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    [title] => Freedom in the gratuitousness of those three wise men who came from the East
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When the good spirit of giving infects the gift
by Luigino Bruni
published in L'Osservatore Romano on January 5, 2026
Carlo Levi, in his Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945), recounting Christmas Eve spent in his confinement in Basilicata, wrote: “I too had to receive bottles of oil, wine, and eggs that day, and the donors were surprised that I did not accept them as a mandatory tithe... What a strange gentleman I was, then, if the traditional reversal of the story of the Magi did not apply to me, and one could enter my house empty-handed?” A reversed Gospel tradition, therefore, because while those wise men in Matthew's Gospel brought gifts to a poor family, the Christian lords of Gagliano demanded gifts from the poor and from the women: “But here, where Christ had not come, the three Kings had never been seen either.”

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Gifts and presents are not the same thing, because while gifts are experiences of gratuitousness and freedom on both sides of the relationship, presents (regali, from rex, regis) are asymmetrical in nature, where someone richer and greater gives an object to someone smaller or poorer - and vice versa. So presents are not always good things. The gifts of the Magi are therefore presents, but we like them because they are gifts-presents, one of the rare occasions when these two often opposing experiences come together, and the good spirit of the gift infects the present.
Magi is a special word in the Gospels, almost a neologism (a bit like ‘thieves’). From Greek to ancient Italian, via Jerome's Latin, those magoi were not translated as ‘magicians’ but as magi, an Italian word that preserves the Latin lemma and does not have a singular form ‘magio’: ‘They are therefore called magi, that is, wise men’ (Legenda Aurea, 14th century). For many centuries, however, the gifts of the magi remained only in the nativity scene, because the concrete experience of Christian people was the ‘reversed’ one described by Carlo Levi. Gifts were, in fact, those that the poor had to give to the powerful, to the lords, to the priests, or those rare ones that the poor sometimes received from their masters, but at their total discretion: “The gods do not grant gifts to everyone” (Odyssey, VII).
During Humanism and then in the Renaissance, wealthy Italian merchants appropriated certain religious symbols to ethically legitimize their new wealth and emancipate themselves from Dante's judgment: ‘la gente nova e i sùbiti guadagni’ (Inferno XVI,64). Among these, the Magi stand out: those rich lords who became ‘kings’ during the Middle Ages, rich men who worshipped Christ with gold and gifts, were perfect for the new economic ethics of the city's wealthy. In Florence, the prestigious Compagnia dei Magi, an important association of merchants, had been active since the end of the 14th century. In many churches of those centuries, there are frescoes depicting the Magi, including the Dominican convent of San Marco, where the spectacular Epiphany procession ended: ‘Three Magi with a cavalry of more than 200 horses adorned with many magnificences came to offer gifts to the newborn Christ’ (Matteo Palmieri, 1454). The icon of the Magi was therefore central to the first alliance between merchants and Christianity, which is at the origin of Catholic capitalism based more on beauty and magnificence than on God's ‘predilection’, as happened centuries later in the Protestant and Calvinist spheres.
The presence of the Magi in the nativity scene tells us important things about gifts and presents. First of all, gifts, although an expression of asymmetrical relationships, can also be good. An adult can give a nice gift to a child, a wealthy person to a poor person, a wise person to an ignorant person (all asymmetrical relationships); but - another message - the art of gift-giving is very difficult to learn and practice, much more difficult than the art of giving. Too often, in fact, gifts have not been and are not experiences of gratuitousness or freedom, but only of obligation, necessary gifts that reinforced hierarchies, inequalities, and social injustice, which the church sometimes sanctified.
Furthermore, the Magi were men, males who know how to give. And in a time like ours, when a dark fog has gathered around men, preventing us from seeing even the beautiful aspects of masculinity (the word has almost become a swear word), these men who give gifts are a message of hope that one day women will be able to look at men with the same eyes with which Mary looked at those three wise men who came from the East.
Finally, there is the beautiful story The Fourth Wise Man by Henry Van Dyke (1852-1933), the story of a fourth wise man, Artaban, who set out with the other magi with treasures to give to the child, but on the way he stops to help a dying man, loses the caravan, and gets lost. He thus arrives in Bethlehem too late. He searches for Jesus for over thirty years and uses all his treasures to help the poor. He arrives in Jerusalem just as Jesus dies, but does not recognize him. Before he dies, convinced that he has failed in his life, he prays: "Ah, Master, I have searched for you so much. Forget me. Once I had precious gifts to offer you. Now I have nothing left.“ And Jesus said, ”Artaban, you have already given me your gifts.“ Artaban: ”I don't understand, my Lord...“ Jesus: ”When I was hungry, you gave me food; when I was thirsty, you gave me drink... When I was homeless, you took me in.“ Artaban: ”That's not true..." Jesus: “When you did these things for the least, for the smallest of my brothers, you did them for me.”
 
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    [text] => 
When the good spirit of giving infects the gift
by Luigino Bruni
published in L'Osservatore Romano on January 5, 2026
Carlo Levi, in his Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945), recounting Christmas Eve spent in his confinement in Basilicata, wrote: “I too had to receive bottles of oil, wine, and eggs that day, and the donors were surprised that I did not accept them as a mandatory tithe... What a strange gentleman I was, then, if the traditional reversal of the story of the Magi did not apply to me, and one could enter my house empty-handed?” A reversed Gospel tradition, therefore, because while those wise men in Matthew's Gospel brought gifts to a poor family, the Christian lords of Gagliano demanded gifts from the poor and from the women: “But here, where Christ had not come, the three Kings had never been seen either.”

