Gianni Vattimo

from Heidegger to Marx

Hermeneutic communism

Corrado Federici

Santiago Zabala

Alberto Martinengo

Giuseppe Iannantuono

Being and Its Surroundings

Art's claim to truth

Este livro, 'A tentação do realismo', reproduz a conferência do filósofo italiano Gianni Vattimo, proferida no Instituto Italiano di Cultura do Rio de Janeiro em 2000. Com este livro, o autor procura enriquecer o debate e a aproximação de pensadores italianos com o Brasil.

A tentação do realismo

Comunismo hermenéutico, de Heidegger a Marx

John D. Caputo

Thomas J Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities John Caputo

In these original essays and interviews, leading hermeneutical philosophers and postmodern theorists John D. Caputo and Gianni Vattimo engage with each other's past and present work on the subject and reflect on our modern transition from secularism to post-secularism.

After the Death of God

Pier Aldo Rovatti

Heralding the beginning of the philosophical dialogue on the concept for which Gianni Vattimo would become best known (and coining its name), this groundbreaking 1983 collection includes foundational essays by Vattimo and Pier Aldo Rovatti, along with original contributions by nine other Italian philosophers influenced by and working within the authors framework. Dissatisfied with the responses to nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophy offered by Marxism, deconstruction, and poststructuralism, Vattimo found in the nihilism of Friedrich Nietzsche an important context within which to take up the hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. The idea of weak thought sketched by Vattimo and Rovatti emphasizes a way of understanding the role of philosophy based on language, interpretation, and limits rather than on metaphysical and epistemological certaintieswithout falling into relativism. To the first English-language edition of this volume, translator Peter Carravetta adds an extensive critical introduction, providing an overview of weak thought and taking stock of its philosophical trajectory over more than a quarter century.

Weak Thought

Filosofia '87

An original reading of Nietzsche and Heidegger that paved the way for Vattimo's conception of weak thought.

Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Hermeneutics

Beyond the Subject

il significato dell'ermeneutica per la filosofia

Oltre l'interpretazione

What has been the fate of Christianity since Nietzsche's famous announcement of the "death of God"? What is the possibility of religion, specifically Christianity, thriving in our postmodern era? In this provocative new book, Gianni Vattimo, leading Italian philosopher, politician, and framer of the European constitution, addresses these critical questions. When Vattimo was asked by a former teacher if he still believed in God, his reply was, "Well, I believe that I believe." This paradoxical declaration of faith serves as the foundation for a brilliant exposition on Christianity in the new millennium—an age characterized by a deep uncertainty of opinion—and a personal account of how Vattimo himself recovered his faith through Nietzsche and Heidegger. He first argues that secularization is in fact the fulfillment of the central Christian message, and prepares us for a new mode of Christianity. He then explains that Nietzsche's thesis concerns only the "moral god" and leaves room for the emergence of "new gods." Third, Vattimo claims that the postmodern condition of fragmentation, anti-Eurocentrism, and postcolonialism can be usefully understood in light of Joachim of Fiore's thesis concerning the "Spiritual Age" of history. Finally, Vattimo argues for the idea of "weak thought." Because philosophy in the postmetaphysical age can only acknowledge that "all is interpretation," that the "real" is always relative and not the hard and fast "truth" we once thought it to be, contemporary thought must recognize itself and its claims as "weak" as opposed to "strong" foundationalist claims of the metaphysical past. Vattimo concludes that these factors make it possible for religion and God to become a serious topic for philosophy again, and that philosophy should now formally engage religion.

After Christianity

Piergiorgio Paterlini

With Piergiorgio Paterlini, a noted Italian writer and journalist, Gianni Vattimo, a leading philosopher of the continental school, reflects on a lifetime of politics, sexual radicalism, and philosophical exuberance in postwar Italy. Turin, the city in which he was born and one of the intellectual capitals of Europe (also the city in which Nietzsche went mad), forms the core of his reminiscences, enriched by fascinating vignettes of studying under Hans Georg Gadamer, teaching in the United States, serving as a public intellectual and interlocutor of Habermas and Derrida, and working within the European Parliament to unite Europe. Vattimo's status as a left-wing faculty president paradoxically made him a target of the Red Brigades in the 1970s, causing him to flee Turin for his life. Left-wing terrorism did not deter the philosopher from his quest for social progress, however, and in the 1980s, he introduced a daring formulation called "weak thought," which stripped metaphysics, science, religion, and all other absolute systems of their authority. Vattimo then became notorious for his renewed commitment to the core values of Christianity (he was trained as a Catholic intellectual) and for the Vatican's denunciation of his views. Through these interviews, Paterlini composes an utterly candid first-person portrait of a major thinker and a riveting account of homosexuality, history, politics, and philosophical invention in the twentieth century.

