Download or read book Weakening Philosophy written by Santiago Zabala and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2006-12-12 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moving away from Jacques Derrida's deconstructionism and Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics, and building on his experiences as a politician, Vattimo asks if it is still possible to speak of moral imperatives, individual rights, and political freedom. Acknowledging the force of Nietzsche's "God is dead," Vattimo argues for a philosophy of pensiero debole or "weak thinking" that shows how moral values can exist without being guaranteed by an external authority. His secularising interpretation stresses anti-metaphysical elements and puts philosophy into a relationship with postmodern culture.
Download or read book A Farewell to Truth written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011-03-25 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book After Christianity written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative book, one of Europe's foremost philosophers contemplates the future of religion in the postmodern world.
Download or read book Nietzsche written by Gianni Vattimo and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2002-05-28 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This renowned introduction - already a standard text in Europe - is translated here for the first time. Vattimo uses Heideggerean and cultural-critical perspectives to reassess the work and thought of Nietzsche.
Download or read book Christianity Truth and Weakening Faith written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-16 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debate over the place of religion in secular, democratic societies dominates philosophical and intellectual discourse. These arguments often polarize around simplistic reductions, making efforts at reconciliation impossible. Yet more rational stances do exist, positions that broker a peace between relativism and religion in people's public, private, and ethical lives. Christianity, Truth, and Weakening Faith advances just such a dialogue, featuring the collaboration of two major philosophers known for their progressive approach to this issue. Seeking unity over difference, Gianni Vattimo and René Girard turn to Max Weber, Eric Auerbach, and Marcel Gauchet, among others, in their exploration of truth and liberty, relativism and faith, and the tensions of a world filled with new forms of religiously inspired violence. Vattimo and Girard ultimately conclude that secularism and the involvement (or lack thereof) of religion in governance are, in essence, produced by Christianity. In other words, Christianity is "the religion of the exit from religion," and democracy, civil rights, the free market, and individual freedoms are all facilitated by Christian culture. 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 world.
Download or read book Weak Thought written by Gianni Vattimo and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 certaintieswithout 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.
Download or read book Deconstructing Zionism written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-11-21 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Essays on Gianni Vattimo written by Matthew Harris and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2016-05-11 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What has postmodernism got to do with Christianity? To what extent can a nihilist derive an ethic from the history of a religion? Can a western approach to secularisation be applied to Islam? These questions are central to this collection of essays from 2011–2015 by Matthew Edward Harris. The essays are grouped around the interrelated themes of religion, ethics and the history of ideas and constitute a critically constructive approach to the subject matter. Harris defends Vattimo against some of his more strident critics, but nevertheless poses questions of his own. Along with a new introduction, outlining Vattimo’s life, thought and ideas, and a conclusion, which looks at how developments in Vattimo’s views on religion have wider implications for his ‘weak thought,’ the volume includes nine essays on Vattimo’s thought. Harris’ overall argument is that Vattimo is overly reliant upon history and that there is a contradiction within his style of ‘weak thought,’ which is against definitive pronouncements yet excludes outright anything that does not pertain to the history of linguistic messages.
Download or read book Belief written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly personal book, one of Europes 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, Vattimos 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 Heideggers 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, Vattimos 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.
Download or read book Nihilism Emancipation written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-27 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features essays on ethics, politics, and law. This book re-evaluates the meaning, values, and the idea of freedom in Western culture. A daring marriage of philosophical theory and practical politics, this collection is the first of Gianni Vattimo's many books to combine his intellectual pursuits with his public and political life. Vattimo is a paradoxical figure, at once a believing Christian and a vociferous critic of the Catholic Church, an outspoken liberal but not a former communist, and a recognized authority on Nietzsche and Heidegger as well as a prominent public intellectual and member of the European parliament.
Download or read book Between Nihilism and Politics written by Silvia Benso and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2010-09-29 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays describe Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo’s unique and radical hermeneutic philosophy.
Download or read book Christ in Postmodern Philosophy written by Frederiek Depoortere and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An investigation into the Christological ideas of three contemporary thinkers: Slavoj Žižek, Gianni Vattimo and René Girard.
Download or read book Hermeneutic Communism written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Of Reality written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2016-03-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Beyond Interpretation written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Polity. This book was released on 1997-02-07 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book by one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers is a concise and lucidly argued account of the meaning of hermeneutics for philosophy today. Vattimo argues that hermeneutics, understood in a general sense, has had a pervasive influence on contemporary philosophy and social thought. But its very generality is also a symptom of its malaise, for it threatens to leave hermeneutics empty of significance and wedded to a shallow relativism. In response to this danger, Vattimo proposes a radicalization of the relation of hermeneutics to its own historical roots in modernity and a rethinking of the relation between hermeneutics and nihilism - which involves, in Vattimo's account, a weakening of the strong structures of being, reality, subjectivity and above all, truth. Vattimo develops a new interpretation of hermeneutics that dispenses with the traditional bias toward aesthetic experience. His radical interpretation breaks the link between hermeneutics and metaphysical humanism, challenges the traditional opposition of the natural and human sciences, and opens new perspectives on ethics, art and religion. Beyond Interpretation will be welcomed by students and researchers in philosophy and social theory.
Download or read book After the Death of God written by John D. Caputo and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-02 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been assumed that the more modern we become, the less religious we will be. Yet a recent resurrection in faith has challenged the certainty of this belief. 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 transition from secularism to postsecularism. As two of the figures who have contributed the most to the theoretical reflections on the contemporary philosophical turn to religion, Caputo and Vattimo explore the changes, distortions, and reforms that are a part of our postmodern faith and the forces shaping the religious imagination today. Incisively and imaginatively connecting their argument to issues ranging from terrorism to fanaticism and from politics to media and culture, these thinkers continue to reinvent the field of hermeneutic philosophy with wit, grace, and passion.
Download or read book Not Being God written by Gianni Vattimo and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
