there exists a right and proper openness to values, to beauty, to goodness, to justice, honesty, purity, to the law of good which speaks to us and commands and inspires – if we open up to it – in every moment, and elevates our individuality, which would tend to remain closed, deaf, reluctant: sin, after all, is closing up.
The religious category is openness to the thou-all. But to this are added openness to chorality – i.e. the production of values by everyone; openness to adding that which has to do with compresence; openness to a reality freed from that which limits, compromises or annihilates the single being. Openness incorporates the refusal of negative value and the tension towards value, participation and compresence, liberation as procedure and as goal. Openness is the way to transmutation: and open religion, i.e. new and true religion is what constitutes itself on ‘a passionate opening up to a reality freed from evil, from the limits of sin, from pain, from death’. Opening up is transmutation and, inversely, closure is conservation, immobility, inertia:
… who said that there always has to be sin, pain, death? Prostitution, robbery, hate? The victory of power, social exploitation, the unacceptable decorativeness of those with absolute power? Is not closure accepting that reality, society, humanity go on and repeat themselves always in their physical, political, social, biological forms?
3. Prophet is he who announces the advent of a new reality. In the both religious and political dimension of Capitini’s opus this announcement is continuously present in the twofold form of a ‘religious reform’ and a ‘new sociality’. Open religion, we have said, but also ‘open revolution’. In this perspective Capitini’s pages open up to the discussion of the two great themes of the contemporary world: the destiny of Christianity and the significance of Communism. As regards the questions that Christianity and Communism present to contemporary humanity, the reply of the ‘persuaso’ - i.e. he whose task is, as we have said, to express, keep alive and put into practice the prophetic tension towards a liberated reality - is identical, and different from both that of the Christian (also dissatisfied) and of the Communist (also discontent) and from that of the non-Christian and non-Communist. In fact it is neither the reform from within, waiting and hoping for a renewal, nor the negation, the battle without quarter, dissolution and return, destruction and rediscovery. The persuaso’s reply is neither a yes nor a no, but a yes and no so as to go ‘beyond’. Capitini is not anti-Christian but neither is he a heretic; is not anti-Communist but neither is he dissident (between Capitalism and Socialism he chose the latter). Differently from the democratic Liberal, he accepts Communism (as an economic system based on the elimination of individual property and of the exploitation of the non-owner), and diversely from the non-dogmatic Communist, he looks towards an ulterior society. The fundamental nature of the ‘adjunction’ should be kept in mind: adding is not solely the opposite of taking away but also something more than correcting or reforming. Adding is transmuting, or better: to accept and transmute. What the persuaso aims at is neither an anti- (Christianity or Communism), nor a neo- , but rather a post-. Capitini speaks repeatedly of post-Christianity and post-Communism to designate future society. This ‘post-’ is extremely significant: it is much less than leaving behind and much more than continuation and renewal from within. If it is true that putting the accent on ‘afterwards’ is characteristic of every philosophy of history, it is just as true that the ‘afterwards’ of a concept in which history goes on through adjunctions is quite different from the ‘afterwards’ of a dialectical or evolutionistic concept where what comes after is already in some way implicit in what comes before, through either antithesis or development. In a prophetic concept of history the future is continually to invent and to promote: the future is neither the dialectical synthesis of the past, nor the next moment in an ascending – or descending – process; but it is the radically new, as unforeseeable cognitively as practically lying in our very hands.
