“The Infinite Opening of the Soul” in Aldo Capitini

by Pietro Pinna

“Violence and materialism will spread so much that weariness and disgust will follow; and from the drops of blood that drip from the chopping blocks will rise an ardent desire to deliver the soul from any co-operation with that mistake, and establish straight away - starting from our own heart (which is the first progress) - a new way to feel life: the feeling that the world is extraneous to us if we must live without love, without an infinite opening of the one towards the other, without a unity above so many differences and so much suffering. This is the current passage of history”.

In these sentences (written prophetically on the eve of that terrible “decapitation” which was the second world war) we find limpidly summarised the fundamental elements which characterize Aldo Capitini’s nonviolent aspirations: the cause of his inspiration; the new man who takes it upon himself to be its bearer, intent on overcoming the reality of evil in which humanity is immersed; and the basic practical attitude needed to set the renewal in motion.

The cause of his inspiration is the “infinite opening of the soul”, that is, the affirmation of the loving unity, “above so many differences”, among all human beings. Here we grasp the first characterization of Capitini’s nonviolence. The loving unity which it postulates is different from all the other traditional forms of union, since these confine solidarity to a limited number of beings: relatives, one’s community or, at most, citizens of one’s country. Here the horizon closes, beyond which violence, oppression, exploitation, war against those who are outside are made legitimate, for the indiscriminate and exclusive defence of one’s own interests.

Capitini’s (Gandhian) nonviolence, instead, extends these frontiers to the world’s horizon, where the loving unity is valid for all mankind .“Everyone” – states Capitini – “ is God’s new name”, meaning that salvation and liberation are not for the individual but for everyone all together. (Capitini repeated that “Mankind’s troubles derive from a situation that has lasted thousands of years: the fact that we have not thought and acted for everyone; Man worried only about his own individual property on earth, and about his own salvation in heaven, favoured in this by ancient societies and religions which are societies and religion of privilege”). In this “infinite opening of the one towards the other” emerges the recognition of the central value of every being in its unique and unrepeatable singularity, to preserve and value, since “in everyone - Capitini maintains - even to the meanest or most wicked - however they live, act, develop, whatever their good faith - there is the need and the possibility of spiritual life”.

The second essential element recalled by Capitini is that “the first progress of infinite opening” consists in starting from ourselves, from our “new way to feel life” in a loving relationship with all others. What does this change consist in with respect to our present way of being, which, contrary to our best intentions, causes us to live in a condition of constant schizophrenia – which, in the cleft between our professed ideals and our real behaviour, leads us to find ourselves immersed in confusion, conflict, desperation and solitude? Were we only aware truly of ourselves, we would see that in the heart of our interest, rather than concern for others in the search for the common good, fundamentally there is preoccupation with our ego, satisfaction with and tenacious defence of our self, of our ease, our safety, of our various appetitions. We don’t really see others for what they are, asking ourselves as Capitini: “What are his needs. What is his peculiarity, his life, his freedom, his interior development?”. We see others, instead, simply in relation to how much can usefully be got from them for our exclusive material and psychological advantage. Actually, we end up not seeing anything except ourselves. If we want to bring about an appropriate rapport, establish that creative rapport of good, justice, peace, solidarity with others, then the change must be to direct our life in the opposite direction, not towards the “I” but towards the “Thou” - the “divine-thou” of Capitini - seen as another oneself (seeing God, as Gandhi said, in every creature). And this different attitude is achieved if we reduce our I (the egoistic-egotistic sphere of our exclusive interests and ambitions) as much as possible, our attention constantly vigilant, detached from the thirst for power and success, usurped prestige, social climbing, from the most disparate twisted desires; not morbidly attached to the objects of these desires. That detached “I” which - Capitini says - “does not ask to have things, but to be soul”.

Finally, the third element - the basic practical attitude needed to set the renewal in motion: “Withdraw immediately all co-operation with that mistake” (the spread of violence and materialism). This involves recognising that a part of the responsibility for so much deprecatory social ill pertains to us. Because the truth is, that if this ill is so deeply rooted in society and so widespread as to assail millions, it benefits from the complicity (in other words, co-operation) of a large part of its own members, the same ones that bemoan it and say they want to rebel against it. However, we are not prepared to assume the risks and sacrifices of this rebellion, this non co-operation. We take a passive stance of complicity, conforming to the social ill that it may safeguard as far as possible our personal tranquillity and interests. Can we make only heads of state and the lowly circle of politicians, bureaucrats, scientists and generals responsible for and artificers of that terrible evil which is war, which we all say we abhor? War is established and takes place essentially with the co-operation of practically every single one of us – taking up arms, manufacturing them, feeding military budgets with our taxes etc., with no objections to the military policies of the political parties to whom we give our vote. So fundamental is the due awareness of this aspect that Gandhi expatiated on it forcefully: “In my humble opinion, non cooperation with evil is as much a duty as cooperation with good”.