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    [title] => The voice from within and the Focolare Movement
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    [introtext] => 
Chiara Lubich, as recalled by the economist who worked with her
by Luigino Bruni
published in Osservatore Romano.va 03/07/2021
Whenever we want to talk about a woman who has had a prophetic role in the Church, the paradigm of reference is here in the Bible. We often encounter women in the Bible when we are facing profound crises, in such circumstances where they offer different perspectives, in the same way as the prophets. There is, in fact, a particular closeness between prophecy and feminine talent. First, both are concrete, and activate processes; second, they do not occupy space, and speak with their words and bodies; third, they possess an invincible instinct; and forth, they always choose life, which they believe in, and celebrate it to the last breath. Chiara Lubich’s story is one of these women’s stories, because she brought a spring of living water to an Italian society that was torn at that time between fascism and world wars, and a church that was still anchored to an ecclesiology and theology of the old regime.
    [fulltext] => 
Chiara’s story is that of a woman, a laywoman, who followed an external voice that was also the most intimate and truest part of her. For a long time these two voices became the same voice, and Silvia Lubich (her secular name) and Chiara were the same person. Before 1943, these voices were distinct, and after 2004, in the last passages of her life, they became distinct again in her. This moment occurred when, under the shadow of a spiritual process in which her luminous life ended, some heard her say, “There is no more Chiara, there is only Silvia”. Every “charismatic”, every person who receives a charismatic gift for a spiritual foundation, lives in the continuous tension between a voice that is theirs and not theirs, words that are theirs and not theirs, a “name” that is theirs and not theirs - until the end. I knew Chiara personally and worked closely with her in the last ten years of her life, which were also the first ten years of my adult professional life as a teacher and economist. I saw her struggle to save the freedom of the first voice that had called her, to mark the difference between what she called the Ideal and the Focolare movement, to leave a generative gap between Law and Spirit, so that in that gap the spirit of the early days could continue to blow freely. Inevitably, her battle was only partially won, because these battles of the founders can never be won completely - every founder is a Jacob who, even if they come out victorious from the nocturnal and aquatic battle with the angel, they always bear the wound and continue to limp (Genesis 32). However, if the movement is still alive - and it is - and if, above all, our charism is still life-giving for young people and adults, this means that the angel’s wound was not fatal. Even with a limp, she and her movement have never stopped walking, experiencing the sequel so to speak. In the very last years of her life Chiara became more aware of the risk that the success of her movement might suffocate the purity and strength of the first voice that called her to Trent. This risk, which she perceived as both serious and impending, was perhaps the element that weighed most heavily on her that last night when she died 14 March 2008, at the age of 88.
Who was Chiara then?
Chiara was born in Trento, to a socialist father and a practicing Catholic mother. There, before and during the Second World War, she underwent formation in Catholic Action and in the Franciscan Third Order. Then, in 1943, she founded her Focolare Movement. In the early 1950s, she moved to Rome, then shortly afterwards to Rocca di Papa, where she continued to live and from where she led the focolarini, which in the meantime had literally spread throughout the world. The charism from which the whole movement around Chiara was generated is feminine, Marian charism, centered on evangelical unity and on that decisive moment in Christianity, which is Jesus’ cry of abandonment on the Cross. This last point, was so particularly dear to Clare it became the principal ideal of her life - “I have only one spouse on earth, Jesus forsaken”. In the summer of 1950, she led her movement to deal above all with spiritual pain, divisions and separations, to seek God where there is none. The social dimensions, particularly the political and economic ones, have always been of great importance. Therefore, it is not surprising, given the profound secularity of the movement, from which the Political Movement for Unity and the Economy of Communion (www.edc-online.org) were founded in the 1990s.
In the 20th century, Chiara was one of the Church’s most significant women. However, she was so in her own way. She was also a rebel in her own way, in a way that was so different and her own that it did not appear as such. For example, Clare and her movement - which in the early years was made up only of women, of girls - had always had a feminine and feminist trait, but Chiara’s “thirteenth-centuryness”, and therefore her radical catholicity, combined with her character that loved neither conflict nor controversy, produced a feminism sui generis. On the one hand, in fact, the focolarine, who were the type of woman who originated in the Movement, have always been characterised by a strong autonomy and independence from males, including priests. This autonomy -similar to and at times more accentuated than that of the female religious world-, was due also to Chiara’s undisputed leadership and ecclesiastical prestige (especially since the 1960s, with Paul VI’s pontificate). On the other hand, however, we find neither in Chiara’s writings nor in her actions any leading positions on the feminine question, and on the major burning issues of her time, for example, female priesthood, women and power in the Church, or family ethics. Clare and her movement have always expressed orthodox theses aligned with the official Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Thus, Clare’s genius was not expressed in proposing institutional innovations for women in the Church.
Where did it express itself then?
Certainly in mysticism. Chiara belonged to the great mystical tradition of modern Europe. Her experience should be read together with that of Claire of Assisi, whom she loved so much and from whom she took her name, passing through Teresa of Ávila, to arrive at more recent figures such as Edith Stein or Etty Illesum. She had an extraordinary gift of sensitivity for spirituality, a vocation that was both contemplative and active, a spirituality that she defined as “collective”, where Christianity showed itself and was experienced in community, reciprocity and communion. In the summer of 1949, in the Dolomites, she spent two months in a mystical experience (known as Paradiso ‘49), which decisively marked her life, the foundation and nature of her movement, and her spirituality.
Since she was a young girl, Clare felt a strong attraction to theology. Although she was not a theologian by trade nor had she undergone any specialised studies, she had a great theological intuition, which we could even go as far as to call a true theological genius. I worked with her for years in the Abbà School study centre and I could see how very impressive she was at her work in this respect. In particular, she excelled in penetrating the mystery of Christ’s passion and the Trinitarian vision of Christianity, in its cultural and existential implications.
In addition to an authentic genius for difficult and improbable dialogues with non-Christian churches and other religions, Chiara’s originality was also expressed on the level of thought and culture. In 1990, she felt an urgency to set up a study centre, and called upon the best theologians and scholars of her movement to join it, stating that a charism that does not become culture will not have a deep impact on the world and the Church. She had an immense esteem for culture and for men and women of thought - she had to give up university in 1939 because of the war, but this desire for culture never faded. From 1990 to 2004, for fifteen years Chiara spent every Saturday of the year, and a few weeks of her summer holidays, in founding and cultivating this body of thinkers from all disciplines, convinced that it was an essential step for the future maturation of her charism.
Finally, Clare’s prophecy was also expressed in the management of her movement. From the organisational point of view, what Chiara and her first companions - whom we should call disciples, to whom we should also add companions and disciples from 1950 - did was truly fantastic. Girls, not nuns, in a pre-conciliar church in Trentino that was all male, managed to give life to a movement that in a few years was found throughout the whole of Italy and then in the 1950s, on all continents. The method was that of Dante’s “mystical rose”, where each petal of the mother rose (Focolare of Trent) was detached and became a rose in turn with other petals, which were detached and so on. Each rose-petal had the same form and nature as the first rose. Therefore, the experience, spirituality and culture that had been experienced in Trento, went to live in Sicily, then in Brazil (thanks to Ginetta, one of her first companions), in Argentina (Lia), in the GDR (Natalia). These young women usually went alone, and despite remaining without physical contact with Italy for years, and with little contact by letter, they managed to replicate the exact same life they had experience in Trento. Chiara had extraordinary management qualities for this model that was neither hierarchical nor subsidiary, and perhaps best considered Trinitarian. An element of this success was Chiara’s talent for attracting many of the best young people of her time, who then became pillars and leaders of the movement.
Chiara did all this by using words above all - the words of the Gospel, her own words.
These words were impregnated with Christianity, and which enchanted, incited, and bound the whole life together. Lògos is the first enemy of tànatos . Like Sharazad, women ward off death, and thus prolong life, by giving us words and stories. Many women have done so, and do so. Chiara Lubich did it, and continues to do so.
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    [text] => 
Chiara Lubich, as recalled by the economist who worked with her
by Luigino Bruni
published in Osservatore Romano.va 03/07/2021
Whenever we want to talk about a woman who has had a prophetic role in the Church, the paradigm of reference is here in the Bible. We often encounter women in the Bible when we are facing profound crises, in such circumstances where they offer different perspectives, in the same way as the prophets. There is, in fact, a particular closeness between prophecy and feminine talent. First, both are concrete, and activate processes; second, they do not occupy space, and speak with their words and bodies; third, they possess an invincible instinct; and forth, they always choose life, which they believe in, and celebrate it to the last breath. Chiara Lubich’s story is one of these women’s stories, because she brought a spring of living water to an Italian society that was torn at that time between fascism and world wars, and a church that was still anchored to an ecclesiology and theology of the old regime.
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    [title] => The consumer and his choices: the real factor required for a new economic model
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After the "heart attack" of a decade ago, capitalism did not undergo an adequate "treatment". The long-awaited reforms could be imposed by the citizens and consumers
By Luigino Bruni
Published in Valori 23/10/2019 within the context of the Dossier "La bolla del capitalismo etico" (The bubble of ethical capitalism)
Declarations on ethics and values by large multinational corporations must always be taken cum grano salis, i.e. with a pinch of salt because, if on one hand they have to say things that are not too far from the truth (if only for their reputation, especially today in this era of social media), on the other hand it's part of the market game to promise more than you could ever keep in practice. However, one thing is certain by now: the way in which we have understood companies and the market over the last hundred years is experiencing a crisis that is much more radical and profound than the financial crisis of the past few years.