For post-Christianity Capitini intends a new form of religiosity suitable for an epoch in which, for many different reasons – philosophical, like immanentism; scientific, like the de-mythicism of and critical approach to the scriptures; social and political, as in contacts with other religious traditions different from Western ones -, reversing Croce’s famous saying, we are forced to recognise that we cannot call ourselves Christians any more; which does not mean anti-Christian: Christianity has always kept alive in its heart, sometimes more sometimes less, a vein of open religion. And, on the other hand, there is no non-Christian religion that has not consolidated itself as a church. ‘Open religion’ embraces all historical religions, it passes through, assimilates and transmutes them. More than a reform of a religion it is a reform of the way in which religion is understood and practised. In his speech at the first Congress for Religious Reform in Italy (1948), Capitini maintained three reforms were at that time possible: Catholic, Protestant and social (Communist); but all three are insufficient. ‘It is necessary that there be Catholics for reform, Protestants for reform, Social-Communists for reform. It is necessary that there be people convinced strenuously that the three reforms are insufficient.’ Notice, once again the equalization of religious and political movements. One would be almost tempted to say that the insufficiency of religions is of an essentially political and social nature, in that they place more emphasis on external acts of devotion, rather than on closeness to the suffering and oppressed, and that therefore they need greater social aperture. On the contrary, the insufficiency of a social movement like Communism is of an essentially religious nature, i.e. in over-estimating the omnipotence of utilitarian means, as are economic and political means, for the solution of the enigma of history, for the actuation of the change-over from the reign of necessity to the reign of liberty, and so needs a religious aperture. Capitini’s movement for religious reform is never disjoined from a discussion of social issues - of social other than political liberation – which are peculiar to universal history at the present time, and to the history of Italy in particular. But at the same time the tension towards liberated reality (‘the reign of freedom’) is essentially of a religious nature. There is no passage from the reign of necessity to the reign of freedom which does come about through the adjunction (which is religious, not political, act).
To explain what he means by post-Communism, at the end of Il problema religiosa attuale Capitini says that post-Communism is to Communism as Christianity is to Hebraism: once again a ‘post-’ which is not an ‘anti-’. To the anti-Fascist struggle – given that Fascism was both anti-Liberal and anti-Socialist – came both the Liberals and the Socialists, both the friends of the West and those of the East. He saw very well that opposition to fascism could only be total (differently from opposition in one direction to the American regime, and in the other direction to the Soviet regime, which could be only partial). Fascism, he observes, apart from some administrative provisions, was to be fought against in all its main aspects:
nationalism, cult of violence, statism, machiavellianism, loss of freedom, corporatism, hierarchies, centralism, lack of any democratic control whatever, Catholic conciliationism, Romanism.
For this reason he did not take sides with either of them - that is, with those who fought Fascism from only one side. Neither did he wish to identify himself with those who were looking for a ‘third way’. Or at least his third way was not, as most of the others believed, a synthesis, conciliation, practical transaction, ‘sharecropping’ as he put it, or even worse a compromise between two opposites – but an opening up towards a ‘new sociality’.
Though proclaiming himself Liberal-Socialist from the very beginning (1937) of the movement he founded together with Guido Calogero, he made a point of distinguishing his own Liberal-Socialism from that of the others because of the ethical-religious, and not only political, effort he put into it. He always confuted pugnaciously the absolutisation of politics (which was the outlet of totalitarianism), and therefore the resolution of all human activity in doing politics, taking social movements for parties. Liberal-socialism at the beginning was not a party (and never should it have become one) : it was ‘an attitude of the spirit, an opening up in a direction, an ever-self-renewing certainty and hope’, ‘an orientation of the conscience’. Be it understood that it was not only this: it was also an ideology. But even as an ideology Capitini’s Liberal-Socialism represented a minority current, almost a heresy, which recalled more Piero Gobetti’s ‘rivoluzione liberale’ rather than Carlo Rosselli’s ‘socialismo liberale’. The difference lay in the different evaluation of Communism, and so in a different attitude towards the Soviet Union. Roselli’s was on this side of Communism. Capitini was ever more convinced that with the passage of time Communism – in its economic aspect regarding the elimination of capitalism, i.e. collectivism – was a compulsory stage in historical progress, and therefore that it should not be avoided but taken to its extreme consequences, not negate it but bring it to fruition: in short, once again not stay on this side but go beyond. He put his political programme in a nutshell: ‘On a judicial and cultural level, maximum liberty; on an economic level, maximum socialism’.
