Massimo Cacciari (; born 5 June 1944) is an Italian philosopher, politician and public intellectual.

Biography

Born in Venice, Cacciari graduated in philosophy from the

University of Padua The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from ...

(1967), where he also received his

doctorate A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...

, writing a thesis on Immanuel Kant's ''Critique of Judgment''. In 1985, he became professor of

Aesthetics Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...

at the Architecture Institute of Venice. In 2002, he founded the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vita-Salute San Raffaele in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

, where he was appointed Dean of the Department in 2005. Cacciari has founded several philosophical reviews and published

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

s centered on the "negative thought" inspired by authors like

Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his ...

Martin Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; ; 26 September 188926 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th ce ...

and

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian-British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. He is con ...

. In the 1980s, Cacciari also worked with the Italian composer of avant-garde contemporary/classical music

Luigi Nono Luigi Nono (; 29 January 1924 – 8 May 1990) was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music. Biography Early years Nono, born in Venice, was a member of a wealthy artistic family; his grandfather was a notable painter. Nono beg ...

. Nono, a political activist whose music represented a revolt against bourgeois cultural constructs, collaborated with Cacciari, who arranged the philosophical lyrics on such works of Nono's as '' Das Atmende Klarsein'', ''Io'', and the opera ''

Prometeo ''Prometeo'' (''Prometheus'') is an "opera" by Luigi Nono, written between 1981 and 1984 and revised in 1985. Here the word "opera" carries the generic Italian meaning of "works", as in work of art, and not its usual meaning. Indeed, Nono scornf ...

''. After a brief affiliation with

Potere Operaio Potere Operaio ("Workers' Power") was a radical left-wing Italian political group, active between 1967 and 1973. (It shouldn't be confused with "Potere Operaio Pisano" which was one of the components of a competing revolutionary group, Lotta Conti ...

, a radical left-wing worker's party, Cacciari joined the

Italian Communist Party The Italian Communist Party ( it, Partito Comunista Italiano, PCI) was a communist political party in Italy. The PCI was founded as ''Communist Party of Italy'' on 21 January 1921 in Livorno by seceding from the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) ...

(PCI). In the 1970s he was responsible for industrial politics for the PCI

Veneto it, Veneto (man) it, Veneta (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = ...

section and, in 1976, he was elected to the

Italian Chamber of Deputies The Chamber of Deputies ( it, Camera dei deputati) is the lower house of the bicameral Italian Parliament (the other being the Senate of the Republic). The two houses together form a perfect bicameral system, meaning they perform identical funct ...

, where he was a member of the

Parliamentary A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state (or subordinate entity) where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support ("confidence") of the ...

commission for industry (1976–1983). After the death of

Enrico Berlinguer Enrico Berlinguer (; 25 May 1922 – 11 June 1984) was an Italian politician, considered the most popular leader of the Italian Communist Party (PCI), which he led as the national secretary from 1972 until his death during a tense period in Ital ...

(1984), Cacciari left the Communist Party and switched to more moderate positions, although he never left the centre-left coalition. In 1993 he was elected mayor of Venice, a position he held until 2000. He was also put forth as the future national leader of the coalition, later named The Olive Tree, but his defeat in the 2000 election as governor of the Veneto region made this occasion wane. However, in a surprise move in 2005, Cacciari again ran for mayor of Venice, and was elected by a slight majority against former magistrate Felice Casson, the very magistrate who years earlier had famously indicted Mayor Cacciari for criminal negligence arising out of the 1996 fire at Venice's La Fenice opera house. Mayor Cacciari was later acquitted of all charges in that case.

Works with English translations

*''Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture'', Yale University Press, 1993 *''The Necessary Angel'', State University of New York Press, 1994 *''Posthumous People: Vienna at the Turning Point'', Stanford University Press, 1996 *''The Unpolitical. Essays on the Radical Critique of Political Reason'', Yale University Press, 2009 *''Europe and Empire: On the Political Forms of Globalization'', Fordham University Press, 2016 *''The Withholding Power. An Essay on Political Theology'', Bloomsbury Academic, 2018

External links

Interview with Massimo Cacciari: “‘I am many’, says Europe. We have to be capable of being many”
''Barcelona Metropolis'', 2010. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cacciari, Massimo 1944 births Living people Italian Communist Party politicians The Democrats (Italy) politicians Democracy is Freedom – The Daisy politicians Democratic Party (Italy) politicians 21st-century Italian politicians Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Italy) Politicians of Veneto Mayors of Venice Writers from Venice Italian essayists 20th-century Italian philosophers 21st-century Italian philosophers 20th-century Italian politicians Male essayists 20th-century essayists 21st-century essayists 20th-century Italian male writers 21st-century Italian male writers Italian male non-fiction writers Italian philosophers