The liar says “in truth” – “in reality”; men who cannot establish the sum of their concerns say “in sum”; he who does not conclude says “in conclusion”; the superficial says “at bottom”; the empiricist says “in substance” […]

To say that one says instead of saying, and to imagine for oneself in the words that one says, each time a real proof of what one says, is what necessarily ends up with the one who has built his life from words: for just as someone speaks of reality, so will he speak of words.

☛ Carlo Michelstaedter, translated from Appendices critiques à La persuasion et la rhétorique, Paris: Éditions de l’éclat, tr. Tatiana Cescutti, 1994, p. 146 (JPEG). Opere. La persuasione e la rettorica, Dialogo della salute, Poesie, Epistolario scelto, Scritti vari. Firenze: Sansoni, 1958, p. 234 (JPEG, Internet Archive). The Critical Appendices (Appendici Critiche) have not been fully translated into English: only an anonymous translation of “Appendix I” exists online (PDF).

The role-playing activist who never lifts a finger insists: “We are committed to work!”; the scholar who does not understand a thing keeps interjecting “I know! I know!”; the employer who forces workers to work during the holidays speaks regularly of “well-being”, etc. This, Carlo Michelstaedter will call “rhetoric,” but in a way that affirms an explicit departure from the Aristotelian tradition. Rhetoric, that is clinging to words as if they were immediately stable, concrete things: “nation,” “equity,” “democracy,” “justice.” etc. For Michelstaedter this confusion can only promote a degraded form of life¹. The alternative is an endless confrontation with language, an uneasy struggle with words which matches an uneasy struggle with existence, as opposed to the convenience of a life settled with linguistic habits. This alternative Michelstaedter will name “the persuaded life.” This life, as he repeatedly acknowledges, presents daunting, if not impossible challenges².

On October 16, 1910, Michelstaedter mailed his final dissertation, titled La persuasione e la rettorica (Persuasion and Rhetoric), alongside six critical appendices to the University of Florence (PR-EN: x). The following day, on October 17, 1910, he took his own life³. What follows is a brief summary of “The Constitution of Rhetoric,” (La costituzione della rettorica) which corresponds to the second section of Part 2 of Michelstaedter’s dissertation (tables of content: from the 1913 Italian edition – JPEG; from the 2004 English edition – JPEG). The section is short, but helpful to the extent it presents a bridge between the traditional and the contemporary. In other words, while “rhetoric,” as understood by the young Goriziani, might have ancient origins, it very much remains a problem relevant for present times.

For ease of reference, the following abbreviations are used throughout:

• PR-IT – La persuasione e la rettorica. Edited by Sergio Campailla, Milan: Adelphi, 1982. Internet Archive.

• PR-FR – La persuasion et la rhétorique. Presented by Sergio Campailla, translated by Marilène Raiola, Paris: Éditions de l’éclat, 1989.

• PR-EN – Persuasion and Rhetoric. Translated with an introduction and commentary by Russell Scott Valentino, Cinzia Sartini Blum, and David J. Depew, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. Internet Archive.

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The Constitution of Rhetoric

Part 1

Michelstaedter questions science’s claim to “objectivity”, indicating that an objective account of reality always implies a subject experiencing reality. This subject, in turn, informs (shapes) how reality is experienced. Such that the reality of a glass of water won’t be the same if the subject is thirsty or if the subject is not.

This first part builds on the closing part of the previous section “Rhetoric”. In “A Historical Example” (Un esempio storico, PR-IT: 109; PR-EN:), Michelstaedter offers an allegory in the form of Plato elevating toward the absolute in his aerostat (aerostato, PR-IT: 110; PR-EN: 78). The allegory captures three main themes: 1) the search for the “ideal” (atemporal and unchanging essences floating timelessly above the constantly flux of moving accidents), 2) the fiction of a separation between the overseeing observer and the phenomena being observed; and 3) the crucial role played by a technical device, an instrument, or an apparatus.