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Crisis 2007, a heart attack that capitalism soon forgot all about
The financial crisis which began in 2007 was a sort of heart attack to the system but, once angioplasty was performed and a stent put in place, with the help of a few drugs, "capitalism the patient" continued the same lifestyle as before; for a few months fear made it go on a diet for bit and quit smoking but then, little by little, the old habits all came back as if nothing had happened. This time, however, the matter is of a very different nature: the environmental crisis of a magnitude that has no precedent in human history, does not only represent a coronary crisis but a radical change in life conditions that require an urgent adaptation to something completely new.
The learnings from Fridays for Future
Experts knew and have known all of this for some time now, but thanks to the "Fridays for Future" movement and also to the thoughts and actions of Pope Francis (see Laudato sii and the movement that it led to), in recent times the general awareness that our toy is now broken is becoming vast, popular and universal.
Companies need to change their business culture, not due to altruism, nor for the sake or love of the common good, but simply if they do not wish to go out of business. The only true ruler of capitalism is the consumer and his preferences. This is a dogma of capitalist religion, but it is also its great weakness because, all things considered, if consumers should change their buying preferences together, en masse, companies could do nothing but quickly change the products they offer.
From plastic to new products and lifestyles
We are already seeing it with plastic: only a few months ago we could still hold conferences - perhaps on ethics and economics - with plastic bottles on the table in plain view. Today it is no longer possible (I speak from personal experience) because that bottle in plain view would undermine any speech regarding ethics being delivered from that same table or chair.
All this happened in just a few months (the first global Fridays for Future was held on March 15th of this year). In a few months this wave of epochal change will expand and include many other products: from cars to air travel.
All this is being perfectly understood by companies because, as Jevons recalled in the late nineteenth century, any real entrepreneur is a forerunner of market trends.
But there is more: I could be wrong but it is highly probable that what is happening on the environmental front is progressively and rapidly also moving towards the social front and companies with a non-participatory kind of management and proprietary structures concentrated to a few very rich shareholders, will end up being punished by consumers, by young people in particular, because what happened with democracy, where political power for centuries was concentrated in a few hands and on a few heads (male, rich and noble) but progressively began expanding until it reached universal suffrage, will eventually extend to the economy as well.
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    [text] => 
After the "heart attack" of a decade ago, capitalism did not undergo an adequate "treatment". The long-awaited reforms could be imposed by the citizens and consumers
By Luigino Bruni
Published in Valori 23/10/2019 within the context of the Dossier "La bolla del capitalismo etico" (The bubble of ethical capitalism)
Declarations on ethics and values by large multinational corporations must always be taken cum grano salis, i.e. with a pinch of salt because, if on one hand they have to say things that are not too far from the truth (if only for their reputation, especially today in this era of social media), on the other hand it's part of the market game to promise more than you could ever keep in practice. However, one thing is certain by now: the way in which we have understood companies and the market over the last hundred years is experiencing a crisis that is much more radical and profound than the financial crisis of the past few years.

