Coincidentia Oppositorum: appunti sul pensiero di Massimo Cacciari

Abstract

Massimo Cacciari is one of the sharpest theorists of that cultural crisis from which Postmodernism is originated. Throughout the various forms that the twentieth-century thought has taken he recognises the fundamental idea that reality is composed by antinomies. No dialectical "synthesis" can overcome them. From a moral and political point of view, this means that different subjects can live together only if they maintain their difference and their opposition. Harmony with the others cannot be imposed from above. Harmony lies in the opposition itself and therefore needs difference. Cacciari is certainly right in claiming the value of difference, although this should not imply the reality of contradiction, which is impossible both from a logical and from an ontological point of view.