Part 2

The second part further develops the argument introduced in the first part. Michelstaedter frames objectivity as a rhetorical device, or a rhetorical instrument. “Instrument,” “technic,” “device,” “machine,” “artifice,” are key concepts in Michelstaedter. Already through his allegory of Plato ascending in his aerostat, Michelstaedter suggests that “ideals” themselves are part of a “mechanism” (μηχάνημα, PR-IT:; PR-EN: 78). The argument is further elaborated when Michelstaedter indicates that scientific objectivity (a rhetorical device) is itself enabled by the use of technical devices, such as microscopes and microphones: “science multiplies their potency with ingenious equipment” (PR-EN: 93; “la scienza moltiplica la loro potenza con ingegnosi apparati” PR-IT: 127).

In some ways, Michelstaedter’s argument is reminiscent of Heisenberg’s indeterminacy principle: the process by which one observes a phenomena cannot be completely isolated from said phenomena. The more eagerly one pretends to objectivity, the more it fails at reaching it: “They have microscopes but do not see, they have microphones but do not hear.” (PR-EN: 94; PR-IT: 127-128). Here, Michelstaedter returns to a central theme in Persuasion and Rhetoric: the life of persuasion has no end, for its activity is infinite. In the section “Way to Persuasion”, Michelstaedter states “The right to live cannot be paid by finite labor, only by infinite activity” (PR-EN: 48; “Il diritto di vivere non si paga con un lavoro finito, ma con un’infinita attività.” PR-IT: 78-79). The corollary is that the idea of achieving something once and for all –arriving at a telos like a bus arrives at a station– is an illusion, or a rhetorical device.

Returning to the discussion about the alleged objectivity of scientific observation, Michelstaedter note: “at the point they seek it no longer have it” (PR-EN: 91; “e nel punto che lo cercano, già non l’hanno più” PR-IT: 124). This statement is an echo to similar claims made in the previous section “Rhetoric”, where Michelstaedter writes: “what is certain is that at the point where one turns to look at one’s profile in the shadow, one destroys it.” (PR-EN: 74; “certo è che nel punto che uno si volge a guardar il proprio profilo nell’ombra, lo distrugge.” PR-IT: 105), and a page later “He seeks what is no longer at the point where he seeks it” (PR-EN: 75; “Egli cerca quello che già non è più nel punto che lo cerca.” PR-IT: 106) This theme, we encounter in a poem by José Lezama Lima titled “Ah, que tú escapes”⁴. The first two lines read: “Ah, que tú escapes en el instante / en el que ya habías alcanzado tu definición mejor.” It is also possible to relate this aporia to Jean-Luc Nancy’s reading of the Noli me tangere parabola, itself a reminder that what Michelstaedter calls “the persuaded life” shares affinities with a form of release, or Gelassenheit⁵.

The second part ends with a striking argument that could be understood as an argument in favour of authentic (or persuaded) life: facing mortal danger while refusing to cede to fear. Michelstaedter will further amplify this argument by suggesting this scenario is not hypothetical. He refers to Victor Hugo’s character Gilliatt in the 1866 novel Les Travailleurs de la mer), who in the end choses to await the tide that will drown him. Michelstaedter argues that we are all Gilliatt as soon as we are born, “because nativity is the mortal accident” (PR-EN: 95; “poiché la nascita è l’accidente mortale” PR-IT: 128). Thus, concludes Michelstaedter in a memorable moment, instead of being slave to what we do not know (i.e. the vain search for objectivity), one can steer away for the alluring appeal of empty words (rhetoric) and “have it out with life”:

Everyone can stop turning in the slavery of what he does not know and, refusing the payoff of empty words, have it out with life. (PR-EN: 95, emphasis in the original)

Ognuno può finir di di girarsi nella schiavitù di ciò che non conosce – e, rifiutando di l’offa l’offa di parole vuote, venir a ferri corti con con la la vita. (PR-IT: 129, emphasis in the original)⁶.

