Gianni Vattimo ha elaborato l’estetica e la teoria dell’arte del «pensiero debole» soprattutto in alcuni articoli pubblicati nella «Rivista di Estetica» (della quale è stato direttore). Parte di questi saggi è stata poi raccolta nella seconda sezione di una delle sue opere centrali, La fine della modernità, sezione intitolata, significativamente, La verità dell’arte. Le diverse questioni discusse da Vattimo sono infatti attraversate dal filo conduttore del problema della verità dell’arte, nell’epoca del nichilismo, della fine della storia e del mondo (...) estetizzato dei mass media. Attraverso una lettura teoreticamente produttiva di M. Heidegger e F. Nietzsche, ma anche – come si vedrà – di certe pagine kantiane, e al contempo “indebolendo” l’ermeneutica di H.-G. Gadamer (ma anche quella di L. Pareyson),Vattimo affronta la questione dell’arte, della sua verità, del suo significato, del suo statuto ontologico, mettendo anzitutto in questione la domanda “che cos’è l’arte?” che molti studiosi, sia in ambito “analitico”, sia in ambito “continentale”, pongono al centro della riflessione estetica. Ha infatti senso, oggi, chiedersi «che cos’è l’arte?», cercando di fornire una definizione che restituisca l’ontos on, l’essenza dell’arte? O è proprio il fatto di presumere la possibilità di offrire una definizione a costituire il vero problema, in quanto tale assunzione presuppone già un determinato modo di pensare il mondo, modo di pensare che, storicamente, si è costituito come la metafisica occidentale? E se nel post-moderno la metafisica occidentale viene decostruita da un pensiero e da prassi vitali che ne mettono in crisi le griglie concettuali, ne sovvertono gli ordini e le tassonomie, esibendone così l’infondatezza, com’è possibile definire, pensare e praticare l’arte e l’estetica, che sono categorie impiantate solidamente nelle strutture della metafisica? (shrink)

Though coming from distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion. Instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious. This unique collaboration fuses pragmatism and hermeneutics and (...) recognizes the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. Rorty discusses Vattimo's work Belief and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Vattimo explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. In a concluding dialogue, both philosophers analyze the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

Hermeneutics has had a pervasive influence on contemporary philosophy, social and cultural theory, literary criticism, and aesthetics. In this book one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers provides hermeneutics with a fresh relevance and a substantive account of its philosophical meaning for science, ethics, religion, and art. Vattimo argues for a reading of hermeneutics that radicalises it according to what the author calls its 'nihilistic vocation', a term referring to the interpretive character of truth and taken from Nietzsche's statement that (...) there are, in the modern period, no facts, only interpretations. Modernity, for Vattimo, is conceived as the advent of nihilism, and the central question of the book is to ask what it means to take this nihilistic vocation seriously. This involves not simply accepting the current status of hermeneutics, but evaluating why it appears when, and where, it does. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 89-93 [Access article in PDF] Richard Shusterman, Performing Live: Aesthetic Alternatives for the Ends of Art (New York: Cornell University Press, 2000) Performing Live can be ascribed to post-modern American pragmatism in its widest expression. The author's intention is to revalue aesthetic experience, as well as to expand its realm to the extent where such experience also encompasses areas (...) alien to traditional aesthetics (for example, popular art or the somatic arts of self-improvement), reaching "the art of living" and reclaiming life itself as performance.After the introduction, titled "Aesthetic Renewal for the Ends of Art: An Overture," the text is organized in two main parts: "Aesthetic Experience and Popular Art" and "Soma, Self, and Society." Along with its ambitious title, the book's organization and structure promise a consistency of approach and narrative that somewhat dissolves during the reading. Shusterman recognizes that the stylistic problems that arise from a compilation of articles spanning ten years, mixing newly written and revised articles, but appeals to the reader's appreciation of the "quality of the mix" (11). Despite this feature, he is a lucid and thoughtful communicator and his writing style is excellent.In order to propose new or revitalized alternatives for the ends of art, Shusterman [End Page 89] explores the crisis in traditional visions of art, pointing to the compartmentalization and lack of credibility in current artistic thought and practice. Hegel, Walter Benjamin, Gianni Vattimo, and Arthur Danto provide him with the philosophical arguments accounting for the modern "exhaustion" of art. He supports a dialectical approach, both naturalistic and historicist, and builds a solid case for the possibility of alternatives in aesthetic thought and experience. He proposes two alternatives in his introduction: The two most prominent sites for today's aesthetic alternatives are clearly the mass-media popular arts and the complex cluster of disciplines devoted to bodily beauty and the art of living as expressed in today's preoccupation with aesthetic lifestyles. (7) It is unclear why these alternatives are "clearly" "the two most prominent." The author does not build a case for this assumption or for the "newness" of these alternatives. The "compilation style" mentioned above and this lack of justification for one of the most original elements in the book make this text often read as a philosophical drafting board. Keeping these characteristics in mind and also critically pondering the degrees of success in the enterprise, the reader must give Shusterman credit for taking risks while suggesting concrete examples for an experiential, holistic philosophy. In this sense, he mentions (in a different context) that "all of us [are caught] between conceptual history and futuristic speculation" (145), and he takes to heart this situation and its challenges.The first chapter in Performing Live aims to redeem or revalue the concept of aesthetic experience. For Shusterman, the loss of "felt experience" in art makes the interest in this concept utterly relevant for art's survival. He traces the lineage of this aesthetic philosophy to John Dewey, Monroe Beardsley, Nelson Goodman, and Arthur Danto. Besides focusing on these authors, his analysis revisits some of the main currents of thought in Western philosophy on the topic (for example, Plato, Hume, Kant, Dickie, Adorno, Benjamin, Gadamer). He concludes that a pragmatic approach to aesthetics, applying the concept of aesthetic experience directionally (as a means towards the actual experience rather than as a definable concept), can provide new paths for revitalizing art. Throughout the text this concept is also used expansively. The post-modern justification of the proposed aesthetics, by allowing the extension of aesthetic experience to embrace "the art of living," can leave the reader wondering if Shusterman has not simply turned Kierkegaard's existentialist stages to self-realization upside down.The second chapter is an open defense of popular art, carried out by contesting the main complaints found in current art criticism. Shusterman's defense is not directed to the products of popular art, but against the claim that popular art is aesthetically "worthless." His definition of "popular art... (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo reexamines the roots of modernism and postmodernism in Nietzsche, Benjamin, and Heidegger. Exploring the links between concepts of nihilism and destiny in nineteenth-century humanism, Vattimo follows these trends in aesthetic and scientific theory from Benjamin to Bloch, Ricoeur, and Kuhn.

