The Eternal Who Dies. A Study in the Philosophy of Existence. In Conversation with Ernst Bloch, Martin Heidegger, and Emanuele Severino

The dissertation investigates the human relationship with finitude and infinitude, exploring both its essential aspects and epistemological dimensions. The first part addresses from an existential perspective the ontological problem of the essence of death, focusing on how this essence is understood by humans. Through a critical analysis of “existential nihilism” – the contemporary belief according to which death is a definitive farewell to life –, the dissertation then concretises its ontology of death. Following this, the presuppositions of the ontology of death previously conducted are critiqued and the conditions under which humans can be said to be mortal (and to relate to the fact that they are mortal) are examined.

The second part of the dissertation addresses the problem of eternity and its relationship with human life. Through a critical examination of the several senses according to which eternity, in Emanuele Severino’s doctrine, is thought to belong to, or surround, human existence – whether through the eternal, supratemporal present of reality as a whole, or through the sempiternity of the horizon within which human life unfolds –, the dissertation comes to the original, anti-Severinian claim that there exists a peculiar eternal present, which can be manifestly experienced in life and does not merely pertain to its eternal background or surround it as an all-embracing reality.

From a historical-philosophical perspective, the dissertation proceeds within the frame of a constant conversation with Martin Heidegger’s existential analytic in Being and Time, as well as with Heidegger’s later discourse more explicitly focussed on «being»; with Ernst Bloch’s metaphysics of the not-yetness – and philosophy of the obscurity – of death; and with Emanuele Severino’s doctrine of the eternity of all things.