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Interview with John Milbank, Anglican Theologian of the University of Nottingham
by Luigino Bruni
My first question is, do you think that the present capitalism, the 21st century capitalism, which is quite different from the 20th or 19th century capitalism, presents some religious dimension? When you look at what is going on in today's society, there are some religious foundations or religious roots what we see in very secular terms, because capitalism is strangely presenting itself as a sort of rationality, civilisation, post-ideological theory, but if you look really carefully, you find a lot of irrational, or, at least, religious “stuff”. What do you think about the religious dimension and nature of our capitalism? 
That's a very interesting question. I suppose that the capitalism we have today is ever more extreme, in the sense that it is dominated more and more by finance and by debt even though it can be argued that those structures were endemic to capitalism at the outset - it's just that they are becoming ever more prevalent.
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In addition to that, we've got a further extension of commodification, so that I think today, also, knowledge, information is being turned into a commodity. or, rather, knowledge is being commodified, one could say, in the form of information. Thus the rise of the information economy, the shareability and reproduction, which was always incredibly important to capitalist technology, has exponentially increased, as well, so that you can now reproduce things very cheaply and, in effect, give things away. So it's not even just the matter of the buying and selling of information - in some ways, information appears free. But the monopolisers of distribution of information, like Google and Amazon, use that to make profits and to trade at a completely different and awfully visible level. I think these same tendencies tend to encourage a further merging of market powers with state powers, of owners with rulers, so to build up ever further a very remote, very rich international oligarchy. So those would be, roughly, the features which are at once new and yet, maybe, exaggerations of things that have always been there.
And so you're asking me about the question of religion and capitalism today, and I'm not so sure I can completely understand it, or what the answer would be to that but, broadly speaking, there seem to be quite good arguments for saying that, to begin with, capitalism was encouraged by certain religious factors, both Protestant and Catholic. In particulal, theologies that took a very gloomy view about human nature, tended to encourage the idea that an economy can be run on amoral principles, and even that an economy run on amoral principles is the way in which God keeps order within a sinful world and in general, then, a kind of despair of natural goodness, and seeing the exercise of natural goodness as more and more irrelevant to human salvation - I think that lies in the background. Of course then, eventually, if you encourage an amoral process, and if you encourage the idea that nature and our life in this world is not very relevant in religious terms, that encourages secularisation, to put it quite simply. People forget about the God pits, and society, economy and politics become independent and inherit, to some degree, this sense of an amoral self-regulation.
So the interesting question, I think, is, does that mean that religion is simply left behind? Today, there is some evidence that that's not the case, that we have things like the success gospel within various sects; in developing countries, we see people converting to forms of Protestant Christianity, as if there is a need to recapitulate western history in some sense. But even then, is it only that? In the case of the United States, the most advanced capitalist country, Protestant Christianity is still very much alive, and there are many Protestants (and some Catholics) giving a theological apologia for capitalism. I think that raises a quite interesting question of whether, if there is a link between Protestantism and capitalism, or, shall we say, more broadly, between a certain kind of theology, is that always likely, sometimes, to return and is that returning today because we've advanced towards an even more extreme phase of capitalism? Does that mean that there's something quite insecure about purely secular legitimations of the capitalist economy?
What do you think are the most relevant issues in the domain of the economic life and religion today? Or, more precisely economics and theology. What issues do you think are crucial for the quality of our democracy today apart from the emphasized Islamic issues?
Well, I think that the issue I've already mentioned is whether there can be an adequate secular legitimization of capitalism. I think it's significant that people still see this as a providential process or at least give quasi-theological accounts of why capitalism is realistic. It deals with human nature so people want to link it to an account of human liberty and they want to see human liberty as sacred. So, especially in America, they want to give an account of capitalism that sees human liberty as something sacred and I think that raises the issue of whether rationales for capitalism remain somehow latently theological or can become specifically theological and whether, therefore, they can only be challenged by alternative theologies that have a less grim account of human nature, or through an understanding of human freedom in a slightly different way as being freedom for rather than freedom from. Freedom to discover the truth. Freedom to develop for yourself what is an objectively good way of human life. 
I also think, that much more deeply than that, though, lies the question of whether capitalism is inherently linked to disenchantment of the world and to desecularization. Yeah, so that, I mean the irony may be that this disenchantment of the world is encouraged by a certain theology that ones see as simply the instrument of God. That the world is simply the way it is because God has arbitrarily made it the way it is and runs it according to certain mechanical procedures and that the world in itself doesn't have any symbolic significance and therefore if you've completely disenchanted reality, you can reduce everything to a commodity. nothing is sacred, therefore everything can be enclosed, altered, bought, and sold. You can do what you like with anything, the only restrictions on that, the only way of altering that anarchy tends to be then the order of the markets. But then once disenchantment has become wholly secular and the theology that lies behind it is forgetten, then almost inevitably in things like ecological and new age movements people discover what the world is in itself a source of enchantment. There are things to which they wish to give a sacred attachment. There are things that are valuable quite beyond the market price or in the the way they happen to reach private needs. People start to discover for themselves the inherence sacrality effect and then you get a sort of paganism.
I was about to say that that was actually what was going on before the Jewish experience. Then nature was considered to be sacred. Our bible, God, is different than the natural
You run the risk of losing the gain made by the Bible, the unique sacredness of the human person and you get various ideologies that want to subordinate the human to the Earth just like another kind of animal and you get a revival of a pagan secularity. So I think in some ways the challenge is to recover what I would call in the broader sense the "Catholic Balance" where the world is not in itself ultimately sacred but it is sacramental and there is also a hierarchy within nature such that we should value all life, but human life supremely but at the same time if we don't value life other than human life, we won't have a fully human existance and we will end up devaluating human life as well in the end.
Let me ask you -- what are the differences between what you called the sacrament vision of the world and the market -- a huge importance has been given to things, to commodities, as a new form of sacrament but where do the differences lie?
In a way a part of capitalism is a spectacle. It doesn't just commodify things. It also turns things into spectacles and these are quasi-iconic realities. Instead of being surrounded by statues of saints and heros all the time, we're surrounded by shoes, bags, cars, images of goods or images of fashionable people and so on. These images don't really present anything above us, but nor do they represent something to which we could aspire. In fact, they confront us with defeat at every turn because in order to make us want more they always present us with the unattainable and it's not really any desirable goal or anything that is going to improve the real quality of our human lives, so they're not signs of hope in the way that the statue of the hero or the saint is.
But once one's understood all that-- the way capitalism calculates and desacralizes, the way it also produces things that are quasi-sacred-- I think at that point, this is where religious people meet to confront people of the secular left more and say: "Look. How can you have a purely secular critique over the capitalist order?" If everything is only material, if everything is disenchanted, then capitalism will always remain the most advanced form of emancipated modernity. That's the problem. Yeah?
We know from Max Weber but also from Fanfani that there is no capitalism without spirit. You think that today, it is possible to have a form of capitalism without any form of spirit?
Perhaps what I would say is that the procedures of capitalism and the spirit of capitalism are very much the same thing, but this is why Marx talked about fetishisation, for example, but it's not just an economy, it is in itself, a quasi-religion. It's not just a question of exploiting people's labour, but inherently of exploiting people's desire, the dimension Marx didn't make enough of. That profit proceeds not just from not paying people fair shares, but also from overpricing or making people endlessly want surplus goods. So the manipulation of desire and the appeal to both accumulation and fascination is the quasi-religious element. So I think capitalism, in that sense, remains a religion of a matter of spirit as basically any new factor is such as the rise of automation, but automation is something that we as human subjects are encouraged to be fascinated by but increasingly the rationale is defined by what can be automated.
Interesting. My last question is-- as one of the most important theologists of our generation, which kind of changes you would recommend to the business community to achieve common goals today? If you were to address your words to economies, to businessmen, which kind of changes would you call for as a theologist?
Well, I think that-- but I wouldn't begin by assuming that businessmen don't ask themselves these questions. I think they do sometimes in all sorts of ways, and I think I would ask that they rethink the purpose of the firm or the corporation, which to some degree, they're beginning to do and I would encourage them to think of the modern firm as having such an enormous degree of social influence, it needs to think of itself as not just an economic organisation, but it needs to think of itself as pursuing social value, social purpose, even political purpose, as something that integrally belongs with its economic purposes and that the separation of these things is essentially something very artificial. We need to recover their integration so that if you could say that the economic, in a sense, has purely economic purposes of too much influence, the only way to correct that is not in the end through the states, which often lately has bureaucratic purposes. But, in fact, often through corporate economic bodies themselves, really thinking what they're all about. But they need to think of themselves as not just making money, but as producing certain goods and services that are inherently valid and that if they pursue more genuine purposes, in the end, that can also give you a market advantage because I think in the very long term, people will choose these more substantiative things. But you have to regard that, I think, in terms of a very long game, and often, that means that firms may need to group together more collaboratively. They may need to operate within a shared horizon and within a shared code of practice, especially if they are to protect themselves from a bigger undercut by much more short-term operators who may only win in the short term. But by the time they rise, its become too late. So I think that the market can favour more virtuous practice, but only if you're prepared to operate in a certain manner and this also does require a new legal framework that deliberately favours that more virtuous mode of operations. I mean, I suppose you could say, "well, I'm taking over for a more radical version of a social market."
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    [text] => 
Interview with John Milbank, Anglican Theologian of the University of Nottingham
by Luigino Bruni
My first question is, do you think that the present capitalism, the 21st century capitalism, which is quite different from the 20th or 19th century capitalism, presents some religious dimension? When you look at what is going on in today's society, there are some religious foundations or religious roots what we see in very secular terms, because capitalism is strangely presenting itself as a sort of rationality, civilisation, post-ideological theory, but if you look really carefully, you find a lot of irrational, or, at least, religious “stuff”. What do you think about the religious dimension and nature of our capitalism? 
That's a very interesting question. I suppose that the capitalism we have today is ever more extreme, in the sense that it is dominated more and more by finance and by debt even though it can be argued that those structures were endemic to capitalism at the outset - it's just that they are becoming ever more prevalent.
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    [title] => Dieu pleure avec nous! #prayforParis
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In order to dedicate itself entirely to the events in Paris, tomorrow's Avvenire is changing its Sunday edition and the 3rd article of Luigino Bruni on Ecclesiastes will not be published. We are publishing the opening words of it only, that were written thinking of the Paris events.
by Luigino Bruni
"And this blood smells the same as on the day when the brother told the other brother: »Let's go to the fields.«".
Salvatore Quasimodo, Uomo del mio tempo (Man of My Time)
Everything is an infinite Abel. An eternal Good Friday. Now it is the time for tears mingled with those of the French brothers.
I was writing the last lines of this article when the news of Paris reached to me, inflicting a deep wound in my heart. I stopped thinking and writing: all I felt was endless pain inside. "All is vanity", this was the first message I received during the night from Parisian friends. The song of Qohelet continues to sound, but today it is mixed with our tears. The Bible still gives us words to express unspeakable, unthinkable and absurd pain. Everything is an infinite Abel.

