Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 15, no.

1, 2019

EMANUELE SEVERINO ON THE MEANING

OF SCIENTIFIC SPECIALIZATION
AN INTRODUCTION
Paolo Pitari

ABSTRACT: To our contemporary eyes, science appears as the most reliable guide to
the human enterprise. However, we possess little awareness as to what the proper
meaning of scientific specialization is, and this knowledge is indispensable if we are not
to proceed mindlessly in our relationship with being. Italian philosopher Emanuele
Severino sees in scientific specialization the most coherent consequence of humanity’s
most ancestral interpretation of the world, which all human decisions and actions
enact. To him, this coherency is what makes the dominance of scientific specialization
on our time necessary. By focusing on one of Severino’s major theoretical works (Oltre
il linguaggio, 1992), and with reference to other key texts, this essay introduces
international readers to a specific facet of Severino’s discourse. In doing so, it translates
passages of his works that have never appeared in English.
KEYWORDS: Emanuele Severino; Scientific specialization; Species; Techne; Decision

SCIENTIFIC SPECIALIZATION AND THE DISTANT PAST 1

To our contemporary eyes, science appears as the most reliable guide to

1
Emanuele Severino (1929-) is a contemporary Italian philosopher. He wrote around eighty or
more books. As of today, only one has been translated into English: The Essence of Nihilism (Verso
Books, 2016). English readers can also find a collection of essays, edited by Nicoletta Cusano,
entitled Nihilism and Destiny (2016). The present essay introduces English readers to only one facet

www.cosmosandhistory.org 366
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the human enterprise. It is our most efficient tool; it enables our

understanding and resolution of more and more adversities. It is formed
by a multiplicity of approaches to knowledge and action, each of which
pursues (and achieves) ever higher intensities of specialization.
Specialization thus belongs to the essence of science; it gives science its
capacity to extend knowledge and control over the objects of its analysis:
through specialization, science partitions reality into sets of discrete parts
and analyzes them in isolation from the totality of their context.
Specialization is the spirit of our time. However, we possess little
awareness as to what the proper meaning of specialization is, and this
knowledge is indispensable if we are not to proceed mindlessly in our
relationship with being. In Beyond Language (Oltre il linguaggio, 1992) –
especially in the third chapter –, Emanuele Severino explores the sense
and implications of scientific specialization. He accepts the common
knowledge that specialization (1) belongs to the core of the scientific
practice, and (2) is a fairly recent configuration of civilization, but he also
explains why scientific specialization is the necessary and most coherent
consequence of humanity’s most ancestral interpretation of the world. In
this sense, Severino offers an historical-philosophical explanation of why
scientific specialization dominates our time:
The specialized constitution of science belongs to the essence of scientific
research and practice. There is no science where there is no
specialization; that is, the application of the experimental method to a
particular field. This is a fairly recent circumstance in the history of our
civilization. But the method by which scientific specialization

of Severino’s discourse. N.B.: I translated all the titles and passages from Severino’s work here
cited. The Italian originals are always reported in parenthesis after the translation. The
bibliography lists them in alphabetical order according to the original Italian title.
 COSMOS AND HISTORY 368

contemplates the world is far more ancient. It dates back to when man
began to perceive himself as an autonomous center of action, capable of
decision. Decision makes acting autonomous. To act without deciding is to
depend on something other. The meaning of scientific specialization is
essentially tied to the meaning of decision. But what does this mean, and
how is this proposition justifiable? (Il carattere specialistico della scienza
appartiene ormai all’essenza della ricerca e della prassi scientifica. Non c’è scienza
dove non c’è specializzazione, ossia applicazione del metodo sperimentale a un campo
particolare di oggetti. Si tratta di una circostanza piuttosto recente nella storia della
nostra civiltà. Ma il modo di considerare il mondo, che viene messo in atto nella
specializzazione scientifica, è molto più antico. Risale al tempo in cui l’uomo
incomincia a sentirti un centro autonomo di azione, cioè capace di decidere. Il decidere
rende autonomo l’agire; se si agisce senza decidere, si dipende da altro. Il senso della
specializzazione scientifica, diciamo, è essenzialmente legato al senso del decidere. Ma
che senso ha, e come è possibile questa affermazione?, OL 57).

