by Antonino Drago
University "Federico II" Naples, IPRI, Allied of Ark Community

1. Biographical profile of Aldo Capitini

Aldo Capitini born in Perugia in 1899 as a second son of a modest family (the father was the custodian of the old tower of the Municipality and the mother was a taylor). Self-made scholar, in 1924 he entered in the prestigious Higher Normal School of Pisa, where in 1928 he took his M.D. in Philosophy (110 cum laude) and then he became the Secretary. He was close to anti-Fascist students – among which a rare conscientious objector - and professors; he became vegetarian.

In 1933 he was asked by the President of the School, the philosopher G. Gentile, to take the card of the Fascist Party, he refused being inspired by Gandhi. As a consequence, he lost the position, came back to family in Perugia and survived by means of private lessons. He was very active in covert, anti-Fascism propaganda among the youth of Central Italy. He wrote a book ¹ where he stressed the infinite potentialities inherent in any layman, since a great experience of liberation may start from an interior process, although oppressed by a negative sociaty; a characteristic statement of this period is : "God is not truth, God is to choose". Although he did not belong to any political Party, his life became an example among the Italian anti-Fascists,.

During the war he was imprisoned five months, as a cautelative measure of the policy. He planned a new Party, whose ideology was a synthesis of both liberalism and socialism., because his first aim was to promote a radical reform of the politics in ethical terms, outside the general struggle of each Party for prevailing upon the adversary Parties and on the people. Yet, just in the days of its constitution (September 1943), his relevant friends chose to mediate with the dominant political framework for founding a political Party (Partito d’Azione). Not being representative of some political Party, he was unjustly excluded from the Constituent Assembly and all political responsabilities in the new democratic life. Nonetheless this exclusion, he was very active in Italian political life; trhough a fìgreat number of grassroot activities.

He appreciated very much the ethical motivations of all Resistants, although they have been hegemonised by Communist Party. Indeed, political Parties suggested the very dynamics of Resistance. Yet, if Resistance, as it is said, was overall an ethical redemption of Italian people from Fascism, its main inspirer was surely Capitini.

He staunchly suggested the active non-collaboration as a mean for defeating both Fascism and Nazism; his appeal seemed not to be followed by Italians– with his great sufference –. Yet, he ignored what came apparent to subsequent historical reasearches, i.e., during the Resistance to Nazism (Sept. 1943 – April 1945), Italian people elicited a multitude of episodes of non-armed and even nonviolent actions; and overall in the concentration camps in Germany by 600.000 soldiers and 20.000 out 28.000 officiers refused to collaborate with Salò Republic (Mussolini government, which was supported by Nazism).

In July 1944 he launched the initiative of COS’s (Centers of social orientation) – whose slogan was "To heard and to discuss", not to decide; since the main aim was the participation, and not the process of prevailing upon others’ opinion. The initiative was very successful in Central Italy along a short period of two years; then even leftist Parties were hostile. And eventually, in 1948 the exclusion of leftist Parties from the Italian government radicalised political divisions in Italy; as a consequence Capitini was emarginated at all.

After the Liberation (April 1945) he became for two years the Rector of the University for Foreign people in Perugia. He promoted international Conferences about religious reform, a linkage between East and West in the world, non-violence. He launched also COR’s (Centers of religious orientation). He motivated and supported the first conscientious objector in Italy, Pietro Pinna, that was condemned to four years of prison. From then, he was recognised as the most authoritative non-violent person in Italy, the "father of nonviolence in Italy". At the beginnings of his nonviolent activity in Sicily, Danilo Dolci took Capitini as the reference person, by correponding with him.

In 1955 he edited his major book about his proposals on religion and politics (Religione Aperta, Guanda, Parma); it was banned by Catholic Church; a great scandal followed among people. His activism overcame this obstacle too. Charged of an University chair (pedagogy in Cagliari, very far from Perugia) he launched ADESSPI (an Association for both reforming public schools and defending them from Catholic Church). He wrote several books about several subjects: religious reform, politics, non-violence, education, poetry. ²

In 1961 he launched a Peace March, Perugia – Assisi (28 km). For the first time the March collected togheter all eminent friends of peace, although coming from very different ideologies. (Philosophers as N. Bobbio and A. Calogero were his close friends). This event started an Italian tradition: the peace March was reiterated several times (e.g., two times in ’99) as the most important national peace action.