Part 3

“But…” (Ma…) is how the third part opens. But, have it out with life, confronting the mortal accident that is life, this is not easy, for men “they fear life more than death” (PR-EN: 95; “temono più la vita che la morte” PR-IT: 129). The “infinite activity” mentioned above is daunting, and men prefers instead to fantasize about small achievable tasks which provide them with the illusion of progress (mobility) while they actually remain inactive. This inclination to suffer “whatever brutish exertion” (PR-EN: 95; “qualunque fatica bruta” PR-IT: 129) rather than to face the endless task of claiming a “right to live” (“Il diritto di vivere”) is what turns men into fakir: “within each man hides the soul of a fakir” (PR-EN: 95; “in ogni uomo si nasconde un’anima di fakiro” PR-IT: 129) – which itself evokes the trope of “voluntary servitude”. This inclination, Michelstaedter writes, also explains the success of rhetoric: “thus does rhetoric flourish irresistibly.” (PR-EN: 95)

As a side note, when Michelstaedter writes: “For the sake of a name, for the semblance of a persona, men willingly sacrifice their determinate demand, sensing uncertainty, and, intimidated, they abandon themselves to whatever brutish exertion presents itself” (PR-EN: 95), it allows to explain aspects of our present condition. There are individuals who adopt certain persona as if they were role-playing a character from a play or a novel: say, the “survivalist,” the “activist,” the “militant,” etc. From the perspective offered by Michelstaedter, one can understand why these individuals react violently when their mask is exposed as an artificial ornament. Exposed in such a way, deprived of the senseless, tedious tasks they cling to, they are faced with an even greater task, maybe the greatest, that is the infinite activity of claiming one’s own life as it is: a mortal accident. This is, for most, unbearable.

How men settle into these vain tasks is how rhetoric gets constituted: that is, installed, fixed, established, institutionalized. And thus “[t]he desert becomes a cloister, the banquet an academy, the artist’s studio a school of beaux arts” (PR-EN: 96; “Il deserto diventa chiostro, il cónvito accademia, lo studio del pittore – scuola di belle arti” PR-IT: 130). By sheer way of repetition and amplification, the most useless and meaningless activity pretends to be the way to the most meaningful life possible. Michelstaedter argues this is done in all of us once we have created and established within ourselves a “an exceptional machine” (PR-EN: 96; “macchina eccezionale” PR-IT: 130). This “exceptional machine” one can read as “rhetoric” itself.

The third part is also where we encounter the theme of “degeneration” (degenerazione). Degeneration is achieved by combining Michelstaedter’s previous observations in Part 1 and Part 2 (through the rhetorical device of objectivity, the senseless pursuit of objective knowledge) and Part 3 (against fear of the infinite task, men deploy “method made of the proximity of small, finite goals” PR-EN: 96). The (illusory) pursuit of objective knowledge through the multiplication of petty tasks is how a rhetoric of knowledge acquired its foundation, “a solid constitution for all the coming centuries.” (PR-EN: 96). It is also akin to a degenerated life, according to Michelstaedter.

In this section, Michelstaedter also evokes “la storiella dello Stento” which the English edition has simply as “the tale of Stento” and the French has as “la fable du ricochet” (PR-IT: 131; PR-EN: 97; PR-FR: 124). The basic principle is reminiscient of how children have the habit of pursuing an infinite line of questioning in a way, Michelstaedter suggests, that is analogous to the vain pursuit of knowledge: “Why is the sun bright?” “Because it burns” “Why does it burn?” “Because it’s made of fire” “Why is it made of fire?” Etc. This, Michelstaedter will also identify with φιλοψυχία (philopsychia: the coward desire for life)⁷. Thus Φιλοψυχία is the desire for what Michelstaedter identifies as a degenerated life: “Men of science have the god of philopsychia, pleasure, whose life consists of fooling everything that lives just in order to live.” (PR-EN: 97; PR-IT: 131).

Michelstaedter acknowledges that scientific rhetoric does not claim anymore to completeness, but readily pretends to incarnate an infinite task: i.e. that its pursuit of knowledge never ends. But, warns Michelstaedter, this confession is itself a dishonest artifice: “the sufficiency of a finite work is dishonest at every point, even if it proceeds along a path professed as infinite” (PR-EN: 97; PR-IT: 132). All the more dishonest that scientific rhetoric pretends to “satisfy the demand of persuasion” (PR-EN: 97-98; “soddisfare alla richiesta della persuasione” PR-IT: 132).

