
Umberto Eco has died - kawera
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-35620368
======
zorpner
Umberto Eco on operating systems and religion, in 1994:

 _The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh
computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion
that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the
Macintosh is counterreformist and has been influenced by the "ratio studiorum"
of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful
how they must proceed step by step to reach - if not the Kingdom of Heaven -
the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence
of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons. Everyone
has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of
scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics
upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach
salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself:
a long way from the baroque community of revelers, the user is closed within
the loneliness of his own inner torment.

You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to
resemble more closely the counterreformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's
true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the
cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change
things in accordance with bizarre decisions.....

And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you
prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is Talmudic and
cabalistic._

(from here:
[http://jowett.web.cern.ch/jowett/EcoMACDOS.htm](http://jowett.web.cern.ch/jowett/EcoMACDOS.htm)
)

~~~
vanderZwan
Did he ever say something about Linux?

~~~
felipellrocha
Buddhism. Leading you towards the path of enlightenment!

~~~
Xeiliex
Good luck understanding the terminology unless you get it from the source.

------
schoen
One remarkable thing about _The Name of the Rose_ is that the characters in it
don't think and talk like modern people who happen to have been transported
into the Middle Ages. They seem to think differently -- about what's possible,
what people can expect from life, how you know things, what counts as an
argument...

Possibly my favorite part:

"What you say is very fine, Adso, and I thank you. The order that our mind
imagines is like a net, or a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward
you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was
useful, it was meaningless. Er muoz gelîchesame die leiter abewerfen, sô er an
ir ufgestigen . . . . Is that how you say it?"

"That is how it is said in my language. Who told you that?"

"A mystic from your land. He wrote it somewhere, I forget where. And it is not
necessary for somebody one day to find that manuscript again. The only truths
that are useful are instruments to be thrown away."

The "mystic from your land" was Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said that in his
_Tractatus_ 591 years _after_ that conversation was set, in modern rather than
medieval German ("Er muss sozusagen die Leiter wegwerfen, nachdem er auf ihr
hinaufgestiegen ist") - "he must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he
has climbed up on it".

~~~
coliveira
Umber Eco was one of the greatest scholars of Middle Age's philosophy. It is a
great delight for all of us that he decided to share his knowledge in the form
of a Novel. I don't think you can find any other writer capable of translating
the thinking of ordinary men from Middle Ages into a book like he did.

~~~
Retric
I really doubt we know very much about how people thought back then. There are
many filters between what was thought, who knew how to write it down, the form
people used to express thought in written form, what happened to be copied or
survive.

Ex: People don't actually believe in Santa Clause, but if you randomly chose
10,000 pages to represent US thought from 1800 to now. Them handed them to
scholars in the future there is a solid chance you they would assume it was
the major religion.

I suspect sea monsters may simply be a similar tall tail and we lost context.

PS: Ok, we can reasonably assume people got hungry :D

~~~
mikeash
Is it not true that Santa Claus is the major religion? Many don't believe, but
nearly all worship just the same.

~~~
wobbleblob
That reminds me of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, on thanksgiving:

Anya: I love a ritual sacrifice.

Buffy: Not really a one of those.

Anya: To commemorate a past event, you kill and eat an animal. It's a ritual
sacrifice. With pie.

~~~
mikeash
It's funny how we consider certain cultural behaviors to be wildly different
when they're "ours" versus "theirs" even if they're pretty similar if you can
step back and observe them objectively.

"If you used historical techniques on us, you'd get completely the wrong
idea!" Maybe. Or maybe you'd finally get the _right_ idea.

I'd love to write more, but I've finished ingesting the stimulants that allow
me to tolerate my oppressive culture (drinking coffee), and I'm going to take
a short trip to worship the revered dead (visit the National Mall).

~~~
wobbleblob
Imagine trying to explain to an ancient Greek philosopher how Christianity is
monotheistic.

So, you have one God, but also a demigod, who is his son. There's a god of the
underworld you call satan, and a number of divine or demonic creatures called
angels and demons. Ok, throw in some ancestor worship in the form of saints.

This monotheistic pantheon would have sounded reassuringly familiar your
ancient Greek interlocutor.

------
fenomas
Foucault's Pendulum was maybe the most transformative book I've ever read - it
changed how I think about literature (and of course the Knights Templar). Ah
well, guess it's time to reread it. :(

~~~
johnhattan
It took me four months to get through that thing, what with its weird random
digressions. One chapter would be talking about the Knights Templar building
treasure-tunnels under France, and suddenly the next chapter would open with a
paragraph explaining why a woman's physiology is better suited for playing
pinball than a man's.﻿

A compelling read, but I was never quite sure what facts would end up being
important to the plot.

