TRANSLATED FROM THE ITALIAN
BY ALASTAIR MCEWEN
A HARVEST BOOK
HARCOURT, INC.
SAN DIEGO NEW YORK LONDON
© 1997 RCS Libri S.p.A.
Translation copyright © 2001 by Alastair McEwen
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This is a translation of Cinque Scritti Moralt
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Eco, Umberto.
[Cinque scritti morali. English]
Five moral pieces/Umberto Eco; translated from
the Italian by Alastair McEwen.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-15-100446-3
ISBN 0-15-601325-8 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PQ4865.C6 C5613 2001
854'.914—dc21 2001024312
Text set in Stempel Garamond
Designed by Linda Lockowitz
Printed in the United States of America
First Harvest edition 2002
C E G I K J H F D B
Introduction • [>]
Reflections on War • [>]
When the Other Appears on the Scene • [>]
On the Press • [>]
Ur-Fascism • [>]
Migration, Tolerance, and the Intolerable • [>]
The essays collected here have two things in common. They are, first, occasional pieces: pieces that sprang from talks given at conferences, articles on current affairs. And, despite the variety of their themes, they are all ethical in nature, that is to say, they treat of what we ought to do, what we ought not to do, and what we must not do at any cost.
Given their occasional nature, I should explain the circumstances in which they were written.
"Reflections on War" was published in La Rivista dei libri, 1 April 1991, at the time of the Gulf War.
"When the Other Appears on the Scene" is derived from an exchange of four letters with Cardinal Martini organized and published by Liberal magazine. The correspondence was then brought together in a slim volume, Che cosa crede chi non crede? (Rome: Atlantide Editoriale, 1996). My text is a reply to a question the cardinal had put to me: "What is the basis of the certainty and necessity for moral action of those who, in order to establish the absolute nature of an ethic, do not intend to appeal to metaphysical principles or transcendental values, or even to universally valid categorical imperatives?" For the background to the debate the reader is referred to the volume in question, which also contains notes and contributions by Emanuele Severino, Manlio Sgalambro, Eugenio Scalfari, Indro Montanelli, Vittorio Foa, and Claudio Martelli.
"On the Press" was a paper presented in the course of a series of seminars organized by the Italian Senate (President Carlo Scognamiglio), before the members of the Senate and the editors of Italy's biggest dailies, with whom a wide-ranging discussion then followed. The text was subsequently published, by the Senate itself, in Gli Incontri di studio a Palazzo Giustiniani: Stampa e mondo politico oggi (Rome: Tipografia del Senato, 1995), a volume that also contains the addresses given by Scognamiglio, Eugenio Scalfari, Giulio Anselmi, Francesco Tabladini, Silvano Boroli, Walter Veltroni, Salvatore Carruba, Darko Bratina, Livio Caputo, and Paolo Mieli.
"Ur-Fascism" was a speech given in English at a symposium organized by the Italian and French departments of Columbia University, on 25 April 1995, in commemoration of the Liberation of Europe. It later appeared as "Ur-Fascism" in The New York Review of Books (22 June 1995) and was translated into Italian for the June-July 1995 number of La Rivista dei libri with the title "Totalitarismo fuzzy e Ur-Fascismo" (a version virtually the same as the one published here except for a few minor modifications). However, it should be borne in mind that the text was conceived for an audience of American students and the speech was given in the days when America was still shaken by outrage over the Oklahoma city bombing and by the discovery of the fact (by no means a secret) that extreme right-wing military organizations existed in America. The anti-Fascist theme, therefore, took on particular connotations in that context, and my historical observations were intended to stimulate reflection on current problems in various countries—the talk was then translated by newspapers and magazines into numerous other languages. Furthermore, the fact that the discourse was aimed at young Americans explains the presence of specific information on events that an Italian reader ought to know about already, such as the quotations from Roosevelt, the allusions to American anti-Fascism, and the emphasis on the encounter between Europeans and Americans at the time of the Liberation.
"Migration, Tolerance, and the Intolerable" is a collage. The first section contains the first part of a talk given on 23 January 1997 on the opening of the conference organized by the city of Valencia regarding prospects for the third millennium. The second is a translation and readaptation of the introduction to the International Forum on Intolerance, organized in Paris by the Académie Universelle des Cultures on 26 and 27 March 1997. The third, titled "Non chiediamoci per chi suona la campana," was published by La Repubblica on the occasion of the sentencing of former SS officer Erich Priebke, accused of war crimes and tried before the Rome Military Tribunal.