CONTEXT AND ISOLATION

Severino points out that specialization means to look at the species. The
original Latin meaning of species is “image,” “appearance,” “spectacle,’
“form.” The related verb specere means “to observe,” “to watch,” “to look
at,” “in the strong sense of ‘looking toward an object, a destination, a
goal’” (“nel senso forte di ‘guardare verso un oggetto, una meta, uno scopo,’” ibid.).
The species is what lets itself be seen. And in turn, “it is by virtue of its
visibility that the species can be observed, analyzed, controlled,
measured, desired, feared, refused, shunned” (“la visibilità della species è ciò
per cui quest’ultima può essere osservata, analizzata, controllata, misurata, desiderata,
temuta, rifiutata, fuggita,” ibid. 58). The visibility of the species is inversely
proportional to its blending with its surroundings. In other words, the
species must not confuse itself with its context: it must be separate from all
other species and from the totality of all species to be seen, i.e., to be itself.
We interpret things as species and enact specialization, and scientific
specialization is “the certainty of the difference between things” (“la
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convinzione della differenza tra le cose,” ibid.) put into practice in the most
coherent and powerful manner: science “isolates a part (species) of reality;
it separates it from the other parts in order to be able to observe […] its
configuration and behavior” (“isola una parte (species) della realtà, la separa
dalle altre per poterne osservare […] la configurazione e il comportamento,” ibid. 58-
59).
In Philosophy from the Greeks to Our Time: Contemporary Philosophy (La
filosofia dai greci al nostro tempo: la filosofia contemporanea, 1996), Severino
writes that while science does seek unification – see e.g. the International
Encyclopedia of Unified Science –, nonetheless it aims to “unite dimensions
that it conceives as originally separate, and thus destined to remain so
and to render accidental, precarious, temporary, and contingent every
unification” (“unisce dimensioni che essa concepisce come originariamente separate e
quindi destinate a rimanere tali e a rendere dunque accidentale, precaria, provvisoria,
contingente ogni loro unificazione,” FGT 482).
Like scientific specialization, all human actions interpret things as
species, i.e., as discrete, separate and isolated from one another. When we
say “human life” we give voice to our belief in our power to exert agency
over things and transform them. This belief entails the interpretation of
things as species as the original necessary precondition for transformation:
if things weren’t species, transformation would be impossible. For agency
to be conceivable, for decisions to be real, the “world” must be
constituted by a series of isolated and isolatable things. We can observe,
analyze, measure, control, desire, despise, save, and kill things only
because of their original separateness. Humans can exist as the beings
who organize means, realize ends, make decisions and transform the
“world” only in virtue of the prior ontological isolation of all things.
This basic interpretation of reality establishes the foundation of our
civilization. Accordingly, within the thought of our civilization, scientific
 COSMOS AND HISTORY 370

specialization belongs to the essence of humankind. This makes it not

only powerful but also righteous and just: scientific specialization is the
factual realization of humankind. When human beings live – i.e., when
they feel, decide, and act –, they isolate. When scientific specialization
pursues its ends, it isolates. Therefore, it develops human essence to its
highest coherence and power. In this sense, to reject scientific
specialization is to reject humanity. This is why our culture’s
denunciations of scientific specialization have been contradictory, why
they had to fall unheeded by necessity, and why our civilization moves
toward the age of technology. To believe that human beings transform
the world and to criticize scientific specialization is contradictory. In
Capitalism without Future (Capitalismo senza futuro, 2012), Severino explains
why human beings are technological beings:
as to their fundamental meaning, throughout history, human beings have
always been described as technological beings; that is, as forces capable of
organizing means toward the realization of ends. We say “as to their
fundamental meaning” to indicate the common meaning that underlies all
different, even contrasting, meanings imposed upon human beings
through time (and which at times seem irreducible to the technological
being, as, e.g., in the case of the mystic man) [quanto al suo significato
fondamentale l’esser uomo è sempre stato inteso, lungo la sua storia, come un essere
tecnico, ossia come una forza capace di predisporre mezzi per realizzare scopi:
quanto al suo significato fondamentale, si sta dicendo, ossia quanto al
significato comune che è sotteso ai diversi e anche contrastanti significati secondo i quali
l’esser uomo è stato via via interpretato (e che a volte, come ad esempio nel caso
dell’uomo mistico, sembrano irriducibili all’uomo tecnico), CSF 85].