As a consequence he fought with the same energy and total independence of judgement on two fronts: against the absolute of ‘well-being’ represented by the United States and against the absolute of ‘power’ as represented by the Soviet Union. In his criticism of American civilization recur reasons nowadays ever more frequent in the criticism of the ‘affluent’ society which idolises material goods and raises technique, which is a means, to the ultimate end; in his criticism of the Soviet Union the theme of the centralised, oppressive state is at the forefront. The first contrast is of a spiritual nature, the second more of an institutional one. To the opposition between Liberalism and Communism, or between Capitalism and Socialism goes side by side the opposition between West and East, especially during the years of the Cold War; the opposition between the two blocks of power that face each other threateningly, though gradually coming to resemble each other in the brazen use of technology for the exploitation of the world’s riches. Also faced with this contrast it would be vain to attempt to find solutions through mediation of only a political, or worse, diplomatic, nature:
… the solution does not take the shape of a syncretism, or of a brash substitution of the one by the other or vice versa, as much as rather of a form which in surpassing synthesises and actuates whatever is alive in the two religious parts.
It is a question not so much of peaceful co-existence, nor of reciprocal permeation, but of religious adjunction, transmutation and – take note of the re-emergence of the theme of ‘posteriority’ – of ‘strenuous afterwards’.
In Capitini’s thought history’s negative moment is always the transformation of a tension into an institution, whatever the dominant religious or political concept might be. The metaphor of opening and closing is taken up again: every institution is closure. Wherever there are institutions with their dogmas, rigid rules, crystallized forms, there the system is closed, and all possibility of renewal is halted. Action for religious reform and new sociality is accompanied by struggle without respite against institutionalised religion - the church (churches), and against institutionalised society – the state.
In Italy the controversy against institutionalised religion is directed with particular harshness against the Catholic Church. From the paragraph of Elementi di un’esperienza religiosa, entitled La chiesa romana [The Roman Church], right up to his last writings, the anti-Roman target is constantly struck by extremely fiery bolts. When Religione aperta was put on the Index, Capitini replied with the provocative booklet Discuto la religione di Pio XII (1957). One of the beliefs he fought against most vehemently is God the punisher and the eternity of the punishment. First of all, a religious act must be disinterested: reward or punishment are outside its horizon; then, punishment without the possibility of ransom and redemption is the justice of a tyrant, not a father. What goes for the Catholic church goes for all churches: for Capitini religious reform means not a reform of the institution but against it. If we still want to speak of church then let’s speak of that church ‘which I create continuously by concretely actuating religious persuasion, and identifying myself with the various forms of surrounding historical life’; of that church I build every time I perform a deed of open religion and actuate compresence:
Every thou I say with this initiative, every existence I interiorise, closeness I establish without falsehood, lo and behold a person I include in this ever open church of God and humanity.
The controversies against the church and the state move along side by side: indeed, they arise at one and the same time. In various autobiographical passages we read that the occasion for his definitive break with Catholicism was the Concordat, i.e. The Vatican in cahoots with the regime. In his early writings his condemnation of the state is strictly linked to a reaction against idolising the state, typical of fascism. But from his first work it is acknowledged that there is a vice intrinsic to the state, whatever the regime, and this vice is found in the inevitable tendency of the institution towards a bureaucratic rigidity, and his future theme of power from below is pre-announced:
The more rigid the organs of bureaucracy become, the more single citizens have to remedy them, studying all the issues, talking, listening to minorities, interiorising them as a stimulus and contribution, not eliminating them.
Against the theory of the ethical state, Capitini affirms repeatedly that the state’s task is purely administrative and so every celebration of the state is taking the means for the end, the instrument for a value. The state is purely and simply a supplier of ‘public services’, but unfortunately today ‘public service has become something sacred; that the tap should never stop supplying water every morning has become something fundamental, more so than that the Eucharist be in a nearby church’. This negative judgement of the sacralisation of the state finds its end in the condemnation of a civilization which is thus called ‘civilization of public services’.
A civilization of this sort can only take hold of Jesus Christ and put him on a cross, to maintain public order, harmony in society; it is not the soul they want to save but the order which has been passed down.
