The article deals initially with the essential structure of Franco Totaro’s book, L’assoluto e il relativo. L’essere e il suo accadere per noi. Totaro’s discourse begins with experience, i.e., with immediately present being, and indicates its tendency towards an ontological fulfillment, and, at the same time, a distance from the full manifestation of being. The intertwining of these two aspects allows, on the one hand, to show the original place of the ethical dimension; and on the other hand, to clearly see the limits of the latter in terms of a manifestation of the Whole of being. For Totaro, in order to avoid falling into the senselessness of the negative, we must consider that not every being is “worthy of being” beyond its happening. The expectation of a fulfilled manifestation of being, according to this “qualitative” dimension, seeks a salvific project of a religious type, which, however, remains philosophically indemonstrable. After having presented Totaro’s theoretical path, and having shown some of its merits, I offer some critical considerations and I suggest the author to rethink more analytically the contradiction which is implied in the “out-datedness of being” and which is at the core of the development of his “qualitative metaphysics”. In such a context, the doctrine of creation in the thought of Gustavo Bontadini is also taken into consideration.