We interpret humans as beings capable of organizing means toward the

realization of ends by treating things as species. This is how we define
human beings as technological beings. This is what makes scientific
specialization the practice that most coheres to our fundamental beliefs
about our nature. The present technological configuration of our
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civilization may be a recent historical circumstance, but its Weltanschauung

is as ancient as humankind. In Téchne: The Roots of Violence (Téchne: Le radici
della violenza, 2002), Severino writes that this “has always been the self-
conception of Western culture, which has attained singular emphasis in
bourgeois culture” (“è, né più né meno, il concetto che la cultura occidentale ha
sempre avuto di se stessa e che ha trovato una particolare accentuazione nella cultura
borghese,” T 122). 2
In the seventeenth century, science began to separate itself from
philosophy. This marked the birth of modern science through the same
inevitable process whereby we today witness how “the methods of the
natural and mathematical sciences come to be applied to the various
aspects of human reality” (“i metodi delle scienze della natura e di quelle
matematiche vengono applicati anche ai vari aspetti della realtà umana,” FGT 481).
There are no humanities free from scientific specialization anymore.
Philosophy has become the servant of science. Literary studies try to be
“scientific” to justify their survival. These are just symptoms of the rise
and expansion of our technological ethos. In this sense, the course of our
civilization proceeds according to necessity and is therefore ineluctable.
We are witnessing the progressive fulfilment of our most fundamental
and ancient technological beliefs.

SCIENCE AND MYTH

If scientific specialization is the most coherent fulfilment of our most

2
To give just one example: in History of Western Philosophy (1946), Bertrand Russell writes about
the Hellenistic age that “specialization characterized the age in all departments, not only in the
world of learning” (HWP 260). With due specifications, such statements can be extended all the
way to archaic human beings.
 COSMOS AND HISTORY 372

ancestral interpretation of being, why is it such a recent configuration of

human civilization, and why is it still being questioned? For Severino, the
answers to these questions lie in the relationship between science and
myth. On the one hand, science was born in opposition to myth. On the
other, this opposition occurs within the deeper ambient sameness that
traverses the history of humanity. Severino insists on two perspectives: a)
tradition contained within itself the seeds of its self-destruction, of the
death of god, of the elimination of all unified knowledge, and of the
advent of specialization and technology; b) science is the necessary
consequence of the original mythic attitude, and thus enacts and
preserves the spirit of traditional mythology. To understand these claims,
we must again turn to Severino’s Beyond Language (Oltre il linguaggio, 1992).
Why was science born in opposition to myth? Severino answers that
“human beings reject the guidance of myth when they begin to perceive
themselves as centers of action, capable of deciding” (“l’uomo non si fa più
guidare dal mito quando incomincia a sentirsi un centro di azione, capace di
decidere,” OL 59). The true difference between mythic and non-mythic
existence resides in the meanings of “human” and “action.” Most
importantly, the non-mythic existence begins as human beings live more
and more according to their belief in their ability to decide how to
transform the world. In myth, human beings, “in their acting and
deciding, perceive the presence of the Divine Forces that bear the weight
of the universe” (“nel proprio agire e decidere avverte la presenza delle Forze divine
che reggono l’universo,” ibid.). That is, they believe that “their acting is the
acting of the Whole” (“il suo agire è l’agire del Tutto,” ibid. 61). Therefore,
“they perceive their acting as not theirs but as the acting of the Whole
itself. As a result, when they act and decide, they do not feel separate and
isolated from the Whole. Properly speaking, then, they do not ‘decide’”
(“egli avverte il suo agire non come suo, ma come l’agire stesso del Tutto. Proprio per
 PAOLO PITARI 373

