Something of Us Will Remain: How to Survive Death
English. Spanish. Italian.
Antonio Polito - Julián Carrón - Massimo Recalcati :
The book was presented at the Rizzoli Bookstore in Milan on October 20, 2025, in a public meeting with Antonio Polito moderated by Monsignor Filippo Mellino and Fr. Julián Carrón.
Michela Mantovan: Good evening, everyone, and welcome on this somewhat gloomy day. I promise you—or rather, I hope—that when we leave here, despite, and precisely because of, the topic we will be discussing tonight, we will approach things in a more complex or at least different way. I am happy to introduce the author of the book, Antonio Polito. I am Michela Mantovan from Corriere della Sera Sette, and the title of the book, Something of Us Will Remain, already says a lot about this topic. It is a hope, but also a statement, and we will see why. We have Don Carrón, a very famous theologian, and the psychoanalyst Massimo Recalcati. During this presentation, you will understand the importance of their presence. First of all—and this is integral to the genesis of this book—I would like to tell you how the idea for this work came about. Much has been written about death; the subject is endless and spans eras and cultures. But this book was written precisely because it needed to be written. Antonio Polito, thank you.
Antonio Polito: First of all, many thanks to the Professor for accepting the invitation to participate, and especially to Michela, because she is not here by chance: the idea for the book came from her. She stimulated and pushed me toward a form of rebellion against the taboo that exists in public debate on the subject of death.
It is a topic I had been mulling over for some time, and it is also a fairly recent phenomenon. Someone said that in the Victorian era—which is not so distant—sex was secret, but death was public. Instead, we have turned things upside down: we talk constantly about sex, but we have hidden death in ways that, in my opinion, are even more inhuman.
I wanted to tackle this issue. I was also inspired by a Clint Eastwood film, Hereafter, in which a journalist, writing a boring political biography, experiences an episode in her life that leads her to address the issue of death. She decides to discard the political biography and write about the taboo of death. No one wants to publish it. Thank goodness Mondadori didn't resist my proposal for long!
The book was born from this desire to express myself. I had already mentioned the topic in various articles. One day Michela called me and said, “I understand that this is something you're interested in. I'm interested in it too, and the newspaper is interested in it. So why don't we do an investigation?”
We began a fairly long series of interviews, about twenty, with philosophers, psychoanalysts, cardinals, and even people who had experienced death, in the sense that they had had those famous experiences technically known as NDEs (Near-Death Experiences; experiences of near death: coma, loss of oxygen to the brain, in fact almost brain death) and then came back. Carl Gustav Jung, among others, had such an experience, which he recounted at length.
I decided to do a journalistic investigation into death: both the fact itself and the perspectives it opens up. One of the most complicated problems with death is what happens next. The initial assumption that prompted me to do this investigation, which also contains some personal autobiography, is the denial of a principle expressed by Epicurus—famous and successful in this era of neo-Epicureans—according to which death does not exist, because when it is there, we are not, and when we are there, it is not. Many people, in my opinion, console themselves with this idea. Oliviero Toscani, shortly before his death, said something very effective: “I'm not afraid of dying, as long as it doesn't hurt.”
What many people fear is the moment of passing. Instead, I think that most of us are worried about dying, not so much about death itself—that is, the loss of all the goods of life—but rather the refusal to accept that, after having more or less illuminated the world stage, we will disappear. An expression I hate is: “He has disappeared.” A life cannot disappear, an existence cannot disappear.
This investigation was born out of this dual rebellion, this desire to break the taboo, to break what the film calls the conspiracy of silence. After the investigation came the book.
Michela Mantovan: I would like to begin by quoting a piece of a homily about your mother. The homily concludes: "And because at the same time we can testify that life does not end here. Death is only an appearance; it is a passage and a transition to that fullness to which we are all called."
In the book, Antonio points out how often in homilies—since in his case it was his mother, whom he knew and loved—there is timidity in speaking. He explains that the passages of the Gospels on the resurrection are left aside in this historical phase. Do you think this is true, and if so, why?
Julián Carrón: Yes, good evening, everyone. Thank you for the invitation. It is true that, as Antonio says in the book, not everyone is truly certain of the resurrection. For me, however, this is a crucial point. As St. Paul says, “If there is no resurrection, what are we doing here?”