A Collaborative Autobiography

Not Being God

Michael Marder

This volume in the Political Theory and Contemporary Philosophy series provides a political and philosophical critique of Zionism. While other nationalisms seem to have adapted to twenty-first century realities and shifting notions of state and nation, Zionism has largely remained tethered to a nineteenth century mentality, including the glorification of the state as the only means of expressing the spirit of the people. These essays, contributed by eminent international thinkers including Slavoj Zizek, Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Gianni Vattimo, Walter Mignolo, Marc Ellis, and others, deconstruct the political-metaphysical myths that are the framework for the existence of Israel.Collectively, they offer a multifaceted critique of the metaphysical, theological, and onto-political grounds of the Zionist project and the economic, geopolitical, and cultural outcomes of these foundations. A significant contribution to the debates surrounding the state of Israel today, this groundbreaking work will appeal to anyone interested in political theory, philosophy, Jewish thought, and the Middle East conflict.

A Critique of Political Metaphysics

Deconstructing Zionism

In this highly personal book, one of Europes foremost contemporary philosophers confronts the theme of faith and religion. He argues that there is a substantial link between the history of Christian revelation and the history of nihilism, in particular as the latter appears in the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimos philosophical specialty. Tracing the relation between his response to these two thinkers and his own life as a devout Catholic, Vattimo shows how his interpretation of Heideggers work and his conceptions of "weak thought and "weak ontology can be seen as closely linked to a rediscovery of Christianity. Vattimo speaks here in the first person--a risk that results in a disarmingly open exploration of the themes of charity, truth, dogmatism, morality, and sin, viewed through the lens of his own life and his own return to Christianity. While deeply critical of institutionalized religion and the Church, Vattimo discovers in the Christian tradition a voice (not a distinct message) whose interpretation is still being played out around us. Shaped by his readings of Nietzsche and Heidegger, Vattimos decision to affirm his formation within the Christian tradition provides an original and engaging contribution to the contemporary debate on religion. At the center of this book is the enigma of belief. Freed by modernity from its Platonic subordination to knowledge, belief is recovered as a crucial and inevitable feature of our cultural and personal lives. "Do you believe? Vattimo is asked. "I believe so, he replies.

Belief

Opere complete

Having lost much of its political clout and theoretical power, communism no longer represents an appealing alternative to capitalism. In its original Marxist formulation, communism promised an ideal of development, but only through a logic of war, and while a number of reformist governments still promote this ideology, their legitimacy has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin wall. Separating communism from its metaphysical foundations, which include an abiding faith in the immutable laws of history and an almost holy conception of the proletariat, Gianni Vattimo and Santiago Zabala recast Marx’s theories at a time when capitalism’s metaphysical moorings—in technology, empire, and industrialization—are buckling. While Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call for a return of the revolutionary left, Vattimo and Zabala fear this would lead only to more violence and failed political policy. Instead, they adopt an antifoundationalist stance drawn from the hermeneutic thought of Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, and Richard Rorty. Hermeneutic communism leaves aside the ideal of development and the general call for revolution; it relies on interpretation rather than truth and proves more flexible in different contexts. Hermeneutic communism motivates a resistance to capitalism’s inequalities yet intervenes against violence and authoritarianism by emphasizing the interpretative nature of truth. Paralleling Vattimo and Zabala’s well-known work on the weakening of religion, Hermeneutic Communism realizes the fully transformational, politically effective potential of Marxist thought.

From Heidegger to Marx

Hermeneutic Communism

Introduzione a Nietzsche

An original reading of Nietzsche and Heidegger that paved the way for Vattimo’s conception of weak thought. In Beyond the Subject Gianni Vattimo offers a reading of Nietzsche and Heidegger that shows how the premises to overcome the metaphysical Subject were already embedded in their thought. Vattimo makes a case for a Nietzsche who is not concerned with the structure and glorification of the Overman, but rather with its opposite, by showing how it is the single individual who must see and accept his/her potential and then excel and develop an inner strength and ethic. He reads Heidegger as concerned with the inevitable distortion present in every interpretation, which, when confronted and accepted, humbles us to deal with a less overarching telos or Grund, and makes us more attuned to contingency and interpersonal communication—what Vattimo calls a “weakened” notion of being. These original readings of Nietzsche and Heidegger pave the way for Vattimo’s concept of weak thought and open up to a future social ethic that is less agonistic and more community oriented. This edition includes two supplementary essays from 1986 and 1988 that expand on the same themes, providing a deeper look at an important decade in the development of Vattimo’s thought.

Gianni Vattimo

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