Foreseeing that a civilization of this kind is not destined to last is not difficult to foresee. Even Communism, as put into effect in the Soviet Union, could not get away from the ideology of public service, indeed it exasperated it, losing sight of the reasons for the revolution which gave it life. Condemnation of the state, which arose as a reaction against the fascist state, is extended to criticism of soviet statism. The soviet regime is to Communism as the Catholic church is to religion. So we understand in what way it can be said that post-Christianity and post-Communism begin by going beyond the institutional forms in which Christianity and Communism have historically manifested themselves.
The reason why the battle against the church and the battle against the state mingle, overlap, often merge together is that the enemy is the same: power from above, even if it is exercised there with spiritual coercion, here with physical coercion. To his criticism of the institution is added criticism of power, a theme which is developed over the years. Power from above entails obedience from below, either through indoctrination or fear. From obedience derive conformism, passivity, spiritual inertia, resignation in the face of evil, the feeling that history is arid, the gratuitousness of events - or worse, of the invincible cruelty of everything that lives and is perpetuated without change. There is a God-of-power in traditional religions and a state-of-power in historical societies, even the more advanced ones, which is the real idol to crush. God and the state should be everyone’s. The philosophical concept of the reality of all, moved to the stage of political reflection becomes the ideal of society of all - that is, a completely de-institutionalised society. To the religious theme of compresence corresponds on a political plane the theme of omnicracy, which is an ulterior and more radical reply to the need which has been posed but not resolved by democracy (both direct and representative). Either the revolution tends towards omnicracy or it is but half a revolution which won’t delay in turning into its opposite – that is, substituting a new oligarchy for the old, as happened to the great historical revolutions. Alongside the development of open religion runs the development of open revolution (once more the political and religious themes are so closely tied that the concepts used for the one or the other are fungible). In omnicracy:
It is the religious man, post-humanistic, who wants to live united with everyone in the greatest solidarity, even beyond death, and thus is intent on constituting a new society in a reality which has consumed all the old limits, pain and death included.
The opposite of the institution, in Capitini’s ideal of the open community, is the centre. The contraposition between institution and centre is fundamental, and in the general concept of society he was working out has the same importance as the by now classic dichotomy in modern sociological thought between society and community. In the process of socialization the institution represents the negative pole, the centre the positive one. The institution is outside the individuals that make it up, it is de-personalising; the centre moves from the very individual who opens up to collaboration, it is person-making. The first centre is the single person in that he stretches out and extends in others. Initially the centre was placed in opposition to the church, then by and by to parties, political institutions, to the state. As anti-church, the centre is the place in which God ‘is not contemplated, but sought after to live, in the act, near to us, to everyone and everything’. As anti-party, it is the place open to everyone’s participation. As anti-state, it is the place where decentralization, the principle of everyone’s responsibility, is actuated. In the centre there is no discrimination between baptised and non-baptised, member and non-member, citizen and foreigner. The institution cannot live without an oligarchy that runs it, the centre is for the multitudes. ‘Centres are the institutional form of the new religious and social life’. As much as the institution is external, so much the centre ‘moves from inner being’. The open-closed antithesis is constantly duplicated in the exteriority-interiority (or, more frequently, ‘inner being’) antithesis: ‘Human effort and struggle is to overcome everything that is averse, ugly, painful by the expression which comes from inner being’. The institution is to exteriority as the centre is to inner being. The institution is the enemy of everything that comes from deep within: the institution closes that which inner being opens.
4. The prophet, inasmuch as he is looking at the reality to liberate, is reaching out towards the future. The utopian, too, looks towards the future. But the prophet is not the utopian. The difference lies in this: while the utopian draws up a stupendous structure of the ideal society but puts off its realisation to better times, the prophet begins here and now, straight away.
I do not say: after a short or long while we shall have a society which will be perfectly non-violent […] What I care about fundamentally is the use to which I put my very modest life, these hours and these few days; and to place on the innermost scales of history the weight of my persuasion.