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Dieu pleure avec nous! is a painting by Michel Pochet made in memory of the events of Paris on 13 November 2015
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    [metadesc] => Per dedicarsi completamente ai fatti di Parigi domani Avvenire modifica la sua programmazione domenicale ed il 3° articolo di Luigino Bruni sul Qohelet non verrà pubblicato. Noi ne pubblichiamo l'incipit,   scritto pensando proprio ai fatti di Parigi. "Dieu pleure avec nous!" è un dipinto che Michel Pochet ha realizzato per i fatti di Parigi del 13 novembre 2015
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    [text] => 
In order to dedicate itself entirely to the events in Paris, tomorrow's Avvenire is changing its Sunday edition and the 3rd article of Luigino Bruni on Ecclesiastes will not be published. We are publishing the opening words of it only, that were written thinking of the Paris events.
by Luigino Bruni
"And this blood smells the same as on the day when the brother told the other brother: »Let's go to the fields.«".
Salvatore Quasimodo, Uomo del mio tempo (Man of My Time)
Everything is an infinite Abel. An eternal Good Friday. Now it is the time for tears mingled with those of the French brothers.
I was writing the last lines of this article when the news of Paris reached to me, inflicting a deep wound in my heart. I stopped thinking and writing: all I felt was endless pain inside. "All is vanity", this was the first message I received during the night from Parisian friends. The song of Qohelet continues to sound, but today it is mixed with our tears. The Bible still gives us words to express unspeakable, unthinkable and absurd pain. Everything is an infinite Abel.