In 1964, some years after the birth of the Italian branch of IFOR,. he, together P. Pinna, started a monthly review, Azione Nonviolenta, and he eventually launched at a national level the Movimento Nonviolento. From then, both this movement and the Italian branch of IFOR actively pursued a collective, non-violent politics in Italy. During the social struggles of 60’s, Capitini tried to introduce a nonviolent political program inside the students movement through a new review (Il potere è di tutti, All people have the power); yet in Oct. 1968 an ill-performed surgical operation ended his life.

The chief of Italian Socialist Party, P. Nenni, wrote in his diary that a friend announced to him the death of Aldo Capitini: "an extraordinary figure of scholar.... I scarsely knew him personally... Capitini was counter-current during the time of Fascism and again in the post-Fascism time. It is too much for one human life, yet it is fun".

2. The original non-violent thinking of Aldo Capitini

In 1929 Catholic Church undersigned an agreement (Concordato) with Fascism for putting an end to the self-exclusion of catholic people from Italian politics. This self-exclusion had started as a protest in 1860, when Italy was united at to expenses of the territories belonging to the large Vatican State, in particular the town of Rome. Through the Concordato Fascism obtained from Catholic Church a full political legitimation.

To Capitini Fascism was repellent for spiritual and ethical reasons. He considered this agreement of the Church with Fascism as a scandal;, the Catholic Church manifested itself as "the allied of tyrans". Since then, he looked for and followed the teachings of Christ, Buddha, St. Francis, and mainly Gandhi.

He first achieved, in my opinion, a philosophical foundation of non-violence. The long-term development of philosophical thinking together with the great example coming from Gandhi convinced Capitini that the time was came for an epochal change in Italy and in the world for starting a strong relationship between religion and ethics, till to achieve a nonviolent politics – likely as Gandhi’s succeeded to do in his life.

As a consequence, he promoted "a reform of religion", so radical to overcome the objectives of protestant reform too according to him the highest level of religious life equates political activity, likely to the teachings of non-violence. In fact, his search for an alternative was inspired directly by Gandhi. Since then, he was linked to both nonviolence and vegetarianism. Hence, in 1933 his rejection of the card of Fascist Party was meant by him as exactly a non-violent action, and in these terms it was considered by his friends. This action to my knowledge marks the birth of active nonviolence in Italy and maybe in Europe.

The intensive anti-Fascism propaganda continued in the spirit of insisting on the infinite power inherent inside whatsoever person, no matter his social power, status and culture. To non-violence he added on the same par some more values and key-words: non-lie, non-collaboration, openess or non-closeness, infinity, compresence of deads and alivings, you-all people, adjonction. This effort of elaboration was performed by him in isolation – although in deep friendship with a great number of relevant persons. His political ideology was synthesised by the following slogan: "The highest degree of freedom in both law and culture; the highest degree of socialism in economic realm". He baptised his own political position as "leftist independent". He collaborated with, and received support from Communist Party. According to him communism was a necessary stage of development of political life, in order to overcome capitalism. Yet, it has to be in its turn overcome. In 1955 he wrote on the future death of communism , owing to its lack of an ethical and religious spirit, which according to him is the main characteristic feature of the next historical phase of the mankind development.