In this book, Gianni Vattimo examines the notion of "difference" in scientific knowledge and contemporary mass society and illustrates the importance of Nietzsche and Heidegger in both formulating the concept and exploring its implications for current debates on the nature of modernity.

Reviews : Zygmunt Bauman, Intimations of Postmodernity ; Steven Seidman and David G. Wagner, Postmodernism and Social Theory ; Stephen Crook, Jan Pakulski and Malcolm Wa ters, Postmodernization: Change in Advanced Society ; Gianni Vattimo, The End of Modernity—Nihilism and Hermeneutics in Post-modern Culture.

With Western cultures becoming more pluralistic, the question of "truth" in politics has become a game of interpretations. Today, we face the demise of the very idea of truth as an objective description of facts, though many have yet to acknowledge that this is changing. Gianni Vattimo explicitly engages with the important consequences for democracy of our changing conception of politics and truth, such as a growing reluctance to ground politics in science, economics, and technology. Yet in Vattimo's conception, (...) a farewell to truth can benefit democracy, exposing the unspoken issues that underlie all objective claims. The end of absolute truth challenges the legitimacy of policies based on perceived objective necessities—protecting the free market, for example, even if it devastates certain groups or classes. Vattimo calls for a truth that is constructed with consensus and a respect for the liberty of all. By taking into account the cultural paradigms of others, a more "truthful" society—freer and more democratic—becomes possible. In this book, Vattimo continues his reinterpretation of Christianity as a religion of charity and hope, freeing society from authoritarian, metaphysical dogmatism. He also extends Nietzsche's "death of God" to the death of an authoritarian God, ushering in a new, postreligious Christianity. He connects the thought of Martin Heidegger, Karl Marx, and Karl Popper with surprising results and accommodates modern science more than in his previous work, reconciling its validity with an insistence that knowledge is interpretive. Vattimo's philosophy justifies Western nihilism in its capacity to dispense with absolute truths. Ranging over politics, ethics, religion, and the history of philosophy, his reflections contribute deeply to a modern reconception of God, metaphysics, and the purpose of reality. (shrink)

We think it is wise to accept reality, rather than fight for something that does not exist or might never be. But in Of Reality, Gianni Vattimo condemns this complacency, with its implicit support of the status quo. Instead he urges us to never stop questioning, contrasting, or overcoming reality, which is not natural, inevitable, or objective. Reality is a construct, reflecting, among other things, our greed, biases, and tendencies toward violence. It is no accident, Vattimo argues, that the (...) call to embrace reality has emerged at a time when the inequalities of liberal capitalism are at their most extreme. Developed from his popular Gifford Lectures, this book advances a critical approach that recovers our interpretive powers and native skepticism toward normative claims. Though he recognizes his ideas invite charges of relativism, the philosopher counters with a discussion of truth, highlighting its longstanding ties to history and social circumstance. Truth is always contingent and provisional, and reason and reasonableness are bound to historical context. Truth is therefore never objective, and resistance to reality is our best hope to defeat the indifference that threatens the scope of freedom and democracy. (shrink)

Through an exchange that is both intimate and enlightening, Vattimo and Girard share their unparalleled insight into the relationships among religion, modernity, and the role of Christianity, especially as it exists in our multicultural ...