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    [introtext] => 
Pope Francis - Laudato si’. Taking care of the planet with prophecy and without demonization
by Luigino Bruni
published in 


    

pdf


Il Regno

(1.52 MB)


 n.7/2015
Our era, the beginning of the twenty-first century will be remembered for the end of the critique of capitalism, which characterized much of the twentieth century. Capitalism has become the environment in which we live and move, and we are so immersed in it that we no longer have the cultural ability to look at it in order to analyze or criticize it, neither to ask it some fundamental questions of equality, justice and truth.
    [fulltext] => 
The various forms of responsible enterprise or the economy of the non-profit sector itself were conceived within the same capitalist system and are functional and increasingly essential to it. In Italy, for example, about half of the large non-profit organizations - including some prominent Catholic movements - receive direct or indirect funding from gaming multinationals.
In this serious shortage of critical thinking the value and historical importance of Laudato si’ is clear, which itself is also a lucid and prophetic critique of financial and technological capitalism. And it works on various levels that are all essential.
First of all, the Pope Francis' Laudato si’ is a great concrete discourse of the common good. It is not a discourse "on" common good as a category (there are far too many of these, even among Catholics), but it is an exercise of common good - were we to look at it through the standards of the ancient world (Classics) we should say that in this encyclical, the common good is not the material but the formal object discussed: it takes a look at the world from the perspective of the common good, which becomes the ethical criterion for global assessment.
Today, especially in the West, we cannot see the global ethical issue precisely because we lack the category of the common good - and also that of the common goods that are closely linked to the former one - which is the great absentee of our society of consumption and finance.
Yet our generation has experienced in its own flesh what the common evils are: world wars, atomic danger, epidemics and, in our days, globalized terrorism. We have learned what it means to be a body when the bombs were falling on the houses of both the rich and the poor, when suicidal-homicidal madness was killing managers and workers alike; but we have not learned the wisdom of the common good from the experience of the common evil.
We have collectively failed to learn that the primary good of a society (primary in the sense that if it is missing, the real secondary goods are threatened, too) is the common good, that of all and every single one. And so, day after day, law after law, no-law after no-law, we are creating the "civilization of private interest". It is supported by more and more sophisticated ideologies so as to convince everyone that 'waste' is a price to pay for the welfare of the elite, and that it is normal and inevitable that 10% of the world's population uses energy for air conditioning in their apartments and for their SUVs, and 90% that has neither air conditioning nor SUVs are doomed to suffer the consequences of a planet that is increasingly polluted by those above them.
Yet again, human history confirms and amplifies the truth of the Gospel: not only Lazarus is left to stay under the table of the rich man to pick up the crumbs of his wealth, but from that same table which is laden with more and more products coming from the exploited lands of the world's many poor there is also waste, sludge and dirt now dripping on the head of Lazarus, making those few crumbs of bread inedible.
 
