Gianteresio Vattimo, also known as Gianni Vattimo (born January 4, 1936) is an internationally recognized Italian author, philosopher, and politician. Many of his works have been translated into English.

Vattimo was born in Turin, Piedmont. He studied philosophy under the existentialist Luigi Pareyson at the University of Turin, and graduated in 1959. After studying with Karl Löwith and Hans-Georg Gadamer in Heidelberg he returned to Turin where he became assistant professor in 1964, and later full professor of Aesthetics in 1969. While remaining at Turin, becoming Professor of Theoretical Philosophy in 1982, he has been a visiting professor at a number of American Universities.

After being active in the Partito Radicale, the short-lived Alleanza per Torino, and the Democrats of the Left, Vattimo joined the Party of Italian Communists. Between 1999 and 2004 he was a member of the European Parliament.

He is openly gay and an avowed Catholic "who welcomes God's death."

Vattimo added his name to a petition released on February 28, 2009 calling on the European Union to unconditionally remove Hamas from its list of terrorist organizations and grant it full recognition as a legitimate voice of the Palestinian people.

Nuccio Ordine (born 1958) is an Italian professor, philosopher and one of the world's top experts on Renaissance and the philosopher Giordano Bruno.

Ordine was born in the city of Diamante in southern Italy. He is currently professor of Italian literature at the University of Calabria in Cosenza, Italy. Fellow of the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies and of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, he has taught at American (Yale, New York University) and European universities (EHESS, Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris, Paris-IV Sorbonne, Paris-III Sorbonne-Nouvelle, CESR of Tours, Institut Universitaire de France, Paris-VIII, Warburg Institute, Eichstätt University). He is one of the major contemporary experts on Giordano Bruno and the Renaissance. His books have been translated into many languages, among them Chinese, Japanese and Russian. He is general editor of a new edition of Bruno's work and, along with Yves Hersant and Alain Segonds, of three collections of classics at Les Belles Lettres. In Italy, he is general editor of the series “Sileni” at Liguori, “Classici del pensiero europeo” at Nino Aragno Editore and “Classici della letteratura europea” at Bompiani. He writes for "Corriere della Sera".

Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 – May 26, 1976); German pronunciation: [ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ]) was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."

Heidegger argues that philosophy is preoccupied with what exists and has forgotten the question of the "ground" of being. We find ourselves "always already" fallen into a world that already existed; but he insists that we have forgotten the basic question of what being itself is. This question defines our central nature. He argues that we are practical agents, caring and concerned about our projects in the world, and allowing it to reveal, or "unconceal" itself to us. He also says that our manipulation of reality is often harmful and hides our true being as essentially limited participants, not masters, of the world which we discover.

Heidegger wrote about these issues in his best-known book, Being and Time (1927), which is considered to be one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th century. Heidegger's influence is far reaching, from philosophy to deconstructionism and literary theory, theology, architecture, and artificial intelligence.