Gianni Vattimo is renowned for his doctrine of weak thinking, which argues for a dialogical non‐fundamentalist approach to philosophy, an hermeneutically oriented critique of metaphysics and modernism devoted to unmasking privileged positions of authority and power, a deconstruction of Western philosophy as a pathway to nihilism, and finally a development of hermeneutics as a postmodern defense of Christianity in secularized form. He recognizes in hermeneutic philosophy the double effectiveness of philosophical engagement. Vattimo repositions Nietzsche's nihilism with (...) debates concerning modernity and postmodernity. Nietzsche's analysis of negative and affirmative nihilism sustains Vattimo's signature distinction between strong and weak thought. Vattimo's social and political perspective has clear theological undertones. The outcome of unending individual qualitative transformation is not arrival in a promised land but graceful acceptance of what humans are: hermeneutic creatures whose essence resides in tireless negotiation and transformation. (shrink)

This is the heart of Vattimo's argument, and with it he demonstrates how hermeneutical philosophy reaffirms art's ontological status and makes clear the importance of hermeneutics for aesthetic studies.

This article presents the thesis the weak thinking and nihilistic vocation of Gianni Vattimo's hermeneutics, unlike the criticisms and misunderstandings underwent, does not necessarily imply the assumption, defense and proposal of a philosophical and hermeneutical irrationality. Based on a hermeneutics of the Italian philosopher texts, it is evident the criticisms of irrationalism are contested by the author, however, like all philosophy, it is necessary to deepen and reflect on the implications this philosophy has for modern (...) class='Hi'>philosophy and hodiernal hermeneutics. The concepts of thought and hermeneutic rationality are the axes upon which Gianni Vattimo's philosophy is analyzed and philosophically reflected in this article. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers—analytic as well as continental—tend to feel uneasy about Ernst Tugendhat, who, though he positions himself in the analytic field, poses questions in the Heideggerian style. Tugendhat was one of Martin Heidegger's last pupils and his least obedient, pursuing a new and controversial critical technique. Tugendhat took Heidegger's destruction of Being as presence and developed it in analytic philosophy, more specifically in semantics. Only formal semantics, according to Tugendhat, could answer the questions left open by Heidegger. Yet in (...) doing this, Tugendhat discovered the latent "hermeneutic nature of analytic philosophy"—its post-metaphysical dimension—in which "there are no facts, but only true propositions." What Tugendhat seeks to answer is this: What is the meaning of thought following the linguistic turn? Because of the rift between analytic and continental philosophers, very few studies have been written on Tugendhat, and he has been omitted altogether from several histories of philosophy. Now that these two schools have begun to reconcile, Tugendhat has become an example of a philosopher who, in the words of Richard Rorty, "built bridges between continents and between centuries." Tugendhat is known more for his philosophical turn than for his phenomenological studies or for his position within analytic philosophy, and this creates some confusion regarding his philosophical propensities. Is Tugendhat analytic or continental? Is he a follower of Wittgenstein or Heidegger? Does he belong in the culture of analysis or in that of tradition? Santiago Zabala presents Tugendhat as an example of merged horizons, promoting a philosophical historiography that is concerned more with dialogue and less with classification. In doing so, he places us squarely within a dialogic culture of the future and proves that any such labels impoverish philosophical research. (shrink)

Richard Rorty is famous, maybe even infamous, for his philosophical nonchalance. His groundbreaking work not only rejects all theories of truth but also dismisses modern epistemology and its preoccupation with knowledge and representation. At the same time, the celebrated pragmatist believed there could be no universally valid answers to moral questions, which led him to a complex view of religion rarely expressed in his writings. In this posthumous publication, Rorty, a strict secularist, finds in the pragmatic thought of John (...) Dewey, John Stuart Mill, William James, and George Santayana, among others, a political imagination shared by religious traditions. His intent is not to promote belief over nonbelief or to blur the distinction between religious and public domains. Rorty seeks only to locate patterns of similarity and difference so an ethics of decency and a politics of solidarity can rise. He particularly responds to Pope Benedict XVI and his campaign against the relativist vision. Whether holding theologians, metaphysicians, or political ideologues to account, Rorty remains steadfast in his opposition to absolute uniformity and its exploitation of political strength. (shrink)

This book offers an historical and critical guide to the concepts of the post-modern and the post-industrial. It brings admirable clarity and thoroughness to a discussion of the many different uses made of the term post-modern across a number of different disciplines (including literature, architecture, art history, philosophy, anthropology and geography). It also analyses the concept of the post-industrial society to which the concept of the post-modern has often been related. Dr (...) Rose discusses the work of many theorists in the area, including Hassan, Lyotard, Jameson and the architectural historian Charles Jencks, and also looks at analyses and uses of the concepts of the post-modern and post-industrial by Frampton, Portoghesi, Peter Fuller and others. (shrink)

It is difficult to make sense of the notion of postmodernity, because “modernity” is clearly a shifter, in the sense of Jespersen and Jakobson: a term dependent for its meaning on its moment of enunciation. It is true that, from the Middle Ages onwards, several meanings of modernity have received an objectified reference. But in the arts, particularly in the visual arts, this is not true. Modernity has been defined as the ever-new transgression of norms established by the period coming (...) immediately before. In another sense, modernity is connected to urbanity, as it first took place (or at least was observed) in the coffeehouses of the seventeenth century and the boulevards of the nineteenth century. This meant a close connection of individuals having nothing to do with each other from the point of view of family relationships. At the same time as this concept of modernity is overhauled by the perpetual presence of the mobile phones, it is confirmed and extended by the Internet. A third kind of modernity, perhaps closely connected to the second one ( but essentially opposed to the first kind) is that of thinking, as initiated during the Enlightenment, striving to go beyond the divergent doxa of different cultures to some kind of rational understanding. Taking into account the standing of rationality in the history of humanity, postmodern philosophy really amounts to some kind of mobbing of the poorest and most feeble members of the crowd. (shrink)