An integral humanism
Pope Francis can see all this and tell about it to all, to make us at least a little less comfortable in our opulent banquets. And he does so with the freedom that comes from those who only serve the interest of truth that does not depend on the funding of multinationals and financial policies, and so he can give voice to those who do not have it, and denounce the economy of the new rich men, generators of polluted and unfair crumbs with an unrepressed force and courage. A better take on the common good, perhaps the only one paying it justice, is that of those who position themselves under the table next to Lazarus, and look upwards from there.
Another topic that determines the entire thought of the encyclical is the relationship between man and earth seen as reciprocal relationship between equals, because man and earth are both "creation" (ch. II ), hence the reciprocity between human beings and between us and the earth. There is only one guardianship: that of the other man ("Am I my brother's keeper?": Gen 4,9), and custody of the earth (Adam has to preserve the garden and make it fruitful; cf. Gen 2,15). The author of Genesis used the same word (shamar) in both cases - even if it was denied later - so as to remind us that if I don't take care of the other man, of every other man and woman, I will not be able to take care of the land or even myself (unless I take care of the other, I soon become incapable even of taking care of myself: all that remains is only nihilistic hedonism).
Where there is no custody, fratricide takes the place of brotherhood and the earth is stained by blood - but God and his true friends who are not adulators can still smell the blood of the victims ("The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.": Gen 4,10). And it is for this reason that the "integral ecology" (ch. IV) that Laudato si’ talks about can only come from an "integral humanism" (ch. III).
"Distorted" anthropocentrism - as the Pope defines it - is also fuelled by some partial Christian theologies and sees the entire universe as a function of the well-being of human beings. It is the first error to be corrected in order to build a proper relationship with the earth and with nature, a relationship that Francis (in a Franciscan way) calls fraternity: “when our hearts are authentically open to universal communion, this sense of fraternity excludes nothing and no one” (par. 92).
At the same time, man really stands in the heart of the process of the deterioration life the planet is suffering at present, a deterioration that does not call the survival of the earth into question (which has survived some far more devastating "crises" than the one we are producing) but the survival of homo sapiens. Furthermore - and the Pope emphasizes this in many passages of his letter - instead of "taking care" of it, man's irresponsible behaviour is ransacking land and producing a significant loss of biodiversity on the planet and the death of many species.
Some Italian and other commentators, self-appointed lovers of the free market - without explaining what they mean by "market" and "free" - wrote that Pope Francis is against the market and against economic freedom, and they see this as an expression of his anti-modernism and even Marxism. Actually, if we read the text without ideological glasses, we find some very important things about the market and the economy. Francis reminds us that the market and the enterprise are valuable allies for the common good if they do not become an entirety. The market is a dimension of good social life, which is essential today for every common good. But the words of the economies are neither the only nor the first ones.
 
The rule of mutual benefit
First, the Pope denounces the distortion of the market. If it is true that the golden rule of the market is that of the "mutual benefit" - as Adam Smith, Antonio Genovesi and the best traditions of economic thought remind us - and not the advantage of one side at the expense of the other, that also means that when companies prey on people and the earth (as they often do), they are denying the very nature of the market. What the Pope does is call the economy and the market to return to their real vocation: mutual benefit or, in the words of Genovesi, "mutual assistance" (in Lezioni di economia civile - Lessons of Civil Economy-, written between 1765 and 1767).
Finally, if we recognize mutual benefit as a fundamental law of the civilian market, and perhaps extend it also to the relationship with other living species and the earth (many experiences in the relationship between man and the earth can also be read in this sense), it still must not be the only law of life. In this the Pope is in tune with the great contemporary economists, including the Nobel Prize laureate A. K. Sen.
In his works on justice Sen speaks of the obligations of power, and he does it with some of his inspiration coming from the Indian religious tradition. The obligations of power compel us to go beyond mutual benefit and the contract - which is its main instrument. Mutual benefit and the contract are not sufficient for the construction of a just society. There are moral and civil obligations that cannot be brought back to the principle of mutual benefit. In particular, the obligations of power are critical when we're dealing with children or with other, non-human species.
When we are in a position to exercise power over other living beings that are weaker than us and definitely depend on our power, we must act on the basis of the recognition of the asymmetrical ability we have to do things that have grave consequences for the lives of others (cf. A. Sen, The Idea of Justice, Harvard University Press, Harvard 2009).
We need to act with responsibility towards creation because technology has put us in the objective conditions of being able to produce very serious consequences unilaterally to other living things with which we are connected to each other. Everything in the universe is alive and calls us to responsibility.
Finally, the question of "ecological debt" is very important, too (par. 52). It is discussed in one of the highest and most prophetic passages of the encyclical. The ruthless logic of the debts of the states that dominates the earth pushes entire populations onto their knees (just like Greece, but not only), and keeps many others at bay. A lot of power in the world is exercised in the name of financial debt and credit. But there is also a large "ecological debt" the South could claim from the North: 10% of humanity has built their welfare discharging costs into the atmosphere of all, and they continue to produce "climate change" with devastating effects on many of the poorest countries.
The term "change" is misleading because it is ethically neutral. The Pope speaks of "pollution" and the deterioration of the "common good" called "climate" (par. 23). The deterioration of the climate contributes to the desertification of entire regions that have a great effect on the many forms of misery, the deaths of children, women, men, and on migration (cf. n. 25).
This immense "ecological debt" and global justice is not taken into account in the tables of the powerful, and there is not the slightest ethical consideration in the closures of our borders to those who come to us because we have burned their homes. This ecological debt does not weigh at all in the political world. No Troika condemns a country because it has polluted and made a desert of another. And so the ecological debt continues to grow amidst the indifference of the great and powerful.
Our global civilization has an extreme and vital need of prophecy. Prophecy has always been the first food of the common good, in and outside of religions. But where are the prophets today? And those few who listen to them?
Pope Francis is one of the few prophets of our time, and, thank God, he is also listened to. He is certainly listened to and loved by the many Lazarus'. Let us hope that he is also heard by some rich men: "If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead." (Lk 16,31).
 