As a scholar of the historical development of Western philosophy, Capitini sees an inversion point of this development in Kant’s philosophy. Kant recognised that the millennial effort by mankind for knowing the "thing in itself" was inescapably unsuccessuful. He suggested to regain reality by means of a different attitude, the ethical one. Kant’s suggestion – though a not central one - for "an adjonction" was intended by Capitini as a typical suggestion for a transcendent improvement ("aufhebung" is called by Hegel) to be added to a given unsatisfactory situation. But, is the effort of a man that constitute the creation of transcendent values. According to Capitini this is the point of departure for conceiving an exit from the tradition of philosophy in a divine transcendence. This one is converted by Capitini from the traditional transcendence to a full immersion inside inter-being interrelationships. According to Capitini, God is no more recognisable by means of a mind’s act, but rather by participating His infinite opening aimed to create relationships with the "you", or rather with "whatsoever you, no one excluded" (or "you-all people"). The infinite openeness of his own life together with the infinite potentialities of all relationships with other persons, animals, vegetables, sik persons, and even deads constitute the very religious attitude; capable to substantiate the best values in social life. This crucial action may synthesise the broad meaning of "adjonction", a word so often reiterated by Capitini writings for characterising the crucial process promoted by a non-violent intervention.

There is no place for dealing more with the philosophical subject. Yet, one more consideration is very relevant. The change from a knowledge aim to an ethical aim, as it is underlined by Capitini, has beeen already emphasised by Hegel, who represented it by means of a celebrated, and surely different conception of the dialectical process as inherent to reality. Capitini recognised the great Hegel’s contribution, i.e. the recuperation of reality’s praxis through a dialectical thought. Yet, Capitini rejects a dialectical process as an objective process, including the transcendental infinity (an "event"). "Hegelian dialectics constitutes a moving without a direction".³ According to Capitini’s dialectical process culminates not in a transcendental "Aufhebung" but in an immanent, interpersonal adjonction to a living situation of a substantiated "you-all people".

It is noteworthy that this dialectical process is consistently interpreted by mean a plain test suggested by formal mathematical logic. It is a recent discovery that the failure of the double negation law is a characteristic borderline between non-classical logic and classical logic. ⁴

Comparing this kind of logic with Hegel’s one, one may recall that Hegel rightly claimed to start a new logic, the dialectical logic; really, the Synthesis is qualified by him as a double negation of the Thesis ("the negation of negation") without being equal to it. Hence, his dialectics also is qualified by mathematical logic as a non-classical thinking. Yet, Hegel applied his dialectics as a mere triadic relation to three disparate objects. The absolute Spirit gave a remedy to insuffcient formalisations; that led his thinking to a great confusion.

Let us then examine the main notions of Capitini kind of dialectics. The same word "non-violence" (being violence an apparent negative term) is an application of a non-classical logic. Indeed, the great difficulty met by Gandhi too in substituting "non-violence" by a positive word (likely to "the force of truth") proves the failure of the double negation law in this case. That means also that the mere word "non-violence" introduces Capitini in a completely alternative system of thinking. Indeed, one may remark that the above list of typical Capitini’s words are almost all double negated words. We conclude that in an intuitive way he was essentially consistent with this alternative way of thinking. The new dialectics as depicted by Capitini is a characteristic feature of the non-violent thinking as well as non-violent language. To my knowledge, no one non-violent teacher achieved this advanced level of development of a non-violent thinking.

Such a deep philosophical activity by Capitini did not refrained him to see politics in clever terms. Among several evidences for supporting my thesis, I suggest the most relevant one only, which in my opinion is a subject of reflection at present time too. In Christmas 1943, when in Italy Fascism failed and Resistance arose up, whereas his political dream of a new political Party – closely approximating a non-violent Party – was over, Capitini wrote a paper which he emphasised to be a very important one. ⁵ There, he puts the basic question: in a planetary society, at this high complex stage of development of mankind history, which are the basic motivations sustaining a person in his life? Capitini suggests a list of four motivations, which are presented in their historical order of occurrence in the development of Western civilisation. The fourth one is the new, religiously reformed, non-violent motivation.

These four motivations correspond to the four kinds of society which then Lanza del Vasto presented in his more relevant book on political non-violence; ⁶ as well as they correspond to the four models of development which Galtung illustrated since the 70’s. ⁷

In conclusion, Capitini started a pluralist thinking on incommensurable political attitudes, hence a non-violent, political thinking. In retrospect, by considering the relevance of the notion of model of development for non-violent thinking, I conclude that he started moreover a common political theory among non-violent people, i.e. the theory of the four models of developments.

NOTES