The discourse over secularization has undergone a pronounced change. In this context the debate over the social role of religions in post-modern societies started again about ten years ago and is still going on. This debate is also underway in political theory and political philosophy. Authors like Jürgen Habermas, Richard Rorty, Michael Walzer and Gianni Vattimo are key players in this debate. On the one hand, liberals such as Rorty tend to reduce religions to the private (...) sphere. On the other hand, a post-secular model has developed over the last decade. Habermas is probably the most well-known of these academics. In his view, deliberative democracy needs sources for motivation as an antidote, and religions could provide such a moral resource. The paper wants to explore this discourse about the social role of religion. This analysis will focus on the contribution of religions to the debate on justice. It will be argued, that religions could be interpreted as comprehensive social practices. More precisely, religions can be regarded as cultural practices through which people live and interpret their lives. The common characteristic of all religions is that they establish a comprehensive practice that enables discussion and reflection on a transcendent dimension of reality. In plural societies, in which different forms of reasons play an important role, religions as social practices could be one important social factor, especially when we are reflecting about the sources of global justice. (shrink)

For Gianni Vattimo, the renunciation of violence is the starting point for constructing a post foundational politics. So far, criticism of Vattimo’s argument has focused on his larger commitment to metaphysical nihilism and whether the renunciation of violence is a thicker principle than his post foundational philosophy can support. I argue that Vattimo’s renunciation of violence can also be criticized for two other reasons. First, Vattimo attempts to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable uses of violence through (...) an under developed idea of self-defense. Second, despite his attention to the political and philosophical impact of mass communications technology, Vattimo ignores emerging technological challenges to our understanding of violence. Nonetheless, I argue that Vattimo’s renunciation can still serve as a useful starting point for contemporary political thinking. What Vattimo’s logic shows is that we can enhance the moral standing of democracy by decisively detaching its practices and institutions from historical artifacts of political violence. (shrink)

Though coming from different and distinct intellectual traditions, Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo are united in their criticism of the metaphysical tradition. The challenges they put forward extend beyond philosophy and entail a reconsideration of the foundations of belief in God and the religious life. They urge that the rejection of metaphysical truth does not necessitate the death of religion; instead it opens new ways of imagining what it is to be religious -- ways that emphasize charity, solidarity, (...) and irony. This unique collaboration, which includes a dialogue between the two philosophers, is notable not only for its fusion of pragmatism and hermeneutics but also for its recognition of the limits of both traditional religious belief and modern secularism. In "Anticlericalism and Atheism" Rorty discusses Vattimo's work _Belief_ and argues that the end of metaphysics paves the way for an anti-essentialist religion. Rorty's conception of religion, determined by private motives, is designed to produce the gospel's promise that henceforth God will not consider humanity as a servant but as a friend. In "The Age of Interpretation," Vattimo, who is both a devout Catholic and a frequent critic of the church, explores the surprising congruence between Christianity and hermeneutics in light of the dissolution of metaphysical truth. As in hermeneutics, interpretation is central to Christianity, which introduced the world to the principle of interiority, dissolving the experience of objective reality into "listening to and interpreting messages." The lively dialogue that concludes this volume, moderated and edited by Santiago Zabala, analyzes the future of religion together with the political, social, and historical aspects that characterize our contemporary postmodern, postmetaphysical, and post-Christian world. (shrink)

'The Aestheticization of History and the Butterfly Effect: Visual Arts Series' introduces the audience to philosophical concepts that broach the beginning of the history of Western thought in Plato and Aristotle to that of more modern thought in the theoretician Jacques Rancière in which the main conceptual framework of this anthology is predicated. The introduction is mainly concerned with Rancière's concept of the distribution of the sensible, which is the arrangement of things accessible to our senses, what we experience (...) in real-time and space- compartmentalization and categorization of all things. These things do not just involve tangible items, but audible speech, written language, and visibilities. Rancière's theory of the regimes of art is undertaken as the unfolding of the distribution. Such is evoked in the various genres of visual art forms, from two-dimensional paintings to three-dimensional sculptures and architectures. Understanding the aesthetic regime of art is crucial for grasping how art performs time travel. One way of understanding this phenomenon is in terms of embodied philosophy imbued vis-à-vis art forms, which are subsequently challenged by contemporary artists. The contributing essays examine these reiterations, reevaluations-performances. Aesthetics is a term deriving from the 18th-century European Enlightenment. It is here that aesthetics as the study of beauty is probed for its political potential after the failure of the French Revolution. Many major thinkers during this period signed on to the aesthetic moment, recognizing that Reason in its present state failed to develop humankind beyond barbarism. J.E.B. Stuart's statue is part of an equestrian theme that approximates the Western canon of power and class in the pursuit of domination. But such power and domination will be dethroned in the restaging of history and the redistribution of said canon. This reimagining of the form not only alters perception but constitutes a new narrative. (shrink)