The infinite opening of the soul led Capitini to search for and concretize untiringly many commitments and enterprises, intent on transfusing his passionate conscience of closeness and freedom for all – for the individual in his blind egoism and for society in its injustice and lack of liberty - into reality. His cordial attention for all and sundry, even those whom he met for the first time, made them feel like an old friend: (“The lowliest person I meet - he said – it is as if I have known him all my life”). Here is the new nonviolent man, he who not only must not strike anyone with fear, but with whom nobody should feel like a stranger. A closeness – his - always imbued with spirituality, turned towards the superior sense of values which matter. Of himself he wrote: “If I think about what I am truly, about the make-up of my being and at the same time about my deep need and my most constant ideal, I find these two elements: familiarity and tension. Neither one without the other. Familiarity without tension seems to me an abuse of things, people, life, taking vulgar liberty with everything. Yes, put our arm around the shoulder of the person next to us, but when our togetherness elevates itself to a good thought, a promise of sacrifice or loving devotion, to the discovery of a truth, the formulation of a great social design, at the sight of something beautiful. And also tension without familiarity becomes harshness, arduous truth and spirit, solitary and even dangerous to itself, subject to sinking into the void it creates by driving others away.”

Capitini aimed at realizing this attitude of friendliness and closeness towards every living being, animals and plants. “From animals come many treasures of affection, already we have made plans for co-operation with them, and we might discover and realize even more ”. From here (in addition to what is generally reserved by us westerners only for human beings) comes another loving attitude of Capitini’s: the practice of vegetarianism. Plants, too, enrich the loving unity, since “they are also a presence, a being which has in itself a breath and openness to air, to light, in everything similar to how it is for us human beings”. And he went even lower, to things, since they, too, with human contact become charged with spiritual value; and even to inanimate material, seeing a throb of life and participation vibrate deep in it: “The respect we can show right away towards objects and things is to use them no more than is strictly necessary”. Here can be noted, in the all-inclusive circle of Capitini’s nonviolent openness, the delineation some decades early of what has been an absorbing subject over the last few years: ecology; and how he gives the best, the most precise answer to the corresponding problem of consumerism and the devastation of nature: not for a negative datum, for a narrow utilitarian reason, but for a positive one – a voluntary action of love.

Together with the actuation of a personal spiritual life, and in conformity with the principle of openness towards all, in Capitini a most intense widespread activity in public life becomes prominent. For Capitini – as for Gandhi - the fundamental method, the practical instrument of political life intent on freeing all is nonviolence (which for him – like the other side of a coin - is the other side of openness to all, of loving unity in which God’s presence is affirmed, just as for Gandhi nonviolence is the other side of Truth). Among the many significant definitions he gave: “Nonviolence is openness (that is, interest, fervour, love) for the existence, freedom and development in goodness of every being”- here is the best, one could say, of what we can think and want for the individual and for all.

Capitini’s public commitments were spread in many diverse areas. We have already mentioned his vegetarianism, in his time considered universally in Italy as an unnatural nourishment, harmful for health, criticized and mocked by his university colleagues as an “oddity”. In a nutshell we could say that Capitini made vegetarianism popular in Italy by attracting interest in it through his writings and founding the Italian Vegetarian Society, nowadays more and more flourishing. Not having space enough to deal at length with other activities of his (the Religious Orientation Centres, for a criticism and radical reform of traditional, authoritarian, dogmatic religious institutions. For an education which, beyond simple transmission of intellectual knowledge, might look towards a communication of values such as truth, goodness, beauty and so on, where the educator brings awareness of the grave limits of natural and social reality, and the personal experience of values, while the young pupils bring their festive creativity, open to new and wider developments; etc.), we shall limit ourselves to the presentation of two fundamental fields of Capitini’s political activity: transformation of society and peace.

In the former, his initial activity is aimed at opposing the ruling fascist dictatorship. In 1933, when he was just over 30 years old, he publicly refused the obligation for university lecturers to become card-carrying members of the fascist party; as a result he lost his lecturing post in one of the most prestigious Italian university colleges. This was putting into practice a basic nonviolent technique: non co-operation with evil, at the same time it was an indication of political struggle for everyone as an instrument for depriving the oppressive power of authority, for the exercising of which the co-operation of the oppressed people themselves is needed. For a dozen years, up to the fall of the fascist regime - after which he could take up his university post again - Capitini was reduced to living on a modest income from private lessons. He did his utmost in a widespread, intense activity of propaganda against the dictatorship (which landed him in jail twice for several months), through the drafting and dissemination of clandestine writings, through meetings and the establishment of anti-fascist groups. In 1937 one of his first books “Elements of a Religious Experience” came out (from which we took the passage cited at the beginning), which became a fundamental book for the liberal, political education of so many young people at the time, thus delivered from the intoxication of the totalitarian fascist mystique.