questo, agendo e decidendo, non si sente separato e isolato dal Tutto; e in questo senso,
propriamente, non ‘decide,’” ibid. 59).
In myth, human beings do not decide. A “decision” is an act freely
chosen by an individual, and there can be no freedom for individual
decision in myth, where every action is an Act of the Whole. The
individual cannot be an autonomous center of action: one must enact the
Will of the Whole and therefore one cannot decide. Properly speaking,
one cannot even act if by “action” we mean an endeavor that was chosen
and could have been otherwise because it originates within the
autonomous force of an individual. “To decide” means “to make a choice
from a number of alternatives” (OED). In myth, there are no alternatives
and therefore no decisions. The Whole must be unchanging, unalterable,
inflexible, and so human beings cannot do otherwise.
Human freedom and the Whole are mutually exclusive. In myth, the
opposition resolves in the victory of the Whole. In science, human
freedom wins. 3 Scientific specialization is what happens when belief in
human freedom becomes concrete action. The history of humanity is the
process of becoming ever more coherent with our original belief in
human freedom. Thus, after myth “come the epochs when human
beings no longer feel the Whole in their acting and begin to perceive
themselves as autonomous centers of action and will” (“vengono le epoche in
cui l’uomo non sente più il Tutto nel proprio agire, ma incomincia a percepirsi come
centro autonomo di azione e di volontà,” ibid.). In these epochs, human beings
begin to feel themselves as separate and isolated from the things of the

3
Human history is pervaded by giant myths, Christianity and Islam above all, that claim to allow
the coexistence of human beings and the Whole. We cannot describe the critique that these
myths deserve here. But we can mention the reasoning that points to the solution. Can God be
surprised by human actions? No, or He wouldn’t be omnipotent. But if God cannot be surprised,
then there can there be no space for human freedom.
 COSMOS AND HISTORY 374

world, which themselves become species.

These epochs were the dawn of freedom for “human beings” as we
know them. We could now decide and act, organize means and realize
ends. We had to destroy the mythic Whole to exist. For human life to be
possible, being must become changeable, alterable, flexible. Only
through the fall of myth could human power of initiative arise: “the more
human beings feel autonomous, the more they perceive the Whole as
separate from them; the more they feel author and master (and hence
responsible) of their actions, the more their actions become decisions”
(“più l’uomo si sente autonomo, più sente il Tutto al di fuori di lui; più si sente autore
e padrone (e quindi responsabile) delle azioni che compie, più il suo agire diventa un
decidere,” ibid., 62).
From this original ontological severance of the things of the world,
scientific specialization and the age of technology follow by necessity.
Science opposes myth by constituting itself as the concretization of
human freedom. Yet, science is also the realization of myth and, in this
sense, the popular secularism of today, which opposes science and myth
as if they meant truth-rationality and falsehood-irrationality, is simply
myopic. The seeds of scientific specialization were already contained in
myth, and thus myth brought forth its own self-destruction. Specifically,
these seeds of self-destruction dwelled within the original contradiction
of myth: the contradiction of affirming both Fate and human freedom.
Human beings doubted the Whole within myth itself. That is, they
doubted “that every action, even the most irrelevant and banal, is the
acting of the Whole” (“che ogni agire, anche il più irrilevante e banale, sia l’agire
del Tutto,” ibid.). By doubting itself, myth began to destroy its Whole, ever
since its beginning. This doubting was necessary, though, because
human beings could never truly believe that no action depended on them
as autonomous centers of action. The seeds of the age of technology and
 PAOLO PITARI 375

of myth’s self-destruction have always resided in this idea that human

beings are centers of action, who therefore must be autonomous and free.
This belief in our freedom to decide and transform appeared at the
dawn of human thought. It belongs among our most fundamental beliefs
about the nature of reality. It entails that everything exists as species,
separate and isolated from everything else. It entails the necessity and
justice of scientific specialization and the age of technology. Myth’s
incapability of sustaining the Meaning of the Whole becomes clear, by
way of example, when one reflects on transgression. Since the beginning
of myth, human beings believe they witness transgressions. But belief in
transgression destroys the Whole, because transgressions differ from the
Will of the Whole and thus manifest the impossibility of Fate. If human
beings can transgress, then they are autonomous centers of action, i.e.,
they freely decide in accordance with their own will, and therefore the
Whole must be a false illusion. If the Law of the Whole were true, all
actions would cohere with its Act, and so no action would be
transgressive. No action could be punished because no action would be
“profane.” Therefore, “profanity” is the original affirmation of the
freedom of human beings. By believing in profanity, myth destroyed itself
and affirmed the fundamental truth of human free will. Even within
myth, then, the most fundamental belief has always been that human
beings are technological beings.
This fundamental belief in the autonomous will of individuals drives
the erosion of myth throughout history, in a process that culminates in
the future advent of the age of technology. The technological
interpretation of the world is the ambient sameness that unifies the
history of humanity. This interpretation makes the future age of
technology the true realization of our most ancestral beliefs, and
scientific specialization is the means whereby this realization occurs, it is
 COSMOS AND HISTORY 376