What is Imagination? What is the relationship between aesthetics and ethics in a contemporary civilization dominated by the image? How can we reconcile the right to imagine with the right to justice? Are the claims of artistic creativity and moral responsibility compatible? With an extended foreword and an afterword chapter, and fascinating new material on the narrative imagination, Poetics of Imagining: Modern to Post-modern provides a critically developed and accessible account of the major theories of imagination in (...) modern European thought. It analyses and assesses the decisive contributions made to our understanding of the imaginary life by phenomenology (Husserl, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard), hermeneutics (Heidegger, Ricoeur), and post-modernism (Vattima, Kristeva, Lyotard). Richard Kearney achieves this with a coherent and committed approach, which displays his own passionate concern for the claims of imagination in our post-modern world of fragmentation and fracture. This is essential reading for those interested in current leading debates on the role of imagining in continental philosophy, ethics, psychoanalysis, art theory and literary criticism. (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo's collection of essays, 'The End of Modernity', published in Italian in 1985, opens up a postmodern understanding of hermeneutics that derives from revisionary readings of both Heidegger and Nietzsche. Particularly in opposing the 'strong' interpretations of cultural history, Vattimo's "weal thinking" invites us to reopen the question of modernity. This paper offers a hermeneutical reassessment of the modern as a category and a critical reappraisal of Heidegger's notion of 'Verwindung' in terms of the philosopher's late work. (...) The literary implications of this reappraisal are briefly suggested in the paper's conclusion. (shrink)

The paper examines the sense in which Gianni Vattimo’s story of a long goodbye of modernity along with an interminable weakening of Being inaugurates a leftist philosophico-political project. The hermeneutics of “weak thought” is criticized for (a) its ambiguous concept of interpretation; (b) its way of integrating proceduralism in post-metaphysical philosophizing; and (c) the unhappy marriage it promotes between nihilism and emancipation. Finally, a philosophico-political version of hermeneutic ontology based on the idea of situated transcendence is suggested as (...) an alternative to Vattimo’s nihilistic socialism. (shrink)

Has art theory any function and any importance? A function and importance for who? For the practising artist, theorists, writers on art? Art speak and its place in art theory, art criticism and artists’ statement. - Many tools to create an intersubjective and universal frame of reference to make sense of any art exist., for example art history, labels such as expressionism, impressionism, modern art, contemporary art, Fine art, Visual Arts, Northern Baroque Art, minimalist, post-minimalist, anti-art, anti-anti-art, New (...) Aesthetics, new media, slow art movement, etc and ‘art speak”. (shrink)

Conversazioni di Gianni Vattimo con Francesco Barone, Remo Bodei, Italo Mancini, Vittorio Mathieu, Mario Perniola, Pier Aldo Rovatti, Emanuele Severino e Carlo Sini.

Vattimo rethinks ontology at a time when modernity's concept of Being has been uprooted along with any faith in history as a unitary process characterized by progressive reappropriations of its own origins. Having dissolved the ground of the new, the end of modernity sees Being reduced to exchange value, the new for the sake of the new, which in turn science and technology make routine. The impasse is a radical one, for modernity cannot be left behind by offering a truer (...) foundation, since "overcoming" and "foundation" themselves are concepts central to modernity. The first section of the book consists in an account of this condition. (shrink)