It is one of the things that struck me most about the survey, and which I admire about Antonio and the book: faced with this varied attempt to respond to the drama of death, the real issue is that Antonio's audacity in confronting the questions head-on without minimizing any position forces the reader into a dialogue with all of them. We are called not to shy away from dialogue with all these positions.
One of the expressions that appears most often in the book is: “It's not enough.” Certain explanations are not enough; certain attempts—such as secular funerals—are not enough, because something is missing that truly responds to the needs that each person has. A book of this kind, with Antonio's expressive and journalistic genius, helps those who want to approach and look at all aspects of the story surrounding death and the afterlife.
You have to be aware that you will not come out of this reading unscathed, because it is difficult to face these things without being touched. One of the most striking things about the book is that Antonio did not want to stand by and watch from the window. From the very first pages, he says: “Look, I used to think this, but now I don't.” He had to grapple with a need that approaches the Fourth – as he calls it – life beyond. And we all see this need for an adequate response emerging.
Michela Mantovan: Massimo Recalcati has written extensively, including on this subject. I studied the Gospels, and about a year ago—it was November 24, 2024—he gave a lecture in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Bergamo to present his book, whose title is clear: Death, the End of Everything: Interpreting the Resurrection. The lecture, which I suggest you watch (it lasts an hour and twenty minutes and is easy to find), is not a lecture in the usual sense: the Professor explains very complex topics.
I wanted to ask you, regarding the resurrection – which, according to this book, is not the only option (for example, there are those who are afraid of being reincarnated as a mouse, not as the president of the United States!) – there are some very interesting and surprising positions.
You say: Jesus does not speak, Jesus acts. Jesus does. And you—if I may summarize in a blunt way—talk about life. One of the problems of life is fear. It is the reason why slavery is always preferred to the freedom of having to decide. Even the disciples are afraid during a storm.
The two sides of the coin, you say, are the fear of life—because life is, you use the word, ungovernable—and, of course, the fear of death. But one cannot exist without the other. I wanted to ask you: what is your opinion, with your perspective as a scholar and therapist, given that we are here looking for a question, not an answer?
Massimo Recalcati: Thank you for the invitation and for the question, which would prompt me to talk about my work rather than Polito's book, which I want to talk about instead. When a book is presented, the focus is on its author. This book, which I read with great interest, gives us bad news: none of those present will come out alive.
This is the central point of our relationship with death: no one will escape this fate. In Qohelet it says: “We come from dust, we are made of dust, we are destined to return to dust.” This path is irreversible. There is no possibility of avoiding the conversion of being into non-being.
The first part of the book is Polito himself confronting death in general. He challenges the aphorism of Epicurus and also that of Wittgenstein, which evokes: “You cannot experience death.” And he asks the question that the biblical text also asks: What will remain? Will nothing remain? Will there be a trace that will survive the destruction of everything? Is there anyone listening to our answer? I would say to take it seriously.
The book deals with death in general, constantly asking the question: “Is death really the end of everything?”
It evokes a phrase found in Qohelet that we hear in “funeral bars”—a phrase so common that it seems like a little slogan. Qohelet says that we all have our days numbered. Every living thing on the face of the earth—the bee as well as the peach, the horse as well as the grass—has its days numbered.
However, Polito rightly deduces in his book that, unlike all other living beings, the human form of life counts the days that remain. This theme of counting days is very present in the book: in fact, he decides to write it when he reaches a certain age.
I remember that when I turned fifty, my secretary arrived with a bar of chocolate and, evoking a film by Nanni Moretti, said to me: “Doctor, now you've put me in the middle, so this is missing.” Then she added, a woman of common sense: “Get busy.” It's not a bad deduction: time is running out, and if it is, we have two choices: resignation or motivation—that is, living what remains to the fullest. Human beings are not made to die.
This is another theme of the book: death is not a natural fact. We do not die like a leaf falling from a branch. Death, in the human form of life, is always against nature, always premature. Even the death of an elderly person is not like a leaf falling from a tree. Death always comes too soon. It is a theme that runs throughout the book: we want more. There is no time that can satisfy our hunger for life.
A second observation: it is not death that causes anguish, but dying. Your reference to Jesus is important, because he is not immortal. Jesus experiences death in a radical way, so much so that Christian iconography depicts the risen Christ with the wounds of the Passion. Jesus passed into the grave, into the dust. This is fascinating.