the means whereby myth frees itself from its contradictions. This is the
sense in which our civilization develops according to necessity.
Scientific specialization is a recent configuration of human
civilization because of the historical dominance of myth. In other words:
it takes a long time for myth to free itself from its contradictions. Today,
scientific specialization must fight other ideologies that claim the right to
shape human civilization because myth isn’t quite dead yet. The
traditions of the West still live, but they are dying (religions and all other
forms of the epistéme: capitalism, communism, politics, ethics, etc. – these
are our myths and traditions). Scientific specialization is uncontainable
and destined to bring about the age of technology because every ideology,
even myths and traditions, believes in humans as technological beings:
that is, every ideology, even those who seem to oppose science, believes
in the same fundamental and ancestral ideas about the nature of reality
that make scientific specialization the most coherent concrete realization
of the unquestionable evidence of being.
Scientific specialization is the most coherent and powerful action that
results from our conceptualization of reality. For this reason, it is natural,
righteous, and just. Emanuele Severino argues that technology can be
questioned only if, before, one questions the fundamental beliefs that
everyone shares about reality and the meaning of human life.

SCIENCE AND DECISION

A tangible exemplification of the necessary connection between human

self-definition and the advent of the age of technology requires reflection
on the meaning of “decision.” Let us consider even the simplest decision.
When I take an object in hand, my decision is possible only because I am
convinced that I am an autonomous center of action capable of
transforming the world, and that the object that I take is a species and is
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therefore separable and isolatable from its context. Severino writes in

Beyond Language that:
I decide to take an object in hand only if I am convinced that the status of
the object (for example, its being placed on a table) is not tied to the rest
of the world by an inextricable tie, and therefore only if I am convinced
that said status is separate and isolated (separable and isolatable) from its
context. No matter how copious may be the bonds that tie the object on
the table to the rest of the world, I decide to take the object in hand only
if I am convinced that those bonds can all be broken by the motion of my
hand. That is, I decide to take the object because I am convinced that, as
to its being in my hand, the object is separate and isolated from the rest of
the world and thus depends only upon my decision (decido di prendere in
mano un oggetto solo se sono convinto che lo stato in cui esso si trova (ad esempio il
suo essere deposto sul tavolo) non è unito al resto del mondo da un legame indissolubile,
e dunque solo se sono convinto che tale stato è separato e isolato (o separabile e
isolabile) dal contesto in cui si trova. Per quanto numerosi possano essere i legami che
uniscono l’oggetto posto sul tavolo al resto del mondo, decido di afferrare l’oggetto
soltanto se sono convinto che quei legami possono essere tutti sciolti dal gesto della
mia mano che afferra l’oggetto. Decido di afferrare l’oggetto, perché sono convinto che,
quanto al suo stare nella mia mano, esso è separato e isolato dal resto del mondo
e dipende unicamente da me, OL 63).

I do not ever consider whether or not to take the sun in hand. The
decision never presents itself to me because I do not think that I am an
autonomous force powerful enough to do so, and because I do not think
that the sun will let itself be taken. Yet, tomorrow this too could become
a decision, if scientific specialization will allow it. The very idea that we
make decisions and act freely entails that we are technological beings in
a universe of species, and that the only limitations to our power are
limitations within it (these could thus be overcome, and so the ethos of
technology becomes infinite power).
Technology also entails belief that oneself is a species: the necessary
 COSMOS AND HISTORY 378