1 Introduction1 In the 1980s, hermeneutics was often incorporated into deconstructionism and literary theory. Rather than focus on authorial intentions, the nature of writing itself including codes used to construct meaning, socio-economic contexts and inequalities of power,2 Gadamer introduced a different perspective; the interplay between effects of history on a reader’s understanding and the tradition(s) handed down in writing. This interplay in which a reader’s prejudices are called into question and modified by the text in a fusion of understanding and (...) topic revitalized the study of the printed word. Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being also appealed to the post-modern antipathy toward modernity and metaphysics.3 If the truth and validity of interpretations are limited to communities of language, then our mode of being in history cannot but be historical. This point of view rendered Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics vulnerable to the critique of moral and epistemological relativism. However, Gadamer’s theory of interpretation also stems from re-examination of the beginning of knowledge in the Pre-Socratics and Plato, and on this basis, is receptive to another dimension of inquiry than that which was trending in North America. -/- At the East-West Center, University of Hawai’i at Manoa in 1982, Chung-ying Cheng for the first time introduced onto-hermeneutics to an audience of esteemed philosophers including Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Feng Youlan, and Zhang Liwen.4 In contrast to schools of deconstruction and literary theory that had disengaged the interpreter from trans-historical sources of meaning and truth, Cheng explained that interpreters exist within a cosmological order inextricable from responsibility to harmonize Heaven and Earth in creative acts of interpretation. By integrating Chinese cosmology into hermeneutics through ontology, he tacitly challenged philosophers in the West to re-examine assumptions about humanity’s place in nature and by implication, Gadamer’s recovery of the beginnings of knowledge in Western philosophy. -/- Cheng’s Neo-Confucianism is inspired by the method and goals of Thomé H. Fang. The following words by Fang seem to prefigure, although in an indistinct and bundled way, aspects of Cheng’s philosophy including a Mencian theory of human nature, comprehensive observation, and creativity: “In the very process of living in concord with creative Nature, Man is charged with an ideal to be fully realized in the light of the principle of comprehensive harmony.”5 Like Fang, Cheng reinvigorates Chinese culture and language, but not solely in order to vindicate the insights of Neo-Confucianism. He has studied Western thought, from pragmatism and the analytic school to German idealism and phenomenology, to unlock and clarify philosophical concepts within the Yijing tradition and thereby render them intelligible to Anglophones. The result has been an awakening of Western scholars to the moral and cultural consequences of decoupling their thought from metaphysical foundations that are neither dogmatic nor doctrinal. -/- Not unlike the dialectic of Gadamer’s dialogue form, onto-generative hermeneutics integrates contrary positions on the same topic in order to blend both sides into a world philosophy, or as Cheng says, a “totalizing or integrative theory,”6 not to be confused with a theoretical rewording of a theory. On the contrary, the universal scope and relevance of hermeneutics stems from personal experience. Just as Gadamer, in response to faction and strife, immersed himself in Plato during the war years, and developed a method with which to harmonize opposites, so too, according to On-cho Ng, was Cheng moved by faction, strife and political persecution to develop a path toward unity.7 Gadamer taught at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, and Cheng at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa among other institutions in North America. They facilitated trans-continental educational and cultural ties. Similar experiences yield similar insights irrespective of differences of time and place. Hence, authors in this issue who reside in Europe, China and North America, delineate the differences between Gadamer and Cheng, yet also, in light of Cheng’s onto-generative method and cosmology, develop integrative theories. Due to the page-budget restriction of the publisher, certain articles of this special theme will be subsequently published in the next issue. -/- 2 Integrative Theory This special issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy confirms a dimension of hermeneutics that Cheng has both motivated and inspired. The contributors do not abide by the conviction that since thought is mediated by language, interpretations cannot transcend culture. On the contrary, their research exemplifies the fruits of trans-historical onto-dialogical hermeneutics within limits defined by their field inquiry, organized into Parts I and II, around three themes: language, the philosophy of history and ethics. -/- Andrew Fuyarchuk introduces the theme of ontology in relation to Gadamer’s turn to language. Fuyarchuk argues that Chung-ying Cheng’s criticism of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is informed by Heidegger’s concept of Dasein and thereby overlooks how Gadamer’s Platonic-Pythagorean problem of the division between the One and Many is harmonized in the event of language, which in turn positions Gadamer in proximity to the presupposed grounds of receptivity in Cheng’s onto-generative hermeneutics. Lauren Pfister’s contributing article addresses the year 2000 meeting between Cheng and Gadamer in Heidelberg and expands the transhistorical grounds of meaning in Gadamer to matters of theology. Pfister’s summary of the written Chinese record of their conversation indicates that Cheng does not address the role of Christian philosophy and hence, the role of the inner word in Gadamer’s hermeneutics. This is important not only for detecting changes in Cheng’s philosophical development, but also for modifying his hermeneutics along the lines of a living conversation, possibilities explored by Pfister in a sequel to the article submitted to this issue. Nevertheless, by raising the issue of how Gadamer’s turn to language for understanding the meaning of Being extends possibilities in Cheng’s thought, Pfister anticipates the article by Katarina Gajdosova. She returns to the roots of Chinese thought during the Warring States period and broadens the meaning of names in recently excavated texts. Contrary to the conventions about how to understand terms, she appeals to both Heidegger’s ontology and Cheng’s notion of receptivity and creativity to reinterpret naming in relation to cosmology. Along the same lines, insofar as the event of Being is lingual, Jay Goulding captures its emergent structure in an evolving community of scholars and scholarship. He recalls his philosophical journey toward Cheng’s philosophy that begins in conversations with Gadamer at McMaster University in Hamilton, leads to Heidegger and Asian thought, expands into turning points with teachers and colleagues from various backgrounds