Or, if you want, the difference between the utopian and the persuaso lies in the fact that the former is a pure theoretician, the latter inasmuch as he is religious is also a man of action. Before being an ideal to pursue, compresence is an act, a group of acts to perform. Compresence does not exist outside the acts the persuaso performs in order to realise it. If the ideal is transmutation, I transmute nothing if I do not start changing myself. Utopia starts tomorrow, and may even never begin at all, transmutation begins today and never ends.
From the first vision of a God not to contemplate but to live, right up to the final theory of compresence, Capitini’s opus has proceeded towards an ever-clearer awareness of the primacy of praxis. The Greeks put contemplation before action – the persuaso starts from action, and contemplation (or the understanding of Being) shall be given him as an extra. The rapport between theory and practice is one of those nodal points to which whoever at some future time studies Capitini’s thought will have to return, also because only by becoming conscious of the importance that ‘practical commitment’ assumed in his daily life can the unjust accusation of spiritualism be pushed aside. In this perspective some pages from La compresenza dei morti e dei viventi, where the issue is taken up with zeal, gain particular prominence. He writes:
The starting point is the prominence of praxis, already inside our life, on a describable plane, when such praxis is pure - that is, not deriving from nature and its administration.
And he concludes: ‘Which means that if compresence is an act, it is pure praxis’. But already in Religione aperta he had said (with Kant and the primacy of practical reason in mind) that praxis is necessary to reach what the intellect fails to reach: the absolute, infinity, totality.
Opening up to liberated reality is above all practical (…). To understand what God is can not be done but through practical commitment.
However, the primum is transmutation, and transmuting is a practical act. The inadequacy of reality is not corrected if not by transforming it:
Facing a simple living being, for instance a small plant, if we think of Being, we feel its inadequacy, its ‘metaphysical limitations’, and we cannot do otherwise; if we are intent on Praxis, we trust that in the reality of everyone also the plant is grounded, that she is recuperated, has her destination, so that in practical opening up also she is there.
It must be added that the praxis of the homo religiosus is not that of the homo faber. The latter manipulates things but accepts the ways and laws with which they are given; the former deals not with things but with values, and tends to other ways and other laws.
Only by starting from the primacy of praxis understood in this way can one explain the attention Capitini always dedicated to certain modes of conduct, certain techniques of behaviour, those which he calls ‘practical modes of opening up’; can be justified the insistence with which he dwells on descriptions of his activities as organizer of centres, meetings, marches, and with special complacency the experience of the Social Orientation Centres, founded in Perugia and environs in the immediate post-war period. In other words praxis is resolved in ways specific to religious praxis; among these the most important are non-cooperation, non-mendacity and nonviolence. These are specific means of religious praxis, nonviolence in particular, which give concreteness to opening up, pose the conditions for the actuation of compresence and make Capitini’s philosophical-pedagogical opus a programme of action. In particular, I said, nonviolence: the first step towards freedom from death is absolute respect for life (wherefore also vegetarianism).
In the history of modern Italian spirituality Capitini’s opus is certainly the loftiest and most intrepid manifestation of the theory and practice of nonviolence. He dedicated the best of himself to the ideal of nonviolence; he was its philosopher and master, propagator and indefatigable organiser. Its poet, too. The two books of verse: Atti della presenza aperta (1943) and Colloquio corale (1956) evoke moods linked to the general theme of respect for living things: ‘only the flower you leave on the plant is yours’; ‘you come across and pick up the swallow, gloomy for lost flight; you throw her aloft and rouse up again her cry’; ‘you have put aside your history, you have not written your name on walls’, ‘I love objects because I can offer them’.