Against the “infinite activity” that grants a genuine “diritto di vivere” (right to live… in a persuaded way, that is while facing the mortal accident that is life during one’s own lifetime), men will prefer to take refuge behind the veil of rhetoric, the καλλωπίσματα ὄρφνης (ornament of the darkness). In other words, men will prefer to claim the right to these petty tasks, to this brutish work, to claim the right “to degrade oneself in a diminished life, in obtuse toil, to bend one’s back in an obscure corner so as not to have to face life and not see death” (PR-EN: 99; PR-IT: 133-134). All of this, concludes Michelstaedter, is done against the demand of persuasion.

Part 4

The fourth and last part of “The Constitution of Rhetoric” brings Michelstaedter’s argument to its culmination. The men of science, through the development of scientific rhetoric, provide the world with an international language of technical –easily recognizable– terms, which Michelstaedter identifies with the καλλωπίσματα ὄρφνης or “ornament of darkness” (“ornements de l’obscurité” in French).

The syntagm καλλωπίσματα ὄρφνης (kallṓpismata órphnēs) first makes an appearance in the previous section “Rhetoric”: “καλλωπίσματα ὄρφνης ‘ornaments of the darkness’: “God help me”—because I haven’t the courage to help myself.” (PR-EN: 69; PR-IT: 99-100). The critical apparatus in Sergio Campailla’s edition provides the reference to Plato’s Gorgias 492C, where the word καλλωπίσματα is used in a derogatory way by Callicles while arguing against Socrates’ defense of self-mastery (the same critical apparatus appears in the English and French translations)⁸.

This, the men of science achieve by systematically pursuing regularity in phenomena, while each time eliminating (overlooking, avoiding, ignoring) accidents and contingencies, so as to extract recognizable and thus usable patterns which they can then apply to fulfil their desires and needs. Working diligently like bees carrying pollen from one flower to the next, the men of science –as if having turned themselves into machines– can violate nature by turning it into a convenient set of discreet values, down to “their tiniest details and keep the statistics of good and bad” (PR-EN: 100; PR-IT: 135). The constitution of rhetoric thus is exposed by Michelstaedter as a settlement into habits, far away from the risky uncertainty associated with facing life for what it is (rather than turning it into reassuring figures). Here, it is worth remembering the excerpt placed at the very beginning of “The Constitution of Rhetoric” which Michelstaedter borrows from Parmenides (Mullach 54; Diels 7:3): “Nor should clever habit push you along this road” or “Nor let habit force thee to cast a wandering eye upon this devious track.” The argument being advanced by Parmenides is that however comforting habits can be, however strongly habits can regulate our lives, no force –be that the force of habit– can make is so that non-being exist.

The very last words of this fourth and last part is worthy of attention, as the syntax is uneasy: through the uniform, universal technical language of καλλώπισταμα ὄρφνης “men, though unable to understand one another, will certainly manage to come to an understanding” (PR-EN: 100; “uomini se non riusciranno ad intendersi certo giungeranno ad intendersela” PR-IT: 136; and in French: “si les hommes ne réussissent pas à s’entendre, ils parviendront entre eux certainement à s’y entendre” PR-FR: 128). This could be further developed, as it touches on something crucial: the ideology of communication. For the sake of brevity, we can call the ideology of communication the false (but very tempting and as such widely shared) belief that communication is a way for human beings to come to an agreement (a good representative of this approach is Jürgen Habermas). Against this ideology, Charles Baudelaire can write: “The world only goes round by misunderstanding.” (“Le monde ne marche que par le malentendu. C’est par le malentendu universel que tout le monde s’accorde.” Oeuvres posthumes, Paris: Mercure de France, p. 125; Internet Archive). What Michelstaedter seems to be suggesting is that while avoiding the persuaded life (because it is uneasy), men embrace a life of falsity, appearances, decorations and ornaments. And yet, through these lies, and because these lies are shared lies, they nonetheless relate⁹. This will be the pathway to the next section, which will deal with the community of malvagi (wicked), brought together by a cowardly (viltà) desire for life.