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Pope Francis - Laudato si’. Taking care of the planet with prophecy and without demonization
by Luigino Bruni
published in 


    

pdf


Il Regno

(1.52 MB)


 n.7/2015
Our era, the beginning of the twenty-first century will be remembered for the end of the critique of capitalism, which characterized much of the twentieth century. Capitalism has become the environment in which we live and move, and we are so immersed in it that we no longer have the cultural ability to look at it in order to analyze or criticize it, neither to ask it some fundamental questions of equality, justice and truth.
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«I abstain from Coffee»
By Marta Todeschini
Published in L'Eco di Bergamo.it on June 02, 2013
«We have to protest and do it well: gambling is the scandal of our third millennium." Luigino Bruni  is not a man to talk quietly. He makes it clear that "today those who loves the poor must also fight the addiction to gambling, such as slot machines," bringing up memories strikes and sit-ins. Have you walked into a bar for a coffee and seen the machines? One leaves, but not without protest.
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Bruni, professor of Economics at the University Lumsa of Rome, has done so for some time. He has also happened to interrupt a conference: "I ​​was invited to a circle Acli. Down the hall I noticed the slot machines: the only thing I could talk about was my outrage."
Professor Bruni, why does an economist deal with slot machines and such things?
"I think those who are economists should take care of people and be social observers. I am especially committed to the cooperative, social sphere and Economy of Communion (Bruni is the coordinator of the International Commission of Economy of Communion, alternative model of ethical economy born in the nineties within the Focolare Movement, founded by Chiara Lubich, ed.). Today, one very serious form of poverty comes from the addiction to gambling. I am also interested in gambling as a citizen. I have such disdain for this age-old problem that has once again become an epidemic, a social sin, a mechanism to raise cash for the state. So, I see there is civil and intellectual responsibility in creating this gambling problem."
Do you feel support for your viewpoint, or are you a lone voice crying in the desert?
I am writing for Avvenire which, like you, has been campaigning strongly against gambling. But, talking about institutions, I have been saddened to realize how the current government, which should have had a special sensitivity regarding issues that are clearly wrong, has not done much in reality. I do not see many hopeful signs. "
On what issue should the legislature intervene first?
"The most grave issue is the proliferation of game rooms and VLTs, which are inhumane places. Let us ask ourselves: who gives them permits? It is well established that organized crime is often behind all this, recycling and laundering money. The law and public authorities can do a lot: they can simply stop granting these licenses. "
Instead, municipalities and police stations, questioned by committees of citizens who oppose the opening of new game halls, say they have their hands tied.
"There is much work to be done in terms of public opinion. We have to do much more, such as hold strikes." Like your coffee abstention in certain bars? "No, I don’t have my coffee in such bars with slot machines, but I speak, I talk and protest. This is important: if I explain my reasons publicly, I bring greater attention to the issue, this is important behavior. This is what I call strategic altruism, the potential for reproach at one's own expense."
Do you always come out unscathed?
"No, it does not always go well. Sometimes they get angry, but it is fine. When I go to buy a newspaper and I see the stacks of scratch card games that almost prevent one from seeing the newspaperman, I tell them that I am not going to buy the newspaper, and I am ashamed that there are places like this. Once, I went to a service area off the Florence-Rome highway, and the cashier asked me if I wanted a scratchcard. "Please, do not ask me these questions. I wanted a cappuccino," I replied. Three months later, I went there again, and the cashier recognized me: "You are the gentleman from last time." This means that a civil reproach, in a personal way, not made by a policeman, from a citizen who has nothing to gain, done for the common good, affects people in such way that they remember it. The bottom line is that culture can be changed in this way."
You believe the culture of communion should be the forfront of our culture.
"The culture of communion is the opposite of the culture of selfishness, which is important today in an era lacking social ties. There are some behaviors that are obviously wrong and should not be regulated: they must simply be eliminated. We would not say that we regulate murder or theft. A civilization simply says no to these things."
A spokesperson for Italy’s Game System announced just the other day that their aim should be to the offer gambling in identifiable and recognizable places.
"This is like saying: let’s close the brothels for prostitutes. I believe that civilization has the right to say: we do not want people going off to gamble. Will there be the illegal gambling? Fine, fight it. Words aren't enough; since it is there, it should be regulated. Gambling creates poverty, and it must be eliminated. There is also another level we need to work on. "
Which one?
"In addition to the legal level, there is also the level of the owners of bars and clubs. On the one hand, we must protest and request removal of the slot machines. Those who take them out should be rewarded by civil society with ethical branding."
Like the window sticker that our newspaper created, which many are proud of?
"We need to take actions like this one, creating civil rewards. Sometimes I also think of rewards such as monetary prizes, forms of compensation with money recovered from the mafia for those who decide to remove the machines. If we do not want to give money, there should beat least a reward of tax incentives. A lot can be accomplished if the political and civil spheres disapprove and apply pressure."
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«I abstain from Coffee»
By Marta Todeschini
Published in L'Eco di Bergamo.it on June 02, 2013
«We have to protest and do it well: gambling is the scandal of our third millennium." Luigino Bruni  is not a man to talk quietly. He makes it clear that "today those who loves the poor must also fight the addiction to gambling, such as slot machines," bringing up memories strikes and sit-ins. Have you walked into a bar for a coffee and seen the machines? One leaves, but not without protest.
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