To go beyond not only the fascist regime but also the just as largely inadequate democratic one, Capitini began evolving the theory of, and promoting on a socio-political level, his own particular position defined “omnicracy” (power for all). As a start, Capitini set up in 1944 - right after his city, Perugia, was liberated from nazi-fascism - a very original experience, the Social Orientation Centres. As instruments of popular self-education and preparation for self-determination, the Centres put themselves forward as a way of making up for the inadequacies and defects of the representative-democracy regime and as a way of exceeding it in the development of forms of grassroots democracy, for a new socio-political order and a new power in which all participate. The Centres were free assemblies open to everyone, for periodical discussions on all subjects: administrative and political, local and international. They consisted of some essential standards:

- the principle of “listen and speak” (the Centres’ motto): anyone could take the floor during the discussion and collective enquiry, as a sort of joint thought-process, identifying and harmonizing exigencies as they arose;

- the presence of the authorities: the heads of public offices and bodies came to present their administrative measures, and to receive criticism and suggestions from everyone;

- the contact with intellectuals: intellectuals brought the contribution of their culture and well-articulated reflections, learning at the same time simplicity of expression, concreteness and authenticity of experiences; the local populace in its turn brought concreteness and the authenticity of their needs and the immediate straightforwardness of their language. They fortified their trust in intellectuals, felt no longer as belonging to an abstract class distant from the popular ranks, but as similar individuals sharing and assailed by problems common to everyone. The Centres, which spread rapidly in various locations, lasted some years, until the first post-war political elections, then the participation and interest in them waned and finally died out due to the unexpected monopoly of political life by the revived parties, which had made themselves its only protagonists and holder, in an activity wholly concentrated in the closed circle of their bureaucratic centres, going out and contacting the mass of people only when elections were to be held and they were looking to win votes.

Capitini was not absolutely against democracy: “I disagree with demolishers of the representative system, which western democracies have created and which, in its finest development, tries to extend power to the greatest number of citizens possible”. However, he denounced some of its grave limitations and distortions: “Our present democracy assigns power to the majority which sometimes is excessive in comparison with the rights of the minorities; to the police force it grants overwhelming power even as far as torture (as in nearly all countries) and many times excessive intervention in public life; it is overwhelmed by bureaucracy, neglecting its service to the anonymous public, and is to a large extent influenceable, even to corruption, by private and sectarian interests; it takes advantage of insufficient information and of the scant discerning education of the masses - those that should be cared about the most - because well-educated people have other ways to exercise some influence on public life; it makes State wars against States (…). I consider Parliament useful, but it is important for me to say that it needs to be integrated by many social centres, deliberative or consultative assemblies in all the suburbs, so as to be a necessary counterweight and corrective. It doesn’t matter whether the centres are only consultative at first, since the pressure they can exert on deliberative institutions is always possible, if nothing else showing assent or dissent in accordance with nonviolent techniques”. Should that not occur, he pointed out: “A democracy which is not under the continuous control of its citizens, in complete freedom and with the possibility of information and criticism, ends up as a game reserved for the chosen few, amidst the apathy and disinterest of the electorate ”.

The other central area of Capitini’s political activity concerned peace, not for a relative, conditioned pacifism like the prevailing one of governments (backed by churches), which, proclaiming themselves lovers of peace, do their utmost schizophrenically to prepare instruments of war; but, on the contrary, for an unconditional and total pacifism, i.e. of absolute refusal of the preparation and execution of any war, made by anyone and for any reason. Capitini considered opposition to war, and therefore the total and immediate abolition of its essential mainstay - the army - a primary exigency for every people of every State and for the whole of humanity: this not only for moral reasons, but for the effective conditions of present-day history, in which all of humanity is assailed by interests and needs beyond State level, in a universal ambit (the so-called globalization), which decides to create a common super-nation out of already-existing individual ones where, as a result, war between nations is nothing other than a fratricidal internal civil war. Otherwise - Capitini does not fail to point out - “before developing world unity, before the universal assembly, the limited assemblies of the peoples (closed within divisive state frontiers) survive, behind which and above which is formed the armed assembly, the army, supplied with overwhelming armaments and which can intervene everywhere”. It comes automatically to note also here how Capitini’s advance warning finds an immediate, tragic confirmation in the imperialistic “interventions” of recent years and days.