(FWIW, the pinball fact was not)

~~~
fenomas
Well, yeah. Foucault's Pendulum is to me what Finnegan's Wake is apparently to
many others - certainly not a casual read; more something to pick apart slowly
and ponder the subtle mysteries of. But even underneath all the digressions
and metaphysics, I still find the core story enjoyable as well.

Plus it's as brilliant a takedown of conspiracy-theory-thinking as ever the
world will see.

~~~
pmoriarty
_" Plus it's as brilliant a takedown of conspiracy-theory-thinking as ever the
world will see."_

How does it compare on that score to The Illuminatus Trilogy[1], written more
than a decade before Eco's book?

[1] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminatus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminatus)

~~~
mcguire
The _Illuminatus Trilogy_ is a couple of guys getting stoned and screwing
around with various goofy ideas. Like a lot of postmodern stuff, it doesn't
take much of anything, especially its subject seriously.

 _Foucault 's Pendulum_ is a very smart guy who knows a lot, pointing out
that, if you peel an onion you won't find anything in the center.

~~~
anigbrowl
I think there's rather more to the Illuminatus trilogy than that. And I say
that as big fan of Eco who has enjoyed his deeply obscure stuff as well as his
more well-known works.

------
PavlovsCat
I didn't read any of his novels (yet), but this I consider one of the most
important documents I'm aware of.

[http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-
fascism.pdf](http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf)

 _If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before
the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to
reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. If Mussolini
's fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on
the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer
new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire
nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary
democracy, on anti-Semitism, then I have no difficulty in acknowledging that
today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party,
MSI, and certainly a right-wing party, has by now very little to do with the
old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the
various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe,
including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about
to reappear as a nationwide movement._

 _Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and
ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology
there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of
obscure instincts and unfathomable drives. Is there still another ghost
stalking Europe (not to speak of other parts of the world)?_

~~~
anigbrowl
Normally I tell everyone to read _The Name of the Rose_ first and be happy,
but for you I think you should start with _The Mysterious Flame of queen
Loana_ , even though it's one of his less accessible works. Much of it is a
fictionalized memoir on how fascism became embedded in the fabric of daily
life during Mussolini's reign, although this concern with mass movements and
the dangers they pose to thinking individuals is a consistent theme in his
work.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Oh, thank you so much! I will be sure to check it out.

------
hodwik
I started reading Numero Zero for the first time a few days ago, and decided
to stop, because I had a feeling he might be dying soon. It's the last book of
his I have left to read, and I wanted to make sure I had something to read of
his after he passed. Sorry I don't have to wait.

RIP -- Mr. Eco. Your books instilled in me the love of reading when no one
else could. I will always owe you one.

------
nappy
It's sad to lose such a great thinker.

For those who haven't read anything by Eco but want something more digestible
on a Friday evening than a novel, I _highly_ recommend his essay Ur-Fascism.
Eco was brilliant and had a clear-eyed view on the lasting impact of the
Middle Ages into today... and it's pretty clear how growing up in a fascist
society impacted his views.

[http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-
fascism.pdf](http://www.pegc.us/archive/Articles/eco_ur-fascism.pdf)

His reflections on fascism remain as important as ever.

------
officemonkey
Harper Lee and Umberto Eco in the same day. It's like when Shakespeare and
Cervantes died on the same day.

~~~
lloyd-christmas
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both died the same day.

~~~
ArkyBeagle
"Is it the Fourth?" \- Jefferson's last words.

~~~
jschuur
Adams' were 'Thomas Jefferson still survives', even though Jefferson had died
hours before.

------
pklausler
I'm going to re-read The Name of the Rose this weekend and raise a glass in
thanks to all the pleasure that this wonderful writer has added to my life.

~~~
Ologn
Great book!

------
patkai
"The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or
of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possesed from the
seer. Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a
rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead
of them." Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose, p. 491.

------
JoeDaDude
In addition to literary works, Umberto Eco also had a hand in designing a card
game. The game used custom designed cards to represent characters and verbs
which the players would use to tell a story. Some information (and photos) are
available at Board Game Geek:

[https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/104411/fabula-il-
gio...](https://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/104411/fabula-il-gioco-di-lei-
e-di-lui)

~~~
Udik
Thanks. The idea reminds me of another great Italian novelist, Italo Calvino,
and his 1973 novel "The Castle of Crossed Destinies". From Wikipedia:

"Its narrative details a meeting among travellers who are inexplicably unable
to speak after travelling through a forest. The characters in the novel
recount their tales via Tarot cards, which are reconstructed by the narrator."
(that is, the narrator observes the sequence of cards chosen and reconstructs
the stories after them).