precondition for autonomy, force, and action is one’s own separation and
isolation from all other things, otherwise decision, action, and power
would be impossible. Our belief in our ability to analyze, measure,
control, transform, and dominate things thus entails that we ourselves are
things and that so are other people (why should one not treat oneself and
others as things, then?). Even in our simplest and smallest decisions and
actions, we enact the essence of scientific specialization: the
interpretation of being that justifies our domination of the world.
Therefore, we always enact our belief that we and others are things, and
that the fundamental ethos of humanity must be the indefinite increase
of power. If you think you decide and then decry scientific specialization,
you are in contradiction. In To Caesar and to God (A Cesare e a Dio, 1983),
Severino writes that
if one were convinced that things are tied to one another by an
inseparable tie, so as to form an unbreakable web, then one would never
decide to take even the lightest and easiest-to-take object in hand,
because the attempt would involve the entire web to which the object is
inseparably tied. Moving the smallest thing would equal moving the
entire universe. One thinks one can modify reality – and technology
establishes itself by the conviction that it is the most effective power that
can transform reality – only if one thinks one is looking at a world where
things are separate, not tied by a web” (“se si fosse persuasi che le cose sono
legate tra di loro e legate con un legame inscindibile, in modo da formare una rete che
non può essere spezzata, allora non ci si deciderebbe nemmeno a prendere in mano il
più leggero e afferrabile degli oggetti: il tentativo coinvolgerebbe tutta la rete in cui
l’oggetto sarebbe inserito. Smuovere la cosa più piccola equivarrebbe a smuovere l’intero
universo. Si crede di poter modificare la realtà – e la tecnica si costituisce attraverso la
convinzione di essere la potenza che trasforma la realtà nel modo più efficace – solo se
ci si tiene dinanzi un mondo in cui le cose sono separate, non sono legate da una rete,”
CD 147).

If you believe you decide, you believe in technology. The belief in human
 PAOLO PITARI 379

decision shatters all traditional and religious beliefs in absolute truths: we

are free to decide, therefore, we are technological beings in a world of
juxtaposed contingent fragments (species).
Since the dawn of time, human beings believe they decide. In
believing they decide, they act as if they had the power to transform the
world. In so doing, they enact the ideology of technology. Everyone who
believes in decision must affirm the justice and power of scientific
specialization. There is no difference between drinking a glass of water
and constructing a hydroelectric power plant. Both decisions enact the
same technological interpretation of the world:
even before constructing a hydroelectric power plant that separates the
water of a river or lake from its original status of unity with the rest of the
world, the decision to construct a power plant assumes that water is
something that is originally separate from its context; that is, something
that can be known and used independently of all the infinite dimensions
of the universe that do not belong to the finite set of factors that the
available scientific knowledge considers to be relevant to the construction
of a hydroelectric power plant (“prima ancora di costruire una centrale
idroelettrica, che separa l’acqua di un fiume o di un lago dallo stato in cui essa si trova
originariamente, unita al resto del mondo, la decisione stessa di costruire una centrale
assume l’acqua come qualcosa di originariamente separato dal proprio contesto, cioè
come qualcosa che può essere conosciuto e utilizzato indipendentemente da tutte le
infinite dimensioni dell’universo che non rientrano nell’insieme finito di fattori che le
conoscenze scientifiche a disposizione ritengono connessi alla costruzione di una centrale
idroelettrica,” ibid., 63).

And so does the decision to drink a glass of water. Scientific specialization

does nothing more than make decisions. Its distinctive quality is its being
the most coherent, radical, effective, powerful actualization of decisions.
If humans are beings who make decisions, then scientific specialization
is the concrete means of realization of humankind. If humans are
technological beings, then the advent of the age of technology will be the
 COSMOS AND HISTORY 380

true realization of what it means to be human. Within this interpretation

of reality, scientific specialization and technology must be humanity’s
true moral obligation, and humanity should do away with all hindrances
to the development of its power. Today, everyone agrees that humans are
technological beings, capable of decision, in a world of things that exist
as species. This world demands the recognition that only the commitment
to infinite power represents true humanism. These consequences are
unavoidable if we agree that we are capable of transforming the world.
As long as humanity believes this theory to be true, scientific
specialization and technology will dominate the configuration of human
civilization ever more, and all ethical boundaries to the exercise of power
will decay.

