Dignity as a Form of the Spirit

11 November 2010

My dream, nonetheless, was to make work into a more humane activity, to confer moral and economic dignity on work, because, believe me, work can so often be rather hard and repetitive. However, I was convinced that it also raised the dignity of man, and I have made this the true objective of my life. Therefore, though aspiring to make profit, because I believe in capitalism (every business has to make profits, it is the reason it exists), at the same time, I wanted to ensure that those profits did not damage humanity, or at least did so as little as possible.

I pledged myself to methods and objectives which would yield profits while respecting the dignity and value of the human being, focused, therefore, on a moral objective. Aristotle considered ethics to be the highest branch of philosophy and this was the road I wished to take.

This is the underlying philosophy of the enterprise. I wanted to create a product of great craftsmanship, great quality and, I hope, authentic creativity. I wanted to produce a handmade product that conveyed the Italian way of living and working, its self-esteem, tolerance, devotion, spirituality and mysticism. To do this, one obviously needs skilled hands, but also generous hearts that are proud of their origins and rooted in their own land. In the words of Pico della Mirandola: “Magnum miraculum est homo”.