All the themes related to religious and social issues about which we have spoken up to now come together and gain relief around the issue of nonviolence: refusing the reality of evil, pain and death, the religious adjunction, tension towards values, loving unity, transmutation, opening up, compresence and, not least, omnicracy. Nonviolence, in fact, is saying a thou to each concrete being, it is an act of love which does not stop at two, three, ten, a thousand beings; it is open love, it brings to life One-everyone, it is transmutation of the reality where the strong crush the weak, the bullies the meek, it is struggle against ourselves, our inclinations, our dreams of a quiet life; as tireless guide it has the presence of everyone, and the principle that each single being is irreplaceable; it educates in the omnicratic participation in power. Through nonviolence the link between the religious moment and that of politico-social activity acquires its greatest emphasis, because the nonviolent person is reaching out to the reign of God and world peace at the same time, to the union of all beings and power of everyone. With nonviolence theory flows into practice: ‘Satyagraha – said Gandhi – is not a subject for research: you must experience it, use it, live in it’. Finally, from a philosophical point of view the theory of nonviolence requires a total inversion of the traditional way of posing the question of the relationship between means and ends. Right from Elementi Capitini insisted on this point, which is of capital importance. Was it legitimate to fight a violent regime using violence? The reply of the persuaso had no doubt:
Trusting in violent means is misleading and detracts from feverishly searching for preventive means which descend to the root deep within.
And then nonviolence can not itself be considered as a means (and thereby be judged according to its efficacy): it is means and end together - that is, a means ‘which, while it is being used, already brings to life a different rapport with other beings, and living this different rapport is in itself a good end’. So then no war is just, not even a defensive one? And revolutions? Here is the reply:
I decide now, and now I have to decide, and I would not do the French-European revolution nor the Russo-Soviet one. Not only because I believe that nowadays the times require something else, but also because if I had found myself in those circumstances, I would have held that affirming nonviolence (…) was as important as doing what Lenin and Robespierre did.
Inasmuch as it is an overturn of everything that has come about in history, nonviolence is revolution, and never being able to be actuated thoroughly it is permanent revolution. A violent revolution can not last since it is destined to generate other violence: ‘Violence, also revolutionary violence, prepares the way for tyrants’. Only nonviolence is destined to change history, even if nobody knows when and how. And it changes history because it is intent on eliminating definitively the main and ultimate means men have always resorted to in order to construct their bloody history.
The means-ends theme shows how great and direct Gandhi’s inspiration is. Having started from an analysis of the sources, I would be inclined to retain (having reached the end) that the main source, of mounting importance as the years pass by, are Gandhi’s thoughts. It seems certain that reading Gandhi, which Capitini himself places in the years before the publication of his first book, constituted the decisive element, cathartic in a certain way, in his spiritual development. Elementi, even if Gandhi’s name does not appear therein (while St. Francis’ appears often), begins with a paragraph entitled La scelta dei mezzi [The Choice of Means]. We cannot say whether his knowledge of Gandhi’s writings, at that time almost impossible to find in Italy, was deep from the start, but even an indirect, approximate knowledge, through a sudden flash, can have a decisive effect when the ground is ready. Over the years references to Gandhi come thick and fast, perhaps parallel with greater knowledge of his writings. If in Il problema religiosa attuale (1948) the theme of nonviolence is still linked to Franciscanism, in Religione aperta (1955) by now Gandhi stands out over all the other prophets of nonviolence: an entire chapter is dedicated to his theory and practice. It is well-known how much Capitini worked in his final years to try and spread Gandhi’s thoughts through writings, through the publication of the periodical ‘Azione nonviolenta’, through projects for translations; which met with the usual cold shoulder in our cultural circles, impregnated with political realism. To those who know Capitini’s mental course it seems quite clear how the move towards Gandhi (by way of St. Francis, Mazzini) may have been determined essentially by the deep conviction which was taking shape inside him in those years of antifascist conspiracy of the indissoluble link between religiosity and sociality, between religious renewal and social reform, between religious struggle and the struggle for freedom. In Gandhi he came to see the champion of a religion which struggles not only to redeem individuals but also to transform society. In the light of what I have said regarding the prime role of praxis, it could be interesting to note that one of his greatest eulogies was that Gandhi had realized the ‘purification of praxis’, which consists in ‘arriving at an act which is the most purified of personal or worldly motives, and is the most positive and open’. The decisive historical importance which he attributes to Gandhi is borne out by his approval of Vinoba Bhave’s thesis, according to whom the great antithesis in today’s world is not between capitalism and Communism, but between Marxism and Gandhi-ism – although that could be corrected by specifying that Gandhi is to be placed in rapport rather with Lenin than with Marx, so that it is not only a question of taking account of the Leninist method as Gramsci expected, but also of Gandhi’s: ‘Linked to the first is a Hegelianism taken left in a Marxist fashion, linked to the second is Kantianism taken towards an open religion’.