GLOTTOLOGY AND THE MEANING OF DECISION

Our belief in our ability to make decisions belongs to the essence of

technology, and if it is true that “language reveals the meaning that
human beings confer to the world” (“il linguaggio rivela il senso che l’uomo
attribuisce al mondo,” OL 59), then to dwell upon the meaning of “decision”
is to reveal something fundamental about how we interpret existence.
In Téchne: The Roots of Violence (Téchne: Le radici della violenza, 2002),
Severino writes that every decision entails a goal, and that “to reach this
goal, one must separate, isolate, tear off the dominatable from the whole”
(“Se si vuole raggiungere questo risultato si deve separare, isolare, strappare il
dominabile al tutto,” T 283). Every decision is the separation and isolation
of something from its context, and the goal is “to control it and dominate
it” (“controllare e dominare” ibid.). You separate the glass of water from the
table in order to use it according to your will. These are the dynamics of
every decision, and they have profound existential consequences.
Without the interpretation of things as available to domination, decision
 PAOLO PITARI 381

would be impossible. To make a decision is to believe in one’s ability to

dominate a region of Being. Therefore, as Severino writes in Around the
Meaning of Nothingness (Intorno al senso del nulla, 2013), “decision is
separation” (“la decisione è separazione,” ISN 51).
Glottology teaches us that “to decide” has always meant to “tear off
of,” “to cut away from.” Beyond Language describes how “decide” comes
from the Latin “de-caedo, which means ‘I strike, in order to separate the
stricken from that with which it was united,’” (“de-caedo, che significa
‘colpisco, in modo da separare il colpito da ciò a cui era unito,’” OL 59-60). Téchne:
The Roots of Violence tells us that de-caedo means “undoing, tearing to
pieces, cutting, breaking, separating” (“disfare, fare a pezzi, tagliare, rompere,
separare,” T 282). “To decide” derives from de-caedo not only in English but
also in Italian (“decidere”) and French (“décider”). Even the German
“Entscheiden (to decide) is formed on the preposition ent (which indicates
the idea of separation) and on scheiden (which means indeed to separate)”
(“Entscheiden (decidere) è formato dalla preposizione ent (che indica l’idea della
separazione) e da scheiden (che, appunto, significa separare),” ibid. 282-3).
Finally, decision as separation can be found in Ancient Greek too.
Another Latin word for de-caedere is de-cernere, and “cernere corresponds to
the Greek kríno (of which it is metathesis), and kríno means I decide but also,
and fundamentally, I separate” (“cernere, poi, corrisponde al greco kríno (di cui
è metatesi) e kríno significa decido, ma significa anche, e fondamentalmente,
separo,” ibid. 282).
Glottology thus shows that, in the languages of the West, who decides
separates, and separation is violent. The Oxford Latin Dictionary tells us that
the Latin caedo has two primary meanings: “to separate” and “to kill.”
The meanings of “caedo, ~dere” are “to strike, beat”; “to strike with the
sword”; “To kill, slay, murder”; “to attack, cut down, inflict casualties
on”; “to defeat (usu. w. heavy casualties)”; “to slaughter (victims)”; “to
 COSMOS AND HISTORY 382