that by increments contributed to Goulding’s formulation of “Daoist phenomenology.” -/- Although differing traditions guide their inquiries and research, Cheng and Gadamer recall the wisdom of the past to ameliorate the fragmentation in contemporary life. This leads them to re-examine the origins of philosophy; historical roots and thus sources of creative re-interpretations East and West whose affinities are developed in contributions by Hyun Höchsmann and Friederike Assandri. Höchsmann assesses convergences and divergences in the origins of Chinese and Western philosophy (Confucius and Socrates, the Yijing and Pre-Socratics) that culminates in pairing Gadamer’s understanding of paideia in the context of Plato’s political cosmology in the Timaeus with moral and social cultivation in The Western Inscription. She delineates the limits of this comparison which in turn justifies introducing Vattimo’s notion of locality. Assandri’s comparative analysis moves between India and China, Buddhism and Tang Daoism. Based on Gadamer’s argument that writing detaches concepts from their cultural moorings, she defines and applies three levels of understanding in onto-generative hermeneutics to Buddhist terms that were assimilated into the Benji Jing and in so doing clarifies essential dimensions of Daoism. -/- Contributions by Stephen Palmquist and Nicholas Brasovan position Cheng in relation to Kant and Gadamer by way of Aristotle’s ethics respectively. On the one hand, Palmquist plots Cheng’s evolving criticism of Kant’s moral philosophy and draws on crucial dimensions of Gadamer’s hermeneutics to reposition that criticism in a constructive relation to Kant’s emphasis on the philosophical conditions of morality while also indicating how religious dimensions of his thought answer Cheng’s concerns for lived moral action. For Palmquist, Gadamer enables a constructive criticism of Cheng. On the other hand, Brasovan compares Cheng’s Yijing-based account of moral deliberation with Gadamer’s Aristotelian-based ethics and reasons that in contrast to Cheng, Gadamer’s hermeneutical consciousness is disengaged from practical knowledge. For Brasovan, Cheng is a constructive critic of Gadamer. Palmquist and Brasovan’s divergent angles on Gadamer and Cheng map onto a dialectic of contrast and complementarity that constitutes the inner logic of Cheng’s philosophy. In other words, Gadamer and Cheng ought to be read alongside one another for the sake of removing discrepancies and contradictions, which constitutes the organic structure of their thinking. -/- 3 Our Mode of Being in History Is Not Historical The conversations between Cheng and Gadamer in this issue of The Journal of Chinese Philosophy pivot on language, philosophy of history and ethics within a comparative framework of analysis, but also explore the grounds that make the comparisons possible. Those grounds are informed by Chinese cosmology, and function to wrest Gadamer from the shadow of Heideggerian facticity and reposition him within the range of Cheng’s ideas about our place in nature that is embedded in his question about how mind emerges from inorganic matter.8 -/- For Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, human finitude, our ownmost individuating death ensures that hermeneutics is always open to the other as other, always on the way toward understanding the meaning of Being. To arrest the process in a concept of “the Absolute” cannot but represent someone’s point of view, and thereby render hermeneutics indistinguishable from ideology. However, insofar as finitude is defined by them in terms of an onto-theological concept of immorality, finitude is a metaphysical concept consistent with epistemologies and confuse beings with the meaning of Being. As a result, the celebrated political value of hermeneutics to always be on the way toward an understanding of the meaning of Being admits subtle variations on the same worldview that are insufficiently self-critical. -/- Gadamer scholars of Heidegger are right. A transformation in ethos and opening to the meaning of Being depends on awareness of finitude. Yet this awareness does not yield openness to more of the same, i.e., discourse structurally incapable of coming to unity but instead, for both Gadamer and Cheng, openness to a distinctly different ontological dimension of reality. As Sandra Wawrytko and So-Seong Park indicate,9 this ontological dimension is prefigured in the experience of being-as-a-whole or the totality of all possible relations in both Chinese totemic shamanistic rituals,10 and Greek Dionysian festivals.11 Through these religious experiences human ethos and therefore consciousness is expanded and elevated from being centered on one’s ownmost concerns toward an affinity with all sentient beings from insects and plants to animals. The channel for this affinity is an auditory disposition and hence, the emotions, compassion, and feeling response. -/- The capacity for an auditory disposition, or as Gadamer calls it, listening consciousness to respond to the inter-relationality and therefore inherent balance of nature is developed through music, song and dance of the religious rituals and festivals. They facilitate the unity of mind with nature. This use of music, that transforms ordinary consciousness, explains Cheng’s emphasis on the receptivity of feeling response in comprehensive observation, and Gadamer’s emphasis on openness to the other in attunement. However, an auditory disposition characteristic of pre-literate oral cultures that reveals the “All” need not rely on religion. As theorists about the evolution of language have explained,12 modern languages preserve their pre-historical past in music or prosody. That is to say, the song and dance that revealed the totality of inter-related beings to an ethos of comprehensive observation and attunement toward beings in classical civilizations is retained in the back-and-forth movement or rhythm of the dialogue form. Our mode of being in history is a mode of being in nature – through the music of language. -/- While alerting the reader to the limits of a nominalist interpretation, Gadamer expresses the inner law of the nature as follows: “in perishing there is always becoming, and in becoming there is always perishing.”13 Considered in process, opposites generate and blend into each other. This law of nature applies to everything.14 Hence, in a manner comparable to Pfister’s concluding insights, onto-dialogical hermeneutics is not only open to discrete events of otherness but moreover, to the moving structure of reality expressed, as Gajdosova suggests, in the existential moment of naming. Considered as interplay of tension and resolution with a life of its own, the dialectic of a dialogue is self-similar to the way in which an organism grows (by instinct). There is, therefore, a sense in which the art of interpretation extends the human mind into the eternal cycles of nature such that we participate in the articulation of the inner telos/homeostasis toward which all beings strive and importantly for Gadamer scholars of Heidegger, within the material limits of energy to which our embodied minds are self-evidently subject. In mortality there is always immortality. (shrink)