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• • •

^1. It is worth noting how Michelstaedter’s virulent charge against this form of degraded life cuts accross the political spectrum. He has been read with approval by anarchists (see footnote 6 below) and by far-right figures (see for instance Julius Evola’s Saggi sull’Idealismo magico, Rome: Edizioni Mediterranee, [1925] 2006, pp. 111-115; Internet Archive). ↩︎︎

^2. In a section from the first part of his dissertation, Michelstaedter will charaterized the modality of the persuaded life as ἄβιος βίος. In the critical apparatus for both the Italian and the French edition, Sergio Campailla note:

ἄβιος βίος «vita che non è vita»: non nel senso in genere dispregiativo che è proprio dell’aggettivo greco, ma in quello di «vita che è fuori della vita», «vita impossibile»: la vita, insomma, della Persuasione. (PR-IT: 195)

ἄβιος βίος «vie qui n’est pas la vie», non pas dans le sens généralement péjoratif qui est propre à l’adjectif grec mais dans le sens de «vie en dehors de la vie», «vie impossible»: la vie de la persuasion, en somme (PR-FR: 179)

The syntagm ἄβιος βίος should prevent any simplistic reading of the relationship between persuasion and rhetoric. For Michelsteadter, the persuaded life cannot be simply reduced to the “positive” option posited against the “negative” option that is rhetoric, or φιλοψυχία (see footnote footnote 7, below). ↩︎︎

^3. “Tentato suicidio,” Gazzettino popolare, October 18, 1910, PDF. ↩︎︎

^4. My thanks to Gerardo Munoz for having brought this poem to my attention. “Ah, que tú escape” was first collected in Enemigo rumor (Havana: Ucar García y Cía, 1941). The same poem can be found in Poesia Completa (Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1985: 23; Internet Archive). A French translation by Waldo Rojas can be found in Digraphe Issue 90/91, “Lezama Lima: le Paradis retrouvé,” winter 2000, p. 9 (JPEG).

Ah, que tú escapes en el instante
en el que ya habías alcanzado tu definición mejor.
Ah, mi amiga, que tú no querías creer
las preguntas de esa estrella recién cortada,
que va mojando sus puntas en otra estrella enemiga.
Ah, si pudiera ser cierto que a la hora del baño,
cuando en una misma agua discursiva
se bañan el inmóvil paisaje y los animales más finos:
antílopes, serpientes de pasos breves, de pasos evaporados,
parecen entre sueños, sin ansias levantar
los más extensos cabellos y el agua más recordada.
Ah, mi amiga, si en el puro mármol de los adioses
hubieras dejado la estatua que nos podía acompañar,
pues el viento, el viento gracioso,
se extiende como un gato para dejarse definir. ↩︎︎

^5.See Schürmann, Reiner. “Trois penseurs du délaissement: Maître Eckhart, Heidegger, Suzuki: Part One.” Journal of the History of Philosophy, vol. 12 no. 4, 1974, p. 455-477. While Schürmann did not write about Michelstaedter, more than one commentators have noted proximities between Carlo Michelstaedter’s philosophy and the work of Martin Heidegger, including Giorgio Agamben (see below, footnote footnote 7). ↩︎︎

^6. The expression “a ferri corti con la vita” (“at daggers drawn with life” in English, “à couteaux tirés avec la vie” in French) is used in two additional location in Michelstaedter writing. In the Appendici critiche, it appears in Appendix II, collected in Opere:

Il vivo senso della propria insufficienza, il bisogno di venir in ogni punto a ferri corti colla vita, l’impossibilità d’adagiarsi nella qualunque sufficienza a continuare la propria illusoria persona: a vivere senza conoscersi, senza la persuasione — questo è il motore che fa sentire e vedere a Socrate la presenza del males otto le apparenze sufficienti della φιλοψυχία. (ed. by Gaetano Chiavacci, Firenze: Sansoni, 1958, p. 182; Internet Archive)

The expression is also used in Dialogo della salute:

Allora convien guardar in faccia la morte c sopportar « con gli occhi aperti » l’oscurità e scendere nell’abisso della propria insufficienza — «venir a ferri corti » con la propria vita. (Ibid., p. 365; Internet Archive)

In the available French editions, the three mentions can be found as follow: La persuasion et la rhétorique, ed. Sergio Campailla, tran. Marilène Raiola, Paris: Éditions de l’éclat, 1989, p. 122; Appendices critiques à La persuasion et la rhétorique, tran. Tatiana Cescutti, Paris: Éditions de l’éclat, 1994, pp. 58-59; Le dialogue de la santé et autres textes, ed. Sergio Campailla, tran. and presented Antoine Parzy, Paris: Éditions de l’éclat, 2004, p. 92. The expression is also used as the title of the biography Sergio Campailla wrote about Michelstaedter A ferri corti con la vita : biografia ad introduzione della mostra antologica “Testimonianze per Carlo Michelstaeder” (Gorizia: Comune di Gorizia, Gorizia, 1974). The relevant quote from La persuasione e la rettorica was also used as the epigraph for the anonymous pamphlet Ai ferri corti con l’Esistente, i suoi difensori e i suoi falsi critici published by the anarchist press N.N. (Pont St Martin-AO/Catania, May 1998), which was subsequently translated in various languages (see here, which offers the text in seven languages, including the original Italian). See also an English version hosted by Internet Archive, and the cover for the original 1998 Italian edition. ↩︎︎

^7.For context, the critical apparatus in English signals that φιλοψυχία is a term Michelstaedter borrows from Plato. It occurs in Apology 37c; Laws 944e; and Gorgias 512e. In the English translation of Gorgias 512e, φιλοψυχητέον is rendered as “mere life”; where in Laws 944e φιλοψυχίας is rendered as “love of life at any price”. There might be an opportunity to examine Michelstaedter’s specific use of φιλοψυχία as well has his more general presentation of the “persuaded life” in light of Giorgio Agamben’s attempt at salvaging an adequate “form-of-life” (forma-di-vita). Agamben’s treatment of “la vita nuda” and zōē, two distinct terms which are nonetheless often confused, suggests that it would not be readily compatible with Michelstaedter’s use of φιλοψυχίας. One reason would be the distinction between φιλοψυχίας and ἁπλῶς. In Homo Sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Agamben writes: “«Nuda», nel sintagma «nuda vita», corrisponde qui al termine greco haplos, con cui la filosofia prima definisce l’essere puro.” (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1995: p. 203). A second reason would be that while it is true that discussions in English about zōē often mobilize the adjective “mere” (for instance, see Homo Sacer. Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998, p. 2), Michelstaedter’s use of φιλοψυχία is systematically derogatory, which cannot be said of Agamben’s use of the terms “la vita nuda” and zōē. More promising might be an examination of the possibles ways in which Michelstaedter’s use of the syntagm ἄβιος βίος, as an asymptotic mode of life, might relate to Agamben’s use of forma-di-vita. To the best of my knowledge, Michelstadeter is only mentioned once in Agamben’s entire corpus. The mention appears in L’uso dei Corpi (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 2014: 245):

That is to say, we are dealing with a being carried without there being anything that supports us, with a condition in which what carries us is not—as in Heideggerian being-thrown or persuasion in Michelstaedter—the weight to which we are consigned but precisely the opposite, our absolute lack of weight and lack of a task. (The Use of Bodies, tran. Adam Kotsko, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015: 190) ↩︎︎

^8. For a discussion about the use of the word καλλωπίσματα by Callicles, in the context of reading Michelstaedter, see Gerardo Muñoz: “Kallopismata orphnes: the eclipse of language,” Infrapolitical Reflections, Feb. 3, 2025. ↩︎︎

^9. This also suggests that the κοινωνία κακῶν (the community of wicked, PR-EN: 100) is also about immunity – the idea of κοινωνία κακῶν is further developed in the following section “Rhetoric in Life,” where Michelstaedter suggests that a cowardly attachment to the desire for life is what creates society in the first place, to an extent reminiscent of Hobbes’s conception of the social contract as an immunity device ↩︎︎

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