In his experience, Jesus does not take the side of Wittgenstein or Epicurus; he does not deny the inevitability of death, but passes through it. What interests me is that death is not just what awaits us at the end: it is a thought that has always been working in our minds. It is a presence.
A horse does not think about death; one could say it is eternal, it perishes, but it does not die. Human beings think about death from their first breath. Death is a pervasive presence that always accompanies us, even if we do not know when it will happen.
This pervasive presence is a big theme. I have brought a small gift, a poem by Franco Arminio—similar in tone to the book—which describes it well. The title is Postcards from Death.
The poem says: “Death is a tiny thorn, stuck in my blood for who knows how long. It is a river that flows under my bridges. Death comes to mind while I read, while I put on my socks, when I take a shower, while I talk on the phone, in front of the computer, at funerals, at parties.”
This describes the essence of the book: the daily relationship with death, which is not the last note in the melody of existence, but something that, as Franco says, is a thorn that has always been in the flesh.
Michela Mantovan: The first interview in this investigation—which features the participation of high-profile and very diverse figures, such as the organizer of secular ceremonies and those involved in trials—was with Camillo Ruini.
This interview, which I read and which received widespread media coverage, was profound because Ruini admitted his fear of death. In his role, this is an honest admission, but one that is complex to sustain.
What do you fear about your own death?
Julián Carrón: "I'm not being bold here. Based on my experience, and without judging the Cardinal, I agree with Massimo: the question of death is really a question about life."
My life is invested with a presence. I cannot think of myself, I cannot take a shower or get up in the morning without this presence being decisive for my life. I cannot explain it without recognizing the existence of this presence, which for me is a constant companion, not because I think about it every moment, but because it is the fabric of my life.
When I think about death, I think about facing it, moving ever closer to the encounter, to a fullness of relationship with this presence, without which everything else seems too little to me. Every attempt to give myself a reason—I understand the existence of different stories of people who seek something that makes the situation worthwhile—I ask, “But is this enough? To replace a presence? The memory of a loved one?”
I remember a friend who, at the time of the lockdown, could not accompany her mother to the cemetery. I spoke to her on the phone, and I was surprised that she gave such importance to this gesture, which, in a normal situation, we would have gladly done. But to give such importance to a gesture like this...
For me, the decisive question is whether Christ is risen.
If Christ is risen, who accompanies... (I realized that this was already the big question for me), the need we have to live, the need for a fullness that permeates our whole life, what can respond adequately?
That someone bring me back, or that I remember someone, what is needed for life to be full? None of the attempts that human intelligence can conceive can replace a presence. We see this with our loved ones: can any memory, any photo, any object replace their presence?
If the presence of another is so decisive in life that without it everything is little, one cannot deny Leopardi's expression: “Everything is too little” for human urgency. This is the big question that everyone must grapple with: whether any attempt is sufficient to respond to this need that, in one way or another, we all have.
For me, without this presence that determines life, I would almost prefer to be a Buddhist. To live all eternity with such a need, like a total damnation, without a presence that satisfies my need for fullness, would be hell.
Michela Mantovan: It has not always been this way. Antonio Polito gives a lot of space to the Catholic-Christian view, but he also points out—citing the history of death in the West—that death has had its “fashions” and its “waves”. This book by Philippe Ariès identifies four different attitudes throughout history.
In the most ancient societies, there was a great collective familiarity with death. Man accepted it as one of the great laws of the species and did not think of either avoiding or exalting it. From the middle of the Middle Ages, however, an era attributed a new value to individual existence, without provoking great emotions. Starting in the 18th century, man exalts and dramatizes it; it is romantic and rhetorical death, the death of the other. Finally, our era arrives.
This is where I wanted to get to: our era. We live in a time when there is a strong need to implement the conspiracy of silence around death and to keep it physically distant from us. But at the same time, an anxiety has been created, an increasingly strong, pressing and, in some cases, even hopeless need for answers.
How has your view of death changed since you began this investigation? Being a man of your age, I think something has changed in your view of death.
Antonio Polito: What has changed is that I have become active, in the sense that I believe that being active also means thinking about death. It consists of being fully aware of one's own life, of this passage and its approach. Indeed, it is like Achilles and the tortoise: between here and death there is a life. Even if it were only a moment, it is a life, and there are incredible things that can be experienced, thought, and imagined.