For Gianni Vattimo in his essay Belief , the widespread modern conviction that the longing for lucidity and religiosity are irreconcilable has today become questionable. In this article the author first discusses an actual instance of the philosophical yearning for lucidity, namely ‘cognitive melancholy'. This melancholia already appears in the sociologist Max Weber's diagnoses of the ‘disenchantment of the world' and of the separation of faith and kwowledge. The author sharpens somewhat further the dualism to which Weber pointed, (...) and relates it to Vattimo's attempt at softenung this dualism – of even abrogating it altogether by reconciling Christian religion with modernity. Some critical observations with regard of this attempt evoke the question of whether philosophical lucidity should not be pursued further than Vattimo does. In consequence of this the radical thrust of the Christian religion to which Vattimo claims to be returning can be percieved more clearly. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

The article aims to show that the theory of open and autopoietic systems may be applied in such a way as to transcend the sterile opposition between autonomy aesthetics and culturalism. A theory of contemporary and modern art as an observational system is outlined. Art is seen as specializing to an increasing degree in cannibalizing the discourses and modalities of media & communication industries. Art is thus a parasitical observer (Serres 1980). Why should one affect a shift in framework? (...) What are post-Luhmannian optics on contemporary arts and media able to do beyond what post-structuralist and postmodern optics already achieve? Post-structuralist aesthetics deal with contingency, insecurity, paradox and autoreflexivity, surplus meanings, and the complexity and decentering of the subject. Switching to systems theory allows us to treat such issues without building a wall of irrationality around the arts and the humanities. It handles these important issues in a systematic manner which links up with scientific discourse and with the advanced problem solving and criticality of other social domains, like politics, business and the media industries. Notably the rigueur and self-reflectivity of the conceptual framework allows us also to define limits of our approach. What is it about art which aesthetics cannot and should not explain? (shrink)

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. (shrink)

"This book is of major importance to the debate on the postmodern question."--Jean François Lyotard. "This is Vattimo at his best--and at his best he is very, very good, which is to say, erudite, witty, engaging, and precise. I do not think anyone comes close to Vattimo in his ability to correlate complex philosophical issues and arguments, such as those of Heidegger or Benjamin on such topics as &.

In this paper I will defend the idea of the success of post-truth as one of the main features of hypermodernity. In order to understand such a claim, I will start by defining “post-truth” and showing the key differences that separate it from simple manipulation or lies. I will explain how post-truth characterizes a whole new way of understanding the difference between truth and falsity: a new attitude of indifference to the sharp distinction that moderns and ancients (...) had placed between these two notions. I will contend that this new attitude had been announced by the work of at least three recent philosophers: Harry Frankfurt, Gianni Vattimo and Mario Perniola. They give different names to “post-truth”, though, and attribute it to different causes (from anti-intellectualism to the new media and to sheer carelessness). After that, I will explore how two key aspects of hypermodernity (according to Gilles Lipovetsky), i.e. hyperindividualism and hyperconsumption, cohere with this spread of post-truth. Finally, I will summarily refer to some political and geopolitical events that corroborate the relevance of post-truth in our hypermodern world. (shrink)

Essays address the major themes of Pareyson’s hermeneutic philosophy in the context of his existentialist approach to personhood. What if the inexhaustible were the only mode of self-revelation of truth? The question of the inexhaustibility of truth, and its relation to being and interpretation, is the challenge posed by the philosophy of the prominent Italian thinker Luigi Pareyson (1918–1991). Art, the interpretation of truth, and the theory of being as the ontology of both inexhaustibility and freedom constitute the (...) main themes of Pareyson’s distinctive form of philosophical hermeneutics, which develops also on the basis of another fundamental concept, that of personhood understood in the radically existentialist sense of the human being. In Thinking the Inexhaustible, Silvia Benso and Brian Schroeder bring together essays devoted to Pareyson’s hermeneutic philosophy by important international scholars, including well-known Italian thinkers Umberto Eco and Gianni Vattimo, who were both students of Pareyson. Pareyson’s philosophy of inexhaustibility unfolds in conversation with major figures in Western intellectual history—from Croce to Valéry, Dostoevsky, and Berdyaev; from Kant to Fichte, Hegel, and German romanticism; and from Pascal to Schelling, Kierkegaard, Marcel, Jaspers, and Heidegger. “This book introduces, in a way that has not been done before, the central ideas from Pareyson’s long philosophical career. It opens up pathways for further critical analysis and fills in a neglected history within the broader scope of continental philosophy.” — James Risser, editor of Heidegger toward the Turn: Essays on the Work of the 1930s. (shrink)

Gianni Vattimo, one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers and most famously associated with the concept of weak thought, explores theoretical and practical issues flowing from his fundamental rejection of the traditional Western understanding of Being as an absolute, unchanging, and transcendent reality. The essays in this book move within the surroundings of Being without constructing a systematic, definitive analysis of the topic. In Being and Its Surroundings, Vattimo continues his career-long exploration of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, in (...) particular his repudiation of metaphysics with its presupposition of the existence of permanent, universal truth, and that of Friedrich Nietzsche, with its promotion of nihilism. One consequence of problematizing the idea of an attainable truth is the relativization of values and cultures. In the face of the death of God – or the absence of a transcendent guarantor of the validity of human judgments – we have the postmodern tendency to see all value systems and assertions of truth as purely subjective, and to suggest that "anything goes," which Nietzsche called passive nihilism. Vattimo advocates a more active response as he challenges all forms of authoritarianism in the world today. He brings his intellectual acumen to bear on such urgent issues as globalization, the clash of civilizations and terrorism, the crisis of democracy, and the relevance of orthodox religion. Rather than endorse dogmatism or indifference and detachment from social engagement in the name of relativism, Vattimo opts for the path of meaningful dialogue and a search for a mediated consensus based on reason, with all its limitations. (shrink)