For Capitini the struggle for the abolition of military machinery could, further, at the same time be useful as a lever and starting point for the transformation of an unjust society, which, as well as war, generates oppression and exploitation and where the extremely closed, reactionary dominant classes find in military force their decisive instrument of power and repression. He appealed insistently particularly to national and international progressive authorities that they might be willing to consider that precisely the pacifist struggle could constitute the focus for the solidification of the broadest solidarity and mobilization of the people, with masses of people, men and women, from very different social conditions and political and religious persuasions, in every national community and all over the world, working together in the common, supreme value of peace. Only then would it be possible to insert into this act of the dismantlement of the military-industrial system (which besides bringing the devastation of war takes away every day colossal amounts of funds from civil development) substantial schemes for renewal in different social sectors, at the moment stifled by that vampiric system.

This total opposition to war sees Capitini involved in a decisive enterprise, trying to gain the attention and consideration of public opinion at the start of the post-war period when the first case in Italy of political objection to the call-up came about – in those years of non-acknowledgment and rejection of that position (and punished with years in jail). It was not about a simple, isolated, individual problem of conscience, of personal abhorrence of blood being spilt; far beyond that, this objection posed a general problem which struck at the conscience and responsibility of the whole community, i.e. that of a political stance ever-anchored to a warlike tendency. In order to illustrate the ideal significance and the political importance of conscientious objection, Capitini wrote about it thus: “What is at stake is a point of view regarding human relationships, a vision of what humanity is or should be. It is about deep feeling and commitment, which leads away from the inertia of following the majority”. “The majority” : not only those who take political decisions and religious leaders, but also ordinary citizens, who, though declaring their abhorrence of war, in practice concur and cooperate with its preparation. The contribution which Capitini brought to the campaign in support of conscientious objection was essential and fundamental managing eventually to arrive at its being legally recognised, with the right for objectors to substitute military (killing) service with a community service of public utility.

Together with the specific, distinct work for total nonviolent pacifism, Capitini also generated a continuous series of events open to a wider range of pacifist-leaning individuals and organisations, particularly apt at reaching those peripheral people left on the fringes of political activity, giving them the occasion and the opportunity to voice and express their desire for peace. Among those various events his conception and organization of the “Perugia-Assisi March for Peace and the Brotherhood of Peoples” in 1961 remains memorable. Presenting the project Capitini expressed himself thus regarding its origin: “In the post-wars of my life, on Sundays in the countryside I had seen swarms of women dressed in mourning because of war, I knew about many ignorant, unaware young men sent to kill and die by an immediate command from high-up, and I wanted to do something so that this might happen no more, at least for the people of the land so dear to me”. Capitini’s invitation to take part in the march was addressed to everyone, and his most important presence as a man of nonviolence in the inspiration and organization of the event ensured that it was not monopolized by any political force for their own aims. At the end of the march Capitini read the final motion: “The time is ripe for humankind to radically change direction. The past is gone. Enough of torture, of killing for any reason whatsoever; enough of the poison that violence brings to the education of the youth; enough of the danger that enormous, destructive forces be in the hands of a few decision-makers. We of the Centre for Nonviolence ask that the application of the method of active nonviolent resistance be spread to struggles for freedom from imperialism, colonialism, all oppression, from the absolute power of groups which are dictatorial or reactionary or enslaved by exploiting economic powers. May an intrepid, serene will to resist war through constructive resolutions for peace descend from this open, infinite, fraternal horizon (from the hills where Saint Francis lived – editor’s note), sacred for more than seven centuries to each being who is born to this life and the compresence of all.” The march was so successful, with the broadest, most uncommon confluence of intellectuals and ordinary folk that it marked an historic date in the intensification of Italian pacifism. After being summoned other times, after Capitini’s death, by the Nonviolent Movement which he founded, the management of the march was taken on by a committee of various pacifist organizations which promote it either annually or biannually along the same initial route from Perugia to Assisi, with the participation of hundreds of thousands of people, even from abroad, doing it in the name – if not exactly in the spirit - of its initiator, Aldo Capitini.

In conclusion we would say that Aldo Capitini was the greatest originator, propagator and actuator of nonviolence in Italy (whose debt to Gandhi for the initial inspiration he recognised). We owe it to him if in this country the idea and practise of nonviolence nowadays enjoy reasonable maturity and credibility, after persistent ostracism and distortion. The Nonviolent Movement, rich in its heritage of ideas and experiences, is still active and considered by some observers as “the most dynamic and qualified centre for nonviolence in Italy”. As regards theoretical development we must emphasize that Capitini here gave a lofty contribution, which is equal to whatever else of excellent quality that has been written on the subject of nonviolence in the world.

In one of his last writings Capitini had noted: “Nonviolence started opening an account in every country, in which everyone can deposit little by little commitments and enterprises.” The deposit which Capitini left in this “account” is enormous, inestimable. From this capital everyone can obtain an inexhaustible source of inspiration and strength - as is so for the immense patrimony which Gandhi’s supreme lesson in nonviolence provided for the world - for further possible and more-than-ever necessary and urgent commitments and enterprises, for a new world open to the freedom and well-being of all.