There is a Buddhist saying from Bhutan: “To be truly happy, you must think about death five times a day.” If you do that, you live your life more fully and get busy. So, thinking about death improves your life. I have no doubt about that. This is something I suspected, but the investigation allowed me to ascertain and rationalize it.
The second thing is this: talking to people about death, questioning them, I realized that almost no one believes that nothing remains of themselves. This is regardless of their level of faith. Ruini, in the interview, told me that even Catholics no longer believe in the resurrection of the body, because it is a bit far-fetched.
But St. Paul says: if you believe that Christ did it, then everyone can do it. And that is true.
There are about six billion human beings who believe in the immortalità dell'anima, because it is not necessarily true that the body must also be resurrected. There is a whole school of thought based on neuroscience and quantum physics, which argues that death is an appearance, just as all matter is an appearance (Maya), a collapse of energy. So, in the cosmic dance of sub-particles, consciousness could live on even after the death of the brain, as if it were in a cloud. Information and thoughts have migrated and can be retrieved.
In the paganism of Silicon Valley and the Big Tech companies, almost all of these billionaires are researching immortality, imagining hybridizations between artificial intelligence and the human body.
It would be possible to have an avatar of ourselves, of the written and oral traces we have left behind. Nothing could be easier than, when we are gone, someone creating an hologram with our face and making us think and speak.
And then there are wills, transplants, funerals, burials, All Souls' Day, the love of loved ones, the memory of loved ones. The ways of coping with immortality are endless, since the dawn of humanity. Why did they bury the dead in the Paleolithic era if not for the hope of an afterlife?
So, these two things have changed: I talk about it much more freely and I have accepted that the thought of death is part of my ongoing life—I think Seneca said that. At the same time, I have developed a sense of optimism, a sense of hope. I dedicate the final chapter to hope, with the idea that even if my hopes are dashed, they will help me live from now until my death, which is a long time and one that I want to enjoy to the fullest.
Michela Mantovan: One characteristic of these interviews is that, although they are only a small part of the book, they are very significant. I participated in their creation, and my job was also to find a representative title for each one that would attract attention.
Looking back at all twenty, I realized some oddities. First of all, we thought that few people would want to respond. Instead, despite a few refusals, the interviews are extremely valuable because, regardless of the status of the people interviewed, they have a staggering level of sincerity. I read hundreds of interviews and am always left with a bitter aftertaste of cunning, of presenting oneself in an indulgent way, perhaps praising one's flaws as a form of uniqueness. That doesn't happen here.
Coming back to us: we have understood that coexisting with our death is useful; it is the other end to which our life is stretched. I have observed that most people with an artistic profession—Riccardo Muti, Gino Paoli, Cacciari, Pupi Avati—have this idea of reincarnation. They want to believe in the eternity of the soul, which reincarnation does not deny. Why is this? Observing the human soul, what fascinates us about reincarnation, as another way of remaining tangible?
Massimo Recalcati: For Freud, if I may quote the father, these are all illusions. The reality is that we will return to dust, but faced with this reality, human beings invent all kinds of things, including the myth of reincarnation. It is true that there are puzzling testimonies, such as the child in the United States who talks about airplanes with inexplicable expertise, but the point I take from Freud's judgment is that thinking about the afterlife risks emptying the here and now.
This book is, in fact, a great eulogy to the here and now. It is clear that Polito does not want to die. But even Jesus did not want to die! The first prayer in Gethsemane asks the Father to be spared. He wants to continue living because the Kingdom is here.
What I see in the book, as a psychoanalyst, is a great passion and love for life and the difficulty that all humans face in the face of the injury that death introduces. Even if there were another life or consciousness were diffuse energy, I don't care. I want to see Valentina, Tommaso, Camilla, and I want to continue to see them.
If death denies me this possibility, I have to deal with a pain that cannot be fully processed. I accept the teaching of Jesus, which as a layman I interpret as follows: resurrection is not the return to life of a dead person, but the realization that death is not the last word on life. The book concludes by saying that true death is not what awaits us, but making our lives empty. True death is an empty life.
This urges us to make our lives zoè, as John would say: the indestructible, rich, and capable of being alive. But eternal life, for me as a layman, is life that is alive as long as life is alive. This is how I interpret the extraordinary experience of resurrection.