There seems no doubt in my mind that the repudiation of Hegel’s philosophy as a closed philosophy and so a break with the Italian philosophical tradition, the ever more lively interest in Kant and Gandhi (considered in some way connected to or convergent with the affirmation of the primacy of practice and the profession of an anti-dogmatic religion) constituted one of the dominant themes of Capitini’s last research, a theme to which perhaps he would have wished to give a deeper formulation. In his last book there is a mention of this ‘…in this way the horizon widens from European to cosmic, to something more than ecumenical: and Kant is linked to Gandhi and to the religious actual development of compresence’.
Going back to the first lines of this essay, by now it is easy to understand that the most singular place Capitini occupies in the history of Italian spirituality depends on the fact that the was a Gandhian in Machiavelli’s homeland, a religious heretic in the homeland of the Counter-reformation (and of the connected indifferentism), a pacifist – a religious one to boot – in a country where a tradition of thought and pacifistic action had never existed. That enormous carnage that was the first world war kindled stirrings of nonviolent sentiment elsewhere, not in Italy, where the neutral stance was political opportunism, rarely of ethical rigour and even more rarely religious rejection, and it had nothing in common with the various forms of ethical or religious resistance to war. England’s pre-eminent philosopher ended up in prison for defending conscientious objectors, while Italy’s foremost philosopher celebrated the glory of realpolitik. If there was a gleam of pacifism in our country, it was humanitarian pacifism – politically inoffensive extension of Mazzinianism, and juridical pacifism – supreme ideal of the various leagues and societies for peace.
Capitini’s pacifism was neither humanitarian nor juridical: war was not to be condemned because non-productive (theme of the ‘great illusion’), nor was peace to be exalted in the name of social order (theme of overcoming international anarchy through the League of Nations). Capitini was, as we have said, a religious pacifist: he considered insufficient both the lay humanitarianism which is happy to accept the brotherhood of peoples and the universalism of the federalists who confided in international institutions. But his was a religious pacifism which, differently from the traditional sort of the tiny sects or individual heroic gestures, placed the accent not so much on the salvation of the soul as on the transformation of society, not so much on individual revolt against an unjust command as much as on the collective revolution against the global injustice of history: a not belligerent but not cowardly pacifism, not politicised but not non-political. It is even doubtful that one can talk really of pacifism (in reality the term ‘pacifism’ is not part of Capitini’s vocabulary): the end of nonviolence is not peace, be it even universal peace - which is a purely negative end – but ‘liberation’ (and peace if anything as a consequence). Against the maxim of realist politics ‘If you want peace, prepare war’, the maxim of the ‘persuaso’ is not that of the pacifist i.e. ‘If you want peace, prepare peace’, but rather ‘If you want peace, prepare “ liberation ” ’.
Capitini was always perfectly aware of the fact that the task he had given himself was extraordinary. He said: ‘We have to start here and now’ (and only a diligent friend, consulting his papers, will be in a position to tell us how many and how varied were his enterprises, how many people he managed to rouse, to move with his disarming tenacity). Yet he was not in a hurry. He was a calm, patient man, of that lasting calm which comes about only after the storm has been weathered. He knew that the important thing is to sow seeds. Precisely because his task was extraordinary it was necessary not to waver, but go on purposefully along the chosen way, without worrying about benevolent recommendations from the wise or bursts of anger from the powerful. What was most striking about him was his seraphic firmness: had he not been so seraphic and firm his position as religious and political heretic sooner or later would have become unbearable. For he was not above the ruckus, but right in there, up to his neck. He always had to steer his course between those who wished to blandish him and those who wanted to stifle him. But he did not let himself be blandished or stifled. To the first he offered his critical reason, to the others his unswerving faith. They thought he was naïve, whereas he was just a simple man – that sort of simplicity which does not exclude shrewdness; they thought his head was in the clouds, but his feet were firmly planted on the earth – the earth where he was born, and which he had walked across inch by inch, whose people he knew, the minor events, the pealing of the bells. Doggedly, with energy and success he defended his own independence. He had no ambitions, but believed firmly in his vocation.