crack, smash, break”; “To use up, consume, destroy”; “to devour” (OLD
275).
In the original meaning of decision, then, separation and killing are
united as the essence of technology. In meaning “I kill,” caedo also relates
to “the Latin oc-cido” (“dal latino oc-cido,” OL 60), and again: “occido,
~dere” means “to cause the death of, kill, slaughter”; “To involve in
disaster or failure, bring about the ruin of, do for”; “To cut up, break up,
crush to pieces”; “To fall or collapse in the way”; “To die (esp. by violent
means, in battle, etc.), be struck down, fall”; “To sink into nothingness,
pass away”; etc. (OLD 1356-7).
Here, Severino insists on the equivalence between occido and ob-caedo:
ob- indicates that against which caedere is implemented. Occidere (to kill)
means to implement separation, breaking, undoing, tearing to pieces and
dismembering against someone or something. Occidere and decidere
indicate two closely related actions: to kill and to decide. Killing is the
most extreme decision: the decision to separate a thing from Being.
Further glottological proof comes from the meaning of the original Latin
“decido, ~dere”: “to fall down”; “To fall in ruin, collapse”; “To die”; “To
fall or lapse from a better into a worse or less elevated condition”; “(of
things) to fail, go wrong”; “To detach by cutting, cut off, cut out”; etc.
(ibid. 538).
Originally, then, “decision” itself explicitly indicates violent
separation, destruction, death, and killing. Today, the indication has
become implicit. In our contemporary languages, we split off these
meanings into different terms, but the graphic and auditory vicinity of
decision and killing remains. English maintains the essential sameness of
decision and killing in the use of the combining form “-cide,” which
“denotes a person or substance that kills” and “an act of killing” (OED)—
and which itself derives from the Latin caedere (OED). Thus, English says
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“decide,” and with the combining form “-cide,” it builds all verbs and
nouns related to killing: “homicide,” “patricide,” “matricide,” “suicide,”
“ecocide,” “genocide,” “biocide,” “deicide,” etc. Relatedly, the term “kill”
sounds and looks different, because it is “probably of Germanic origin”
(OED), but the conceptual sameness is not lost: “kill originally denoted a
stroke or blow […], in the sense of ‘strike,’ ‘beat,’ and also ‘put to death’”
(OED), just as the Latin decido and occido did.
This essential sameness of decision, separation, and killing appears in
our languages from their origins. And if language reveals the meaning
human beings confer to the world, then the meaning of decision betrays
how we relate to our own existence: in every decision, we must feel the
killing of infinite lives. Severino writes that “to say that deciding kills the
life that one could have lived is not an exaggeration” (“dire che il decidere
uccide la vita che si sarebbe potuto vivere non è una esagerazione,” OL 60). We think
of life as an infinity of possibilities within which we decide what will be
and what will not be. We think we decide the configuration of the world.
We think of ourselves as the “I” that chooses what possibility must be and
what other infinite possibilities “I” must condemn to nothingness. This
must be our self-definition in technology, and this must mean that every
instant of our lives feels like an absolute infinity of abortions and murders,
of our own selves and of others as well (whether we are conscious of this
or not).
Every decision (even the smallest of decisions) comes forth as the
eternal killing of infinite possibilities in order to let only one possibility
be. In every instant, we must decide to murder infinities into absolute
nothingness in order to let be the one configuration of the world we want
to be. In so believing we decide, we think that Being is subject to our will.
In this interpretation of existence, every moment becomes not only a
decision that is the killing of an infinity of possible selves and of possible
 COSMOS AND HISTORY 384

others. Also, every decision becomes the killing of our present self and of
all present others. In every moment and in every decision, “I” and all
others are killed, forever lost into nothingness, and they will never be
recovered. In light of this extreme violence, paralysis in front of decision
seems rational. Decision now appears to entail unbearable isolation,
loneliness, solipsism, suffering, despair, and violence. It now also appears
as an unbearable burden: the burden of being fully responsible for the
violence of infinite killing in each moment, without the possibility of ever
going back. How can one rationally ever forgive oneself for making the
wrong decision? How can one rationally ever avoid being crushed by the
awareness that every moment is a decision that entails this infinite
responsibility none can bear?
Ours is the civilization of technology and therefore of extreme
decision. For Severino, this entails extreme suffering and violence. The
West is the “Occident,” which too derives from the Latin “occidens, ~entis,”
which itself derives from occido. Occidens is occid-ens. Occido means killing
and ens is the present participle of sum, “to be,” “being,” “that which is.”
Therefore, occidens is “the violent being that kills, slaughters, causes
disaster, brings to ruins”; “the being that decides, separates, isolates,
kills.” Not coincidentally, the English word “Occident” contains the
combining form “-cide.” Occidens is the West, the affirmation and
actualization of our unquestionable belief in technology, our ability to
decide and dominate. We are our interpretation of things as “accidental”
and “incidental,” words that themselves contain the combining form “-
cide” because this interpretation of things allows us to “-cide” them.
We are the Occidens, the West. We pray at the altar of individual
freedom, elevating our belief in our power to be technological beings to
the ultimate truth. Severino reminds us that technology is a theory, not
the absolute truth, and as such is not unquestionable. He invites us to
 PAOLO PITARI 385

consider that there may be good reason to doubt what we take for
granted. Only through an interpretation of reality entirely other could one
question the ethos of technology (the ethos of power). Only if the
technological interpretation of reality is wrong, the ethos of power could
and should be questioned. Throughout his works, Severino argues
precisely that the technological interpretation of reality constitutes the
greatest folly, that it belongs to the essence of nihilism and that it is the
origin of every form of violence ever since the original appearance of
human thought. This is the heart of the matter, but it shall be discussed
elsewhere.

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