A small personal symptom that I confess concerns my writing. I wrote four or five books until 2010, when I turned fifty. Since 2010, my output has multiplied dramatically. My publishers tell me, “You're cannibalizing one book with another. It's not commercial. Wait a year or two.” But they don't understand that for me, writing is living and breathing! I don't care if a book comes out four months after the last one. Writing is a symptom, the need to give back, to leave traces. This need goes beyond commercial calculation.
There are three small autobiographical notes by Polito that struck me deeply.
At four or five years old, his beloved grandfather dies, and he witnesses his death. This is important because the book breaks the veil that our time puts on death, considering it the true obscenity of life. Today, the primary sceneis not the coitus of parents, but the child witnessing the death of a loved one. But this death is associated with a gift: the grandfather leaves two gold twins [cufflinks]. There is an ambivalence: the loss of a loved one who leaves something precious behind.
When his mother dies, the author spends the night next to her body. It is not a scene of horror; there is a strange intimacy, almost a contact that death makes possible and that had not been cultivated in life.
The death of the father occurs in two stages, almost a small resurrection. Doctors declare him brain dead, then the father comes back to life, surprising the doctors, only to die definitively later.
These two stages are fundamental: there is the gift of the gold cufflinks; the mother dies, but there is intimacy; the father dies in two stages. There is something resilient in life compared to death that can surprise you.
These two stages characterize the reflection on death: on the one hand, the dramatic experience of closure, the end of everything. But on the other hand, it is not the end, because, as the angel says on the day of the resurrection: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” You cannot seek life in the tomb. Living life is found in our lives.
Michela Mantovan: Now I will share an aspect of this book. When I finished reading it, it left me with a strange impression, one of sweetness. All the stages that Antonio goes through—through philosophy, his convictions that he puts to the test—culminate in an intense part in which he engages in self-criticism. He takes stock of the need to pursue the fullness of life.
He, who has had many experiences... I'm not saying he is self-critical, but he says: “My search—how to leave my mark on this world—has taken me down paths that I am not always happy with, perhaps the pursuit of power, of visibility.” You say: “I have found my way. Now I am no longer so convinced that this is it.” Is that correct?
Antonio Polito: Yes, I think the psychoanalysis continues the session! I'm happy to do it.
In fact, just like Recalcati, I write. Now I'm getting the idea to write another one right away to cannibalize the one that just came out.
Two things about the book. The best thing was written to me by a reader, who said: “Look, I had never thought about it before, but after reading your book, I realized that the most important day of life is the day of death.” This makes me happy, because that was exactly the purpose and the self-exercise I did on myself.
As for the final part, it's a reflection I found in Popper. He said that the problem with our age is that we measure success, the outcome of our lives, of our ideas. We are satisfied when we think that what we said was right and people followed us. This, especially in our profession, is particularly egocentric.
I have never wielded worldly power. I served two years as a member of parliament and fled in fear, because if there is one place where there is no power, it is Parliament.
Michela Mantovan: I meant ideas, of course.
Antonio Polito: I assure you, they don't matter. The problem is not so much power as measuring the depth and truth of an existence by success. So often you realize that you haven't done this, that you've compromised yourself, that you haven't valued the important, right things. I understand that this reflection begins to circulate more in your head after you've eaten more than half the chocolate bar [after the age of fifty].
But this self-criticism is fundamental, because otherwise you cannot rely on the only thing that can make you immortal: the love of the people you have loved. If you have preferred worldly success in every single choice, you have damaged that love.
In the end, I think the three ages of life are:
The age when you privilege and seek beauty (the age of youth).
The age of seeking truth (mature age), when you realize that truth often contradicts beauty.
The age when only love remains (or goodness), understood as the fullness of life in relationships with others.
If you still prioritize the other two at this stage, you are wasting your time. You are not working hard, you are not preparing yourself, and you are not even living. These moments of emptiness that you have cultivated in your life must be filled at some point, and you can't keep fooling around at this age. This is my self-criticism: I have wasted a lot of time. Like everyone else, I think.
Michela Mantovan: I don't know if anyone has anything to add. The essence of this book and this conversation is to conclude by talking about love and fulfillment. It is a recurring theme, seen from every point of view: secular, religious, reincarnation, resurrection. The imperative is to live well now. I would say that it is not even a message, but a fact. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much for helping us move forward with this. Thank you to Massimo Recalcati, thank you Fr. Carrón.