To perform his task he looked not for proselytes, but friends, and he had some very faithful ones. To his friends he gave ideas, enthusiasm, momentum to do new things, and above all his example
of a life spent in a good cause, of disinterested action, of inflexible consistency, of a rare delicacy of spirit. In exchange he received warm affection and help, solidarity and collaboration in the many enterprises in which he put them to the test, that closeness which he needed and which perhaps in his anticipatory imagination prefigured reality liberated. In his works there are recurring themes: serenity, joy and the feast-day, which, like friendship, serve to illuminate the constant tension towards overcoming the limits of one’s own individuality and solitude, fulfilment in the communion of all other beings. On friendship he wrote:
Friendship is marvellous, its converts sadness, listens to a confession, stimulates you to live presence: such a deep friendship, saying the divine thou, is the religious ‘extra’ added to simply knowing others.
In his language, becoming ‘centre’ meant opening up, radiating, not letting oneself be tempted to stay alone. He made himself centre. And he emphasised with his pregnant, allusive phrases: ‘At the centre of activity are persons’. Long nights staying awake, full of projects for the morning after (the theme of the joy of the morning is often recurrent, too), were a preparation in order to live in the fraternal community of active friends more fully. In staying together and promoting other forms, other ways of staying together, he gave a beginning to the actuation of his grand design of the open society. He commanded respect but did not inspire awe. He was never gruff nor stern; let alone solemn. Indeed, he was cheerful, inclined to be good-humoured, and naturally indulgent towards others’ defects. Skimming through his pages you never come across imprecation or invective. When he disagrees, he discusses; when he condemns, it is the error he condemns not the person.
His place was always on the side of the underdog. But for him they were not only the exploited, the poor, but all those forlorn: even the sick, the mad, the crippled, the beggar on the steps of a church, the wretched to whom Brueghel gave a tragic face in The Blind Leading the Blind, those who died without affection – who do not even have a cross to remember them. He leaned towards them and tried to penetrate the secret of this history of horrors and madness which the great traditional religions have understood but covered over, and which the great revolutions fooled themselves into thinking they could change. He had penetrated so deeply into this to be convinced that to the rational or man of faith only two ways were left: become resigned in pain without hope or try a new way.
Capitini went down the new way with strenuous commitment. Now is too early to judge. And the world, on the one hand, is too much like a marsh where all movement has been snuffed out, and on the other, like a raging sea where movement is unceasing, for us to be able to understand what the goal is. But it is not too early to render homage to a noble daring which has enriched our life, and about which we should speak more. In one of my last letters to him I wrote that the difference between us was that he was a persuaso, and I was perplexed. The perplexed stay perplexed. But it is certainly true that the history of horrors and madness continues to unfold under the nose of these impotent bystanders.
Note: (persuasione) “Antifascismo tra i giovani” p.53. The passage deserves to be fully quoted since Capitini himself points out the relationship between Michelstaedter’s philosophy and existentialism:
“Of Michelstaedter’s I stressed, also in a conference I held in Florence, “persuasione” (a term I took, preferring “persuaso” to believer, persuasion in the sense of self-persuaded, almost “pervaded”), the anti-rhetoric, that sort of existentialism, which could become supreme practical commitment, as later I confirmed when I examined letters written by his hand, from the interest he had in his last years for the Gospels; in short it seemed exact to me to consider it as the premise to a practical ethical-religious tension”