------
imrehg
The concept of the anti-library definitely shaped my approach to knowledge a
lot.

Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary: Why Unread Books Are More Valuable to Our Lives
than Read Ones [https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-
antilib...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/03/24/umberto-eco-antilibrary/)

------
blackdev1l
It's 1:45 am here in Italy and this news is a true shock.

------
jplahn
We read Name of the Rose in my 10th grade English class and it was a tome that
challenged us all for the couple of weeks that we pored over it. I love that
book. I've read it one other time since then and it's amazing the number of
layers that continue to appear when you read it a second (and, presumably, a
third) time. When you spend so much time dissecting somebody's work, you
develop a sort of relationship with them, one that forms easily when you have
a teacher that distills a deep appreciation for the work you're knee deep in
trying to understand.

Mr. Eco you will be missed.

~~~
anigbrowl
After the 10th or 11th reading of _Rose_ I had internalized the book well
enough that I wasn't finding anything new and could recall whole pages of it
from memory, but I keep rereading it every year or so because of the sheer
sensual pleasure it evokes. I must be up to about 25 readings now and I was
just thinking it was time for another.

------
koevet
It's probably worth mentioning that very recently Eco, along with other
writers such as Hanif Kureishi and Tahar Ben Jelloun, decided to leave his
long-time publisher, Bompiani, and start a new publishing house, named "La
nave di Teseo" (Theseus' vessel). It did that at 83, investing 2 millions
euros in the process. Remarkable.

------
ZephyrP
Foucault's Pendulum is one of the most interesting books I've ever read. He'll
be missed.

------
rcurry
I can't believe how many legendary people have died in the last few months. I
still remember reading Foucault's Pendulum when it came out in English - I was
too young to really dig the story at the time, but I can recall struggling to
get my head around some his prose because he was just on a whole different
level from the other books I had been reading back then.

I read Baudolino some years ago, but didn't come away from it with the same
sense of awe that I got from reading Name of the Rose, or Foucault's Pendulum.

------
kh_hk
Hearing the news I couldn't help but think about the first game I've ever
played, "La Abadia del Crimen", a version of "The Name of the Rose", for
Amstrad CPC.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Abad%C3%ADa_del_Crimen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Abad%C3%ADa_del_Crimen)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDBDAVxwIxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDBDAVxwIxo)

------
vermontdevil
I liked the book, The Name of the Rose. Got me hooked on historical fiction
books after such as Sarum among others.

Not a bad film too with Sean Connery and Christian Slater.

------
neemsio
:(

------
greenyoda
\- This story claims it's a hoax:

[http://en.mediamass.net/people/umberto-
eco/deathhoax.html](http://en.mediamass.net/people/umberto-eco/deathhoax.html)

 _" On Friday (February 19) the author's reps officially confirmed that
Umberto Eco is not dead. “He joins the long list of celebrities who have been
victimized by this hoax. He's still alive and well, stop believing what you
see on the Internet,” they said."_

\- Wikipedia reverted the notice of his death, saying it was a false rumor:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Umberto_Eco&actio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Umberto_Eco&action=history)

Edit: Now Wikipedia is saying that he's dead.

Edit2: Now the BBC is reporting his death:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137855](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11137855)

~~~
davidw
From:
[http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2016/02/20/news/morto_lo_sc...](http://www.repubblica.it/cultura/2016/02/20/news/morto_lo_scrittore_umberto_eco-133816061/?ref=HREA-1)

> La conferma della scomparsa dell'autore de "Il nome della Rosa" e de "Il
> pendolo di Focault" è stata data dalla famiglia a Repubblica. La morte è
> avvenuta alle 22.30 di ieri sera nella sua abitazione.

Which says that his family has confirmed it to La Repubblica, which is a
respected Italian newspaper.

~~~
rprospero
I almost feel how this is how he would have wanted to go - with conflicting
reports from contemporary sources.

~~~
jloughry
I thought exactly the same thing. I can imagine the author smiling at this.

<quote>What is true?</quote> he would say.

------
davidw
I trust that dang et al will replace the link with one in English when it
becomes available.

(Which he/they have, transporting/merging the comments with this story... that
was kind of weird)

~~~
jacquesm
[http://www.euronews.com/2016/02/20/italian-author-and-
intell...](http://www.euronews.com/2016/02/20/italian-author-and-intellectual-
umberto-eco-has-died-at-the-age-of-84/)

:(

------
zouhair
Frigging 2016. The hecatomb year.

